Cypress

When you live in a place tethered to the edge of reality, stuck gingerly between here and not quite here, you quickly learn that traditional medicine will only get you so far. Of course, normal injuries still happen. Sickness, frostbite, broken bones and cuts and deep seated, ugly coughing that rattles the lungs until they're bloody. People get hurt and sick from the most mundane things, always, and most of it can be treated with care, knowledge and patience.

But there's the other sicknesses, too. There are those who seem lost, who don't recover from hypothermia like they should, who shiver and look at snowstorms with longing when they should be afraid. There are those who seem healthy, at first glance, but if you ask them about their gifts they will avert their eyes, maybe letting you catch a glimpse of the pain it brings. There those who know too much and those who don't know anything anymore, all seeking you out because they are sick and they need help.
And, of course, there are things that are sick that hardly even qualify as people, but they have consciousness and they feel pain and fear, and they need help, too.

So you learn how to deal in favours, quickly, swiftly, you learn how to bless and how to curse and how to walk the thin, fragile line between reality and elsewhere. You learn - you saw - how dangerous mistakes can be, and you know there's things out there that are clever and deadly and you cannot afford to misjudge them.

There are lives in your hands.

Tread carefully.

Cypress looks like she might have been a racoon, or a tanuki, maybe, at some point? How much of her outlandish appearance is due to the wims of her birth and how much is the consequence of lifelong exposure to magic and fae fuckery is up in the air, and no one is stupid enough to ask directly. The glowing eye, though? Pretty sure that isn't natural.

Cypress is tall, pale, and looms. She's unsettling in more way than one, can stand unaturally still and very, very rarely smiles. She's a very serious, no-nonsense kind of person, has no patience or tolerance for sheanigans, and has the sharp, cutting intelligence to back her intense personality and presence up. She's been a witch for a long time, and in this profession, you either die young or become very good, very fast.
And while no one knows exactly how old she is, she is not young. She is also not dead, nor does she seem to be overly burdened by any curses, so whatever she's doing, it's working.

Outside of her height and general demeanor, the most striking thing about her is the sheer amount trinkets she carries with her. Bundles of herbs, pocketfulls of coins and salt, stones, crystals, bones, knotted rope, teeth that don't look like they belong on any normal animal. Crinkled paper with runes painted on, vials of deep black liquid, berries of all shapes and sizes. Pits. Carved wood. Strips of leather, rings of hair tied with gold string, iron shards. You name it, she probably has it on her person, somehow.
No one knows what each and every one of those trinkets does, but anyone halfway versed in magic can tell you a whole lot of that is for protection, and an impressive (and slightly worrying) amount of the rest is probably insurance. The most powerful weapon against fae is a piece of themself, right after their true name. Cypress is a healer and a bargainer, a negotiator with sharp, sharp teeth, and she has saved many lives and made many, many powerful ennemies. She's armed for good reason.

Sometimes people wonder if she has a collection of names, too. When asked, she will not answer, but her smile is sharp and mean and you know, you know.

• Her right eye is always covered, her left eye glows faintly.
• She always has several bundles of herbs somewhere on her person.
• The skull and antlers are optional.
• Other than the first two bullet points on this list all of her design is up to your discretion, really. I'm not attached to any of the details!