Human beings, Human life... They are not capable of grasping this truth. We cannot merely sit idle and await the future. We must dedicate our lives to the realization of the truth.
ABOUT
Valerie is a soft, caring, well-behaved young girl. She is protective of those she knows, like her bastard half-uncle and her love interest Hedvika, but to a fault: she gives second chances to people who have tried to do her harm. However, she does not give third chances. She is over-permissive, once.
Valerie has magic of her own and a pair of magic earrings with a will of their own with magic itself. They are bonded to her, and will remain bonded to her until she dies, even if worn by another. They'll help friends of hers and thwart enemies. People who haven't even met Valerie will know the earrings belong to her right away, which can be disconcerning. The earrings sometimes send her on quests, usually while she is asleep but not always. Sometimes she will know where to go, and sometimes she will wake up, barefoot, somewhere unknown. She has taken into the habit of always having her hair nicely brushed and wearing nice camisoles for this reason. The earrings can also greatly harm anyone who wants to hurt Valerie if ingested or worn (This includes being worn as a pin in hair or clothing) where they'd be completely vulnerable to Valerie's desires besides their inherent magic.
As for her own magic, Valerie, in essence, can make the waking life work as a dream, nonsensical and uncohesive, and bring to physical form what has been created by the mind. it is strange: Valerie can visit people's dreams and subconscious and pull objects from there, she can match a person to her dreams and nightmares, and send them away with a kiss. She can tell shapeshifters apart no matter their shape, and can run through alleys only she can see, among many many other things. On a different note, She can turn vampires back to normal by kissing them in the lips or forehead. This also undoes certain spells, and causes or takes away memory loss. She has not yet learned the full extent of her powers, or that of her earrings', which will increase as she ages.
She has dark doe eyes and brown hair. She enjoys singing and doing traditional dances, where women dance in circles, without men. There is something in her that makes her calming to others. Valerie loves making her own dresses and ribbons, but she dresses demurely and appropriately, often in monochrome. The jewelry she wears is never too opulent, though her magic pearl earrings often captivate other people. She loves being barefoot in nature. She is an avid swimmer.
Backstory
Valerie is a young highborn girl, heir to land and good income, cared for and instructed by her grandmother Elsa after her mother joined a convent (Though this is not the full truth). She always wears a pair of earrings that seemed to have come out of nowhere on her thirteenth birthday (Even though her grandmother claims she had them all her life and that her mother left them to her when she joined the Church).
They are beautiful earrings made of gold and pearl, and Valerie quickly becomes obsessed with them. At the same time, she is suddenly plagued by nightmares of a man called Polecat assaulting her and killing her, and begins fearing to sleep, which makes her hazy and causes her to doze off at strange times of the day and at church.
While these events are happening, her grandmother invites Constable Richard to her house, a man who comes to town for the first time with his bastard son Orlík, who he physically abuses. Orlík can communicate with birds and may have the talent to transform into one, but he has not unlocked it. Though the town thinks he is simply a guest for a local wedding, that is only a cover-up: He is the Polecat, and he has been stalking Valerie’s dreams to see if she has a gift of magic, which she does. He and Elsa were once lovers and still have some feelings for each other.
The Constable wants Valerie’s latent magic, land, and earrings (Though he misunderstands their value), and asks Elsa to betray her. At first Elsa refuses it, out of love for her granddaughter, but the Constable knows how to make Else a young woman of 17 years again, and the temptation is too much to resist. When he turns her into a young, beautiful vampire, she promises to transfer him the house titles by her own hand, and she later passes herself off as a guest of the family in her new younger body to trick Valerie.
Elsa, now disguised as a young woman, tries to bite Valerie but doesn’t dare to go through with it. Instead she restrains her granddaughter and steals Valerie’s earrings, drinking the blood of a soldier instead, which Valerie sees, and also attempts to seduce Orlík. He and Valerie help each other escape, and get the earrings back.
Still unaware that the Constable and the Polecat are the same person, but aware that he is a vampire, Valerie tries to feed him a chicken so he does not harm a person. This does not sate the man, who wants to drink her blood, and also use her and her bastard uncle for a ritual that would make Elsa and him immortal, killing them both. The betrayal gets to Valerie, but she tricks the Constable into drinking one of earrings: Though it isn’t in her own hand, she can still control it. Overpowering him with her own magic, she finds out his true identity and transforms him into a literal polecat who later on dies.
Elsa loses the enchantments that made her young and beautiful with the Constable’s death, though she does not miss the taste of blood. She confesses to Valerie that her mother never joined a nunnery, but instead got pregnant with a High Priest who had given oaths of silence and chastity. To avoid the shame, she fled with him during her pregnancy, returning the baby after her birth with a decree that made her legitimate by law, so she could inherit her mother’s land. Her mother and father now live in exile, and she used her magic to finally meet them in her dreams.
Valerie has now unlocked her full potential as lady, magic user, and pearl heiress. She can use her magic without issue and has sheltered her bastard uncle in her home. Though her grandmother is apologetic and still lives with her, Valerie has assumed her role as a Lady of her House and she is relegated to an invitee, and is outranked by Orlík, who is her heir presumptive until she has children of her own. She also has earned admiration from the town neighbouring her estate for saving them from harm.
