Aibell and the Fae

WIP STORY mostly art right now

BREIF OVERVIEW:
This story is currently intended to be a blend of classic storybooks, fairytales, and graphic novels. Picture, antique ink illustrations + illuminated manuscripts but also a comic.
Part of me making this lil Wattpad thing is for the purpose of organization but also if ya interested in reading this it'd be cool to find an audience here. I used to write silly Wattpad stuff when I was much younger (I never strayed from the fairytale theme) so this is nostalgic for me too.

BUT WITHOUT FURTHER ADOOO 🥁🥁🥁

HERES WHAT I HAVE THUS FAR, in terms of an overall premise.

Our heroine is the magician Aibell McClure, a thoughtful, closed off and distrusting girl who tries to pave her own path in the world ALONE. Bitterly, but gratifyingly, alone.
Her partner in crime is the well-travelled Raven, Cagair, whom she uses to see the world of the Fae from a safer distance for a time.
Cagair is a sleuth and finder of secrets, and Aibell benefits from this inconspicuous all-seer, learning the ways of her stingy father and coincidentally her cousin's unhappy love life.

They met a short while after Aibell's family moved from Scotland to Yorkshire to live with their more fortunate cousins after the sudden disappearance of Aibell's mother. The raven had been eyeing the silver key that was left behind in their abandoned cottage, so he made himself known to Aibell and began to tell her all that he knew in hopes of learning the purpose for it.

Their research leads them to Fairyland and most unfortunately, the Unseelie court.

Within this court we find the fairy Queene, who stole away the first born son of a MacLeod chief and the Queene's daughter. This son, born of man and fairy, is claimed by the Unseelie court on account of blood lineage, and well the fairy Queene has been so terribly lonely since her daughter ran off with the MacLeod chief.

Now this son, who Aibell comes to call Dalziel, Prince of Autumn, though was in fact stolen away before he could be christened, grows up believing that he is entirely faerie, though he has a peculiar longing for earth and rain and all sorts of grounding things. He hardly ever flies so as to keep closer to solid ground. He's a very melancholic prince of Autumn who wishes for the heart he thinks he lacks.
(The faeries he keeps company with have traditionally cut out their hearts and sealed them away so as to not "succumb to beguiling love". ) Though, were they to speak truly, they would talk of heartbreak and fear.

Aibell meets him when she is discovered and captured by the faerie Queene, who keeps her in a birds cage, misunderstanding that Ciar and her are not entirely one and the same.
Dalziel visits her when he can, not from a sense of care but from an envious desire to know all about the earth she came from. He is eventually convinced to set her free when she offers him books to learn about the world he feels so curiously connected to.

They read together, they learn together, and the prince begins to feel as though Aibell is in essence exactly the warmth he's been searching for, he thinks he loves her.
Aibell is opposed to this notion, she has never been considered warm by anyone's standards. To him, her sincerity is her warmth, her character. He has been surrounded by heartless creatures all his life, has never once witnessed a tear run down their cheeks, nor a drop of blood fall from their skin.

    𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐈𝐒𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐎:

𝐀𝐢𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐥:

Aibell was brought into the world upon the moors of northern Scotland in the vear 1795. Her mother was a lowlander that tought Aibell all she knows now of the Seelie and Unseelie fae.
Aibell inherited her profession as a practical magician before her sudden dissapearence in 1805 when Aibell was still a wee bearn.
She is the skeptical type, especially since learning of her father's dishonest self-serving nature.

    Examples being:

    He only let her mother continue her profession after they were married because he thought     it would guarantee him a son (it did not, only a boyish girl)

    Aibell was only allowed to be schooled because her father believed that since her beauty     and charm was lacking, she must at least be intelligent enough if there was ever to be a     chance of her marrying to increase the families status and fortune.

    Aibell was permitted to practice magic, with her fathers hope that it would make them very     rich. He often set tasks upon Aibell to make people more generous or agreeable than they     ought to be for this purpose.
(She did not always do as he asked and she hardly had to show anything for it because her     father was so afraid of the practice that he'd rather just leave it to her and assumed it would all work out)

She often mistrusts people looking to care for her: She is very protective of her heart, as much of her life has been filled with loss and grief.
She hides and diminishes the part of herself that wants to openly cherish and care for all that she loves and admires, so as to protect herself from the consequences of naïveté and irrationality.

Aibells room is a confined eclectic space that evokes pain and discomfort. There are marks across the walls from where she has struck them with spells gone awry.
She dreams of bloodied tapestries and too-tall windows and wardrobes.
She hides her tobacco pouch under her mattress.

    Concerning her profession:

Aibell is incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to theoretical magic. She enjoys the study. Though she's very lacking in her aptitude to perform any practical spells in a pinch. She gets a bit lost in the intricacies and history which makes her spells rigid and dull at times, before she learns to commune with the magic that runs through the world by nature, and in doing so, she learns to work with it in a manner that flows freely while maintaining intent and direction.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐞:

The Queene stole away the chiefs only son, believing it to be her rightful claim to the union between her daughter, and the human chief. This son believes himself to be a fairy.
She steals the hearts of those who wish to escape grief.

𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐥𝐳𝐢𝐞𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧:

The story goes that the chief of clan MacLeod fell in love with a fairy princess, and that she could not stay with him longer than a year and a day, afterwards she would have to return home. She made the chief promise that when she left, he would not allow their son to cry. However this promise could not be kept, and so he vanished (stolen away into faerieland but no one knows that for sure yet) leaving behind this silken cloth. (Faerie flag)

The no-name prince was never christened, so he is nameless and therefore devoid of any knowledge of a connection to a human family. He is given a fairy name, Dalziel, while the name intended for him is withheld by the fairy Queene.

The prince is not proud or judgmental, though he's ashamed to admit that he wishes he knew more about the human world. He thinks to himself, that there is some part of him that not entirely at ease in his shifting and fantastical world. He longs for earth and solid ground, the smell of rain and salty seas.

When he meets Aibell he's very curious, though envious of her, which he disguises poorly, and the longer he gets to know her the worse his wishes get. And worst of all he thinks Aibell can give him everything he's ever wanted, simply because she comes from the one place he's secretly felt he's truly belonged to since forever.

Cagair:

Aibell's Raven is a professional sleuth, good at knowing things they shouldn't. This is how she discovered some of her father's dishonest self-serving nature (beyond his unethical requests).

The bird is well traveled and as anyone knows, ravens are especially familiar with traveling between worlds, once believed to roam the realms of faeries. So they are familiar with a multitude of languages and cultures.

She bonds with this bird as it takes an interest in her mothers silver skeleton key.
(bird brain like shiny thing)
Cagair reveals to Aibell that it was meant to be left to her after her mothers passing, but was instead withheld from her by her father, who believed it to be cursed in some way that he was unable to take advantage of.