#WritingWonders 8.4 — Share art, pics (face claims), and/or mood boards of one (or more) of your side characters.

I'm really not good with drawing figures. A sketch would take me days when I could write a two page description in an hour. Generally, I'd rather not have a precise idea of a character's appearance, and I sometimes make someone intentionally vague such that a reader is allowed to imagine someone like them or someone they'd like. That said, the little art I do possess is of main characters. I've nothing for side characters.

Instead, in humble defiance of the prompt, I'm sharing an #excerpt that evokes the visual (and other) senses. It is from an unpublished romance adventure novelette last revised in 2008, thus it is written in 3rd not my usual 1st person. The characters are both amazing side characters from an epic fantasy trilogy (also unpublished). Pardon it for being a little rough.

From Through Blood and Tears by RS.

An unseen cloud of lavender and heather enveloped [Myra] and she sneezed. Needing a distraction, she followed the scent. She pushed aside spiky blue-gray bushes dotted with purple flowers and peered into an herb garden.

A winged girl squatted amongst the aromas, intent on a porcelain dish containing wet snowy-white sand. She wore a white linen blouse and gray work trousers, a dirt splotch staining one knee. She molded the grains with her fingertips, spun the plate, and brushed it some more. The girl pushed aside her red hair, rapt in her creation, humming, her voice cracking and drifting into the upper registers. The girl could echolocate already.

Myra tilted her head and strained to hear sounds that, until last week, she could neither hear nor make. An apparition of a hand, index finger pointed skyward, flickered above the dish. Myra gasped.

The girl flinched, striking the plate, spraying globs of sand, dispelling the effect. She landed hands and knees down, her red-brown wings pointed behind Myra. The girl turned her fall into a bow. "Highspeaker! Forgive me!"

[Author retains copyright]

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