Ivan was a Fairest Flowering Spring, an extravagant and flourishing charmer. He’s a great artist and tends to come off as very charming. He’s good at sales, crafting, herbology, botany, and biology.
He likes writing or drawing when he has spare time, something he often has too much of these days.
Ivan is deathly afraid of bees.
Ivan’s gentry was Dorothy, and his guide was Hoggle.
He was born December 5th, 1991, and was taken in 2011.
Description
Personality
Transfixed by the abrupt shift in his current surroundings, he does his best to maintain an exuberant and encouraging attitude for not only himself but for the people around him. He is innately a healer, both of physical and emotional wounds and does his best to let his own experience in finding healing inform and assist those around him to also heal. He carries with him simple medical and artistic supplies, as well as his notebook which he has titled Ivan’s Log.
Ivan likes sweet things, and hates bitter things.
Physically
Ivan is a plant based life-form of humanoid proportions with striking shoulders and pale skin. His pale upper limbs end on colorful and ridged appendages out from which spindle bundles of delicate green-tipped fingers. His lower appendages are a twisting mass of pale sinewy lengths that resemble the veiny roots of a tree. He often wears a pair of pants over his lower half with a deep brown paisley pattern; the closest thing he could find that make him look like he had rougher, bark-like skin coating his exterior below his belt. His upper half is often covered in a deep green, collard shirt; over which flows his canopy of flowers. The botanical mass that coats his upper shoulders has a way of finding its way through a multitude of different places in his clothes magically rearranging itself around him as if it had no real anchor outside his spiritual center. His head is framed by his hair and his jaw which emerge from the flowering canopy like a central cresting bloom. His hair is a dark, dirty blonde. He carries with him everywhere a leather and canvas bag which contains his supplies. Through one of the straps on the bag, he constantly also carries a long stemmed rose which he uses to defend himself or offer as a gift to friends and enemies alike.
Pre-Arcadia
Ethan was a groundskeeper at the botanical garden at Morrison Discovery Center in Denver CO. He spent most of his time sitting at a desk drawing while he waited for customers to come through, savoring any chance to catch the eye of a customer or strike up a conversation about membership deals. Most days he was bored out of his mind since most people didn’t care too much for plants. The majority of his patronage during his shifts were couple’s dates and family outings which gave him few opportunities to flirt. The double wide strollers blocked the walkways and he was constantly shooing teenagers off the brick walls where they were making-out.
Arcadia Experience
The Taking
On one of the rare occasions that a girl walked into the gardens, Ethan’s ears perked up. He made idle, but charming smalltalk until she was smiling then asked her what she was up to, “in my forests”. She said she actually worked at a different branch. The other garden across town happened to be hiring from inside and she was wondering if he would be interested in applying for the position. “After all,” she had said “the foot traffic out there is quite a bit more..lively” as she looked around the empty lobby. Ethan jumped at the chance and scheduled an interview then and there. The next week he showed up at the listed address from the invite and found that the job opportunity was for specifically a flower garden and not a botanical emporium. He accepted the invitation anyway, chomping at the bit to interact with more customers. It was then that the ruse was lifted and he was transported to Arcadia.
Durance
Most of Arcadia for Ivan was about being passed around as a tool for the pleasure of others. After his experiences under Dorothy near the Emerald City, in the poppy fields, he spent most of his time on Junk Island as a discarded nothing. Being that the location was far away from sources of magical energy so commonly found throughout Dorothy’s more densely populated realm, he was very depleted over the course of his stay. As a result, his physical form appeared malnourished and drained of color for the most part whenever seen during his Durance. During that time, he was discovered by other magical creatures and carted off multiple times for month long ventures, where his leaves were clipped and steeped for tea by magical leaders and minions alike.
Dorothy was a hard task master in the stories she chose to weave concerning him. Ivan was forced into service as a tender of the poppy fields. Terribly dangerous, the place was not only noxious to him, it was also infested with that which he feared most; bees. He was transformed by Dorothy into a plant-like entity that tended the poppies and weeded the garden. He regularly had to return to a fertilized area and stand in it in order to regain draining strength. Being away from it for too long, whether via accidentally falling asleep because of the noxious fumes, being chased through the poppy field by giant bees, or trying to make an escape run, would cause him to lose color and strength. He would wilt and he hated it.
After Dorothy was done with Ivan he was discarded to Junk Island where he met most of his friends. After six years as a garden hand, the more directed portion of his torture in arcadia had drawn to a close. The remaining two years of his time there was a different kind of punishment. An abandonment. He quickly lost most of his color and fullness of body in his first weeks on Junk Island. After several days of searching, dragging his frail body across discarded rubble, he found some spots that had enough nutrients that he was able to gain a little strength back. Enough possible to get up and walk around a little instead of dragging himself over the sharp and uneven ground.
Ivan met Acrid the Opossum at while on Junk Island and helped her escape her cage. For a few months of his time on the island he helped acrid locate dependable food locations suitable for her, and otherwise attempted to communicate. However, any time he attempted to be his charming self, she fainted for some reason. He always figured it must be some kind of allergic reaction to garbage the same ways he was susceptible to the flowers.
Two years went by and he learned how to survive. Avoiding recapture from the Queens and staying out of his gentry’s forethoughts, he had to keep a low profile. He made a few friends and helped who he could. But eventually, his nutritious soil dried up. Whatever magical energy that he was able to feed off in those locations eventually gone. He wilted over the last few months into obscurity and eventually vanished into the background of the garbage laden landscape. One day, he fell asleep, drifting under the waves of the coast of the island and washed away.
Arcadia Attitude
Ivan was primarily a survivalist by education in Arcadia.
Present Experience
The freehold has been a welcome change to the solitude that was living in the hedge, but they get themselves into such dangerous shenanigans willingly that he often questions his safety being worth the friendship. Having put his life on the line to test the resolve of their pack, Ivan has been overall unenthused by the group’s urgency to save his potentially endangered life. He spends most of his time working at the local coffee shop and making an apartment livable
Present Attitude
After Ivan’s experience in the Arcadia having redefined his understanding of what a home and a family looks like, he is weary of new systems, especially ones where his safety may be in jeopardy. He has chosen to primarily keep a low profile, get a job at a local coffee shop, and try and live a new life. He wishes deeply to reconnect with old friends from Arcadia, but feels bad doing so on uneven ground. Since he remembers so much of his time there and the others seem to remember so little he has withdrawn within himself, preferring to talk to other’s about their past and help them remember instead of digging around through the skeletons in his own closet.
After falling away from the freehold, he picked up work preforming out the window of his local coffee store, choosing to stay closer to Denver. He lived as best he could, making new friends and keeping some old ones.
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