Arily Johnson

Arily's name has a special meaning. It's an acronym - Always Remember I Love You

21

She/Her

B&B Hostess

Selkie

March 11th

Fan BingBing

5 FT 6 IN

She has a slender and muscled frame from her years of extracurricular activities as a child: dance, ice skating, gymnastics, more recently yoga and Pilates.

Dark Brown

Black

Straight, and she doesn't usually let it get any longer than mid-back before she'll cut it to shoulder length and restart.

Her clothing tastes are as spontaneous and eclectic as her personality: one day she can be fashionable, one day she can be comfortable, and everything in between.

She has a sort of ageless quality in her appearance, where she can make herself appear much younger or much older than she is with outfits and makeup.

Arily thrives on how the world is forever changing and loves to chase after life. She is easily moved to tears by sad stories and can only be serious when the situation calls on it. She loves to dance and have fun. Generally, she's a dramatic young adult who has no idea what she wants in life and always looks in the present rather than what's in the future.

She considers herself allergic to commitment of any kind; she is young and wild and carefree, and trying to mask and nurse a hole in her heart caused by a traumatic, life changing recent events.

Swimming, dancing, ice skating, yoga, a soak in the hot springs, interior decorating, cozy sweaters, shopping, cute boots

Being sore or achy, sticky heat, rude or entitled guests, people who can’t clean up after themselves, litter, carelessness, sad stories, traumatic events

She also has zero tolerance for anything horror or scary.

• Social Butterfly: Arily is a total social butterfly. She is an extrovert, loves to talk with everyone and help people out. She will almost always say 'yes' to every party and social engagement she's invited to, and loves the spontaneity of having next to no notice. You can count on Arily to show up just about anywhere she's invited.




• Good listener: Arily has the kind of personality that people love to pour themselves out to her. She is a great listener, loves to offer comfort, advice, and cheer if someone is going through a hard time, and celebrating when someone is having a great time. She doesn’t gossip or spread rumors, she just likes to be there if people need her.

• Heart On Her Sleeve: Arily is both emotional and compassionate, and she doesn’t bother to hide her feelings from anyone. People often say she is an open book, easy to read, even when she tries to hide a reaction or how she’s feeling. She is a bad liar as a result.




• Flighty: Arily prefers her life to be a constant whirlwind of activity, always something new around every corner, no time for rest. She is always doing something, never likes to sit still or commit to anything long-term, as it may impact any spontaneous plans that come up.

Pansexual

Arily is a social butterfly who loves to make friends. She can be almost obnoxious about it, determined to make everyone smile and turn even people who don't like her into a friend. She wears her heart open on her sleeve and always wants to be friendly and supportive. She never wants to be by herself, she is an extrovert through and through and wants to be at every party.

She wouldn't even call her enemies enemies, more like potential friends she is determined to get through to. Which can be grating and annoying for some people. But there is no one Arily can bring herself to downright hate.

Arily has never had a serious relationship. She is not a virgin, but she has been with less than five partners (none of which were while in a relationship with them) and feels herself inexperienced in physical intimacy of a sexual nature. Because she is a social butterfly and extroverted, she often doesn't realize when someone is trying to change the nature of their connection to her (such as friendship to relationship) and prefers frank conversations rather than hints.

Her extroverted nature means she doesn't want to tie herself down to one person just yet (because she finds so much to love in everyone), but she is traditional insofar as she doesn't know how she feels about open relationships or being polyamorous, and despises cheating, so rather than date she stays single.

Subtle hints and teasing often went straight over her head. She had been raised in a very loving, very liberally minded household so oftentimes teasing or jokes had no meaning just because to her they were just facts of life. Can't be embarrassed when that's just how things were.

Arily has some undiagnosed PTSD from the deaths of her parents. Her therapist - when she had one - had explained it was possible to experience PTSD without having actually witnessed the event itself. That what police reports and conversations with investigators couldn't answer, her imagination filled in the rest. Losing her parents had been terrible enough, then the how, then finding out she was adopted so soon after… it had all turned into one dark monster she couldn't bring herself to face.

Plot Ideas (copied from Plotter):

Idea #1: A life in Snow Haven. Arily is not a native, but she spent every June-August in Snow Haven from age 9 to age 17. Her parents were well known in the area, as her father was a doctor who volunteered with the outreach clinics and her mother was an artist who volunteered her time while her husband worked. So even though Arily did not grow up here, she basically grew up here, and would at least have a "summer camp" kind of relationship with people who are in her age bracket or might have known her parents. So if you have someone within her age bracket, we can always build a past connection off of this!

Idea #2: A New Family. Arily is an orphan twice over. She has no family left to her name. So she is in need of building a new family for herself. There are lots of routes for this! It could be a friend group, multiple friend groups, a support group. It doesn't necessarily have to be the good kind of friend group either. Maybe it's toxic. Arily is not her normal self, so she can get herself into all kinds of situations.

Idea #3: Support System. In that same vein, Arily being extroverted and empathetic means that she would be perfect for anyone looking for a character to be a support system for theirs. Arily can provide a place to stay (the Inn), money, a job opportunity, emotional support... in fact, I think it's something Arily would really want to do whether or not the person wanted help. It's a distraction from dealing with the problems in her own life!

Arily doesn't know anything about her real family - she was a hospital drop off when she was only days old, in the middle of the night by a woman who kept her face covered. She was adopted at a few months old by Antony and Sonya Johnson, both Selkies themselves, who raised her as their own.

She did not find out that she was adopted until after her parents passed in a house fire about a year before she came to Snow Haven.

She has a black cat named Balthazar who adopted her shortly after her parents died. It's a memory she can think of without much conscious effort: her sobbing on the stoop of her motel room, one of those older locations with the rooms all connected via outdoor hallways. Her crying probably making the storm worse, thanks to her sea magic. It had only been a few weeks since she arrived home to be met at the airport by security and her family's lawyer. Everything was still so fresh and raw, and the sympathy and pity that surrounded her in the small town where she once had her childhood home was suffocating.

And a scrawny little black cat had come out of the dark, soaked to the bone, planted his feet on her leg, and yowled. She had always said the moment felt like something - a guardian angel, Fate, whatever - had sent him to her in that moment.

March 11th

Unknown

Snow Haven, Alaska

High school diploma; she never did figure out what she wanted to do with school during her gap year, so the gap year has turned into a many-year situation.

Through the use of dictionaries and online translators, Arily can usually muddle her way through any conversation not in English. She knows lots of conversational bits and pieces in several languages because that's how she intended to backpack through Europe.

Meet Arily! Arily is a bright and bubbly Selkie who's not native to Snow Haven. But, she and her parents came on vacations every summer from when she was 9-17. They always stayed at the Pinewood Inn from the beginning of June to the end of August. Her father was a doctor and her mother active in the artist scene, and they were prolifically involved in Snow Haven life while they were here and considered Snow Haven their second home.

When Arily was 19, her parents were killed in a suspected arson fire. They never found any suspects. As Arily had to deal with the police and her inheritance, it came to light that she was actually adopted as an infant, and her parents were actually her adoptive parents.

Reeling from being made an orphan twice over, Arily turned to the only other home she had, Snow Haven and the Pinewood Inn, and escaped here to live, to work, and to try and regather herself and decide what she wants to do with her life going forward.

Arily was a hospital dump. Left in a car seat in the waiting room of a hospital when she was only days old, by a woman in unidentifiable clothes who kept her face covered and slipped in and out so quickly no one remembered seeing her even after the security footage was reviewed. The who and why would remain forever unknown; the baby hadn't even been left with a name. Nothing to identify who she was with or where she came from. Just a tiny leather bracelet around her wrist, a plain white onesie, and a car seat. She was put up for adoption shortly after, given the name of Baby Doe.

Antony and Sonya Johnson knew what the bracelet around the infant's wrist meant the moment they saw it. A Selkie couple who tried and failed for years for a child of their own and was now knee-deep in the adoption process instantly knew the talisman for what it was. It was the first Selkie child they had come across in their search for a family of their own, and they knew the baby was the one for them. Baby Doe was adopted by the Johnsons and given the name Arily.

Arily remembers nothing but a happy childhood. She looked close enough to her parents that they chose not to tell her she was adopted, and she knew no different. Antony was a doctor, Sonya was a dance instructor and freelance artist, so her home was filled with a mixture of science and creativity. The Johnsons were well-off; between Antony’s occupation and Sonya’s rich upbringing with a tidy inheritance the family never hurt for money and Arily had all she could want.

Antony was a general practice doctor who preferred to lend his time to Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross than to settle down with a family practice, so the Johnsons moved around a LOT through her early childhood. Wherever Antony went that it was safe to reside, Sonya and Arily followed… as long as it was near water so the Selkies never lost their connection to the sea. She was homeschooled through most of elementary school until her parents finally determined they needed to settle to provide her a steady home and education. Arily was 9-going-on-10 when they finally purchased a home in Washington right off the Pacific.

There Arily spent the rest of her time growing up. She did moderately well in school, but she took after her mother more than her father; Arily preferred the arts to the sciences. She liked to draw, paint, dance, sing, play music, and sew and create things than do math and science and doctor-y stuff. Their family summer vacations took them up to Alaska frequently as Antony would lend his services as a traveling doctor to tiny, far flung villages where getting into town to see a doctor was hard. They spent a lot of time at a cozy bed and breakfast in Snow Haven, as it was so central to the state, and the Hot Springs made it feel like the sea.

When Arily graduated at 18, she had no idea what to do with her life. She was a free spirit of free-spirited parents who wanted her to take her time in choosing the direction of her career and life. So instead of applying for colleges like her peers, her parents funded an international backpacking adventure where she could take a year off and explore the globe on her own, as her parents had done before her. Although her parents did pay for it for the most part she paid for it herself through odd jobs, working her way across the States and Europe into West Asia and then South America in a bid to circumnavigate the world before returning home to settle down. She wanted to prove she wasn’t a typical rich kid and had a good work ethic and could take care of herself, as well as experience as many jobs as possible to help her decide a career path.

That was the plan, anyway. A year into the trip, while Arily was in Paris, France, she got an urgent and worrying message from her parents to return home as soon as possible. By the time Arily was able to arrange a flight home and landed in Washington, she discovered the message had gotten to her too late. The family lawyer and the police sat her down to explain that her parents’ house had been burned to the ground, with her parents inside, and all had been completely lost. Her parents were gone. The police suspected arson, that her parents’ death was deliberate, but with no suspects or motives besides the single voicemail, the case went cold.

In the whirlwind of insurance paperwork, wills, and inheritance, was when Arily discovered her parents’ longest held secret: she was adopted. Already lost in grief, this news sent the Selkie on a mental and emotional breakdown tailspin. All the soul searching and adventuring during her trip had cost her the last year she would ever have with her parents, and she was still as lost and confused as ever. With nowhere else to turn, once all the paperwork finally settled and all the money was in Arily’s hands she returned to the frequent vacation home of her parents, the little B&B in Snow Haven, Alaska, to both work and try to recover from the mess she’s in.

Selkie, with a beast form of a Black Harbor Seal

She was raised by Selkies, so she has always had the common knowledge everyone else had growing up.

She is a typical Selkie in almost every way, with average control over her sea magic and a good handle on her shifting abilities.

Arily's beast form as a Selkie is a Black Harbor Seal, which is a rare coloring among the species. A coloring most commonly found in Scotland, it is a very long way from Arily's childhood in Alaska. It leads her to believe she has ancestry somewhere in western Europe in terms of her Selkie side.

Her TALISMAN has always been the same: a double braided leather bracelet with a single sea glass charm attached to one end. She never, ever, takes it off.