Aeriel
Servant · heroine
A young woman with a plain, luminous face, pale hair that can look silver in lunar light, and a thin strong body used to work. She is not a court beauty; she is watchable. Gray or pale-blue eyes, a mouth that has learned silence. Clothing: servant’s rough weave, later travel cloaks the color of dust. Bare feet or simple sandals. She should look like someone who could cut out her own heart and still stand. Age: a young woman, not a child.
Loyal past reason, curious, stubbornly merciful. Loved Eoduin as mistress; redeems Irrylath; hunted by the White Witch; Talb is her unlikely counselor.
Irrylath
The Darkangel
A tall, devastatingly beautiful young man with black feathered wings spanning wide, skin like cold marble, and hair as dark as the wings. The face is princely, almost empty; eyes can be human-brown when the curse thins, or bird-black when it does not. He wears little that is not ceremonial or ragged princely remnant. The wings are real anatomy, heavy, not costume. He should look tragic, not like a club promoter. When human again, the wings remain as memory in the shoulders.
Cruel by curse, ashamed by remnants of a prince, slow to accept touch. Aeriel’s opposite and husband-after; son-weapon of the White Witch; Eoduin was a bride among others; Talb plots his unmaking-as-mercy.
Eoduin
Mistress · bride
A young noblewoman of conventional beauty: richer color in the hair (warm brown or auburn), a face Aeriel was taught to serve. Fine clothing that becomes wraith-gray when the Darkangel takes her soul. In life: spoilt mouth, pretty eyes, the posture of someone who has never fetched water. As wraith: translucent, heartless, still wearing a bride’s ruin. We portray her living, with a hint of the later fade in the eyes.
Selfish, not evil; a person who becomes a warning. Aeriel’s mistress; Irrylath’s thirteenth bride; the Witch’s harvest; the other wraiths are her sisters in loss.
Oriencor
The White Witch
A figure of terrible fairness: white as packed snow, hair like fiber-optic frost, a face that might be mother or mask. Tall, thin, not skeletal-horror—more like a law of entropy wearing a woman. Clothing is white on white, hard to photograph. Eyes without ordinary warmth. She should feel colonial and cosmic at once: the forgotten science of a witch. No sexualization; she is a climate.
Hungry for completion, patient, the author of hollow sons. Made Irrylath and his brothers; Aeriel’s true enemy; Eoduin is inventory; Talb remembers older magic she would erase.
Talb
Duarough mage
A tiny man who turns to stone in sunlight: in shadow he is wrinkled, brown-gray, with a craftsman’s hands and eyes like wet pebbles. Shorter than a child, old as masonry. Clothing is earth-colored, patched. When the light hits, he is a garden statue with a secret. Beard sparse, nose large, expression irritated-kind. Not a cartoon dwarf from later films; a folklore maker.
Cryptic, practical, offers rhymes instead of comfort. Sends Aeriel questing; enemy of the Witch’s schedule; regards Irrylath as a lock to pick; Eoduin is already lost.
