Talia

An elf of the old western kingdom, Talia abandoned ancestral marble halls after a duel ended tragically. Bridgeport offers anonymity and, at the Cat House, an appreciative audience for her sharp wit. She converses fluently in five tongues, quotes philosophy mid‑massage, and sketches patrons’ portraits with merciless accuracy.   Talia’s exile left her fiscally poor yet linguistically wealthy: she rents out perfect translations of love-letters, ensuring betrayals sound sublime in any tongue. Her calligraphy has become a minor cult; students gather on the pier to watch her strokes dry to silver in the salt breeze.   She trains each dawn on the abandoned south pier, fencing shadows cast by gulls. Her favoured sword, Winter’s Second Chance, bears an opal pommel that flashes like frozen lightning. Between thrusts she recites quatrains, claiming rhythm refines both blade and breath.   Her private attic studio overflows with canvases: moody seascapes, charcoal studies, and one painting permanently shrouded. Beneath the sheet lies a portrait of the duel that ruined her – two silhouettes locked mid‑lunge, one already fading like morning frost.   Talia’s solitary vice is honey‑cake drenched in rum; she eats it only on anniversaries of the duel, letting the sweetness smother memory’s sting.   Once a month she posts an unsigned poem to the Gazette’s classified pages - an arena duel of couplets with an unknown adversary. Readers wager on whose stanza will draw blood; rumours insist the opponent is none other than her former betrothed, now a court poet in the Ice-Birch Thrones.   Her loft teems with borrowed instruments - a glass armonica, a serpent horn - each left by guests hoping she’ll learn to play and thereby remember them. She dutifully masters one melody, sends a letter of thanks, then donates the instrument to Lili's Orphanage. Thus affection circles the city like migrating birds.