Like her elder brother, Dolores realized by the age of ten that she hadn’t inherited the slightest spark of her mother’s magic. Unlike her brother, who accepted the disappointment and turned his attention elsewhere, Dolores got angry, and she’s been simmering at a low level of irritation ever since. Her mother encouraged her to work on her patience, which only created a divide between them. The fractures worsened when Dolores decided that she would force magic upon herself by any means necessary. Over the years, she’s attempted a half-dozen questionable rituals. Perhaps fortunately, she’s been unsuccessful every time, but her mother’s misguided reassurances that they all love her anyway just rub salt in the wound. Her close relationships with her father and brothers have thus far kept her from leaving the family business and striking out on her own.
Gloria Aguilar
Gloria is a MEDICINE WOMAN WITCH with SPIRITUAL HEALING/HARM powers.
Love moves mountains, or so goes the old saw. Gloria learned early in life that ramming your head repeatedly into a rock, no matter how large or how small, will never give you what you want. Better to push little by little and bit by bit, nudging at all the exposed surfaces until their edges wear down smooth. That flexibility let her survive a childhood that might have drowned a less adaptable soul. She and her sister, Imelda, endured together by lifting each other up when one or the other started to sink below the surface. They escaped as soon as they could, but Gloria never forgot how she’d had to make herself small and bend herself into uncomfortable shapes to keep both of them safe. Hiding and pretending seemed like a miserable future for her family. Fortunately, her husband agreed, and together they packed up and rolled eastward until she could stand in the grass and feel magic sparking upward through the soles of her feet. She knows that leaving the Aguilars back in California hurt her husband and causes him no little regret. She would still make the same decision in a heartbeat.
Ofelia Aguilar
Ofelia is a PURITAN WITCH with ILLUSION powers.
Ofelia would never admit that she struggles to pay attention, especially when she’s meant to be working the forge. She’d rather her family chide her for being self-centered and lazy than confess to her frequent absent-mindedness. Time just seems to slip through her fingers, minute by minute and hour by hour, until suddenly she looks up and the sun is setting…or the fire has burned out, or the horse she was meant to be shoeing has grown bored and wandered away. Her saving grace is her magic, which has always come easily, no matter how her mind might wander or her focus might waver. Her natural talent pleases her mother, and the strength of their bond creates a helpful buffer between Ofelia and the exasperation of the rest of her family.
Imelda Salazar
Imelda is a MEDICINE WOMAN WITCH with PHYSICAL HEALING/HARM powers.
Imelda “Madrita” Salazar would deny that she moved to Never to flee her own heart, but her total reluctance to discuss her prior life might suggest otherwise. Unable to prevent her physician husband’s death at the hands of a group of bandits, she accepted her sister Gloria’s invitation to join her and her family in Never, and now stubbornly applies all of her time and energy into healing others. She charges little when she charges at all, and refuses to lose patients to even the most dire of wounds or maladies. She hopes that in some way, she can thus make up for the most important life she could not save.