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Ash B. Winchester - Celestia ~ Part One

Name: Ash Brighid Winchester
Nicknames: None
Hero Name: Celestia

Age: 89

Gender: F

Birthday: January 9, 1929

Side: Good

Powers:

Empathy Magic: Ash can feel the emotions of other people within a certain range.

Healing: She can heal plants, animals, and people. She can also temporarily take away someone else’s pain (but not her own) while she is touching them.

Precognition: She sometimes passes out randomly and receives short visions of the future.

The weaknesses of these powers are described below in ‘Weaknesses.’

Appearance: Although Ash is 89 years old, she looks to be about 23. She has straight, black hair down to her shoulder blades, but she normally puts her wavy locks of hair into a messy, low ponytail or parts it to one side or the other. Her eyes are warm and reflective, like a shiny glass marble, and her irises are light gray with tendrils of rich, brown and gold hues. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and Ash’s eyes indeed display intense amounts of emotion and thought so much so that her moods are almost contagious if you look into her eyes. She has a willowy, slender frame, but though she has very few curves, her legs, torso, and neck are gorgeously elongated to exactly the right degree, giving her an air of grace and sophistication. Her height is roughly 5’7 and a half inches, and her skin is sheet white, almost giving off a sort of dim, warm glow. Her fingers are very long and slender, and she keeps her nails trimmed very neatly so that they don’t scratch herself or other people. She has hardly any muscle anywhere on her body and consequently, has almost zero strength whatsoever. With her alabaster skin and elegant frame, she more than resembles a porcelain doll with her small features and excellent posture. Ash’s face is slightly more of a round shape, and most if not all of her facial features are very soft and gentle, enhancing the warm but quiet aura that seems to emanate off her. She has small lips and ears, and her nose is a bit small as well. Her eyelashes are very short, and her eyebrows are thin. She has very few scars or markings on her otherwise ghostly complexion, but the three, largest ones are crooked, jagged lines on her back, shoulder blades, and waist. A few, smaller ones are on the undersides of both wrists, and her thighs also have similar scars. Two, large, feathery, white wings extend from her shoulder blades, seemingly the only part of her that actually has some muscle except for her back, which is exceptionally strong. There are also a few dark feathers in her wings, but not many. She possesses no tattoos or piercings, except for one piercing in her left ear.
Ash’s fashion tastes are pretty simple; she tries her best to stay away from more flashy or eye-catching clothes. In her human form, she just wears a pair of ripped jeans with a lacy top and cropped jean jacket or a sweater and scarf in colder weather. She either wears combat boots or sandals, depending on the season, and is an expert with hair, but makeup is something she rarely wears. She likes painting her nails with sparkly nail polish (usually pink or silver), and also likes to tie a red or blue bandana around her ponytail or neck. Her wings are invisible to everyone except angels and demons in this form. In her true form, she wears light, leather armor, tall boots, and metal gauntlets. She has a white belt strapped around her waist, and a holy sword is in a sheath attached to it. Around her neck is a warding symbol on a chain, and her wings are visible to everyone.

Personality: Ash is the most patient person you will ever meet. She never gives up on people no matter what and continues to see the best in them. However, she is not blind to the bad in people but simply believes that change is possible for almost anyone. She can be a little naïve or even airheaded at times, but for the majority of the time, she’s pretty sensible and practical.
She’s an optimist, glass half-full, lighthearted kinda gal and knows how to cheer up almost anyone. She’s down to earth, loves seeing the natural beauty in things, and enjoys helping people out, even if she had other plans. Because she loves people so much, she becomes very depressed and closed off if she is forced to be alone for too long, losing any and all motivation and energy.
Ash lives to listen to people’s problems, give them advice, or help them figure things out. She loves solving problems and will sometimes solve problems for people who don’t want her help on accident. That being said, most of the time she knows when to back off and let people sort things out for themselves.
She naturally takes on a guardian angel, mother hen type role, but sometimes she morphs into a mama bear if someone is messing with her friends or family. She considers almost everyone she meets as a part of her family, and she will do anything to help or take care of them. She freely crosses the boundaries between people or groups of people, not caring for rivalries or other enemies. She doesn’t truly belong to a group, but she has managed to befriend most of the various groups. She is often called on to be a mediator or referee by others in conflict as she is known for being fair to everyone without bias.
Ash has natural leadership abilities as well, and though she is popular in the Celestial Planes, she always declines suggestions of rising in rank. Helping people is her first and foremost concern; being a leader would take that away from her.
Although her heart is probably made out of pure gold, she does have her quirks and flaws. While she can relate well to most people and can give excellent advice, she cannot trust her judgment when it comes to her own, personal life. She ignores her own problems for as long as she can, but that technique has proven time and time again to only be destructive. Nevertheless, she still neglects to take care of her own self, which leads to a lot of pain and isolation from all her friends, and as social as she is, that is crippling to her. Normally she’ll sink into a dark, deep depression and won’t eat or do anything to keep herself from falling apart. It’s always hard to get her out of the deep pit she’s dug herself in, but it is possible. It just takes a really patient person and sometimes some bribery.
Ash also suffers from a number of different fears and phobias, some more rational than others. She has a fear of the dark, the ocean, butterflies, salami, cages, thunder, lightning, sandstorms, koala bears, jellyfish, and moths.
Overall, Ash is an almost annoyingly cheery seraphim, but she means well and tries her hardest to help others and overcome some of her more irrational fears.

Strengths: Ash can read people very well, has an incredible amount of patience, and always has good advice.

Weaknesses: Ash’s empathy magic only allows her to feel what others are feeling; she is completely unable to read minds.
Her healing magic can take away pain, but only while she is touching someone. While doing this, she must also feel the full effect of whatever pain she is taking away from someone.
She cannot control when she receives visions, and even then they never offer a complete picture of what is to come, only a small, blurry piece of the puzzle.
She is also very naïve at times, has a great deal of difficulty living on her own, and has several crippling phobias and fears.

Likes: Open sky
Starry nights
Gentle winds
All animals (except butterflies, koala bears, moths, and jellyfish)
Camping
Hot tea
Gardening
Historical fiction
Celtic music
Chocolate

Dislikes: Poachers
Being cooped up indoors
Science fiction
Heavy metal
Elevators
The dark
Thunderstorms
Cages
Slime
Coffee

Family:

Father: Athanasius Winchester
Mother: Vasilisa Winchester
Half-Sister: Nirvana Winchester

History: Ash was born of a powerful archangel and a human woman, but the god her father served had no tolerance for his angels in relationships with mortals, not to mention an angel having a child with a mortal. She lived with her mother for the majority of her childhood in a small farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. They grew most of their own food and raised chickens, cows, and other animals. They also hired a few farmhands who lived with them in their house to help with the chores and tasks of running a farm. Ash’s mother always picked the farmhands they hired with great care. She couldn’t have anyone going off into any of the closest towns and telling everyone about the woman and her half-angelic daughter who lived in the country.
Ash never saw her father much, but he tried to visit her and her mother whenever he could. He taught her how to control her abilities as best he could with the limited time he had to spend with her. As a result, Ash had to learn how to master her powers mostly on her own, a process that ended up taking years. Her healing magic was the easiest to learn, but her empathic abilities were much more difficult to control. Sometimes no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t feel anything at all, but other times she felt everything from everyone around her all at once, causing her to have severe breakdowns. The stress was so great that it would often cause her to experience psychotic episodes. During these episodes, she became paranoid, delusional, agitated and even suffered from hallucinations. She became convinced that someone was following her at all times, people were out to hurt her, and her thoughts were being controlled externally. She even had audio and visual hallucinations, such as voices in her head and seeing things or people that weren’t really there. These episodes could last anywhere from simply a week to over a month. The random, uncontrollable visions she sometimes received didn’t help matters either. Sometimes she would regain consciousness in a place that was different from the one she originally passed out in. As a young child, she hated and feared it, but as she got older, she just accepted it, since there was nothing she could do to change what happened occasionally. The visions usually came in short bursts and hardly ever made any kind of sense. It was like focusing so intensely on one part of the picture that it was impossible to see the whole of it.
Despite her fragile mental health, most of Ash’s childhood was relatively happy. She loved living on the farm because she got to play with all the animals, and she even got to help the farmhands or her mother when one of their animals was giving birth. Because of her love for nature, living out in the wide open country was perfect for her. She loved to camp out in the fields, and oftentimes she would coax one or two of the farmhands to join her. Sometimes she would sleep in the barn during warm summer nights up in the loft, listening to the restless snorts of the horses below and the gentle brays of the one donkey they owned. She’d take any excuse to be outside and slept outside or in the barn or out by the sheep pen more often than she slept in her own bed.
Her chores around the farm included feeding and gathering eggs from the chickens, helping her mother prepare the meals for themselves and the farmhands, feeding and watering the horses, mucking out the horses’ stalls, weeding the garden, and dusting and cleaning around the house. However, she and the farmhands often played games in the evening to determine who had to do the nastier jobs (like mucking out the stalls) the next day. Usually they played some form of poker, betting chores instead of money. Ash’s mother was not particularly happy that some of the farmhands had taught her poker, but as long as they only bet their tasks and everything got done, she allowed it.

Ash B. Winchester - Celestia ~ Part Two

History cont'd: Ash was never much good at poker; she didn’t have a very good poker face and usually ended up cleaning the horses’ stalls. However, she didn’t really mind as much. She liked being around the horses and other animals in the barn. She often played with the lambs in the sheep pen or with the sheepdog, Bernard, in her free time, and she liked to comfort the sheep when the farmhands sheared their wool in the summertime. Her presence always calmed the farm animals. There were also a few cats who hung around the barn, and she named all of them and learned how to sew little toys for them to play with.
A few times a year, tornadoes formed in their area, and they would all have to hide in the cellar built right underneath the house. The tornadoes didn’t usually touch down near the farm, but it did happen more than once, killing most of the crops. Once Ash got a handle on her healing powers, however, she was able to mend most of the plants, saving the farm from financial disaster.
Ash was hardly ever allowed to leave the farm and go to the nearest town to sell crops and cattle as her parents worried that she would be exposed as a half-angel. She wasn’t able to keep her wings hidden for long periods of time until she was much older, and she didn’t have a good handle on her magic. Besides that, her father was well known throughout this rural part of the country, and she looked a lot like him. Hoping that no one would make the connection was too great a risk. The punishment for a half breed like Ash was death. Her father’s god had no tolerance for illegitimate children, especially those with mortal blood.
Even though she longed to see what the outside world was like, there were enough things to do on the farm that kept her mind and body busy. One summer night when she was laying in the loft as usual, she heard one of the horses snorting and moving around restlessly below. She peered over the edge and saw that one of their pregnant mares was making all the noise, acting as if she was in labor. Ash frowned as she climbed down the ladder. The mare, Apolline, wasn’t due for another several weeks. Gently she felt the horse’s muscles, being as slow and careful as possible so that the agitated mare wouldn’t lash out at her. Ash knew by now the physical signs of labor in farm animals, but she was also connected to them in a strange way. Both her instincts and observations agreed that Apolline was having her foal tonight despite being very early. Ash was about to run to the main house to get help, but then the mare lay down. Ash realized that Apolline was foaling right now, and she didn’t have time to get anyone else. So, she unlatched the stall door and sat next to the horse, talking gently to her. She knew the mare couldn’t understand what she was saying, but Apolline could understand tone. Just as the front legs of the foal emerged, one of the farmhands ran into the barn, having been walking by the barn and hearing Apolline’s distress. Together, Ash and the farmhand watched in awe as the head of the foal arrived followed by its neck, back, and hind legs. The foal was surprisingly small and snuggled up to its mother after Ash and the farmhand identified it as a female. Both Ash and the farmhand stayed the night with the mother and foal, falling asleep in the hay. When they woke up early the next morning to the rooster’s crowing, the foal was curled up, shivering. Ash draped a blanket over it, and that seemed to help.
She got out of most of her chores that day, since she volunteered to keep an eye on the newborn and its mother. However, most of the day the foal didn’t even attempt to walk, which was worrisome. Foals normally began walking within hours after being born. Ash didn’t know what was wrong with foal; she just knew that something was terribly wrong with it. Her mother and the farmhands agreed with her when they came to check on the foal. Ash’s mother really didn’t want to call a veterinarian up to the farm, so she decided they would wait until morning and talk about getting the foal help.
Ash slept with Apolline and her foal again that night, reading them both stories from her favorite storybooks. She had even drawn some of her own pictures in it to go along with the stories. As she was reading the fairytale about the princess and the eleven swans, something clicked in her head. She put the book down and rubbed the foal, closing her eyes. She couldn’t describe what was wrong or how she fixed it. She just felt it. She hadn’t really healed anything of this size before; usually she just mended plants or small birds, but she knew the foal would be alright now.
The next morning when she woke up, the foal was walking around on wobbly legs and licking Ash’s face. When her mother and the farmhands arrived, they were relieved to see that the foal was out of the woods. Ash tried explaining how she had healed the foal, but it was difficult since she didn’t really know what she had fixed. She just sensed something wrong and set it right.
From then on, the foal was her constant companion once it was weaned from its mother. She named it Ember for its glossy, black coat, and once it was old enough, she would ride bareback, the two galloping through the fields. Her mother had a hard time getting her to do her chores around the farm after that, but she did appreciate that Ash had a companion besides her and the farmhands. She tried her best to make a good life for Ash, but she knew that her daughter seemed to want to leave the farm more and more every day. She would do anything to keep her daughter safe, even if it meant Ash could never leave.
As Ash entered her teenage years, she became more distant from her mother and even the farmhands she’d grown up with. A longing to be free churned the bitterness and resentment that had long been festering in the pit of her stomach. Now that she had gained better control over her wings, she often flew high above the clouds to be alone with her thoughts or just overhead of the farm animals, especially the horses. She liked to race Ember when she was supposed to be out doing her chores, pushing her strong wings to the very limit. Usually she won but not without a struggle; Ember was a devilishly fast mare with a determined spirit.
Still, even though Ember was her closest friend, she longed to go out into the world, to meet new people, to see new things, and to do things for herself. She argued about leaving the farm constantly with her mother almost every single chance she got. The rare times her father visited were generally unhappy; she badgered him as much as she could about letting her just ride to town with one of the farmhands the next time they had business in town, but her father wouldn’t allow it. They’d end up having shouting matches every time he visited.
Eventually, she got so fed up with all the rules that she took off and flew to the nearest town herself. She landed about a mile away from the town, shifted into her human form, and walked the rest of the way. When she entered the town, a festival was going on. A parade was in the street, confetti and candy were sprinkled everywhere, triumphant music filled every corner with jubilant notes, and people crowded the streets, the adults taking pictures while the children tried to gather as much candy as possible. Ash loved it. She liked having open fields and skies, but they got terribly lonely. Here, with all the people and energy, she felt much more at ease.
She set out to explore the town, stopping only once to join in the festival dances. After a little practice, she thought she’d gotten the hang of it. Since she didn’t have any money, she just window-shopped. She especially liked the dress shops with all their patterns and silk ribbons and intricate jewelry. She even tried on a few necklaces and rings, wishing she had money to buy them.
Ash was so exhilarated and enthralled by everything, especially the fireworks once it got dark… until she realized her mother would be worried to death about her, since she had just taken off without telling anyone. She slipped out of the town and, while everyone was captivated by the firecrackers, leapt into the air with the aid of her white wings. She flew as fast as she could, draining herself until finally she tumbled down into one of the fields. There was no time to dust herself off; even though she was utterly exhausted, she sprinted towards the main house. Her mother was pacing back and forth on the porch, not noticing Ash until she was climbing up the steps to the wraparound porch. When her mother found out where she had been, she lectured Ash for a good thirty minutes before falling silent and retreating to her bedroom. Ash could hear her mother crying softly on the other side of the door and decided to sleep in the loft of the barn, feeling like an intruder in her own house.
The mood of the next several days was solemn and gray. Ash actually did her chores on time, waiting to play with Ember until after all the work had been done. Her mother would hardly speak to her unless it was related to the farm work, and Ash tried as hard as she could to make things easier for her mother. She even got up earlier than usual to make breakfast for her mother and all the farmhands and insisted on cleaning the kitchen herself. Until that night, she had never seen or heard her mother cry, and it was a sound she never wanted to hear again. No matter how angry she got at her mother for never letting her leave, she couldn’t bear to see her mother hurt like that.
Gradually, Ash and her mother began to speak to each other again, but just as that was starting to happen, her father dropped in for a surprise visit, the expression on his face a mix of anger and regret. Someone had recognized Ash as a half-angel, and it had gotten back to the deity Athanasius served. A long argument ensued, and in the end, they decided that Ash and her mother had to move somewhere else. Athanasius promised to be back the next day to help them, but before he could return, a host of angels arrived at the farm, setting fire to everything. Ash’s mother was unable to make it out of the house alive, and all the farmhands were slaughtered at the hands of the angels. Just when Ash thought it was all over for her, Athanasius appeared, taking on the angels to allow his daughter to escape. He never made it out of the farm alive.
Ash fled the farm, flying high above the clouds to avoid detection by any of the humans below. Living on her own was rough, but growing up on a farm had prepared her for survival. She mostly lived in secluded places: a thick forest, an abandoned “haunted” house, ghost towns, etc. As she got older, she found that she had stopped aging like humans. She seemed to be stuck in the form of a young adult, or she was just aging so imperceptibly slowly. She lived in almost complete solitude, reliving her parents’ deaths and how she had caused them over and over again like a movie in her head that looped on and on and on into infinity. During this time, she lost her curious and spunky spirit, dragging her wings from one place to another. Sure, she finally got to see the world, but it didn’t seem so bright without her family, including her parents, the farmhands, and the animals, especially Ember. Ember had burned to death when the barn was set on fire while Ash had been trying to get her mother out of the burning main house. She hadn’t been able to save a single person that night, and she despised herself for it.
Eventually it got to the point where Ash could barely function. She had just given up and was wasting away in a ghost town. She hardly ate, rarely went outside, and almost never did anything but lounge around, drinking old whiskey in the abandoned saloon she’d been staying in. But as it turned out, fate had something different in mind for her.

Ash B. Winchester - Celestia ~ Part Three

History cont'd: One day, what looked like a caravan came through the ghost town. Ash didn’t even make any attempt to see what was happening; she didn’t have the interest to investigate in the least. A couple of the people, presumably from the caravan, came into the saloon with jovial expressions and playful banter, but when they saw her, one of them nodded at the others. They approached Ash, who was scooting warily away from them until they cornered her against the wall. They tied her up and dragged her outside where the rest of the caravan was waiting. They were strangely dressed, and some of them had swords strapped to their belts. Others had revolvers, and some carried no visible weapons. But what struck Ash the most was that they all had wings. The majority had darker wings, but there were still several with white wings like hers. She was shoved into a car, and someone slammed the door shut behind her. She was so disoriented that she didn’t realize there was someone else in the vehicle with her: A dark-winged angel, who looked only a few years older than her. The girl apologized for the way the other angels treated her and untied her hands. She introduced herself as Nirvana Winchester, Ash’s half-sister. She told Ash that she was Athanasius’s older daughter, and that all the angels in the caravan were half angel and half human. The ones with the dark wings were ones born from a fallen angel or ones whose wings had turned dark. Ash wanted to ask her half-sister why her wings were dark, but Nirvana seemed like she didn’t want to talk about it. Nirvana invited her to join the caravan, and Ash accepted. The idea of traveling with other people exhilarated her, bringing back some of the spirit she’d lost. Traveling was nice and all, but the ‘with other people’ part was what excited her the most, especially the prospect of getting to know her half-sister.
Ash learned how to fit in well with the caravan. They taught her all kinds of useful skills, like how to defend herself, how to sneak around without being seen, and how to persuade people, among other things. Some of the more experienced angels taught her how to use a sword, which she enjoyed more than shooting a revolver, though she had developed into a pretty good shot. The angels traipsed all across the world, punishing murderers, thieves, and all kinds of evildoers. They also conned people to pay for gas and food and the like. Ash became one of the best with her empathic abilities; the other angels had helped her finally master her powers, though her random visions of the future never got better. She’d still pass out for no reason, but she had gotten better at interpreting the visions.
Ash thought she had found a family with the other angels, but she was wrong. Nirvana made an offhand comment one day without thinking, and after much arguing, Ash found out that Nirvana was the one who had informed Athanasius’s father of her existence. She also found out that the angels in the caravan were bounty hunters, and the people they harmed weren’t always bad people. They were just targets of other, more powerful people. Ash left the caravan in the middle of the night, heartbroken at her half-sister’s betrayal. From then on, she has vowed to protect those who can’t protect themselves, trying to get as strong as she can in order to take down the cult of the nephilim and seraphim.

Relationship Status: Single

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