Oopal - XERES LIVE!

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Basic Information

Full Name

Oopal

Nickname

"Daisy"

Race (Grade)

Kobold (F)

Class

Florist

Height

2'8"

Birthday

Thawbloom 21, 1284

Age

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Birthsign

The Bloom Nymph

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Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

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Physical Description

Oopal peeking around a vase in the Oopsy Daisy

Appearance

Oopal is a small, round-cheeked kobold with coral-red scales, finely pebbled like the skin of a strawberry, that pale to cream along her snout, her throat, and the undersides of her arms. A crest of curved horns and frills sweeps back over her head, cream at the tips and coral at the roots, and she keeps it stuck full of whatever is freshest in the shop: daisies, baby's breath, a sprig of something white. Her ear frills are wide, webbed, and peach, one of them hung with a tiny brass bell, and her eyes are huge and honey-gold under long lashes. She dresses for the work: a cream linen blouse with a ruffled collar and the sleeves pushed up, a moss-green apron with brass buckles and a little brass flower-bud charm clipped to the strap, and a leather satchel of twine, ribbon, and seed packets on her hip. Her old pruning shears are never more than an arm's reach away. More often than not, she is peeking out at you from behind a vase taller than she is.

Unique Characteristics

Oopal cannot say anything plainly if a flower will say it better. Friends are "sweet pea" or "petal," a bad day is "a bit of frost," a shy child is "a violet," a stubborn customer is "a bit of a thistle," and anyone grieving is "a bulb in winter." She knows what every flower means, as Burrowbough reckoned it, and a good many more meanings she has decided on herself, and she will not let a bouquet go out of her shop if it says the wrong thing. She is also the clumsiest kobold most people have ever met. She knocks over at least one vase a day, nearly always with her tail, and every time she says, cheerfully, "Oopsy daisy," which is where her nickname came from in the first place.

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Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Knows what every flower means, and says it with them
Warm and sunny with everyone who comes through the door
Can tell what a person needs to say before they do
Patient with anything that grows, people included
Finds something hopeful in even the worst news

Challenging Traits

Knocks over a vase about once a day
Talks in flower metaphors nobody else can follow
Will refuse a sale if the flowers say the wrong thing
Overwaters everything, people included
Hides her own sadness behind a fresh bouquet

Oh, sweet pea, you're wilting. Sit down a minute. Nobody blooms on an empty stomach.

Grief's a bulb, petal. It goes down deep and sits in the dark all winter, and you think there's nothing there. Then one morning it sends up something green.

You don't have to say it. Just tell me who it's for, and the flowers will say it for you. Red tulips, I think. Oopsy daisy, mind the vase!

Likes

Goodberry's sun, which never takes a day off
Daisies, the humblest flower and her favorite
Customers who tell her who the flowers are for
Rain showers, however short
Vippi's rhymes, even the ones about weeds

Dislikes

Dead flowers left in a vase out of guilt
Being told flowers are a waste because they die
Yellow carnations given to someone loved
Her own tail, near anything made of glass
Anyone who tries to hurry something that grows

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Background & History

Oopsy Daisy

Oopal was born in Burrowbough, a kobold village deep in the Geldergreen, on Thawbloom 21, 1284, and she spent most of her kithood falling over: roots, doorsteps, other kits, and most often her own tail. Every time, somebody picked her up and said, "Oopsy daisy, Oopal," and by the time she could walk across a room without falling, the whole village was calling her Daisy. She has never minded. Daisies, she says, get stepped on more than any other flower in the world, and they always come right back up smiling.

A Garden in the Light

Burrowbough lived under oak leaves, and flowers need sun. By the time Oopal went looking for it, Vippi already had herbs growing in every gap in the canopy within an hour's walk, and the two of them argued about it for an entire summer, the kobold way, at great length and very politely. In the end Vippi kept the gaps nearest the village, and Oopal took the far ones, and for years she walked an hour each way, every day, to tend them. They have been friends ever since, though they have never settled the other argument: Vippi says a plant ought to do something, and Oopal says a flower does. It says something.

Saying It with Flowers

In Burrowbough, a kobold who could not say something out loud went to Oopal. She made the flowers for everything: namings, pairings, first teeth, birthdays, apologies, and goodbyes. Shy young kobolds brought her their courting, quarreling neighbors sent each other her bouquets instead of speaking, and when someone died, she knew which flowers to lay down so that the family would not have to choose. She was very rarely wrong about which ones.

Daisy Chains

Oopal had spent a whole year growing the flowers for Funzi's life-pairing feast: garlands for the couple and a posy for every place at every table, from a bed she had planted the spring before. On the night of Goldenleaf 26, 1307, she was cutting them by lantern light, so that they would be fresh in the morning, when Kobbin began beating on the meeting hall gutter. She ran for the old oak with an armful of flowers, because she forgot she was holding them. She spent the rest of the night on a branch making daisy chains with frightened kits, one link at a time, telling them that flowers were much too busy being pretty to be scared, so they had better hold on to some. By morning her gardens were trampled and burned, and there was not a single flower left in Burrowbough except the ones around the children's necks.

Paid in Seeds

In the big-folk towns at the edge of the forest, Oopal discovered that big folk buy flowers for exactly the same reasons kobolds do, only in bigger bunches and for a great deal more money. Kroppi, who knew every shop in town, found her work with a sour old human florist who did not want a kobold in his shop until she sold more in one morning than he had all week. Kroppi also told the florist about the man he had killed. That time, it was a florist. When the rest of Burrowbough set out for Haven, Oopal stayed behind and worked five more days, learning how big folk wrap flowers, price them, and sell them, and taking her pay in seeds, bulbs, and cuttings. She came to Goodberry on Harvestide 8, 1307, on the back of a seed merchant's wagon, with a crate of cuttings in her lap.

The Oopsy Daisy

Goodberry stopped Oopal in her tracks. Inside its bubble the sun shines every day and the nights are cool, and nothing ever has to wait for spring: a flower planted in Goodberry simply grows, and goes on growing. She cried, which she insists was only watering. She spent a week potting her cuttings in every sunny corner Vippi could point her to, and on Harvestide 16, 1307, she opened her own shop on Market Street: the Oopsy Daisy, "Flowers for Every Feeling," with a striped awning that Mimzy sewed for her and window boxes so full that the door is hard to find. Its specialty is the one she brought from Burrowbough. Tell Oopal who the flowers are for and what you cannot say, and she will make you the bouquet that says it. She lives in the two small rooms upstairs, and she has knocked over at least one vase every day since she opened.

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Goals & Aspirations

The Feast Flowers, Again

Funzi still means to hold the life-pairing feast that never happened, and Oopal means to grow every one of its flowers again, from the couple's garlands to the last little posy. She has already planted the bed behind the shop. Flowers that took a year in the Geldergreen take a few weeks in Goodberry, so she will be ready long before Funzi is, and she intends to keep them ready for as long as it takes.

Forget-Me-Nots

Like Yezzi, Oopal has written to Jozub for a copy of the dead side of the Roll. She means to plant one forget-me-not for every name on it, somewhere in Goodberry where people walk past every day. If Vippi ever gets her little bed in the Hanging Gardens, Oopal would very much like the one beside it.

Flowers for Every Feeling

Oopal means for the Oopsy Daisy to be the place in Goodberry people go when they do not know how to say something. Big folk, she has found, have just as many things they cannot say as kobolds do, and a great deal more money to say them with.

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Development

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Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Goodberry

Role

Florist

From Burrowbough