Characters / Moonflowers

The character sheet for Moonflowers.

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Humans

Alima Song

The female protagonist of the story. A Chinese/Filipino-American who moved to Ireland after her parents Ned and Lucy vanished, and is now getting pursued by the Hunter.

• Action Survivor: A normal woman who's physically very small, up against the god-level figure of the Hunter. However, she does act rationally and isn't afraid to defend herself with the knife Ogma O'Luain gave her.
• Affectionate Nickname: Her aunt Alima calls her "Mini-Me."
• Damsel in Distress: Initially. Upgrades quickly to Action Survivor, since she heeds advice and acts reasonably.
• Dead Guy Junior: Played With. Alima coincidentally shared a name with her Muslim aunt Alima, who was killed in a hate crime.
• Dumb Struck: Alima was unable to speak for two weeks after her parents vanished due to unknown magic, and it took her friend's mambo aunt to help in addition to normal doctors. Early in the story, she has moments of unusual grammar or syntax.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: According to her friend Danielle, Alima "has a track record" for blondes.
• The Gadfly: She enjoys trolling Mal, and Ned mentions that she likes teasing guys in general.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: Downplayed. Lucy and Ned both have curly hair, and Alima has wavy hair.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: She's frequently described as small, and Mal needs to get stuff off of high shelves for her. Family-wise, her father Ned is stated to be 6'4.
• Token Minority: She's one of two main character minorities; justified since Ireland is mostly homogenous. However, back in America she has a Louisianan/Creole friend called Danielle DeTour, and a Blackfoot friend called David Sandpiper. She becomes much less token when her family and friends arrive for the police investigation.
• Trauma Conga Line: Her parents go missing for two months, she understandably thinks that they're dead, and she moves to a different country out of grief. Not even a month in her new home, she starts getting hunted by a Fair Folk man wearing an elk skull. Unknown to her, the man is the same one who kidnapped her parents.
  • Her aunt was killed shortly after the September 11 attack.
• Twofer Token Minority: Half-Filipino and half-Chinese.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Hades mentions that since Alima thinks her parents are dead, Lucy can't reach her offerings precisely because she's still alive.

Malachy "Mal" Bray

The main male protagonist, a low-key and friendly young man. He's been taking care of his little brother Logan since their parents died three years ago.

• Dark and Troubled Past: One of his friends was nearly killed for being gay five years ago. Two years later, his parents died and left him as his brother Logan's legal guardian. Owen says Mal hasn't told anyone the whole story.
• Determinator: After a beat-up Owen jumps into an icy river to escape the Knights of Aaron, Mal follows Owen along the river until morning because they're best friends. Then when his shoulder gets dislocated in a run-in with the Wild Hunt, he just switches the knife to his other hand.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He's blonde, tries to avoid swearing in front of Logan, and is very attached to his friends. He also takes a newcomer home so she can dry off after a storm, and then insists on driving her to her inn instead of letting her wait for a cab. Although it's also because he doesn't want her to get messed with by The Fair Folk.
• Former Teen Rebel: He used to go to raves. He's mostly embarrassed by it.
• Good Is Not Soft: He carries an iron knife in his jacket to deal with the Folk, as many in Cloncarrig do. When the Wild Hunt shows up to run him and Alima down, they dislocate Mal's shoulder but he STILL manages to stab one of them with his good hand.
• Nice Guy: Among the nicest in the cast.
• One Head Taller / Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: At least above-average height, since he helps Alima get stuff from the top shelves while grocery shopping.
• Promoted to Parent: After his parents died, he got custody of his little brother Logan.
• Running Gag: His friends constantly call him stupid, even though he shows no sign of it. Apparently, he shorted out his laptop when he was sixteen.
• Saintly Church: He's Christian and is a thoughtful, considerate person who takes care of his little brother. He also saved Owen from a homophobic mob five years ago.
• Used to Be More Social: After his parents died, Aine mentions that he keeps to himself and Owen says that he "stopped being fun." When they go to a concert, Decker asks if he's gone anywhere without Logan or his friends.

Ned Song

Alima's Chinese-American father, a carpenter who got abducted and transformed into a white wolf by the Hunter, and then "adopted" by Alima.

• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: His canine form is white, which fits the Fairy Tale genre since white animals are highly symbolic in myth and fairy-tales. Blends in with White Wolves Are Special, as noted on the main page.
• Deadpan Snarker: Mainly towards Mal. Ned constantly calls him "Goldilocks."
• Dramatic Irony: Alima thinks her parents are dead, but her mother was stuck in the Otherworld and her father is her new pet. On a lighter note, Ned got cursed into a wolf's form, but he's more of a cat person.
• Fluffy the Terrible: "Bulan" isn't the most intuitive name for a massive wolf, even if he's white.
• Forced Transformation: He's cursed to be a white wolf. Though he still has his human mind and memories, he can only talk to gods/spirits and animals.
• Good Parents: Ned and Lucy are very good parents, seeing as Alima's so upset at their disappearance that she leaves her country. Ned sought her out while escaping from the Hunter, and neither he nor Lucy take the news that their only daughter thinks they're dead very well. Ned also gives up his eye-color to save Alima, despite the risk of going blind.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: His wife Lucy is average height, but he's still six feet and four inches. His daughter needs help getting stuff from the high shelves.
• Invisible to Normals: Due to the curse, living people can't hear him talking, but gods/spirits and animals can. Also, Persephone and May's cat say that he's a wolf, but the curse makes average people think he's a wolfdog. Ned's curse extends to blocking conversations with other spirits/people, since Owen doesn't hear anything that May's cat King Brian says to Ned.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Shows quite a few signs of this. He talks with the stray cat Maidin got out of his river, and he immediately offers to find the cat's mother.
• Papa Wolf: He's very protective of Alima and was transformed into a literal wolf by the Hunter.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: His canine form's eyes are frequently called "yellow," and it's the main trait that marks him as a wolf.
• Trauma Conga Line:
  • Ned and his wife are abducted by the Hunter, he gets cursed into an animal's form, and then loses track of his wife. Their daughter thinks they're dead and he can't tell her otherwise because of said curse.
  • One generation earlier, his Muslim sister-in-law was killed after the September 11 attacks. It's implied Ned still has trouble dealing with it, since he's avoided even thinking about her for years.
• Wild Hair: He notes in the Otherworld that his hair's shoulder-length and curly, due to lack of haircuts.

Lucy Song

Alima's Filipino-American dentist mother, who was trapped in the Otherworld for months before Hades helped her out.

• Damsel in Distress: Mainly due to bad timing, as the Morrigan showed up after the Hunter cut off some of Lucy's hair.
• Good Parents: She and Ned frequently banter about each other's methods of raising Alima. Plus, she assures Alima that it's okay to go to a concert and have fun even though Ned's still missing.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: Downplayed. She and Ned have curly hair, and Alima has wavy hair.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: She's average-height, while Ned is over six feet tall.
• Mama Bear: She doesn't trust the Hunter when he compliments Alima's hair and later calls it "a creepy pass at my daughter," and shoots down Nick's suggestion that Alima marry a god to bypass her citizenship wait. And fittingly, Lucy is the one who let Alima get a bear-tattoo that puts her under Artio's protection.
• Shame If Something Happened: The Hunter snips a bit of Lucy's hair off, remarking that he likes Alima's better. Lucy gets creeped out.
• Trapped in Another World / Weirdness Search and Rescue: She's stuck in the Otherworld for a long time because the Hunter took some of her hair.

Owen O'Luain

One of Malachy's friends, and the pagan grandson of Ogma O'Luain. Snarky, handsome, and possesses strong magical abilities. His long-distance boyfriend is Matthaeus "Teis" Summer.

• Alliterative Name: As part of his Alliterative Family: There's a trend for O-names among male members of his family; Oscar is his father, and Ogma is his grandfather.
• Berserk Button: His head-scar from the Knights of Aaron's attack. He grows his hair long to cover it up, and having his hair chopped by attackers to unwittingly reveal it sends him into a rage.
• Broken Ace: He's a handsome, intelligent twenty-something and a powerful mage. He was also nearly killed by his own town for being gay, can't find work, and tends to call himself homophobic slurs.
• By the Eyes of the Blind: When he was five, he started playing with an invisible "brother" named Mark. His parents think it's just a normal imaginary friend until his mother ends up having a miscarriage.
• Deadpan Snarker: Following in his grandfather's footsteps. He almost got killed on his twentieth birthday, and all he says is that it was the "worst birthday ever."
• Establishing Character Moment: He first appears by jumping out of a tree to startle Alima and his sister May. May then jumps on his back and deems him her "steed."
• Hates Being Touched: Claims that he "doesn't do touchy-feely shit anymore" to Maidin, though his actions state otherwise.
• Heroic BSoD: Spends the night after his gay-bashing in this state. He had the gods swear to keep people out of his room, gets extremely distressed when Aengus Og finds a loophole and brings Matthaeus over, and tells Sif that she can take the rest of his hair after she tries to compliment it.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: He calls himself mad/crazy or various gay slurs.
• In the Blood: Snark and magic seem to run in his family.
• Magical Queer: He doesn't fix everything, but Owen's literally a gay man with magical powers (see Straight Gay below). In a darker turn, Owen was nearly killed because people claimed he was a magical changeling instead of human.
• Nerves of Steel: When he gets attacked by the Knights of Aaron, he boasts that he doesn't fear God's men or dying, then jumps into a huge snow-fed river. Then when three people gang up on him in Galway, he spends most of the fight snarking at them and making them more angry. (Until they chop his hair and reveal his head-scar.)
• Noodle Incident: He turned himself and his friends into birds during a drunk spell attempt at graduation. The others constantly insist that it didn't happen.
• Opposites Attract / True Love is Exceptional: He's snarky, bitter, and traumatized due to extreme homophobia. His long-distance boyfriend Matthaeus is a talkative and clumsy jeweler.
  • Maidin is a friendly if ridiculously talkative river-spirit, who had a relationship with Owen in a past life and is now attempting to rekindle it.
• Practically Different Generations: He’s in his twenties, and his sister May is eight.
• Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: His long black hair covers up a scar from his twentieth birthday. When a man in Galway chops Owen's hair off because he's restrained from actually killing him and reveals it, Owen goes nuts. Later on Maidin sees another scar on Owen's chest despite him wearing a shirt, but there's nothing there.
• Real Men Love the Tuatha De Danaan
• Running Gag: His friends often hit him for trivial reasons. Harry hits him as a "preemptive strike" against Owen's potential prank, and both Harry and Aine smack Owen in the face when he tries to tell the story of turning everyone into birds on graduation.
• Seers: He has "the wyrth eyes." He experiences visions of the future, has prophetic "oak dreams," and can see spirits.
  • Fainting Seer: Not fainting, but he loses awareness of his present surroundings when he has a vision and has gotten himself hurt because of it. Invoked when Ogma uses a sleeping spell on Owen during a very unpleasant vision, since he's in hysterics and flailing around.
• Reincarnation Romance: Maidin knew him in a past life.
• Straight Gay: Played With. He isn't Camp Gay in the modern sense of liking theater or being effeminate, but tricksters have a long history of LGBT themes and many cultures ascribed powerful magic to LGBT people.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Very much so.
• Tragic Keepsake: Downplayed Trope. Matthaeus made a runestone necklace for Owen. He isn't dead, but he left for America on short notice and they obviously can't see each other very often. Owen hangs the necklace in his car instead of wearing it, because he doesn't want people asking questions.
• Traumatic Haircut: When he's ganged up on by three homophobes, one of them hacks his hair off with a knife and reveals his scar from the last time he got beaten up. Owen immediately starts cussing them out and screaming he's going to kill them.
• Twofer Token Minority: Gay and pagan.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Maidin says he was a "sweet and dreary little thing" when he was eight.
• When She Smiles: Maidin is delighted when Owen smiles at something he said.

Ogma O'Luain

The proprietor of the Miller's Mount Inn and the town's cunning-man/folk-healer. He's Owen's grandfather, and lets Alima stay at his house until she gets her own place. His wife is Marian.

• Combat Medic: He was a soldier in his youth, is still strong enough to lift his adult grandson, and is trained in first-aid magic.
• Cool Old Guy: He's strong even in old age and is rarely surprised. Is also a literal grandfather.
• Deadpan Snarker: Very much so.
• Misplaced Accent: Has an English accent despite being Irish. As mentioned in the main article's Shown Their Work entry, Ogma went to school in London. Being old enough to have an adult grandson, he'd have either been forced to adopt an English accent, or did so himself to avoid bullying.
• Pals with Jesus: Aside from the story's Fantasy Kitchen Sink nature, Ogma's close to several spirits. Forty years back, he and Dionysus used to get drunk and tell pretty girls' fortunes, and he calls Dionysus "D." He's also friends with Maidin.
• Sacred Hospitality: As he happens to be the town's cunning-man, being Ogma's guest is even more important than it usually is.
• Tongue-Tied: Whenever he tries to tell Alima that her new dog is actually her father Ned, he's forced to say something completely different due to Ned's curse.
• Warrior Poet: Shades of this; he used to be a soldier and is extremely well-spoken. Seeing as his namesake Ogma is a Warrior Poet deity, it's fitting.

Matthaeus "Teis" Summer

Owen's long-distance American boyfriend. Clumsy and talkative, but a skilled jeweler.

• Affectionate Nickname: Owen is the only one who calls him "Teis." He initially hated it, but came around enough to use it in a spell for Owen's necklace.
• The Black Smith: A jeweler, to be specific.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: For all his lack of coordination, making magical jewelry takes a lot of skill—Alima's impressed by the runestone he made for Owen, there's a heavy intuitive element to the process, and the Norse gods give him strange tasks like "make something out of your boyfriend's hair" and "make jewelry in the dark."
• Improvised Clothes: Sif collects bits of Owen's cut hair and says Matthaeus needs to improvise some jewelry out of it, since Aengus just showed up and took him to Ireland as soon as possible. Owen's runestone was implied to have been improvised as well.
• The Klutz: His first entrance is through a badly-done portal, which crashes him into Owen's bedpost instead of leaving him outside Owen's room.
• Nice Guy: Klutzy, but definitely nice.
• Norse by Norsewest: He follows the Norse pantheon and Brighid Brennan calls him a "Northman."
• Opposites Attract: He's a friendly, if klutzy, young man who's been in a relationship with a snarky Broken Ace since high school.
• Quirky Curls: His hair is messy, he's much less coordinated than Owen, and he gets hurt a lot.
• Twofer Token Minority: Gay and pagan, but follows a different pantheon than his boyfriend.

Brighid Brennan

A tall, blonde nurse who's friends with the main group and named after Brighid the goddess. She works at both the Heartenwood Hospital (for humans) and the Standing Stone Vet Clinic (for animals).

• Break the Cutie: In "Can I get there by candlelight," she gets hit with elf-shot, dragged out of the car by a mob of The Fair Folk, and outed as a lesbian by said fairies as they chase her through the forest.
• Crazy-Prepared: She carries several types of medication with her, plus a soundproofing spell that keeps everyone from going deaf from Jude and Duyen's gunshots. Played With since the only unusual thing she has is the soundproofing orb—aspirin and nettle pills are common.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Blonde, friendly, and a healer.
• Self-Surgery: When Brighid gets hit by one of the Wild Hunt's magical arrows, it doesn't physically injure her, but it gives her a heart attack and she has to coach Alima through removing the arrowhead.
• Secret-Keeper: Owen and Maidin know that she's a lesbian.
• Shoot the Medic First: Not intentionally, but she gets hit with elf-shot in the Rain of Arrows and suffers a heart attack.

Aine McCallum

Another of Mal's friends, named after the goddess Aine.

• Badass Driver: She drives them home from Doolin when Ned and Brighid sense The Fair Folk roaming around. She takes another route to Cloncarrig to split the Hunt up and wear out the horses, but when they join back together and clearly outnumber the humans, she drives into one of the Wild Hunt's groups and takes out almost thirty riders from their horses' panicking.
• Meaningful Name: Culturally invoked. She was named after Aine and has stated that she's never had problems with swimming, since Aine is a sea-god's wife. Moreover, goddess-Aine is queen of the (Irish) fairies, and mortal-Aine very much holds her own against The Wild Hunt.

Duyen Khuu

A Vietnamese-American FBI agent from the American embassy, sent to look for Ned. Her partner is Jude Cedarberg.

• Action Girl: Very much so.
• Adventure Duo: Trackers work in pairs; Jude is the Seer and Duyen is his Badass Normal partner.
• Freaky Fashion, Mild Mind: Downplayed. She has several piercings and a magenta-streaked bob, but otherwise she's very professional.

Jude Cedarberg

The second tracker from the embassy, a blonde man with second-sight.

• Improbable Aiming Skills: Due to his powers. He shoots the fairy dragging Brighid out of the car, which most people would NOT risk in real life. Doesn't work for long since there's dozens of fairies swarming the car, but still a feat.
• Magical Gesture: Trackers use three fingers to point out someone's direction. Jude also uses it to hit dangerous targets.
• Seers: He uses his second-sight both to find people and to shoot them. He actually senses Ned's presence at Alima's house, but nobody except Lucy and Ogma know that he's literally pointing at Ned, instead of just sensing which direction he's in. Later on, petting the canine-Ned gives him some kind of magical shock.

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Spirits and Deities

The Hunter

The story's antagonist, leader of The Wild Hunt, and very powerful. Unlike most fairies, he can pass through Cloncarrig's town walls, although it takes him a few hours. According to Maidin and a children's rhyme, he's called the "King Under the Hills," and the twenty-eighth chapter officially calls him the Horned Hunter. This version is a full-on force of nature, and that's VERY bad for the Songs.

• Alliterative Title: The Horned Hunter.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Of hunting. This is a huge part of why the gods can barely help Alima.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Normal fairies can't pass man-made walls and they can't tolerate iron, so metal-heavy things like cars ward them off. The Hunter is not only a powerful fairy, but a Nature Spirit and a king who can get into Cloncarrig (after a few hours) and steal Mal's car.
• Bright Is Not Good: He's constantly associated with white for his deer/elk skull-mask, and red for his tattered cloak. He also has no shadow.
• Casts No Shadow: In his first appearance, especially notable since he's a huge man in an elk-skull mask.
• The Chessmaster: He set up the ENTIRE story through his machinations, as Xanatos Gambit denotes.
• Color-Coded Eyes: He has green eyes that are often called catlike or cat's eyes, alluding to his predatory nature. A subtle tell when he's disguised as Malachy is having green eyes instead of brown.
• Control Freak: Implied Trope due to his massive pride; Owen says he likes feeling big, and he's not surprised to hear that when Alima tried to stab him, he freaked out.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: People who encounter the Hunter or escape the Wild Hunt's pursuit end up shivering for a while. When he's disguised as Mal, Alima notices that his hands are cold. Ned says that he smells like bone and ice.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He doesn't understand why Hades and Persephone are helping Alima. While part of it was Hades' Berserk Button regarding life and death, it's also clear that Hades hates how the Hunter's about to murder an entire family for kicks.
• Horned Humanoid / Crown of Horns: Wears a deer skull or Irish Elk skull for a mask, being the Horned Hunter. He uses the mask as a weapon to ram his opponents.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: He hunts humans with the aid of The Wild Hunt. Every seven years on Samhain, he turns this into a full-on spree by hunting seven randomly-picked "marks."
• Ironic Nursery Tune: There's a children's game about him called "Moon's Cradle," which doubles as an Exposition of Immortality because the rhyme exclusively calls him "the King Under the Hills."
• I Control My Minions Through...: Fear. When the Morrigan attempts to get the Ballybegrosh villagers to help during the Fairy Raid, they point out that he already told them not to help, and he will kill the WHOLE village if someone does it anyway.
  • After he's lost a third of his riders to Aine's Car Fu, he finds a pair of Old Soldiers Bill and Simon because Bill is (or used to be) a piper, and he flat-out orders them to join the Raid.
• Lack of Empathy: He pisses off gods because of his cruelty to the Songs, and it's clearly not normal since the other fairy Maidin is very friendly.
• Malevolent Masked Man: Doesn't get more malevolent than a guy in a skull-mask with burning red sockets.
• No Need for Names: He used to have a name, but gave it up on becoming the Hunter.
• Nature Is Not Nice: Not when you're dealing with the embodiment of predators.
• Nature Spirit: In the twenty-eighth chapter, he's called an outright force of nature. That force being "hunting."
• Nothing Is Scarier / The Quiet One: Largely quiet and composed, to the point of lacking empathy.
• Physical God: Pretty close to a god, according to Carrie Bray and Ogma O'Luain. The Fianna barely manage to get the upper hand on him, as they're minor gods. And as noted above, he's stated to be a force of nature in "Yes, and back again."
• Pride: The Lady of Scales calls him arrogant; while the Tuatha De Danaan can only give the Songs very limited help, the Hunter hasn't even considered that other countries might step in, like Hades and Persephone. Later on, Owen says he's got an ego "the size of Ireland" and implies that the Hunter is a Control Freak.
  • He doesn't seem to expect his victims to fight back—he tries to scare Alima by telling her that Mal isn't there to protect her from him, and when she just pulls her knife and stabs him anyway, he gets hugely insulted and asks why she bothers fighting.
  • His ridiculous pride is now his Fatal Flaw—while he ordered his kingdom not to help the Fairy Raid's marks or ask European gods to help, on threat of death, he doesn't seem to care that there are countries OUTSIDE of Europe. The Morrigan mentions that Mayari (a Filipino goddess) could walk up and punch him in the face.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Maidin name-drops this trope regarding the Hunter's brutal and arrogant personality, since he spends hours shoving through Cloncarrig's walls when Maidin just goes through the river-levees.
• Stalker without a Crush: He hounds the Song family to an obsessive extent, especially Alima, and the Fianna outright call him a "creepy stalker." He mostly wants to torment them before he kills them all.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Justified Trope since his literal JOB is to hunt things down.
• Unreliable Narrator: He mocks Lucy and other humans for being "attached to their family," but none of the other spirits act like this, and he forces the retired piper Bill to leave his own family behind for the Fairy Raid.
• Weak, but Skilled: Compared to prominent gods, at least. His Xanatos Gambit below more than makes up for having less brute strength. Plus, his status as a force of nature means that the Irish gods can't interfere with him too much.
• Xanatos Gambit: He kidnapped a random girl's parents, waited for her to move out of her country from grief, and her new home happens to be his current home. Where she is now at his mercy if she goes outside of the town walls alone, and even staying in town isn't completely safe. Later, it's revealed he cursed the Song family to be in the Fairy Raid several months ahead of time.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: He gained the Kingdom Under the Hills through killing the previous king, and it's heavily implied that he had to kill the previous Horned Hunter to claim the deer-skull mask.

Maidin

The Folk guardian of the nearby Maidin River, and one of Ogma O'Luain's friends. He saved Owen from drowning after the Knights of Aaron tried to kill him.

• Anthropomorphic Personification: Hinted at. Ned asks the mortal-Ogma whether Maidin lives in the river, or if he is the river. Ogma tells him that in Ireland, it's the same thing. Moreover, river-fairies are affected by the course of their river, so meandering ones like Maidin's end up with pretty spaced-out fairies.
• By the Eyes of the Blind: He gets confused that Ogma's old because their last meeting was in the Otherworld, and "he's stayed the same in the soul," so Ogma reminds him that human souls are different from their bodies. Later, he sees a scar on Owen's chest despite him wearing a shirt, but there's no physical scar there. And last of all, he can talk to the river-rock he gave Owen, since he says that "it likes you."
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: He mistakes Ogma's aged appearance for a curse, and he doesn't pay much attention to the actual cursed guy (Ned). According to Ogma, "he has a few wires loose" due to his meandering river, and numerous people call him daft.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's a scatterbrained motormouth who can pass the town walls. This means he's close to the Hunter in strength, who is a literal force of nature.
  Ned: The hell can a ditz like you get inside the walls? Ogma said it’s supposed to be hard for fairies!
  Maidin: I come in through the levees. Why am I gonna waste time shoving through giant walls?
• The Ditz: A side-effect of his Cloud Cuckoo Lander and Motor Mouth tendencies. He nearly forgets he was supposed to help with a baptism, and he needs a lot of reminders when Ogma and Alima ask him for advice. An annoyed Ned also calls him him a ditz later on.
• Elemental Eyecolors: He has blue eyes since he's a river-spirit. The exact shade varies with his emotions and the season.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": He guards the River Maidin, so people call him "Maidin."
• Exposition of Immortality: Artio babysat him "when bears were still in Ireland" (the Iron Age), and he mentions that he didn't always have a name.
• Friend to All Children: He watches over the Cloncarrig children and helps out with baptisms.
• I Have Many Names: Played With in that he didn't always have a name, but more like "titles."
  I like being Maidin, but I’ve also just been the River, or He Lives in the River, or the Man Who’s Always Wet. An Abhainn. Tá sé ina chónaí san abhainn. An fear a gcónaí fliuch.
  • He also remarks that humans have many names—Ned, for example, is called "Ned," "Bulan," "Dad," and "Uncle." And that's just in English.
• In My Language, That Sounds Like...: His river's name isn't a weird spelling of "maiden"—it's Irish for "morning" and pronounced closer to "maj-in."
• He Is All Grown Up: Played With. Maidin's floored that Ogma's eight-year-old grandson is the same person as the grown man he rescued, because twenty years isn't that long for The Fair Folk.
• Misplaced Accent: He has a "strange and guttural" British accent, despite being an Irish spirit. He grew up in similar circumstances to Ogma, since he says others made fun of him for being Irish.
• Motor Mouth: Extremely gabby. Not helped by his Cloud Cuckoo Lander status.
• Nature Spirit: River-spirit, natch.
  • Making a Splash: He floods Ogma's living room when he leaves, though it dries up thanks to magic. He's always trailing water when he leaves his river.
• Nice Guy: Always friendly, helps out with baptisms despite not being Christian himself, and his latest appearance is to drop by Alima's house after saving a cat who fell into his river.
• Really 700 Years Old: He appears as a young man, but he's known Ogma for decades, and he was babysat by the goddess Artio who's been gone for thousands of years.
• Reincarnation Romance: Turns out this is why he wanted to meet up with Owen, which would double as an Interspecies Romance. He runs into problems when he finds out that Owen is different from what he remembers, and he also has a boyfriend. Although he's emphatically not trying to break them up, since he was alive when polygamy was still common in Europe.

Hades and Persephone

The rulers of the dead in Greek Mythology, and Persephone doubles as the goddess of winter/spring. They're otherwise pleasant and very Happily Married. They arrive in the nineteenth chapter "Blind Man's Bluff," when Hades is wondering why a girl's presumably-loving parents would completely ignore her offerings to them after their alleged deaths.

• Bad "Bad Acting": When Hades helps the Fianna subdue the Hunter and finds Lucy's hair, he recites an excruciatingly detailed "I have no idea who this belongs to, but I'll return it as soon as possible" speech so the Hunter's curse won't affect him.
• Bad Powers, Good People / Dark Is Not Evil: Hades rules the dead, but he's also concerned with how Alima's spent months grieving for her parents without closure. See The Sacred Darkness below.
• Berserk Button: Do not fuck with life and death around Hades.
• Darwin Awards: Going by Persephone, hilarious/stupid deaths have always been around, but they didn't have a name until now.
• Extreme Omnivore: When Ogma gives Persephone some toast as an offering, she puts butter, relish, raspberry jam, peanut butter, and gravy on it.
• Green Thumb: Persephone, natch. She contacts Hilal through Alima's moonflower sprig, and it grows a couple inches after she finishes the message.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Persephone's blonde, cheerful, and very sociable.
• Happily Married: As in mythology.
• Hot-Blooded: Hades, mostly because his Berserk Button got pushed hard in his entrance.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Yet another example.
• No Social Skills: Persephone has to remind Hades that coming into someone's house without permission is technically home invasion, even if he has good intentions. He's also bad at acting.
• Perky Goth: Being the queen of the Underworld doesn't mean Persephone can't be bubbly and social.
• Ruling Couple: Both gods actively help the Songs. Hades gets surprised when Persephone first shows up because he thought she'd be running the Underworld while he was gone.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Persephone calls Hades sexy.
• The Sacred Darkness: Hades is concerned that Alima's been leaving offerings to Ned and Lucy without any closure for months, since Ned and Lucy are VERY Good Parents and shouldn't be ignoring their daughter like this. He gets incensed when he finds out that the Hunter's making Alima think her parents are dead for kicks, and gets angrier when he finds out that the Hunter wants to kill all three of them for kicks. Persephone also kept Hades from starting a "Natural Order" speech to Ned.

The Lady of Scales

The spirit patron of Ned's father's town in China. Appears as a pale young woman with knee-length black hair in a blue dress with a veil, and is covered in painted scales and red markings. She makes a bargain with Ned when Persephone asks around for help.

• Batman Gambit: She takes as little from Ned as possible for their contract—it doesn't matter what he gives up, but whether The Fair Folk would respect the deal.
• Body Paint: She's covered in painted/tattooed yellow scales, with red facial markings and red claws on her feet.
• Blood Oath: She makes a Magically-Binding Contract to lift Ned's curse and help him kill the Hunter, in exchange for the color of Ned's eyes. She scratches Ned hard enough to bleed to seal the contract.
• The X of Y: "The Lady of Scales."
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: The only thing Ned can see clearly through her veil.

Alima Khemu Song

Ned and Lucy's Indian-Muslim sister-in-law, who married Ned's brother Jordan and coincidentally shares a name with her niece. Since they aren't actually junior/senior to each other, they're instead referred to as "older/younger Alima." She and Jordan had twin boys, but Alima was killed shortly after the September 11 attacks. She first appears in the twentieth chapter as a spirit.

• Affectionate Nickname: She calls the younger Alima "Mini-Me," and her son Hilal is "water-lily."
• Genki Girl
• Posthumous Character: Literally, due to her Death by Racism.
• Supernaturally Young Parent: Her sons are nearly her age now, since she died when they were young.

Artio

A bear-goddess enlisted to help Alima with the Hunter, who gives Alima a bear claw for protection. Currently De Powered in Ireland, but still formidable.

• Amazonian Beauty: Significantly tall and sinewy, and casually rips oak roots out of the ground. In "Can I get there by candlelight," she can Neck Lift a grown man and carry a wolf. Appropriate for a bear-goddess.
• Mama Bear: Literal example as she's a bear-goddess. She also doesn't like how the Hunter is picking on a woman whose parents are missing.
• Nature Spirit: She has to meet Alima in the oak stand because there are no wild bears in Ireland. In the Otherworld, she talks with Alima in a gigantic forest. Maidin calls her the (former) Queen of the Forest before the bears died off.
• The Pollyanna / Genki Girl: Extremely cheerful and affectionate.
• Scary Teeth: When she smiles, Alima spots bear-fangs in her mouth.
• Wild Hair: She has shaggy, hip-length brown hair with sun-lightened ends. As she rebuilds her power in Ireland, it grows to at least thigh-length.

Mayari

A Filipino moon-goddess who comes to help, thanks to Lucy and Alima being Filipino. Like Artio, she's severely De Powered outside of her home country and America—to the point where she's barely able to contact the Songs at all. She is dark-skinned and curly-haired with traditional tribal tattoos and clothes.

• Carry a Big Stick: A bamboo club, specifically.
• 11th-Hour Ranger: She arrives just days before Samhain, thanks to Catholicism's hold in the Philippines.
• Foreshadowing: The story's heavy moon/night imagery is implied to have been her doing.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: Played With. While she IS De Powered outside of America and the Philippines, Lucy's family didn't ask her for help because they don't even know her name.
• Handicapped Badass / Disabled Deity: She lost her left eye and wears an eye-patch.
• Meaningful Appearance: Wears white, fitting for a moon-goddess.
• Pimped-Out Dress: A tribal outfit with pearl trimming, yards of white and indigo pineapple-silk, and a crescent-moon headdress.
• Power Glows: Especially if you're a moon-goddess.
• Tattoo as Character Type: She has indigenous Filipino tattoos on her arms.

The Tuatha De Danaan

The Tuatha De Danaan are the main body of Irish deities. There are general tropes that all of them share, and character-specific tropes are under their names.

• Healing Hands: Aengus and Ogma are the most frequent users.
• Physical God: They switch between the Otherworld and the mortal world at will.
• Really 700 Years Old

Ogma

The aged Warrior Poet of the gods, whom Ogma O'Luain is named after.

• Cool Old Guy: His entrance involves saving Mal and Alima from the entire Wild Hunt by outwitting the Hunter in a conversation.
• Deadpan Snarker: Doesn't get more deadpan and snarky than besting the Hunter at wordplay.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Does this to the Hunter when he tries to use a Breaking Speech on Mal.
• The Stoic: Rarely raises his voice, and has never been less than calm or amused.
• Warrior Poet: Yep.

The Morrigan

The goddess of war. She attempts to get Lucy back to Alima, but only succeeds partly by getting her out of the Hunter's grasp.

• Authority Equals Asskicking: She states that she's much more powerful than the Hunter, but that "even I have to follow some rules." Later on, it's revealed that while the Morrigan is a war-goddess, the Hunter is the embodiment of predators. Even the gods can't interfere too much with nature itself.
• Big Damn Heroes: Her entrance involves her busting Lucy out of the fairy-hill by turning into a horse, smashing the room to pieces, and turning the glass shards into crows, with very little effort.
• Dark Action Girl: Laughing in the Hunter's face and angering him enough to chase her down isn't a classic hero move.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Described with "chalky" skin and matted black hair.
• Good Is Not Nice: She's good, but very reckless. Brighid mentions that the Morrigan could have avoided overloading Lucy and letting the Hunter chase them down.
• Statuesque Stunner: Nearly as tall as Ned, a war-goddess, and introduced wearing a red minidress.
• Wild Hair: Messy black hair down to her hips.

Brighid

The goddess of healing and the home/hearth, whom Brighid Brennan is named after.

• Heart Is an Awesome Power: She's the goddess of the home/hearth and finds Alima a cheap and serviceable place in two days. That's without being able to talk to her.
• Only Sane Man: When she finds out the Fianna are trying to get information from Lucy after she's just woken up, she's not happy. She also points out that since she can't talk to Alima, she can only manage to find her a cheap house with basic necessities.
• Proper Lady: Appearance-wise, she's a delicate redhead in a long skirt. Personality-wise, she's very proper and cheerful, though not without spine (see Only Sane Man).
• Neat Freak: The benign version—she comes to the shieling to check on house-cleaning, and later complains at having to walk in Artio's muddy forest.

The Fianna

A group of enthusiastic young men in fawn-brown suits, led by the white-haired Finn MacCool.

• Bambification: The older version. They have a deer motif, as their suits are brown and they give Alima a deer-antler whistle. They are also Foils to the Hunter.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Nick is comic-relief and a Cloud Cuckoo Lander. He's also a berserker—he scales the walls after the fleeing Hunter with three people weighing him down, doesn't react when the Hunter's blood burns him, and pursues him until Hades knocks him out.
• Bring My Red Jacket: In the twenty-second chapter, their suits have turned from brown to red in preparation for fighting the Hunter.
• Boisterous Bruiser: They frequently high-five each other when doing a job well.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: A group of young, Hot-Blooded, and sharply-dressed men who are mainly comic-relief. But two of them can lift a car, and they get serious quickly.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Nick says that "first aid is a tricksome phrase," and he suggests that Alima marry one of the gods so that they can bypass the five-year citizenship wait that's keeping the gods from helping her.
• Combo Platter Powers: They're gods of deer and policemen.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When they smell the signal fire's smoke, they immediately go silent and breathe it in like animals. Later in Westermark Howe, Nick's refusal to acknowledge Finn's whistled signal to retreat is a sign that he's going berserk.
• Hero Secret Service: Alima's whistle summons them. It's implied Owen needed their help before.

• Just Whistle: They give Alima a whistle in case she needs their help. Finn has a whistle to command the group.
• Mystical White Hair: Finn MacCool has white hair that's long enough to braid.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: An entire group of young men in suits.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Their reaction on seeing a bleeding Owen pinned to the ground by a stranger is "Owen, what now?!" On the other hand, Owen's probably been victim to a LOT of homophobia.

Aengus Og

The god of love, a man with a Hollywood smile. He has an accent that's frequently stated as sounding Scottish.

• Exact Words: When Owen tells him he swore not to come into his room, he mentions that he didn't technically swear an oath.
  "I said 'I'd keep an eye on you,' to be exact."
• Misplaced Accent: Lucy mistakes his accent for Scottish, and even the Irish-born Owen mentions that it sounds very close. Aengus points out to Lucy that he's older than Scotland.

Other

King Brian the Cat

May O'Luain's adolescent gray tabby. He's attached to her, but extremely contrary to everyone else. Along with the spirits, he can tell that "Bulan" is actually a human.

• Cats Are Magic: He can see through Ned's curse once he's done freaking out, cats are mentioned to know teleportation, and Owen takes him to Ogma's house so he can learn magic.
• Cats Are Snarkers: Only in his case, though—Alima mentions that her childhood cat Ruby was nice. It might also be because Brian's the equivalent of a teenager.
• Commander Contrarian: He hates doing what Owen wants. He also drops by Mal and Logan's place whenever he likes.
• Drama King: His first scent of canine-Ned makes him start shrieking and hissing. Thirty seconds later, he wonders if Ned's brainwashed after Ned calls himself a dog.
• Formally-Named Pet: KING Brian. Owen calls him "Your Majesty."
• Morality Pet: Inverted. May is a cheerful and energetic girl with an aloof and snarky cat, so she's his Morality Owner.

Dandelion the Cat

A stray whose juvenile son fell in Maidin's river, and was taken to Alima's house. She used to be a housecat until her owner died, and she's been living in the forest since then. She's a marbled tabby with a limp, and her son is spotted. They're currently being fostered by Alima, who has called him Pepper.

• Cats Are Magic: Like Brian, she knows magic and taught her son some. Both she and her son immediately know that Ned is a cursed human, not a wolf.
• Cats Are Mean: She's nice, but her son is wary of humans and very much dislikes the vet.
• Reincarnation: Pepper used to be Alima's childhood cat, Ruby. Only Ned knows this right now, because his curse means that he can understand the cats while he's a wolf.