Ambrose Starling

From Changeling Venue

Seeming	Beast Windwing
Court	Spring Court •
Freehold	Realm of Sand and Fog
Player	C Miles

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Alias(es): Ambrose Starling, Starling, Mothboy, Flyboy
Real Name: Jeremy Boyer
Location: San Francisco, CA
Age: Appears Mid 20's (Actually 35)
Seeming: Beast
Kith: Windwing
Court: Spring
Freehold: Realm of Sand and Fog
Virtue: Hope
Vice: Lust
Keeper: The Spangle Maker and later the Marquis of Knives and Clouds
Occupation: Visual Merchandiser (designs displays for Store Windows)/ Event Coordinator
Concept: Hedonistic Butterfly/Information Broker
Entitlement: None

The first feature to draw the attention is his eyes - which are deep brown, almond shaped, and somewhat larger than average. Coupled with his open expression, they lend a disarming Lost Boy purity to his otherwise classical features. Any hints of innocence or vulnerability are quickly dispelled though by an infectious smile which betrays some conspiratorial amusement or, by turns, a feral curiosity. His mixed African and French ancestry reveals itself in his warm brown skin, which gives off an almost subcutaneous glow of health. His six-foot frame is slender, toned, and well suited to the trendy jeans and smartly tailored clothes he enjoys. His dark curly hair is worn in a Caesar cut. The overall impression he makes is exotic, hipsterish, clever, flirty, and somewhat fragile. One always has the sense he’s from somewhere else – another country perhaps – as he seems somewhat out of step with American culture. He speaks English with a trace of a French accent.

Unmasked, his skin takes on a more amber tone with a dusting of tiny iridescent scales here and there. His irises and the whites of his eyes are revealed to be a semi-translucent obsidian black. Only his silvery white pupils betray the focus of his gaze. A set of elegant antenna adorns his head (appearing to sprout from just below his hairline). His hair takes on a lustrous fur-like texture and warms to a brown. Luxuriant fur of the same hue covers his upper back and the nape of his neck as well as his forearms and calves. It has a texture very much like mink. A pair of wings – dark gold and umber with vivid royal blue eyespots – extend from between his shoulder blades. Fully spread, they are a little over a meter from tip to tip and, while impressive and fully functional, appear far too small to bear him aloft (he usually relies on Hedgespun garments to accommodate them.). His build appears even more lithe though no less toned and attractive. He exudes a resinous honey-like scent when nervous or excited.

Relevant Mechanics: Striking Looks 2 - Barfly - Mantle (Spring) 1 - Court Goodwill (Autumn) 1

His Mantle manifests as a stirring breeze and the subtle intensification of colors in his immediate vicinity.

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Ambrose’s fusion of agelessness, childlike curiosity, animal instinct, and almost supernatural perceptiveness makes for an mercurial package. Appearing, as he does, like an overgrown Spright from the hedge, it’s easy to dismiss him as an effete airhead, but he’s capable of startling insights whether from his own observations or useful bits of memory from his durance that float to the surface. This can be traced to the fact that he has largely grown up in Arcadia. He’s far older than he appears, but like a typical Beast, much of his durance was spent immersed in animal awareness. It is clear though that his Keeper had more in mind than just making him the ornamental butterfly. His light touch and amiable countenance belies a subtle mind that’s as attuned to undercurrents as it is to glossy surfaces. He has a knack for blending into the woodwork when it suits him or, by turns, being impossible to ignore. He flickers from passion to coldness as one might expect from someone who is half human and half insect. While often hard to pin down, he has an engaging immediacy that almost anyone can connect with at some time or another. His empathy, married to the vibrant charisma of his Seeming, makes him a magnet for confidences and he never forgets a one.

Those who become intimates quickly discover his airy élan hides a surprisingly fierce loyalty to those few beings who inspire it and a profound curiosity with the magic of Faerie and the Hedge that would please any Autumn Court courtier (he counts a number of friends among the Leaden Mirror). Ambrose’s childhood love of stage magic has matured into a serious interest in the secrets of the World of Darkness around him. In all other respects though he’s a quintessential member of the Emerald Court: aesthetically aware, hedonistic, and au courant about such things as fashion, music, and pop culture. He’s a familiar and welcome face at A-list soirees, nightclubs, art openings, and the occasional scandalous private party. He has a reputation for coordinating some legendary evenings himself.

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The Imaginary Friend

“You broke your promise.”

The accusing voice seemed to come from across the room near the windows. Sprawled across the bed (where he had thrown himself down earlier in his fit of pique) Jeremy raised his head. His face and the crook of his arm where he had buried it was hot and wet with tears. He was only half certain he heard something.

“You gave your word…”

A small sound escaped him when he registered the speaker. Though he hadn’t heard the voice in years, the identity of the speaker was unmistakable. It was Spoke. His invisible friend, which meant he was as crazy as his aunt in the mental institution. Jeremy sat up slowly as his eyes scanned the darkened room for some sign of Spoke. The hard rain outside hissed against the panes of the French doors. The rocking chair near them rocked steadily…almost deliberately.

“Spoke…”Jeremy breathed the forbidden name for the second time that day. Forbidden because it worried his parents and the therapist they had hired. Forbidden because, at the age of 13, Jeremy was too old to have an invisible friend. Especially when crazy ran in the family. But it had been a crazy week. Trying to keep up with exams, looking like an idiot in front of the one person he had a crush on, and the proof of mom getting sicker and not better like she kept saying. Sadder and lonelier than he could ever remember being, he found himself uttering the forbidden name for comfort.

“You broke your word and I went away, but now you’ve called me back. Did you think I wouldn’t remember? “

Jeremy shook his head guiltily and ran the back of his hand under his nose to wipe away the wetness. His pulse raced as the sheer malevolence in Spoke’s voice sunk in. The rocking chair shifted as if someone had been sitting in it and had now gotten to their feet. A silhouette, impossibly gnarled and thin as a shadow with a head a little too large for the body stood against the wan grey light of the windows. Jeremy’s heart nearly stopped at the sight of it. In all those early years of playing with Spoke he had never seen him before. The figure crossed the room soundlessly as Jeremy instinctively got to his feet. Part of him wanted to flee or at least turn on the light, but apprehension rooted him to the spot.

“You gave your word and you broke it.” Spoke was closer now and his large eyes were bright with spite in the dimness.

“I told the therapist…” Jeremy conceded with dawning horror. He remembered the doctor’s look of professional patience and the bland earth tones of his office. The scent of Spoke's breath – like ozone, oak moss, and something moldering brought him back to the present.

“You’re aren’t real…” he half whispered and he could just make out Spoke’s smile at this. The goblin clasped Jeremy’s wrist with spidery fingers as he leaned in close enough that their noses almost touched before replying:

“Well now neither are you.”

With that the creature flung open the door of the nearby closet and drew Jeremy in. The boy tried to resist – dug his toes into the carpet but to no avail. Though thin as a sapling, the hand that held him was freakishly strong. It was like being in the grip of a powerful machine. He was dragged through the door to find it was not the spacious closet they used to hide in years ago, but a dark tangle of brush and brambles. Spoke moved undeterred but the thorns and branches tore at Jeremy mercilessly.

And so began Jeremy Boyer’s Durance…

The Spangle Maker

Years later Jeremy would wonder whether the creature that took him had every really been the Spoke he knew and not something else masquerading as Spoke. He never heard the name again during years in Faerie. The creature took him to a place called the Hill House – a skyscraper tall and dangerously narrow Victorian that leaned precariously over a cliff. Upon meeting the tall, robed, and spider-fingered being called the Spangle Maker, Jeremy initially thought it was his captor’s parent…perhaps come to admonish the imp for bringing him, but the Spangle Maker only praised Spoke and kindly ushered Jeremy in.

“My my…look at you. You must be famished.”

The fingers that touched Jeremy’s cheek were skeletal and as white as bone, but the eyes and the voice were kindly enough in the shadows of the cowl. A flat ribbon of something lustrous, crimson, and taffy-like was offered and, after a suspicious sniff of inspection, Jeremy bit into it. He was hungry. The warm waxy substance was unfamiliar, but mind-meltingly sweet. It was like honey, fruit, and something from Eden combined. Jeremy devoured it wolfishly.

“Hungry little caterpillar.” The Spangle Maker cooed approvingly and handed him another.

By the time Jeremy finished his third, he could barely keep his eyes open. The strangeness of his surroundings was an assault on his senses. It was exhausting trying to make sense of things and the trip here had nearly done him in.

“Where am I?” He asked sleepily. It seemed important. But someone…oh yes, the Spangle Maker, was patting his head and tutting softly as the boy was gently stirred to a door that lead further into the Hill House. Jeremy almost missed Spoke’s feral yellow eyes watching with an unreadable expression…almost.

Jeremy was laid in something that resembled a coffin or sarcophagus. His limbs were already heavy with sleep. Looking down at him with hooded eyes the Spangle Maker closed the lid. Some distant part of him screamed in protest but the weight of the darkness put him out like a light.

He awoke some indeterminate stretch of time later and blinked sightlessly into the dark. He half expected to wake up in his own bed, but memory of being put in the coffin came back to him in a rush. His own heart thumped in his ears as the sense of enclosure registered. He reached up to push against the rounded lid but it was either too heavy or locked somehow.

Buried alive…was his only thought before fear seized his brain. He thrashed and shouted like a wild thing. Calling for his parents, Spoke, anyone to come save him. Finally the lid was removed and he sat up weeping and gasping for breath. The Spangle Maker reached down to rub Jeremy’s forehead soothingly…well as soothing as such fingers could be while Spoke watched on unimpressed by Jeremy’s terror.

Following that first awakening, his days took on a kind of rhythm. Jeremy would toil in the Hill House all day – cleaning, polishing silverware, and dusting – while being given as much food as he desired. Always it was in the form of the rich red taffy which he was occasionally forced to eat even when he refused food. It seemed scarcely a few days had passed when he noticed his body changing. His once, diminutive form (he had always been a small boy for his age) grew heavier and to his flesh began to swell. Horrified as he was, the Spangle Maker seemed delighted and encouraged him to eat more while brushing off any inquiries about when Jeremy could go home. Each night Jeremy was placed back in the suffocating enclosure of the sarcophagus and was forced to find ways to endure his temporary confinement.

Grotesquely Jeremy grew and grew. So much so that it began to affect his chores. Spoke poked, pinched, and jeered viciously, but the Spangle Maker’s satisfaction hung in the air of Hill House like some cloying perfume. Finally, enfeebled by layers and rolls of almost translucent fat, a mewling and bewildered Jeremy was placed in a new sarcophagus. The lid was firmly shut and he was left to darkness. A profound torpor overcame him and he was gratefully spared the madness of claustrophobia. He forgot about his home, his school and his sick mother and settled into a kind of timelessness. While he half slumbered his body continued to change. His skin swelled and then hardened. Organs, bones, and tissue seemed to break down, liquefy, and gradually reform into new structures. Nearly the span of a year passed in Faerie before the lid of the coffin was removed again. The creature that weakly but determinably half ate half clawed its way out of the chrysalis was hardly recognizable as Jeremy. He managed to climb out of the chrysalis and then the sarcophagus unaided before tumbling onto the floor. Something wet and thick clung to his back like a sodden beach towel. It hurt when he rolled over onto it so he was content to rest on his stomach breathing. Curiously, the Spangle Maker hovered close, but refrained from helping or even touching him. Jeremy closed his eyes and his heartbeat was the only sound in the room. The soaked wings on his back slowly painstakingly unfurled and his blood pumped into their veins. As they gradually dried in the heat of the chamber their dark gold splendor unfurled. A sullen Spoke padded out of room.

The Floating Arboretum

Once Jeremy’s wings began to beat the air of the small chamber with some strength. The Spangle Maker swept him up in its branchlike arms and carried him out of the Hill House. Jeremy guessed his host to be easily eight feet tall as they moved to the cliff with The Maker’s characteristic gliding gate. Just over the edge of the cliff, large flat river-worn stones made a floating stairway to what looked like an immense Victorian Greenhouse that hovered like a cloud over the yawning chasm below. The Spangle Maker opened the door and gingerly laid the Windwing on the ground a few paces inside. Jeremy’s new chameleon eyes widened at the sight of what appeared to be a rainforest enclosed in quaint Old World glass.

“Your knew home, my pet.” His host said with a note of bittersweet pride. “Grow strong, quick, and beautiful and you might yet survive.”

With that he left Jeremy to the wonders and dangers of the Floating Arboretum.

Years passed and Jeremy grew strong and quick as he was bid. His instincts and reflexes honed by the other denizens of the Arboretum - birdlike hunters and skitterskulks during the day and bat-like ghouls that swooped, wheeled, and screeched in the deepening dusk. He lived in his senses and became more absorbed into an eternal present of flowers that glowed like lamps, the cold thrill of being pursued, golden pools of sunlight, warm spiraling caresses of wind under wing, fragrant draughts of mind-melting sweetness, and the sudden violence of being pierced and penetrated – by shafts of moonlight or burning flesh. He learned to hide in plain sight by remaining perfectly still or to dart and weave though the high canopy of leaves to evade the beaks, talons, or jaws of those they would prey on him. Other moths and butterflies inhabited the arboretum as well and they sometimes found safety in numbers. Occasionally there would be visitors to the arboretum. Fae guests of the Maker come to admire his handy work. Often they would purchase souvenirs to take home with them: a hoary and spotted carnivorous plant perhaps or a fiery plumaged songbird that sang arias like whale songs. None of those guests were so esteemed as the Marquis of Knives and Clouds, a visiting fae noble. Spotting Jeremy among the other fauna, he purchased him from the Spangle Maker and took him home to his Manor. Jeremy gave the Hill House one last look as they departed and glimpsed Spoke watching from the attic window.

The Marquis of Knives and Clouds

The handsome noble was renown for his lavish parties where prized pieces of his collection were always on display. That those curiosities often emerged from their cases to recite poetry or fraternize with the guests was a considerable draw. In preparation for his new role, Jeremy was tutored by a murder of Wizened Antiquarians in elocution, etiquette, and skills more carnal in nature. Jealous of his own possessions and paranoid about what his rivals were up to, the Marquis intended that his new charge be more than just a party favor. He groomed the Windwing to charm, distract, and gather information. A year passed and life settled into a new rhythm with Jeremy allowed to assume a mostly human form and consciousness as he studied under the cheerless Antiquarians, while at night he reverted back, in mind and body, to a golden butterfly and was sealed away in a dark wood box. Surreally, The line between these two states of being seemed to blur during the course of the Marquis parties in accord with desires of his patrons. Eager to please the magnetic, but temperamental Marquis, Jeremy luxuriated in his station and came to look forward to these soirees for the sheer swirl and excitement of them.

The Imaginary Enemy & the Escape

It came as some surprise then when the Spangle Maker turned up as a guest at one evening’s soiree with the imp, Spoke, at its side. It hit Jeremy then that he hadn’t thought of them once since leaving Hill House all those years ago. A nagging disquiet bloomed in his chest as they made their entrance and Jeremy slipped back among the revelers in hopes of disappearing before they spotted him. It troubled him suddenly that he couldn’t remember much before his time in the Floating Arboretum. Snatches of memory worried the frayed edges of his consciousness and, to escape them, Jeremy became a butterfly again…darting and wheeling among the guests. It was the Marquis himself who caught him…delicately so as not to crush his wings. Those velvety dark eyes watched his Starling with amusement until the fluttering creature settled within the cage of the noble's elegant fingers.

“There there…” His Lord’s handsome face came close and his warm lips pressed against butterfly's furry back. The insect shivered at the kiss and, just like that, Jeremy found himself standing dazedly before the noble in his (mostly) human shape again. The Marquis smiled at him then and, despite his dismay, Jeremy could scarcely tear his gaze from the sight of own iridescent scales on his Master’s well-formed lips.

“It seems an old friend would like to dance with you.”

The Marquis left them then as he went to mingle with his guests. The diminutive Spoke gave Jeremy a courtly bow before drawing him into a waltz-like dance. The Windwing gazed into those inscrutable eyes with a sense of unease. While Jeremy remembered the goblin, his memories of anything before his chrysalis were next to non-existent. All Spoke had to do was say Jeremy’s name, which the young man hadn’t heard in all his time in Faerie, and the spell was broken. It all came back in a flood: The punishing journey through the hedge, his sick mother, the sky over Montreal, the scent of his own bed, and his imaginary friend.

“Why?” he could only ask, but the enigmatic goblin's only answer was to steer him out of view of the glittering throng and to a window.

“You can return if you wish, but your conviction to do so must be resolute or you’ll be lost among the thorns.” Spoke’s expression was terse but strangely tender as he opened the window. “Decide quickly before the Marquis starts to wonder where you are.”

Jeremy felt torn, but in the end it was his concern for his mother that made up his mind. He had no sense of how long he had been away or even if she was still alive, but he had to go back to her.

So Jeremy fled the manor and fought his way back through the thorns to the Montreal he knew. At times he didn’t think he had the strength to make it, but somehow he emerged battered and bleeding from the brush at Mont-Royal Park in the heart of the city.

Found and taken in by small motley of Changelings, Jeremy was introduced to the secret society of Lost in Montreal. He was devastated to find that 10 years had passed in the mortal world and that his mother was long dead. The fact something that looked like him frequently visited his father and seemed to be living his life didn’t lighten the blow. He stalked his father and his fetch for a time, but the more he did so; the more he suspected that the latter was aware of him. Finally with the help of the local freehold, he set about building a new life for himself in Montreal. Adopting the name, Ambrose Starling, he used skills honed during his durance (both supernatural and social) to rise to prominence in the city’s burgeoning nightclub scene. Working odd jobs to support himself he gradually established a freelance business as an event planner – coordinating parties for the local Seasonal Courts and human patrons alike. It took some time for him to settle on a Court himself. His lifelong love of magic resonated with the Leaden Mirror, but in the end he chose the Spring Court as their raison d'etre and signature emotion, desire, was closest to his heart. After a few awkward run-ins with his fetch, he opted to relocate his life and business to San Francisco, California and finally put his past behind him.

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- - Presently looking for ties of all kinds.

Motley

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Mercury/Hermes
The Man With Thistledown Hair from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
An Obsession With Butterflies - by Sharman Apt Russell
Torchwood's 4th episode Small Worlds
Una – From the movie Legend
Myth and Folklore on Butterflies and Moths
The character Mercy Rosmar from Julian May’s Saga of Pliocene Exile
Massive Attack's video for Butterfly Caught

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Sugar Daddy - Laika
Big Wings - Bows
Darkness - Lamb
Butterfly Caught - Massive Attack
Silent Shout - The Knife
Dizzy - Siouxsie & the Banshees
Blink - Perfume Tree
Nightlife - I AM X
Some Velvet Morning - Primal Scream (feat. Kate Moss)
Reckoner - Radiohead
Cologne Cerrone Houdini - Goldfrapp
Nature Boy - Massive Attack (feat. David Bowie)
Fire in the Heart - Nicolette
Spark - The Bird and the Bee