Buttons

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Name: Buttons
Nickname/Alias: n/a

Approximate Age: 19

Source: The Three Sillies, an English Fairy Tale.

Appearance: Though the daughter of simple peasants, Buttons is fetching enough to have one caught the eye of a well-to-do gentleman. Svelte and lovely, her simple frocks and aprons look just as pretty on her fine figure as a gown and jewels do when worn by a princess. Her red hair is often tied up in a ribbon, or worn under a simple cap or kerchief to keep it safely out of the way.

Her golden eyes are perhaps her best feature, bright and thickly lashed. She was once told she had her mother's eyes, leading to quite a fiasco! How does one exactly take the eyes out of their head and give them back to the original owner? It all ended well, though, and she now takes pride in informing others that her eyes are really not her own.

Personality: To all appearances, Buttons is a bright and happy young lady, and that is essentially true, until she starts to think. It is her imagination that is the problem, and it not only runs away with her, but if it can gain enough speed it has been known to take others along for the ride, as well.

It isn't that Buttons isn't smart, exactly. She has lived on her own for some time now without starving to death, so that must say something. She just tends to see things from a simpler, and often more literal, point of view than most. She has a childlike innocence, and loves all life has to offer to someone of her simple lifestyle. She is friendly and outgoing, and is wonderful with animals, able to gain their trust quite easily. At a very young age, Buttons became a vegetarian. She couldn't hurt a fly, for what if that fly had daughters or sons of her own? Why, they'd be orphans! It was just too horrible to think. And it was far worse to consider when it is a lamb or bit of beef on the dinner table.

She is prone to tears as horrible imaginings take hold. Her sense of reality is skewed, and as such it is easy for fantasy to take control. She learned long ago not to travel anywhere without several large handkerchiefs. While others may think she is a bit dramatic, she feels she simply has a more sensitive nature than others, and that can hardly be a bad thing, can it?

Her imaginings are not always negative, though. Highly gullible, she is also easily distracted by fantastic possibilities. She once heard a story of someone who could spin straw into gold, and worked that spinning wheel for days until her hands bled. On another occasion, she wrapped herself in linens from head to toe, trying to turn into a butterfly. In a flash of wisdom, she realized a butterfly could easily get eaten by a bird, and luckily unwrapped herself before she could suffocate.

Strengths: Buttons' concern for others has made her a very selfless and caring individual. She makes friends easily, and is always willing to give aid when it is needed. She is just as happy to warn others of imminent doom if she foresees such an event. It would hardly do for her to have such a rare and wonderful gift of being able to see the outcome of nearly such situations, and then not share it with the unsuspecting folks whose lives are sure to be affected by it. She could never stand the guilt if something horrible happened and she hadn't tried to stop it. On those rare occasions when something she suspected could happen actually comes to pass, she has far too gentle a nature to say "I told you so", but is right there to help put everything back to rights, hoping a valuable lesson was learned in the meantime. Buttons lives by the notion of "an ounce of prevention", and it has kept her and those she loves quite safe.

Weaknesses: It is that very nature that prevents her from maintaining many long term friendships. People tend to get quite tired of her moodiness and ridiculous warnings. Those of a cruel nature have often made her the butt of practical jokes, simply to watch her get flustered over nothing. Local merchants have managed to swindle her out of many a pretty hay penny, once they learned how to work with her gullibility. While not necessarily paralyzing, her fears do keep her from doing many things others thoroughly enjoy.

History: As the version of the English Tale I have chosen goes, there was once a farmer and his wife, who had a pretty daughter. The daughter was courted by a gentleman who used to stop every evening for supper, and she would go down to the cellar each night to fetch the beer for the meal. One evening, while drawing the beer, she happened to glance up toward the ceiling and saw a mallet atop one of the beams. She began to imagine that if she and the gentleman married, one day they would have a son. Perhaps one day that son would come down to the cellar and the mallet would fall on his head, killing him! She was so overcome with horror and grief, she sat right down on the cellar floor and began to cry.

After a time, her mother came to see what was taking so long, only to find her daughter sobbing on the floor amongst the flowing beer. Upon finding out what was troubling the girl, her mother sat down right next to her, crying just as hard over the loss of her grandchild. Shortly, her father came to check on the women, and on hearing the tale, he too sat right down and cried.

Eventually, the gentleman felt it was his duty to see what had happened to everyone, and was aghast at the carrying on going on in the cellar. Laughing, he reached up to remove the mallet, informing them that he was leaving. He would, however, return if he managed in all the world to find three people sillier the family before him, and promised that if he returned, he would indeed marry the daughter. The long and short of it is that he did indeed find three people far more silly than those he'd left behind, and the two were married, intending to live happily ever after, as most tales go.

As a matter of fact, they didn't live happily ever after. One evening, while ladling soup into a bowl before her husband, Buttons imagined spilling the piping hot liquid over his head. As hot as it was, there was no doubt it would boil his very brains, until there was nothing left of the man but a complete simpleton. Not wanting to put him through such an ordeal, and hardly wanting to be strapped to a drooling idiot, she promptly packed his things and sent him on his way, despite his protests. It was really for his own good, and she assured him he would know that when he had time to think on it. So her husband rode out into the night, never to be heard from again.

The people in town couldn't understand her argument, assuming the gentleman finally had enough of her stupidity and fled during the night. Tired of fighting the fools and their narrow-minded thinking, she packed up her belongings and headed far away, finally settling in a little cottage on the edge of the woods, where no one knew her history or could scorn her for doing what she knew was right.

For a time, she had considered selling wares in the nearby kingdom, until she realized the harm she could cause. What if a little girl pulled one of her ribbons too tight around her neck and choked to death? Or just suppose a little boy got his feet tangle in a pair of her knickers and tripped and fell over a cliff, while just trying to hide behind a tree to do his business?

Fortunately for Buttons, in her haste to send her husband to safety, she forgot to pack his coins, a comely sum befitting a gentleman. At first she withheld from spending them, until she realized she was his wife after all, and she had no idea where to find him to return them to him anyway. Besides, she reasoned cleverly that if he had really not wanted her to have them, he would have come back for them. She had learned how to garden from her parents, so she planted a little plot of land and bought herself a few farm animals. What she can't buy, make, or grow for herself, the woods amply provides.

Special Abilities: While Buttons thinks her imaginings are often real prophecies, she actually has no magical abilities.