Tag: medusa

#5 – Roxanna Artani

Those first few years out of college are hard enough for everyone, finding a real job, finding love, finding yourself, transitioning into becoming something roughly shaped like an “adult”. These things can be complicated further when you’re the daughter of a Gorgon.

Roxanna is a 23-year-old girl who currently makes ends meet working too-long shifts at the Lyceum Bar, an establishment that serves other creatures like her alongside human customers who are none the wiser that they’re sharing drinks with a creature of legend.

Creatures of myth have always existed in Roxanna’s world, but as time passed and faiths changed, people began to see past them, see beyond them. Now, they walk among us on every continent, trying to make a life for themselves just as everyone else is. Noticing them isn’t a matter of being gifted, or opening yourself up to the possibility, a small percentage of the population will be walking down the street one day when the planes of reality begin to shift and they realize that the hotdog vendor they always say hello to is actually a incredibly amiable troll who makes the best chili dog in town.

Roxanna graduated from college eight months ago, and still isn’t sure where her life’s supposed to go from here. She lives with her best friend, Jolene (who cannot see her as a Gorgon), in a small apartment they can barely afford, and whiles her nights away watching terrible reality TV with Brandon, a Satyr she met at a terrible concert one night. She’s still trying to convince her mother that she will not be immediately murdered as a result of finally moving out of the house.

Roxanna’s father was human, meaning she is half-gorgon, which is to say, she can “pass” much easier than others. Her hair always seems a mess, and when she is brought to any kind of emotional extreme her true form begins to show. This has made dating a problematic experience for Roxanna, who has had multiple unrequited crushes, but ended up pushing several different boys away out of fear that she would end up hurting them, whether she wanted to or not.

Roxanna frequently quibbles with her mother over her heritage. She considers her human side most people see as her “natural” form, and that the form always lurking just inside her reflection is another person altogether.

To most people, Roxanna appears as a shortish girl with a mess of black hair she never seems to tame framing a warm, pleasant face. She occasionally receives comments on her eyes, one almond brown, the other a bright hazel.

A bright student, with a sardonic streak a mile wide, Roxanna spends more time “between worlds” than any others like her. Every day, she deals with her desire to be “normal” against her loyalty to her heritage and to others like her.