Meet Marle Talbender! She is a bit of a runt of a giraffe, with her short neck - something she's had to deal with alongside any flak her peers threw her way because of it. She's a new adopt that I'm turning into an official character of Taylor Renee's series starting with book 3! I felt the need for another female character since I was introducing way too many new male ones for book 3 and she was the perfect breaker of my writer's block. A chapter was giving me trouble and I honestly had no idea where to go with it, but by injecting Marle into the equation - everything became clear and she was just the fresh blood I needed to continue writing book 3!
Although she looks tribalistic here in her ref sheet that was offered by the artist, she's actually nothing like that. However, it did give me ideas as to her character and how she is a bit more in tune with the magical nature and forces of the world Taylor resides in. She has a special ability that I'm just in love with and her age puts her in her late thirties which lines up perfectly with previous book events to explain her special power. As a result of said events, she's a bit scatterbrained and is not entirely all there often times. She's a recluse and is very much deprived of company and physical touch - a fact that I'm using to further help define her personality and how she acts around others. She is going to be a great, albeit quirky, asset to the protagonists and I'm extremely excited for you to finally meet her on page when book 3 drops in a year or two!