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Messages - Delia Espinoza

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Elsewhere Accepted / Delia Espinoza
« on: 01/05/2020 at 16:05 »

E L S E W H E R E   A D U L T

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Delia Amparo Espinoza Hernández
Gender: Woman
Age: 27  (DOB: 9 Nov 1931)
Blood Status: Halfblood

Education:
1940 - 1955, correspondence courses under Doña Blanca Flores
1953 - 1957, sous chef under Chef Garrett Argabright at Nox Ales Pub in Diagon Alley
Ongoing self-study


Residence:
Diagon Alley, London

Occupation:
Chef

Do you plan to have a connection to a particular existing place (for example: the Ministry, Shrieking Shack) or to take over an existing shop in need of new management?:
The Snake Pit

Requested Magic Levels:
  • Charms: 8
  • Divination: 6
  • Transfiguration: 6
  • Summoning: 12
Do you wish to be approved as a group with any other characters? If so who and for what IC reason?
n/a

Please list any other characters you already have at the site:
Icarus, etc

Biography: (300 words minimum.)
December, 1952
“When was the last time you did something for anyone else?”

The tip of the knife landed solid in the chopping block, rigid with her fist around the handle. In the tilt of her head, she almost appeared thoughtful, painted lips opened to speak.

But Delia had gotten up at 4 a.m. to visit the carniceria in order to have the meat done by 11 for lunch. He charged a little more than she could afford some days, like today, but she was always happy to pay it. The old man's family business took care of at least twelve children, each of whom she fed for free if they came by her truck on the boardwalk. There were four she knew by name already. By name and order and the smiles as they waved goodbye. She was grateful to see they each had shoes that fit as they walked away.

She was home again at 7 to check on her sister, waking her up by feeling for her legs. She had to check that her sister had legs, or else the screams she screamed when she hit the floor would wake their mother, and Delia was in no mood for banshee choirs. There was a list to make sure that Dolores got ready, but four days out of five she forgot all about it. Today, she swore over breakfast that she'd already cleaned up. They had to start again with Delia calling the minutes during her shower to make sure she still got to school on time.

In the afternoon, she fed a homeless man, a crying teen, a young mother, a lost child. She picked Loli up from school, helped her with her history over the sizzling of the grill.

She had just gotten home from the club, and asked nothing but to be left alone with her things. Dark eyes challenged the woman in the door, and the curse sparking under her tongue extinguished only in the breath of a scoff.

Delia gave her mother a one-finger salute.



May, 1953

They went together over the sea. She let their mother think it was her brilliant idea, but Delia had made the arrangements. She paid for the plane tickets. She made Loli’s appointments. She sold her beloved taco truck and exchanged every dragot for the little thing sleeping beside her. The newspapers seemed to promise a chance; some young healers curing Magical Mono offered infinitely better for a tropical sickness like hers than the system at home, which only seemed to have made things worse.

And getting away from The Captain and His Wife was icing on that layer cake. It was sprinkles. It was a maraschino cherry on top.

She looked into the ocean below them, and felt dry as the desert behind them. She craved nopal like water.



November, 1955

In a frying pan over medium heat, roast the nopal and diced onion. Cook until the nopal dries completely.

Someone told her when she was young (and it might have been her mother, when New Mexico held her roots in its rocky soil, roots unwashed by salt water and sir, yessir) that her father’s recipes made Pancho Villa weep.  They said his pozole cured the sick, his salsas saved marriages, his capirotada brought people back from the dead.

They said these things,  and lied.

This one was supposed to be a cure for homesickness.

She knew the recipe by heart. She could make it in her sleep. Some mornings, when she still owned her truck, she was almost certain she had. Delia Espinoza was her father’s daughter, and a good cook. But she’d be damned if she didn’t feel every needle of loneliness all the way down.

If any of it were true, Loli would be well, her parents would still be married, and the little girl who heard this legend would still be here eating bread pudding, too. If any of it were true, neither Delia nor her sister would even be here.

Her cleaver came down hard through the center of a cabbage as she moved on to the next damned dish.



April, 1958

The air split with crackling heat mere inches from her bloodied face, and burst into color colliding with crates along the wall. The rancorous clatter of falling objects couldn’t manage to make her flinch. Delia snarled in the direction of the green glittering plasma, raising an exotic wand at her competitor with wild, wild eyes. The lattice of the thick, dark cholla wood glowed with the hex growing ready, a corpse with a molten core.

“Nice shot, Kazama!” she barked back at the scowling young man whose leather jacket hung from his shoulders, its sleeves sliced in twain by her spite. “But not as nice as me.”

She forgot to flutter her lashes before the bite of “Flipendo!” curled her reddened lips. The punk in his scarecrow suit seemed to go boneless when he hit the ground, enough breath reserved for a curse she couldn’t understand, one without wandform. He looked to be down for the count. But as she approached him, heeled boots tapping a countdown minus a referee, her forfeit burst through the door and pounded down the basement stair.

Delia didn’t need the messenger to speak. She knew in that look. She knew.

“Call the curandero, tell him we’re coming.”

When no one moved, she screamed. The firewhiskey still in bottles boiled. The crowd of roughened men scrambled and tripped from her line of sight.

Delia stepped over her opponent and into the night when she learned the name of fear.



July, 1959

“A la rru-rru rru-rru, patitas de burro—”

The bundle on her back is still, but it watches with eyes abysmally dark. She watches them back, reflected in the edge of her knife, and imagines he can speak. The lullaby, however, is enough language for them, for now.

It won’t be more than a few months, she tells herself. Loli will learn to be independent, doing something she cares about doing. Loli will learn permanence, and perhaps her body will follow. Loli will be ready to take her little fish when she’s ready to remember him.  She will.

Delia drags the blade across the cutting board, pushing onions into the broth. It swallows them into the pot’s depth. She holds her breath, helpless against the burning in her eyes. It won’t be long. She wishes it was now.

She doesn’t know what to do.

The baby doesn’t eat.


Roleplay, Option One: 

Delia swiped the bottle that dangled from the curandero’s fingers. As he swiped after her sticky fingers in protest, she slipped it smugly, snugly, into the forbidden crevice formed by a bodice she hadn’t paid for either. She knew she had won when he pulled his composure back into coldness, and in return she grinned. It was impossible to resist the little victories.

“Yeah, yeah, fine, I’ll make your mole,” she falsely relented. “And your  tortillas, of course. I promise.”

(They had a deal already, established when first she brought her Loli to him years ago. He would do what he could for their little family, and she would make him tamales at Christmas and tortillas whenever he wanted. But when he pulled that sternness, her conscience could not unsee the shadow of the priest. And anyway, it was the principle of the thing. She was a witch, sure, but—)

A woman’s voice interrupted the conversation of her conscience: “Merlin’s fog watch, my heel is broken! Help!”

“Hold that thought.”

But she had as good as forgotten Rafael entirely once her attention turned to the street, dark eyes searching the crowd for the figure out of place. And when she saw the woman (why did it seem that she was the only one who did?), Delia put her weight into a lingering body that stood uselessly between her and the damsel in distress. Of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy. The river of idiots flowed endlessly, and it wasn’t as easy to shove people with shopping bags, animal cages, cauldrons full of books—

“Out of the way, ya dill bags!” Her bark threatened bite, the shout an introduction of the bizarre cactus wand at the end of her outstretched arm. She was no Moses, but she had a magic stick to use against injustice, too, and God help her, she would.


OTHER
How did you find us? Arcane wisdom

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