Hazel Ashgrove

Hazel Ashgrove is a young autumn dryad whose life is tied to a patch of forest she has cared for since she was old enough to understand what that meant. She can feel its seasons, notice when something within it is wrong, and has an almost instinctive awareness of the plants and trees growing there. Her appearance changes subtly with the year, but autumn is when Hazel is most unmistakably herself, with warm-colored leaves and small flowers appearing among her branches as naturally as somebody else's hair might curl in humid weather.

Hazel takes her responsibilities seriously, sometimes more seriously than necessary. Storm damage worries her. Invasive plants become personal enemies. A prolonged dry spell can have her checking weather forecasts with the intensity of someone awaiting medical test results. She's conscientious, capable, and deeply protective of the place entrusted to her, but still learning that being responsible for something doesn't require worrying about it every waking minute.

This is particularly important because Hazel also happens to be a perfectly contemporary young woman who would quite like to have a life. She likes cafés, bookstores, concerts, road trips, wandering around shops with friends, and spending entirely too long deciding what to order before ultimately getting the same drink she usually does. She owns a phone, participates enthusiastically in group chats, and sees no contradiction whatsoever between being an ancient expression of the relationship between living things and having strong opinions about seasonal coffee.

Her closest friend is Fawn Hartley, whose quiet temperament makes her particularly easy company for Hazel. Through Fawn she's also become friends with Mira Thistlewhisk, Lena Mossclaw, and more recently Lanolin Aries, giving Hazel a small social circle where being a dryad barely registers as noteworthy. Lena is usually the greatest threat to Hazel's carefully managed schedule, since “we'll only be gone for an hour” has repeatedly turned out to mean something quite different.

Hazel's emotions have an inconvenient tendency to become botanical. Happiness can coax fresh leaves or tiny blossoms from her branches; embarrassment produces considerably more foliage than she feels the situation warrants; stress can send dry leaves fluttering around her before she's consciously admitted anything is wrong. Her friends have consequently become very good at knowing when Hazel is pretending to be fine. Hazel considers this a serious design flaw.

She loves her forest and can't imagine a life entirely separated from it. She's simply beginning to understand that caring for one place doesn't mean she has to remain planted there.

Sometimes even a dryad wants to get coffee. 🌿☕