Once upon a time there was a girl, there was a boy, there was a poor woman who wanted, there was a queen who couldn’t have,
there was a witch who lived under, there was a green frog at the bottom of, there was a troll, a tree, a bear,
a bright-eyed bird who knew the secret of, there was a fairy who had lost, there was a child who had found,
there was a wizard who had made, there was a princess who had broken, there was a story trying to be told.
~ Terri Windling

Elisabeth, late 30s, single, nulliparous. Legitimately contemplating changing my name to "Wren" or at least going by it for awhile to try it out.

Massage therapist, former barista, and doula-in-training, living in midcoast Maine with a fellow fic writer. I am the Snow Maiden and Rose Red and, since 2014, "the Queen Who Couldn't Have" (courtesy of an unexpected, shattering hysterectomy). Now I'm loathly Ragnell waiting for her Gawain.

I write almost exclusively fairytale-inspired fanfics that lavish love on beautiful old-fashioned things like virtue and courtesy and tenderness, lovemaking (as a sacred, almost sacramental thing), pregnancy, and parenthood. I work on When the Moon with the annotated "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" open in one Chrome tab, the fox chapter of The Little Prince in another, and Song of Solomon on Bible Gateway in a third.

My works are cross-posted on AO3 for anyone who prefers that format.

A reader remarked that s/he had checked my profile to see if there was any explanation for the extended delay on fic updates, so I thought I'd best put something here. In a nutshell: things are bad, extremely so. In October 2018 my roommate (a fellow THG content creator) and I were given 30 days to find a new place to live as our building had been sold without warning. We managed to make this happen but it was neither inexpensive nor easy, and of course, we're STILL unpacking/trying to find everything. I now live about a 20-minute drive (and most of those are rural minutes) from work instead of 3-5 minutes, and because I need to go home at midday to take my dog out, I had to switch to split shifts and I make the round trip (40 minutes) twice a day.

There were a lot of small difficulties after that, but starting just after New Year's 2019, everything fell apart. I fell down the stairs in my house and hurt my knee badly enough that I was out of work (and pay) for almost 3 weeks. During those recovery weeks I got clobbered by one of the worst colds I've ever had and had a bad fall on the ice, hurting (but not quite injuring) my left wrist right as I was trying to get back into massage.

Then, at the beginning of February, my vibrant little rat terrier - my whole life in a little 19lb package - had a terrifying syncopal episode (a sort of faint where she went dead-limp in my arms, emptying her bladder down the front of me and giving the most horrible howl). It turns out that, despite the very best care I've been able to give her, she's developed a severely enlarged heart, a mitral valve issue, slight arrhythmia, et al... She's on two heart meds now ($$) and while we seem to be past the immediate crisis point (though with issues like this, I might come home any day to no-more-dog), we're trying to figure out what the "new normal" is going to be, since she has much less energy/activity now, and she continues to struggle with separation anxiety, which makes me especially nervous with her new heart diagnosis - and of course, that's not inexpensive to treat either.

EverlarkedAlways set up a GoFundMe for me in January and I cannot sufficiently say thank you to everyone who has donated. You guys carried me through January when I had no income and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to use the remainder of the monies. (I have about $700 in outstanding hospital bills for myself and about $850 for Lucky.)

I'm very sorry for the delay on all my fics. I hope you can understand.

My headcanons are deep and elaborate and as consistent as I can keep them across my fics, with a cast of characters as follows:

Jack Everdeen - Katniss's father; storyteller, musician, hunter, and the embodiment of Appalachian Jack tales. (canon character, embellishments mine) Fancast: (at present) Aidan Turner
Laurel Everdeen - Jack's sister, who died shortly after she was born.
Ashpet (Greenbrier) Everdeen - Jack's fierce, cougar-eyed huntress mother.
Asa Everdeen - Jack's father; a plain, gentle miner with a weak heart, who foraged things from the woods to make toys and died when Jack was eight.
Elspeth Greenbrier - Ashpet's mother, exquisite as a mouse, who loved old tales and died giving birth to her daughter.
[conspicuous space here] - Ashpet's mysterious, unnamed father, who called his little daughter "Aschenputtel" and taught her German children's songs and took her to the woods to hunt.
Aisling Greenbrier - Elspeth's sister, who lost her husband and youngest child in quick succession and helped raise her niece Ashpet. Aisling's daughter Wren named her own daughter Hazelle after the enchanting hazel-tree fairy tale Ashpet's father used to tell. :) (Consequently, in my headcanon, Jack and Hazelle are some degree of cousins through their great-grandmother, making Gale and Katniss related but "not closely," per canon.)

Janek Mellark - Peeta's father; the baker. Was raised with, involved with, and nearly engaged to Katniss's mother, who remains the love of his love. (canon character, embellishments mine) Fancast: John Schneider
Marek Mellark - Janek's bachelor brother; a close friend of the Cartwrights, who moved into their home as Janek's sons got older and now works in the shoe shop. Fancast: Paul Jagger, quarterfinalist from S3 of The Great British Bake-Off (Because yes. Just look at the man!)
Lydda Mellark - wife of the late baker and mother of Janek and Marek. A storyteller with a heritage somewhere between Scandinavia and Eastern Europe and remembered with adoration by her grandsons. Helped to raise Katniss's mother and desperately wanted a daughter of her own, but was unable to have more children after Marek.
Marko Mellark (senior) - the late baker; father of Janek and Marek. Famous for his shortbread. :)
Tanni Mellark - great-grandmother of the current generation who taught her son (Marko, senior) how to plait bridal braids in the event that there were no more Mellark daughters to perform them.
Marko Mellark (junior) - Peeta's oldest brother; named for his grandfather. Towering and broad as a barn and utterly besotted with Primrose Everdeen. (canon character, embellishments mine) Fancast: Armie Hammer
Luka Mellark - Peeta's middle brother and their mother's favorite; named for his late uncle. Carrying his own secret, impossible love for Johanna Mason (yes, in canon Panem :D). (canon character, embellishments mine) Fancast: Jeremy Sumpter

Raisa (Brognar) Mellark - Peeta's mother; closet artist, strawberry-blonde, and the object of far too much of Your Writer's affections. The youngest daughter of the butcher; lost her twin brother at 16. (canon character, embellishments mine) Fancast: How I picture her varies slightly depending on the story/context. In general, Christie Lynn Smith, though Ekaterina, photographed with some frequency by Nadima (one of my favorite photographers) evokes some exquisite young!Raisa feels.
Luka Brognar - Raisa's twin brother; a cruel, beautiful young brawler. Died at 16 after picking a knife fight with two miners.
Rooba Brognar (Cartwright, etc.) - the butcher; Raisa's cheerful, lusty sister with a string of husbands and lovers and four grown children to show for it. She quite openly admired Jack Everdeen back in the day but could never snag his interest, though they had a very positive working relationship as butcher and hunter. (canon character, embellishments mine)
Elske Brognar - wife of the brutish late butcher and Rooba, Luka and Raisa's mother; a shadow of a woman and a little witchy, depending on the fic, but generally considered a superb cook.
Vanya Brognar - Elske's late husband; a redhaired anomaly in Twelve and physically and verbally abusive. Thirteen-year-old Rooba finally took him down with a punch and he ultimately died of a hemorrhagic stroke.
Anders Cartwright - Rooba's eldest son by her first, short-lived husband, Dewey Cartwright (elder of the two Cartwright brothers - the younger, Georgy, ultimately inherited the shoe shop and became the father of Delly).
Lettie Wilhearn - Rooba's second child, a daughter of indeterminate parentage. ;) (The father was a Wilhearn but no one - even Rooba, I suspect - is quite certain as to which Wilhearn.)
Jeremy Wilhearn - Rooba's third child, a son with second husband Jerry Wilhearn. Generally considered the handsomest (and most Mellark-like) of Rooba's children.
Judah ("Jude") Tolliver - Rooba's youngest child (at present) by her favorite husband, widowed miner Micah Tolliver. Rooba's only half-Seam child and quite possibly her favorite; of an age with his cousin Luka Mellark.

Alyssum "Alys" (Ebberfeld) Everdeen - Katniss's mother; the apothecary's daughter. Grew up with Peeta's father and was in a relationship with him for most of their teen years, only to break up with him before they could get engaged and marry Jack Everdeen instead. Janek calls her "Lyssa," her childhood nickname that enjoyed a more intimate use later. (canon character, embellishments mine) Fancast: Sonja Bennett.
Violet Ebberfeld - Alyssum's mother, best friends and "cousins of some sort" with Lydda Mellark. Helped to raise Janek.
Madeline (Donner) Undersee - the present mayor's wife in District Twelve. Haunted by the death of her twin sister Maysilee in the 50th Hunger Games, she suffers from crippling headaches and spends much of her time in darkness and quietude, aided by Capitol medicines and visits from her childhood friend Alyssum Everdeen. Her relatives still run the sweet-shop in Twelve and her one child (Madge) was named for her. (canon character, embellishments mine)

I ship every Everlark (or Multilevel Everlark, as I call it): Peeta/Katniss, Marko/Prim, and Janek/Alys, but sometimes I think I love Jack/Raisa best of all, and I'm dangerously on my way to accepting a flicker of that ship as headcanon. I ship Luka with Johanna Mason (who I believe to be at least five years older than him).

On a related note, my canon fancasts (thus far) are as follows:

Peeta Mellark = actor Jonny Weston

Primrose Everdeen (past the age of twelve!) = Absentia, Polish model/designer. In my mind Prim has Alys's coloring but Jack's features and Absentia is a STUNNING combination of those characteristics, with a whisper to how I envision Katniss as well!

Madge Undersee = Ewa Kępys, Polish model/photographer Johanna Mason = Lenka (i.e., Kripac; Australian singer)

I have yet to find the perfect tiny, black-haired, olive-skinned, gray-eyed Katniss, though I live in hope (and search tirelessly). The best I've found so far are Karolina Kumorek (a.k.a. caradelneil), who is also (surprise!) a Polish model/photographer, and Raudha Athif, a Maldivian model who died under suspicious circumstances in 2017. :(

Here's what I hope to work on next (in no particular order):

Six Months to Strawberry Time (because apparently it's not going anywhere!)

- Chapter 15 of When the Moon (oh right, that thing...)

- Star-Crossed, a (in all likelihood, very long) oneshot about Katniss's great-grandmother Elspeth Greenbrier and the mysterious green-eyed man who became Granny Ashpet's father. Canon Panem, early days of the Games/post-Dark Days.

- Twenty-Two Red Ribbons (working title), a Mrs. Everdeen WtMiverse oneshot about the night following the events of Torchlight and preceding the second chapter of Six Months to Strawberry Time

- A Rooba (yes, Rooba) POV oneshot, because I need to map out all her kids and partners and explain why she's really supposed to get together with Marek Mellark.

- True North (because Jack/Raisa is my OTP and I've now officially snuck them into the WtMiverse)

My Tumblrs are as follows:

porchwood (main; follow for writing check-ins, visual inspirations, etc.)

chasingthenorthernlights (a separate blog dedicated to my love and longing for winter and snow)

everlarkescapism (personal fic recs; on a long-term hiatus, alas)

thequeenwhocouldnthave (on surviving life after a hysterectomy; posting only when it doesn't hurt too much, which is rare)