The Arlens of Tellerwick are a long-established human family within the upper administrative tiers of the Realm, most closely associated with the House of Coin. Though not of noble blood, the Arlens have long been respected for their precision, reliability, and subtle social influence — a family whose strength lies not in charisma or power, but in the quiet authority of procedure and permanence.
From ledger keepers to land assessors, they’ve served as the quiet machinery behind property law, taxation, and chartered trade for generations. Their name carries the weight of precision and reliability — not flashy, but respected. They hold a kind of bureaucratic nobility: landowners by tenure, rule-followers by temperament, and adept at navigating the spaces where fae and human interests blur.
Charlotte Arlen, despite an upbringing saturated in order and restraint, was the one to fall in love with Tauren Foss — a match that sent subtle ripples through her world, and shaped the path of their child, Blake Arlen.
Charlotte and Taur
The beginning — young and electric
They met when Tauren was 22, newly carving out his identity beyond the Foss farm. He had just started renting land on the edge of Evergild-claimed territory — not yet absorbed by them, but already under their gaze.
Charlotte was 21, apprenticing under a fae-aligned steward, conducting a boundary verification. She had been sent to observe, note, and eventually confirm or contest the filed maps against the natural ones. When she first sees Tauren, he’s crouched in the stream itself, boots off, hands in the water, muttering to himself about sedge and root systems. He doesn’t look up right away.
She clears her throat. He glances at her, water dripping from his fingertips.
He mocked her clipboard. She corrected his Latin.
He brought her a root she’d never seen. She found herself following him into the field under the guise of classification.
Their affair began in full sun and sudden rain — fast, hidden, full of laughter that turned breathless.
They were both brilliant and misunderstood, and neither of them knew how much they’d long for stability later.
It was meant to be a seasonal thing. But they kept finding each other again: at shared harvests, during minor feasts, in back corridors of negotiation halls, under trees with pressed flowers in their pockets.
They knew it was reckless. Charlotte had family expectations. Tauren had none — which made him dangerous.
The Scandal
When Charlotte became pregnant, her family were appalled. They expected her to marry up, not muddy. Taur offered the right kind of herbs if she wished a different path. She declined. He offered to disappear — not out of cowardice, but love.
But Charlotte chose him. She defied her parents, lost some connections, and married him quietly — in a garden, not a hall.
Some say her family never forgave her. Others say they slowly came around, when Blake proved so composed, so capable. The scandal lingered in Evergild-adjacent circles for a while.
“She married that Foss boy?”
“He sleeps in his own herb beds, I hear.”
“They say she was under some enchantment.”
But Charlotte held her head high.
And Tauren, wild-eyed and unbrushed, would turn up at formal dinners smelling of moss and pepper, bringing gifts no one dared identify.
The staying power
They never lived conventionally, but they did live together — in the loosest sense. Charlotte kept a home with clean lines and good windows. Tauren built a lean-to behind it with vines growing through the roof. He always returned. He planted things outside her kitchen. He once dug a bath-sized hole just to see what kind of warmth the soil held for her winter roses.
They fought often, sometimes gloriously. She had ambition, he had refusal. But when they stopped arguing, it was always with hands on each other’s shoulders, forehead pressed to forehead.
They had a child they both loved ferociously, though differently. Charlotte raised Blake with poise. Tauren taught them to feel the weather in their teeth.
Blake and Charlotte
Blake, in their late teens, sits at the long kitchen table that always smells faintly of dried mint and ink.
The wind was snapping at the windows again. Blake had closed their book three times already, unable to focus. Charlotte sat across from them, unwinding twine from a bundle of dried rosemary — her motions tidy, rhythmic.
“You’re restless,” she said, not looking up.
Blake shrugged. “It’s just the wind.”
Charlotte smiled faintly. “Your father used to say that too. As if the wind had plans for him.”
Blake didn’t answer.
She finished the bundle and set it aside. Then leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes sharper than usual.
“You know why I married him?” she asked. No edge, no warning.
Blake blinked. “Because you had to.”
“No,” Charlotte said. “I didn’t. I could’ve sent him packing and kept you in this house with a different name. I nearly did.”
“…Why didn’t you?”
Charlotte tilted her head, considering. “Because he made the world feel enormous. Like the rules didn’t quite fit him, so they might not fit me either. He was infuriating. Half the time I wanted to drown him in a basin of his own nettle tea. But the other half…”
She smiled — a rare thing, soft around the eyes.
“The other half, I wanted to follow him into the hedgerows and never come back.”
Blake looked down. Their hand had closed around the edge of the table without meaning to.
“Don’t mistake me,” she added, voice quieter. “He wasn’t a safe place. But he was true. And if you ever feel that pull — to someone, or to something wild and shining and not quite sensible — don’t let your first instinct be to shut the door.”
Then she stood and went to the kettle, as if she hadn’t just opened something wide between them.