#fyi the setting is sort of urban fantasy - cars and phones and such but also magic and a pantheon

[thewhumpcaretaker]

🝊 Curse in Two Bodies: Characters 🝊

Adelais. 27. Whumper & whumpee. Small and thin, with pale hair and nearly-black eyes. Prince of a snowy northern country that I have yet to name (but it's basically a smaller Russia). He’s known as a great orator. After a recent military campaign, he was cursed by the god of justice for the path he’s going down as a leader. This is a known occurrence in this universe - the gods will curse a particular part of your body if you do enough evil. For him, it’s his throat. It's horrifically painful and he can’t talk or eat. He’s been on an IV for months while the royal family tries to find a co-bearer to take some of the pain of the curse. There's no cure, but someone can take the curse into their own body for a while to give him relief. This whole situation is embarrassing for the royal family. It means the god of justice doesn’t approve of their son as a ruler. They’re trying to cover it up.

Ninlen. 29. Caretaker & whumpee. Faceclaim Neil Hilborn - kinda. Plus-sized and somewhat muscular, with reddish hair and a well-trimmed beard. Lumberjack build. A poor man who normally works to harvest and channel magic from the land - this can be thought of as analogous to working on an oil rig. It is destructive work and he dislikes it but has little choice. He is offered the job of being “co-bearer” of the curse with Adelais, and accepts in order to send money home to his family. His job is to transfer the prince's wound into his own body when the prince needs to be in public or needs to eat, or just wants to stop being in pain for a while. He hates the prince initially, but pities him anyway (genuine pity is necessary in order to take the curse upon oneself). Co-bearing a curse is seen as an unethical thing to do, because it means relieving punishment from someone who deserves it, and acting against the god of justice. Ninlen is conflicted about this.

Image Sources: One | Two | Three | Four | Five (figure) Five (background) | Six

FIRST CHAPTER