The Magic Between Us: Vali
This post is part of The Magic Between Us series, an exploration and analysis of characters in the Stories of the Eleriannan series.
Vali Dawe is the kind of person who is easy to befriend and even understand, but knowing her? There are depths to Vali. She’s got a complicated and traumatic past and carries a lot of pain, which she’s worked hard to turn into lessons she can use to help others. If there’s one word I’d use to describe Vali, it’s compassionate. She’s the conscience of the Eleriannan: always looking for the kindest and most helpful options for her Fae family to choose from. Together with Lucee Fearney, who I would call the heart of the Eleriannan, she’s worked hard to create a culture of acceptance, cooperation, and good works using the power of the Fae.
It’s no wonder that the Heart of the City chose her to be their representative. Vali is a living embodiment of what community can and should look like. Because of her past, she’s uniquely positioned in the Eleriannan to relate to injustice and need in Baltimore from a place of deep empathy and understanding.
Vali grew up in the foster system, and her experience of it was either benign neglect or active abuse. She acknowledges that not everyone has a bad fostering experience, but hers reflected some of the worse outcomes and that she was viewed as an inconvenience at best and a punching bag and cheap labor at worst. Her mother abandoned her and her father is unknown to her, which is probably where her Fae blood comes from, but that’s unverified. She was completely unaware of her powers before she met Sousa, thinking that she was just extraordinarily lucky at not being seen when she didn’t want to be. Little did she know!
After foster care Vali lost any of the support systems she’d been able to access, and found herself unhoused and on her own. That’s when she built up her street connections, befriending other homeless folk and learning their stories. Some of them gave her tips for staying safe and finding suitable places to camp, as well as ways to make her life run more smoothly. That’s what led her to return that assistance once she had some security, like setting up the ability for her pal Jimmy to have an address where he could receive his disability checks.
When I started writing about Vali’s life, this wasn’t something I just pulled out of thin air because I wanted a character with this background, though she does add a grounding element to all the magic happening in the story. Vali’s experiences are rooted in some of my own; I’ve been unhoused several times in my life, with various different experiences of being houseless to draw from. I’ve slept on the street, and I’ve bounced from couch to couch, and even camped in my office. All of those were different aspects of the same thing, with shared and differing challenges and advantages. They all share the same feelings, though: worrying about being a burden, shame, anxiety, frustration, hopelessness. Like Vali, I worked hard to not let them take over my usually sunny personality, believing that this too shall pass and at least I could try to make things as positive as I could.
It was important to me to humanize and present a relatable face to being unhoused, and Vali gives voice to many of the things she learned in her time of being homeless, including relating to others in the community of unhoused folk. She’s often pointing out why things don’t work the way that the general public assumes–like assistance programs or even why people end up unhoused–and how meaningful changes won’t happen until those in charge actually work with that population, not just for them.
Vali’s also the advocate for taking action over just talking about how to fix problems, and is often volunteering on neighborhood clean up crews, waterway trash removal parties, and free feeding events like Food Not Bombs. She’s managed to rope some of the other Eleriannan into helping, too, with Sousa being one of the most enthusiastic participants. She can be counted on to have a nuanced take on most any community-action-oriented project, offering balanced praise and criticism as warranted.
Her most valuable skill at The Maithe isn’t her ability to work graffiti magic, although she’s used it plenty of times to help. [See: the locking tags for the front door and on the Gates, Camlin’s “tattoos”] It’s the way she sees through to the root of a situation, and how readily she gives people the space to make the right decisions. Even when Camlin, the man who had tried to seize The Maithe from Sousa, had held her hostage, and who almost killed Merrick showed up at her door, she didn’t immediately turn him away. She didn’t react from her emotions. She took a moment to assess the situation and then acted in the way that made the most sense, even while knowing others wouldn’t agree. She also insisted that Sousa re-examine his feelings about Camlin and how he wanted to proceed, knowing that doing so risked hurting her own relationship with Souz. Her calm advocacy for being kind and doing what needs to be done to help in times of crisis, aside from any personal feelings, is a hallmark of who she is as a person.
Having gone through terrible, challenging times doesn’t have to harden a person. That’s what Vali represents. She’s used her trials to motivate her, to make sure that she does the best she can to help others who have been put into impossible situations in whatever way is best for them and is of their choosing.
In this current time, when the US is moving to once again criminalize homelessness as part of our descent into a fascistic hellscape, it’s important to do our best to speak up and show up for those who will be affected by this shift. Most people are one paycheck away from becoming unhoused. ONE. Even if you don’t think this could ever be you [it could! it was me!] Vali would tell you that how we treat those with less than us reflects on all of us. Also: it takes nothing to be kind.
Links you may find helpful:
Why say unhoused/homeless/houseless – https://blanchethouse.org/homeless-houseless-unhoused-glossary-about-homelessness/A comprehensive list of ways you can help with many links – https://nationalhomeless.org/get-involved/The National Alliance to End Homelessness – https://endhomelessness.org/The post The Magic Between Us: Vali appeared first on Christiane Knight.
