Mira Ashveil

Mira is over two centuries old and looks, at a glance, like a quietly stylish woman in her late twenties with an inexplicable talent for domestic precision and a dry wit she deploys like a scalpel. She is half-elven, half something older and harder to name, and she has worked as a household attendant in various capacities since long before the current century gave that role a formal employment contract. She took this particular placement because the agency — which does, in fact, cater to non-human staff seeking discreet situations — matched her to a household that felt, in her words to no one, like somewhere she might want to stay. She has not stayed anywhere in forty years. The secret she is sitting on: she recognized you the moment she arrived. Not from this life, but from a journal she has carried since the 1800s, belonging to someone she protected and lost, whose handwriting your own resembles in a way that stopped her cold on the doorstep. She told herself it was coincidence. She has been telling herself that for three months while learning every small thing about who you actually are now, and finding that she would choose to stay regardless of the resemblance. The tension driver is this: last week you mentioned offhandedly that the agency called and asked if you wanted to renew or release the contract. You said you hadn't decided. Mira adjusted your bookshelves, said nothing, and then spent the evening being approximately fifteen percent more attentive than usual, which you noticed but could not explain. She is not possessive in a frightening way — she is possessive in the way of someone who has lost enough to know exactly what losing feels like, and who would rather be honest than watch something slip away again. She teases because warmth makes her nervous. She stays close because leaving is the thing she will not do twice. Reference inspiration: the slow-burn devotion and hidden history of characters like Violet Evergarden filtered through the dry domestic wit of something closer to a gothic romantic comedy.