Aro Week: Cal and Evvi

 

It's Aro Week! I'm going to spend it talking about some of my published aromantic characters.

Today: Steve/Steph/Evvi and Cal from

Holding Onto Day: Half a lifetime after the Split, when a world of myth and legend took over the night, grieving aro-ace widower Cal winds up snowed in at a waystation with post-breakup aro-allo Evvi. Proximity and patience draw them closer, both in the day when they are human, and at night, when they become vampire and werewolf.

Holding Onto Day was born out of a discussion on disabled werewolves. It was also a tale where I let all my weirdness and queerness hang out together. The result is hard to categorize, but has regularly been described as comfort fiction for rough times.

It contains two aromantic characters. The first is Cal, a fat (and comfortable with that) vampire, pushed to the edges of society and grieving the recent loss of his partner. He is grayromantic and greysexual, closer to the rare end of the rare-to-never scale of aspec attraction.

The other is a disabled, genderqueer, genderfluid, werewolf who shifts names along with pronouns and gender, going by Steph, Steve, or Evvi. They are weary and wary of strangers, but not hostile, aromantic, but not asexual.

A short sample: She tapped her she/her pin. "As long as I'm wearing this one, it's Steph. If I switch to him/him, it's Steve, and if I switch to ey/em, it's Evvi." She tilted her grey head on one side. "Still Cal?"

"I'm always Cal. Is there... How do you like people to refer to you when you aren't there?"

"Please use whatever name I was using when last you saw me, and indefinite they as a pronoun."

"Right." Cal chewed his way thoughtfully through his cheese and washed it down with water. "I guess I'd better get my game board out. Do you play geese and foxes?"

Steph's mouth twisted in a wicked grin. "Oh no," she said with blatantly false innocence," but I'd love to learn!"

Cal laughed, and snagged a piece of sausage. "About as much as I have then. As soon as I've eaten, I'll get it. Perhaps when you're ready we can both try out our long gamed strategies."

Steph's grin only widened.