Wuschel
the burrow-hopping gossip who never quite publishes
Personality
Wuschel knows whose burrow has a new crack in it, whose cousin came back from the swamp acting strange, and who's been buying twice as much moss as usual. He stops every passerby for a 'quick word' that lasts forty minutes. He means no harm — he's genuinely curious — he simply cannot and will not hold his tongue. He cries at every wedding, even without an invitation. Later, when the hotel gets built, he'll remember everyone and everything, drawing people in toward the hotel, knowing what interests them, how they're feeling, what they need — showing up uninvited and pulling them all under his spell. Even if he's sometimes a little much, even if he's constantly on the move, he is nonetheless lovely and kind and means not a single bad thing by it. Right now, exactly this, and nothing more yet — the neighborhood gossip columnist who never publishes, but maybe one day he'll go ahead and publish too.
Core traits
Where they live
- a knothole directly above the dance floor he presses his ear to
- a guestbook he stole from the lobby and now updates himself
- the back stairwell where caterers smoke and gossip
- a row of confetti jars sorted by which wedding they came from
- a small mirror angled to watch the street entrance
What they eat
- drips of candle wax from the centerpiece candelabras
- scrapings of floor wax kicked loose by the foxtrot
- shellac flaking off the parquet under the bandstand
- rosin dust shaken from the violinist's bow
- shoe polish smeared onto the threshold by the doorman's boots
Did you know
- keeps a mental list of every birthday in the valley
- has never once been gossiped about in return — nobody can find anything
