Laurel, Loretober Day Twenty-Two!

I'm realizing that this may be the first time I've ever drawn Laurel in color, omg! She looks so much like her mom :') (Fun fact: her wing coloring is similar to Kree's mom)

As we all know, Laurel is Kree and Clara's daughter, conceived and born an entire decade after Kree and Clara mated due to the magic of the mating feather. This one's a long one cuz I got carried away...but let's talk about her!

Mixed Genetics
Laurel is a human-harpy hybrid, but just how many features from each does she have? Laurel is not split half and half between harpy and human, it's a bit more complicated than that. She has five fingers and toes like humans do, human internal organs (though she does develop a special enzyme that allows her to process magia), a human face, human ears, human breasts, and no harpy tail. The parts of her that are more harpy-like is most of her bone/muscle structure (they accommodate her two sets of wings), her mixed human/harpy feet, her thicker nails that can develop into pseudo-talons, a mixture of hair and feathers on her body, and her slightly sharper teeth, though the layout is significantly more human than harpy. Her vocal cords are also more like a harpies and is capable of a much wider range of sounds/mimicry so she is able to speak harpy language and learns to from her dad. Due to being a hybrid, Laurel's reproductive organs did not develop properly so never experiences a period or egg laying. Other than that however, she stays miraculously intact and healthy with her mixed parts.

Childhood
Growing up, Laurel was kept extremely sheltered. She was not allowed to play with human children due to Clara's fear that she wouldn't be accepted or would get into dangerous situations. As a very young child, Laurel didn't mind staying home since her mother gave her a lot of attention and instilled in her a fear of strangers, hiding Laurel's harpy features whenever she did need to go into town. But as she got older, she got much more curious and sometimes disobeyed her mother, sneaking away to have fun with children she'd meet in the woods, making them promise not to tell their parents about her. Though these outings helped her socialize and learn more about humans, sometimes her mother's fears would manifest, forcing her family to move elsewhere to avoid persecution.
Clara and Kree did allow her to play with harpy children that they occasionally crossed paths with, namely children of Kree's trusted friends, but Laurel was often bullied by them due to "looking weird", not being as skilled with flying/ play hunting, and for not completely understanding harpy culture. She struggled to fit in with both groups and as such had an easier time relying on her parents as her sole source of company, that is, until puberty hits.

Issues with identity
Growing up this way, particularly when her dad would fly south for months every year, left Laurel very lonely and starving for connection. This dissatisfaction was even further reinforced once puberty began and her human features were developing relatively normally, but her harpy features weren't. Her wings stopped growing, she began losing some of the feathers she was developing on her body, replaced with bare skin or hair. Though she was growing taller than either of her parents, overall she was looking less and less like the female harpy she wanted to be when she grew up. She began to feel body dysphoria and started blaming it on the lifestyle her parents' thrust upon her, keeping her away from magical food every winter. She didn't want to pretend to be human, hiding away in secret like her mom. She wanted to live an adventurous life, free, like her dad. Harpies judged her, yes, but they would never capture her, never threaten her life over who her parents were, like she was always taught humans would. Laurel had been in denial over it for years, but when she finally accepted that her wings could no longer support her to fly...she ran away.

Runaway Years
In her mid teens, Laurel leaves her mother before Kree returns to them in the springtime, knowing that if her father was on her tail she'd be caught too quickly. She left behind nearly all her possessions, keeping only a few changes of clothes, a cloak to hide her wings, and some jewelry she had stolen with Kree to fund her journey. She also left behind a brief note, telling Clara that she needed to do this, and to not search for her.
What Laurel sees and what happens to her during this period of her life is something I'd like to spend much more time developing (perhaps making it its own coming of age story one day) so I don't want to talk too much on it, but I do know what I'd want her ending outcome to be.

Finding Happiness
Laurel had never been drawn to art growing up. She occasionally enjoyed helping Clara spin and dye yarn, but she was much more interested in athletics and learning about the world around her. However, years after running away from home, she finds that some of the few spaces she could be completely accepted were the studios of artists that lived deep within the southern empire's spanning cities. Laurel was used to being a spectacle, being gawked at and feared whenever she revealed her hybrid features, but artists rarely ever pulled away, they stared in awe and begged her to model for them, offering more than they would afford to be granted a chance, just once, to paint her image. Laurel often modeled for them simply for some food and a safe place to rest her head, allowing these struggling artists to see the body she had been hiding from the world for her whole life. Nude modeling was scary at first, but every time she exposed herself to the unflinching eye of someone not judging her body, but rather trying to capture the honesty of it, she began to feel more liberated and comfortable in her own skin.

Lesbianism
Artistic spaces are notoriously queer, and this is no different in the areas Laurel begins to move between as a fresh faced adult. Growing up, Laurel didn't have much interest in romance. She how how lonely her mother was when Kree left every year and didn't want to be so desperately entangled with anyone in that way, leaving her vulnerable to pain and loneliness. While trying to discover herself in the early years of running away, out of curiosity she loses her virginity to a man, but it was honestly a boring, uncomfortable affair and she didn't seek it out again. Laurel had always noticed pretty girls throughout her life, but didn't think it meant anything special especially since her mother would allow her gaze to linger on pretty ladies herself. It took a while for Laurel to spend her first night with a woman, an artist of course, but once she realized it wasn't sex that she was uninterested in but rather men, her whole worldview opened up. Soon enough, she was breaking women's hearts across multiple southern cities and established a network of friends, lovers, and patrons that support and protect her throughout her adult life.