OCtober 5th's challenge is "An OC with a scar". This is Matthew, a character from a story that's tentatively called the Oakwood Chronicles. Oakwood was originally invented by me and two of my cousins, and we wanted to write it down as a book, but we lived very far away from each other, only saw each other about once a year, and figured it wouldn't be realistic to try and work on a book together, under these circumstances. So we switched to a play format and put it on at a family reunion, with four out of five of my siblings joining us by the end. The play was terrible, but we had a blast doing it. (Hey, family who's on here, I didn't mean YOU were terrible, I meant the plot and writing was really bad, and that was my fault, so chill.) Over the years, we worked on a script for a sequel, but it never quite made it. Meanwhile, I dreamt up all kinds of cool (or less than cool) backstory-type stuff for the characters. Mostly for Matthew, because I like him.

Matthew and his little sister, Sierra, had a tough life. They started out in a village that was very suspicious of their family, which is understandable, since their mom was a witch and their dad was a wizard who went off to join a war against the elf kingdom. Eventually the villagers turned on them and their mom took them to live on the run. Two years down the road (figuratively and also literally), their mother died in the medieval equivalent of a car accident (a cooler way to say it than "a bridge broke under their horse and wagon"), and they've been living alone in the forest ever since, foraging (and maybe pilfering) anything they can to survive. Matthew is pretty reckless when it comes to protecting his sister (and some of the other characters, too), and has gotten into scrapes with multiple large, clawed animals, which is why his face is so messed up.

What I WANT to do is dedicate this picture to all the siblings and cousins that are in on this story, but not all of them are on here and I don't think you can do multi-person dedications, so.... It's for all y'all!

P.S. One of the things he inherited from his mother was an invisibility cloak, which he uses extensively, including in this picture.