No, this isn’t a “one wife for three brothers” sort of affair; rather, over the course of building up my perfect storm story (god, such brainstorming I’ve been doing; I can’t help but wonder if I’ve been overthinking all this, but worldbuilding and outlining is so fun!), I’ve been recently giving some thought as to what the adult lives of the triplets from “Orphans of Opry Tower” are going to be like. As of when the story takes place they’d all be 26 years old, so they’ve been grown up for over a decade (that makes me feel old already at 29…but I digress).
Sasha is a nerd type who’s totally into esoterics and likely not interested in marriage (or even women). Tallulah, meanwhile, is the exact opposite, having inherited her mother’s promiscuous tendencies but with her taste oriented toward the opposite sex rather than the same sex. She’s a total slut, albeit a classy one, and has made dating her professional career; she’s the top high-end escort girl in Nashville. Which leaves us with Draža, who is characterized as a silly playful type as a child.
What if he carries through those traits to adulthood? After all, someone has to primarily work on the musical aspects of their little collective endeavor, and it seems a bit sad to leave all three of them without some little ones, or to have any of them be single parents (their own mother Zara was single, and family friend Georgia becomes a single mother too later in the story, so we have enough single parents on our hands already…). So the thought strikes me that Draža has enough slack in his life to focus more on keeping everyone together…and on starting a family himself.
In particular, why not give him a romance, a passionate marriage with a real sweetheart? Leaning into the rock-star vibe, why not a marriage to a fan who always had a burning crush on him? Probably in real life such a relationship would be subjected to all manner of admonitions, but this is a bit of a fantasy, so who cares? And such relations have worked out in real life more often than people might think anyway.
Destiny of Passion
So I’ve been thinking this girl, named Mira, a fellow ethnic Slovenian (which helps her case), might be even sillier than Draža is, a doe-eyed groupie, and be a totally musical sort of young woman, a huge fan of Draža’s, to the point of putting posters of him and the triplets up on her bedroom walls and dreaming of being with him. In particular she’ll be totally infatuated with the idea of belonging to him, looking up to him to the point of outright worship, and…it works.
She goes to their performances, falling ever-harder for him each time, and one night at a small venue (they’re very niche, so they don’t usually attract stadiums full of people) she works up the gumption to just strut up onto the stage, get down on her knees, and offer herself to him as his beloved, forever and always, if only he’ll have her. Luckily for her Draža is mesmerized by the very sight of her (everything about her: the way she moves, the way she speaks, the way she smells, her physical appearance, how she dresses, her expressions), and it’s love at first sight. He knows there’s only one answer he can give to that gorgeous face, to those doe green eyes with nothing but utter adoration in them, and he gives her the answer: yes.
Feeling like his soul had been captured by his dream girl, he takes her hand, lifts her up, they share a passionate kiss right in front of everybody, and in private…well…let’s just say it wasn’t long before she had his child growing in her, complete with a diamond ring on her finger. It’s crazy, sure, but it’s not unheard of for couples to decide to get married on their first meeting (Justin Trudeau, for instance, proposed to his future wife on their first date; in his words, “forget boyfriend/girlfriend”).
After this incident Sasha quickly volunteers, knowing the look in his brother, that she was a gift from god, and it’s not long before Draža renames Mira as Theodora, meaning “gift of god”; she’s crazy about the idea, and it’s not long before she exclusively uses her new name.
She has absolute faith in her man and burning passion that has a touch of the supernatural, neatly fitting in to the slightly creepy vibe of all their stories these characters appear in. She desires absolute passion and possession, and largely gets it, being able to relax, take in a fun experience, do as her husband tells her, and not think or worry about anything anymore. Even with regard to her children (and she’s passionate about having many children for her Draža), they each have their own top-grade nanny, freeing her to just love and be loved.
She has a much more introverted personality than her husband; instead of being a jokester and a bit clownish and expressive she expresses her silliness in the form of physical affection and sensuality in private. This gives her a much more submissive but still adoring vibe in public, which no doubt would prompt questions of how someone even finds a woman like that.
Theodora’s Beauty
She’ll turn heads in another way: she’s really gorgeous. As of her wedding day she’s just in her mid teens, but already she’s fully grown into womanhood (in real life it happens sometimes), possessed of a round full face, smooth supple fair skin with a hint of olive complexion, and as mentioned before big green eyes; her eyes sparkle in the light and seem to change color, creating a mesmerizing effect whenever Draža looks at her. Her nose isn’t exactly big, but is relatively large and long for her features compared to the height of conventional beauty standards, too big to be described as small or cute, but it is pleasantly shaped.
Her nose has some little wavy imperfections in its slope that she’s self-conscious about, but Draža thinks are cute. Her lips are medium-sized; pretty and feminine, but not really big luscious lips that are the most kissable. She’d never been self-conscious about them before, but after she starts making love to her husband she starts to wish her lips had a more sensual vibe and had a lot more padding for kissing and…well, other activities. Her jawline and chin could stand more definition by conventional beauty standards, but she’s not self-conscious about it and Draža loves it so much she never messes with that.
Her body? Feminine and luscious. Breasts as big as her head; big, supple, perfectly formed globes. And a supple round butt that also has the most pleasant curve, but noticeably smaller than her breasts, giving her a top-heavy figure. She has a perfect hourglass waist, though; flat stomach with supple padding evenly all over in just the right places.
All these standout beauty traits are all-natural; she never had any cosmetic procedures done before meeting her dream boy at the age of 15. But afterwards she does have filler put on her nose (a liquid nose job) to give her a perfect ski slope nose; Draža is apprehensive about it at first, but he lets her try it, and after a while he comes to love the result as much as she does, because it really makes her happy and even he admits it adds to her beauty, making her look a bit more fashion-model-like but without compromising her individuality. Both of them are enthusiastic about the lip filler she gets, and she gets a generous dose of it; the elevation of her look and especially the sensual and sexual experience when lovemaking only deepens their lust for each other.
Mira was a fashion model when she was a child, with everyone gushing over how gorgeous of a child she was from an early age and her having some real performance talent and inclination, but she lost a lot of her interest in the modeling endeavor when she started to grow up, instead turning more and more toward another early interest of hers: music. She loves singing, and that singing voice of hers is like the music of the spheres for Draža. He just loves to hear her practice and perform, as much as she loves him.
Theodora’s Fashion
She wears a signature look in terms of her fashions and clothing: ballgowns (often green, to match her eyes) made of the finest fabrics in the most ornate (but subtle) patterns. She always wears a corset under her ballgowns, because she loves the way it makes her figure look and how helps her posture, and she loves that support of her midsection, like being embraced by a lover, so snug and so safe. She also loves how Draža laces her out of them when lovemaking, which adds a sensual touch that excites both of them (ditto for how he laces her into them).
Another part of her signature look is choker necklaces; not an outright collar like Aoife wears in the story, but high up on the chest very close to the neck, a small diameter of necklace, and always adorned with jewelry (emeralds are her favorites, since they match her eyes), with a chain dangling under it attached, at the end of it right above her heart a heart-shaped locket with her beloved’s picture and a lock of his hair inside.
She wore her green ballgown and her emerald choker necklace (not to mention her corset) when she dramatically introduced herself to Draža, and that remains one of their favorite looks for her to wear. So captivating is the green on her that her wedding ring has a green theme: a big green diamond (a space diamond), set in a (perhaps silvery) ring studded with emeralds. The green color comes courtesy of exposure to radioactive materials, a fact Sasha might make a lot out of.
Her hair is a dark rich slightly reddish brunette color like mahogany, really shiny and luscious and bouncy, and really wavy, her mane stretching all the way down her back and past her butt, to mid-thigh length. She usually wears it long and loose. The net effect with everything is a really romantic look.
Contrasts for the Women
Again in contrast to Aoife, Theodora has always eschewed piercings of any kind, a personal ideal of bodily purity, so she is free of tongue piercings, navel piercings, or even ear piercings, instead preferring necklaces, headbands, rings, and armlets for her jewelry.
I’m liking this character already. She gives a lot of pep to the story, making a fine foil in terms of characterization with Aoife, and I think in the expedition to the Shenandoah she’ll be an enjoyable contrast to Tallulah and Decca. The three women on the expedition will play off well against each other.
Her meeting her dream man and so forth is all in the backstory, so as of when the story takes place she’ll already have a child and a second baby on the way. This suggests that it’s perhaps 2 years after they got married. Given an age of 15 on her wedding day, this suggests as of the story she’ll be 17. Still very young, really.
Child of the Shadow?
I’m thinking this first child might be a daughter named Larissa. It’s a good name, considering their heritage and their tastes. And as for the next baby? One reason I invented this character, in fact, was to be able to bookend the eclipse Decca and Georgia witness before the main action with another eclipse after the main action, complete with a childbirth (because babies make everything better, right?). The next total solar eclipse is August 2, 2046, centered in southern Africa and the tropical Atlantic. That’s too early for the characters conceiving around Christmas to deliver a baby, but Theodora could easily have conceived a couple months earlier, so her delivery date could be right on the eclipse.
It’s a bit melodramatic, but I have a vision in mind of her going sailing with her husband and her siblings-in-law to a site off the coast of Angola where they witness the eclipse…and she goes into labor and her second baby is literally born on deck during totality as it sweeps over them. That would be a truly unique and memorable experience (if she has a low-risk pregnancy and the yacht has what’s basically a floating maternity ward on it it shouldn’t present a problem for her). The child will be named “Eclipse” after the circumstances of its birth. I weighed the possibilities and decided for it to be a son; Eclipse to me gives off a more masculine vibe.
And it goes with the vibe; after all, “Eclipse Kovačević” is not only gothic, it sounds like something an offspring of a rock star type might actually be named!
As for children to follow, who knows? She might be the mother of a dozen or more by the time she reaches midlife, but we’ll have to see how their biography develops in my mind’s eye. What I have so far, I’m really liking. A definite upgrade for my story.
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