ADELE

Adele is a young woman from another dimension. Her home dimension--Ailashuo, sometimes just called Ailao--is known as a crossroads world, as it's the hub used by dimension-traveling prophets to move between realities. At the beginning of the comic, Adele has been training for all of her short life (nineteen years) to do two things: To become a masterful prophet, and to travel to Thee-ileo--the human dimension.

Adele's teacher, Tabitha, has been instrumental in raising her and training her, and she tries to teach Adele everything she can to make her able to succeed when she goes to the human world in one year's time. Because the pool they travel through disrupts memory, Adele can count on not remembering very much at all, so sometimes she thinks her teachings are pointless since she'll forget everything, and she's understandably upset at the prospect of leaving the only home she's ever known for a total unknown. Tabitha teaches Adele to internalize and make "second nature" certain habits so that they will survive her trip through the pool to help protect her and inform her when she arrives.

Adele's race has the highest rate of people with prophetic abilities in all of the known dimensions, and though prophets are still a tiny minority they are at least recognized and very respected and established. If a child is born with blood-red hair (as Adele was), the child will be tested for prophetic abilities and sent for training if the tests are positive. Such children are paired with teachers and get whisked away for study or to live in prophet hives, and then a very few others (like Adele) end up leaving their world forever. It's a hard life, but very respected and envied by those without the gift.

People with prophetic abilities can do many different kinds of predictions, tend to have true dreams, and have the ability to control the destination of the special water portals. Adele is very gifted even among prophets, and her teacher recognizes that and chose her to train for a position in the human world establishing a prophet network there. She hopes to locate and train a few very rare human prophets and help establish their presence in that world.

Adele mostly speaks the English language taught to her by Tabitha, but she also speaks her home dimension's language of Shioan. Her people aren't "Shioan" themselves; her dimension was "settled" by people from a nearby dimension called Shio, and if they had a previous language before being settled by outsiders, it is lost.

The Negative One storyline begins by depicting Adele's struggle to accept her fate and deal with the sadness and joy it brings to her life and her family. Her story goes on to a life beyond Ailashuo; she travels to the human world and has to deal with the isolation and difficulty inherent in being an alien in a place she can't get caught. She takes a long period of research which helps her understand the human world--using her prophetic gifts to help her survive along the way--and eventually she's prepared to look for a permanent home to put down roots so she can have an established headquarters of sorts by the time she's ready to take a student. When her storyline meets up with those of the other characters, even her abilities are challenged. . . .

Spoilers ahead:

Once Adele finishes her research phase and wanders into the wilderness, she meets a small band of non-humans: Weaver, Dax, and Alix. She settles down with them and helps them survive in the harsh outdoor environment, while taking comfort in their company. She becomes something of a mother to the group, and though there is some distance between her and the others at first because they are alienated by her unusual abilities, Adele soon gains their trust. When Adele finds a mysterious free-range child while on an errand in New York, her psychic abilities encourage her to adopt the girl--who turns out to have strange abilities of her own. Adele brings the girl back to her home base, introduces her to the group, and works together with them to figure out how to parent her. They name her Ivy and give her sustenence, education, and love. Adele becomes responsible for most of the girl's education, and soon discovers that Ivy's telekinetic abilities can be of some assistance reaching new heights in Adele's information quests. They learn to work together.

An interdimensional event interrupts the group's peaceful life, and Adele studies it and rediscovers some of her past. The event also delivers two more strange nonhuman children for Adele to take care of: Tab and Thursday, a wild little girl and a winsome little boy. Adele guides Ivy in learning to be an older sibling and partial caretaker for them. Throughout all of this, Adele carries on a long-distance relationship with a man she met traveling to the city--Webster, who she knows would reject her if he saw her. She has to figure out what she wants out of that relationship, while balancing and developing missions for Ivy so she can learn to interact with the outside world and eventually connect with the right people to get the group a house.

Adele is of short stature--about five feet two inches--with a medium-curvy build and a mostly humanoid frame. Her race differs from humans in that they have brown peach-fuzz fur, softly protruding noses like a teddy bear, small ears high up on their heads, and thick black fingernails resembling dull claws. Adele has red-brown skin, medium brown eyes, and dark red hair (red, not orange), which she wore long until more recently. She wears a black robe that covers her whole body, including her face, if she has to interact with the outside world, but when she's with her companions she tends to wear a variety of store-bought clothes; she especially appreciates plain or patterned sweaters and denim pants (usually rolled up because she's short). Adele brought one pair of jeans into our dimension--a gift her teacher had given her--and other than that she only came equipped with skirts and lightweight blouses, so she beefed up her jeans collection quite a bit after she came to this dimension. Adele doesn't really like jewelry, but she ALWAYS wears socks and/or shoes; she retains a cultural belief that feet are rude, and has never shown her feet to anyone.

Specifics of Adele's superpower: It's an amorphous talent that bridges the gap between clairvoyance and precognition. Adele is able to predict the future through dreams, water gazing, deliberate pebble-based divinations, and interacting with symbols. She can also know facts and happenings from other times and places, which is much easier for her than predicting the future. Pending futures with multiple elements of choice are very difficult to pin down, and her own emotions can get in the way of her accuracy. Despite having awesome insight because of this power, Adele can still make judgment errors and not catch herself, miss things, misunderstand context, or lack detail that would allow her to do a better job predicting. She shies away from giving advice if she is not sure, but even advice she is sure about doesn't always lead to a desired outcome if there are many variables.

Adele is right-handed. She has a low feminine voice and can carry a tune (but is not a particularly good singer), and she is talented at drawing, writing, and many needlecrafts. She has good eyesight and can read very fast. She has a sweet tooth and loves reading about mythology and physics. She's good with children. She feels a bit lonely for much of her life, even around people, and she's very intelligent. She can come off as arrogant, prefers to move slowly, and she is very good at getting people's attention and respect. Adele sees Weaver as a near-equal to her intelligence and trusts his judgment; admires Dax's compassion and simple way with words; and appreciates that Alix tries but usually does not have the patience for him. She considers Ivy, Tab, and Thursday her children and is very proud of them. Adele does not like being in a hurry.

My favorite Adele pictures (click on the small pictures to see large, good quality scans):