Toby is a fairly short, lean man with long digits and limbs.
He has high cheekbones, green eyes, an uncountable number of freckles, and a face that seems almost unnaturally symmetrical with his pointy, elfin ears poking out from his nimbus of blonde hair.
He is covered in floral mandala tattooes, though his left arm is blacked out from shoulder to wrist.
His face is generally warm and expressive but, when not otherwise engaged, is typically observant and thoughtful.
His overall appearance is striking, but vaguely unsettling and inhuman.
Toby grew up on the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver. His family consisted mostly of artists working in mixed media, and he grew up surrounded by both natural and man-made beauty: he grew up in a home on the waterfront surrounded by trees, and his family frequently retreated into the woods for camping trips. His education was largely uneventful as well - there were the usual dramas, but realistically, the most serious thing that happened was familial disappointment when his aspirations turned towards the beauty of the human body and nature rather than the beauty of self-expression. His friends had their silly little squabbles with each other but he found it pointless and wished that they’d get serious and spend their energy more productively - for his part, he spent most of his time in the greenhouse or the garage when he wasn't keeping up with the news or -
Then there was the Breaking. He was ten. With the Veil gone, things became very, very strange for a very long time. It was bizarre, trying to adapt to the fact that some of the families that they'd been vacationing with - their neighbours - were werewolves, that there was a vampire in charge of the supernatural portion of the city, all of the strangeness of learning how to interact properly past the lack of the Veil, et cetera. All of this was completely putting aside the fact that he could now see the pulse of life in the trees, the vectors of the wind, the shear planes of the stone underneath his feet. His head hurt for a week, and he was nearly hospitalized for his fever, but he struggled through.
The world became darker and more violent, and he threw himself into his studies, graduating near the top of his class while also finding the time to sit and converse with nature. Out of a sense of nostalgia and wanting to help turn the tide, he moved to Vancouver and trained for several years, eventually becoming a nurse and starting to collect titles: RN, FNP-BC, DNP. As his career developed, he found himself naturally gravitating towards the sorts of places where people needed the most effort in their interventions - trauma wards and emergency rooms. Places where his refusal to accept death on his patients' behalf could be most meaningful.
His family, throughout all this, continued making art - though the art they created started to take an esoteric lean after a while: new clients, his mother explained. When his father missed their usually weekly check-in, Toby popped over to see what was up.
The house was flattened and twisted pieces of clay, metal, and glass were embedded in the ground at the center of the blast. He knew he would never get answers, which was adding insult to injury. His world had become hollowed out, and he fell into a miserable funk. Some of his extended family put their lives on hold and were there for him, knowing how close he and his parents were. They pooled what they could into an impromptu vacation fund and sent Toby on one of the least expensive trips to one of the most sunny places they could afford. He spent most of his time in and around Paleto Bay and near Mount Gordo, finding it nostalgic but not painful. He had a work visa within a year.
Toby has been immersed in nature since before he had words to describe what he was seeing; he does not see himself as separate from the natural world. He was speaking to it long before he was able to hear it. He always did his best to not impose on it, tending to it instead. This was an instinct that became a reflexive force of habit.
When his wellspring formed from his decade of life in a place of the world saturated in ley - a place that openly advertised itself as "supernaturally beautiful", even before the Breaking - it was an experience similar to waking up: he became able to hear nature's half of the dialogue that he didn't know that he was participating in.
He is not an external force imposing a result on the universe. He is not separate from the things he acts upon magically. He is nature's steward, and is committed to that stewardship: he listens to comprehend, acts after understanding, and helps nature become what it needs to be.
What everyone else calls magic is the universe flinching under coercion. They arrive with conclusions already written, force reality to sign them, and call that power. Toby finds that obscene. They are not good stewards - they are plunderers who have stolen strength from the universe without consent and without appreciation for what they wield, and even those with the best of intentions are still wielding something that doesn't belong to them.
