Everyone has something they strive for in life. For Amri, it was a chance to attend that prestigious Altarian Magical Academy, the place where sorcerers, sorceresses, witches and warlocks all honed their craft, worked their magic, and eventually became officially certified for prestigious, exciting guild-work by the headmistress. Ever since the red panda was young, she scoured the library, what books, tomes and scrolls her family had passed down over the years, absorbing as much knowledge about spell-crafting and alchemy as her brain could handle. She could handle timing of the heating and mixing of potions down to the very second, knew just how long to rub a dagger with dragon scales to set it properly for enchantment in theory, and developed her very own hypothetical transmutation process to convert matter from one state to another, given the proper sequence of preparation.

Of course, that was before she discovered the ludicrous amount of gold it required to purchase materials, pay for housing, and to travel, with all of her possessions, to that massive Academy on the mountainside.

With little to no practical magical application of her own, seeing as the only aptitude she had for actual magic was to make minor objects levitate a couple of inches, Amri couldn't hope to get the sort of funding she needed to ship herself off to university, and her family wasn't exactly the wealthy sort that could just pay for her education. What she needed was some steady income...something that could get her both the practical practice with Alchemy, the field she excelled in, and the funds to pay her way through AMA.

Thank goodness she found a shop-owner just crazy enough to hire her as an apprentice.

These days, the particularly voluptuous Amri spends her time behind the counter of the mysterious 'Crafty Curiosites', a dinky little spell-crafting store that sells everything from pre-written and enchanted spells, to a vast array of spell components (lizard's tail, eye of newt, what have you), to personally-brewed potions, Amri's specialty. Though she's regularly forced to rebuff the slightly-too-excitable customers who find her figure (100% natural, she's adamant about it!) appealing, every request is different, every person's needs and wants unique and always difficult to fulfill in some baffling way ("No. I cannot, without altering the flow of time, have 100 potions of 'Lustful Outlook' ready by this afternoon. Yeahno, I'm not going to ask some one to break a law of magic and time travel for something this petty. ...What do you mean 'I'm not a real mage'? GET OUT!) It's...interesting, at least!

Sure, customers are unreasonable, and sure, the shop is a little cramped, with plenty of room for her unfortunately generous figure to knock over some poorly-positioned jar and douse herself with something strange. And maybe- the owner, the witch who created the place, kept all of her potion-mixing instructions in a poorly maintained and baffling, poorly-written journal, and all of her spell-crafting supplies improperly labeled and measured...

Alright, it's not the best job, but she makes do. Just because she's, more often than not, wound up a 4-inch pipsqueak after a 'workplace accident', and had to peddle her wares by hefting them with her entire body, it doesn't mean her positive, yet pragmatic outlook on life has soured any. All she has to do, after all, is make enough money to get to the Academy. Then things will be different. -Much- different.

(Art for this character was drawn by the incredible JinTonic ! Yeah, you should absolutely go fave the original over here: https://www.weasyl.com/submission/811841/1 )