✖ ✖ ✖ T H E D A R K P L A C E P R O F I L E ✖ ✖ ✖
Zoey Westen
Why am I walking barefoot upon this road with no one around
Zoey is pale, with black hair and blue eyes. Slim, though muscular, build and around 5’4 in height. She gets her eyes from her father, and her colouring and height from her mother. Her usual clothing of choice involves a shirt/tank top/tunic, jeans/shorts/leggings, boots/flats and a leather jacket if the weather calls for it, but she loves wearing skirts and dresses, too. She owns a wide variety of fedoras (there’s a wide brimmed, 1940’s style one that’s her favourite). She enjoys bright colours, but in moderation, so there will usually be one brightly coloured piece of clothing in whatever she’s wearing; at the very least a scarf. If it’s nice enough out… she runs around barefoot; a holdover from gymnastics. Shoes are a pain in the ass when you’re doing a floor routine or are on the balance beam.
Her face is heart shaped, and there’s a small scar running just through her right eyebrow from what was dubbed the fireworks incident. There’s a faint smattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks, but they’re not really visible unless you’re right next to her.
Her straight black hair falls around her shoulder blades and is usually worn down, though she wears it pulled back or braided if she’s doing gymnastics or corde lisse. There are always a handful of hair ties around her wrist, in case she needs one on short notice. She wears glasses sometimes, a pair of cat-eye frames in dark blue. They’re her “librarian glasses”.
She has a tattoo of a flowering vine, starting at her foot/ankle, that winds up her right leg, curves up her hip and onto her back, stopping at the top of her right shoulder. Very similar to this.
There’s a series of scars across her shoulders, back (heaviest on her left-hand side) and left leg that can’t be anything but claw marks. But claw marks belonging to no animal that exists in nature. On her upper right arm there is a bite scar. They ache sometimes, especially when something reminds her of how she got them.
On the back of her neck there is a rectangular, black mark. Nondescript, doesn't seem to be anything more than something resembling a tattoo, but she doesn't seem to be terribly keen on talking about it. In fact, if she's thinking about it she makes a point to keep it covered with her hair. The same goes for the scars on her back.
There is a small metal cuff around her right wrist. It is ALWAYS around her right wrist. She never takes it off. Strange...
She carries herself like the odd combination of gymnast and swordfighter that she is, though she has been known to adopt a more... slouchy, relaxed air. Goes along with the whole ‘underestimating her’ thing.
Since her father’s disappearance she’s taken to carrying her throwing daggers a lot of the time. They were a gift from him... and she carries them to feel close to him. To ensure she remembers what she’s searching for. An acquaintance made her a whole series of sheathes and various other weapons paraphernalia.
POWERS
Turn the page I need to see something new. For now my innocence is
torn...
{Primary} Visions and dreams, portents
{Secondary} Heightened sense of warning, knowledge of things to come
{Inherited} Camouflage
Zoey is a seer. Dreams and portents, etc. Past, present, future. Whether or not it’s appropriate or even accurate, she tends to use the term ‘foresight’ as a catch-all term for her gift. Nothing particularly powerful (or so she thinks, anyway; there’s always the potential for more, isn’t there?), usually manifesting itself in dreams or a prickling at the back of her neck, on her skin. The prickling/crawling of her skin is the primary way her abilities warn her of danger. The stronger the sensation, the more immediate and bad the danger is. Sometimes she gets an idea about something and it occurs, or words pop into her head and someone around her utters them mere moments later. Sometimes she just KNOWS. Someone will spill a drink, or trip on some stairs, and the like. Her dreams are usually cryptic, fragmented, and sometimes hard to remember upon awakening beyond the vague feeling that SOMEthing is going to happen, and whether it’s good or bad (the details would reveal themselves in time; usually in déjà vu or the like). When she does remember the details upon waking, it’s hard for her to piece together what they mean. The worse the visions/dreams are, the easier it is for her to remember the details. She has taken to keeping a detailed journal of all her visions. It has expanded over time to fill several journals.
The worse the visions/dreams are, the harder it is on her. The most intense visions bring blinding agony and tears of blood, as well as screaming and oftentimes words that aren’t her own spilling from her lips.
In part because of her gift of foresight, she is something of a sensitive when it comes to things the naked eye can’t see. She’s very aware of her own mind, having essentially trained herself to be once her gift manifested and she figured out what it was. She’s not telepathic or anything even remotely close to it, but she is aware when other people try to muck around with her head and can fight them/keep them out to some degree. Whether this is a result of dealing with her gift or just sheer stubbornness Zoey doesn’t know.
PERSONALITY
Barefoot in nightgowns, that's how she dances in the rain. Sundown to sundown, like she was
washing 'way her pain
Zoey is fairly sarcastic at times, especially if she doesn’t know someone. She can be fairly friendly, but is very cautious about letting people get close as a result of moving around so much after her mother died (for her father’s new job). What was the point of making friends if only to move away a few months later? So Zoey instead gained acquaintances wherever she went. People who she got along with well enough to not mind spending some time with them, but never really truly got to know them, or let them get to know her. She also gained an ability to be all right with being alone. Though she has a deep-seated longing for close friends, she’d never admit it. A bit guarded is a good way to describe her.
Zoey is an extremely intelligent young woman, though she doesn’t mind pretending to be less so sometimes, in order to make people underestimate her. She doesn’t generally care what people think of her, and she’s well aware of the fact that she’s more than a little bit odd at times. Portents of the future tend to do that to a person. She is not all that great at math. It was one of her worst subjects in school, and she had to work her ass off to get any sort of decent passing grade.
Zoey loves the rain. When she was a child she’d go outside and play whenever there was a downpour. Afterwards she would go inside and her father would fix her a cup of hot chocolate. Then they’d sit down and read. When she was small he’d read to her. But not the typical fare one would usually read to a child. He read her Dune (so she could know where he’d taken her middle name from), Dracula, and Shakespeare’s plays. And as a result she was usually completely at a loss as to why other children didn’t know what the Fremen were, who Van Helsing was, hadn’t read The Colour out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft, or weren’t familiar with Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet. This tradition also led to her becoming an avid reader as she grew up. She also devoured every mythology she could get her hands on; the mythology books took up a lot of room on her bookcase.
Zoey has an irrational fear of elevators. Something about it being a small enclosed space that moves freaks her out. Oddly enough, enclosed spaces that don’t move don’t bother her at all.
She has a much more rational wariness of reflective surfaces. Particularly mirrors. After all she has been through, how could she not?
Maybe it's because of how she was raised, or the fact that she's just had to deal with things, but she's generally able to keep a level head when it comes to intense or stressful situations. Take care of things, deal with what's happening now, and deal with the rest later. She might be freaking the fuck out on the inside, but on the outside she's reasonably calm and collected. Granted, she tends to get a little mouthy when under pressure. Sarcasm and snark are weapons she uses a lot.
Being able to compartmentalize things has come as a direct result of her gift of foresight. She's trained herself to put whatever it is she has to in a box at the back of her mind so she can deal with reaction, fall apart a little, or anything else, after the immediate crisis is done, once she's alone.
As a result of moving around so much and spending so much time on her own, she's an incredibly independent person. And pretty damn stubborn to boot; it helps with the remaining calm and collected in tough situations.
HISTORY
And the taste of dried-up hopes in my mouth; And the landscape of merry
and desperate drought
Zoey Irulan Westen grew up in England with two parents that indulged her early interest in history and literature. They often took trips to various historical sites, as Cassandra Westen’s job was quite well-paying. It was when she was eight that Zoey’s gift of ‘sight manifested itself. At first she didn’t think anything of it; sure, sometimes she’d know the words someone was going to speak before they said them, or know without a doubt that someone was going to drop something or trip moments before it occurred. But it wasn’t until her first vision that she started figuring things out. That young, she didn’t know to keep it to herself. She told. It didn’t go well; the information spread through the school like wildfire, and by the end of the week her schoolmates thought she was weird and a little crazy. She learned her lesson well, and from that point on guarded her gift closely.
When she was ten, Zoey’s mother died. And she had a vision of it; it was the first time a vision had ever affected her personally, and it broke her heart. Afterwards, her father took a job that involved them having to move regularly. Tom Westen didn’t need to work, as his wife had left her family very well off, but he wanted to do more than just live off his deceased wife’s money. It took them everywhere from France to North Carolina. Zoey went to a lot of different schools, and rapidly grew accustomed to it; she kept to herself a lot of the time. There were maybe two or three people that she became close enough to that she actually kept in touch.
Shortly after her father found a job that let him put down roots in North Carolina (he opened a book shop), Zoey left for college and majored in ancient/medieval history (Europe) and minored in archaeology and mythology. She had found herself with a great interest in mythology, ever since she was a child; especially the myths of seers.
Part of the reason was, you see, that she had some talent with the ability of foresight herself. Usually manifesting itself in dreams or a prickling at the back of her neck, on her skin. Sometimes she gets an idea about something and it occurs, or words pop into her head and someone around her utters them mere moments later. (A more in-depth explanation/description is located in the skills/abilities/powers section)
She hasn’t tried anything else like throwing runes, or reading tea leaves or anything, but there are books in her suitcase on the subject. She’s wary to mess with things she doesn’t understand. She can’t exactly help the dreams business.
Her father vanished while she was on her graduation present, a trip abroad. Even across the ocean... she managed to SEE it. Zoey woke up from a horrific dream, screaming and crying tears of blood. All she could remember was danger and darkness. When she returned to North Carolina... he was gone, no sign of where he had gone to, if he had been taken, if something had happened to make him leave. So she gathered anything that might be a clue, or hint, packed up the rest of her stuff, and took off trying to find him. Something started pulling at her, drawing her to it... and she kept going towards it until she reached the Carnival of Rust. For whatever reason, she was brought there. Whether or not it actually has something to do with her father’s disappearance she has yet to find out.
CARNIVAL OF RUST HISTORY
Of implication, insinuation and ill will, till' you cannot lie still. In all this turmoil, before red cape and foil
come closing in for a kill
Shortly after her arrival at the Carnival of Rust Zoey came to the realisation that there was far more to the Carnival and, indeed, the Carnie himself, that met the eye. From their first official encounter after being conscripted into the Carnival’s service in the acrobatics practice tent where she realised he had Nemo’s eyes and then experienced a vision of wood nails being pulled from flesh. It only got worse from there.
The portents and dreams she was receiving certainly didn’t help things.
The realisation that not everyone was as... aware of the dangers and unnatural-ness of the Carnival was made most evident when she aided the Carnie and a young woman named Ashlin in fastening the tents for securely. That was the moment when she started protecting others. Ashlin was the first, as she was both wholly unaware and entirely innocent. So she began her tendency to attempting to step in and/or draw attention to herself in an effort to keep Ashlin and others safe. That was why she volunteered to hold the nail in place for the Carnie. Only her hand got stuck, held in place as if by some invisible force, with an accompanying vision.
Zoey made acquaintances and friends, growing close to some and protective of... quite a few more. All the while trying to figure out the secrets of the Carnival and to keep those around her safe.
She met a pair of drummers who had a gift similar to hers, which was unexpected. It was the first time for that, and she hoped that in asking questions about their gift she might learn more about her own. Despite the fact that they LIKED the Carnival, and the Carnie... she still found herself liking them a little.
Then, of course, shit got worse. Zoey had been feeling under the weather for days... and it finally culminated in one of the worse visions she’d ever experienced. Blinding agony, tears of blood, a twisted nursery rhyme. It happened in the middle of the Carnival, near Nemo’s fortune telling booth. She learned more about the Carnival from that vision, but it also drew the Carnie’s attention to her.
Later that evening she went to the bathhouse to shower, wash away the lingering tears of blood and try and let the hot water soothe away the aches and pains. The Carnie had other plans. Taking the unfamiliar form of a young woman, she caught Zoey by surprise. There was a punishment for what she had seen, what she had said. And in doing so revealed something that Zoey hadn’t known. The punishment she had in mind backfired, catching the Carnie in its snare as well. Together they managed to escape the reflections.
Shortly after that, the Carnie disappeared and the Carnival started to go... haywire. So Zoey ventured into the roped-off House of Dusk in an attempt to discover whether or not he was trapped within its walls. It was the only place explicitly roped off, so it stood to reason...
ZOEY
So will you please show me your real face
FULL NAME: Zoey Irulan Westen
ALIAS: N/A
NICKNAMES: She was called Iru by her dance instructor in Spain
CURRENT AGE: 23
DATE OF BIRTH: May 17th
PLACE OF BIRTH: London, England
MARITAL STATUS: single
SEXUALITY: heteroflexible; possibly bisexual
PARENTS:
Cassandra Westen {deceased}
Thomas Westen {missing}
SIBLINGS: None
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS:
She lost her mother when she was ten, and is very close to her father. Although he doesn’t know of her being a seer. She didn’t want to worry him.
RANDOM FACTS
•Zoey is fluent in Russian, French, Greek & Czech; her Latin is decent
•She is a fairly decent pool player; and has been known to get her pool shark on
•Zoey learned to tango, and waltz while in Spain
•She loves pottery and working with clay/ceramics; either by hand or pottery wheel
•Her father taught her how to throw knives/daggers
•She is skilled with long daggers, long swords, the gladius, quarterstaff and bow
•She has an ear for accents
•She dabbles in photography
•Zoey is extremely skilled at both corde lisse & aerial silks
•She fell in love with gymnastics at a very young age and keeps up with it when she can
•She’s got a very high alcohol tolerance
•She is an unrepentant book-worm
•Zoey will often find the highest, most out of the way place she can find and seclude herself there; usually with a book.
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OOC
NAME: Bree
AIM: ThriceWiddershin
EMAIL: ThriceWiddershins@gmail.com
PB: Ksenia Solo