Ella's Background
This is the sort of thin and mostly artsy background I wrote for Ella. I'm still getting the hang of the genre, so I avoided going into a lot of detail. Also Ella was designed as a largely blank slate kind of character, since that is the best way for me to absorb a new game. So her background is mostly a mood piece, rather than very detailed.
I can remember, the accident, when I was three years old. A sudden orphan, mother, father, baby brother all gone in a sudden blink, an unexpected patch of ice on the road. A simple, uninteresting accident, a twist of fate that left a guard rail bent and splintered as it did my life.
Next comes the stark reality of my existence. Poor planning by my parents, no guardian assigned, shunted from one unfit and unwilling family member to another. The longest I stay in one place is with my father’s brother, the uncle who finds too many excuses to come to my room. He never touches me with anything but his eyes, but I come to resent the growing curves of my body, the things that draw his greedy, staring eyes.
I begin to draw, to reimagine a world that I could love. It is a surprising joy, a bright spot in my world. I stumble into the art room at my high school, I find others who coax the hurt and fear of their lives out onto the page, the canvas, into stone and wood. I find a teacher, a gentle aging hippy woman who encourages the fantastical images that I pour out onto the page. She is my mentor, she adds mythology, tarot, and the old ways to my palette, expanding my world and my art. She takes me in without question, when I arrive on her doorstep, crying and bloody. She listens as I tell her of my uncle, and the touches that finally got further than his eyes, the bloody fight that barely defended my innocence and the retribution that I fear. She makes one phone call to him, and I never see him again. I spend my last year of high school on her couch.
I never intended to go to college, my mentor presses me, forces the issue and we fight, I leave, unwilling to wrap my existence around her broken dreams, her missed opportunities. I am convinced that I can find a better life, free an unfettered. I am possessed with the same foolhardy optimism that ruins millions of lives. I fair better than most, worse than some. I spend a lot of my time in tourist areas, drawing cariacatures, reading tarot and scraping a small living from my skills. I go to clubs, I make friends. I never really notice that I am lonely.
I start to draw a major arcana, invisioning my own tarot deck. The art is beautiful, delicate and empty. Everyone I show it to nods, smiles, and moves on, untouched. My frustration grows by slow degrees, infecting everything. I drink, and smoke, too much, dance too late into the night, and make worse friends who I like even less. At a party where I have lingered too long, a dark eyed drug dealer covers my mouth, rips my clothes and takes what I was unwilling to give. No one even bothers to try and convince me to go to the police. A tired, older girl lends me a pair of sweats and drops me off in front of my apartment. Contrary to clichés, it takes me almost a full day and a half to shower, or cry. I draw all night long, and through the day, racked with dry, useless sobs. The deck is good, gentle, sad and true. I’ll never be able to look at it without feeling guilt, and it will never be far from my reach.
This is the end of my journey. Twenty years old, just beginning to find galleries, boutiques that were interested in my artwork, just beginning to piece myself back together. This is where my feet leave the path, a story so short it’s barely worth remembering. At least, in a strange way, I have fulfilled some promise, repaid some debt that I have owed since I survived the accident that took my family 17 years ago. I went, for one last time, to sit in the shade beneath a tree and draw, and that was it. One moment there, one moment gone. My destiny awaits.
I can remember nothing of the time before this. No matter how desperately I try, the past is lost within the thing that I’m told is called the mists. I may find it again, I may not, maybe I am lucky to have what little I do.
Next comes training, education. The one who found me will teach me, or so he says. I have no reason to trust his word, to trust him, but I also have no options left. Even in these few, lonely days I have felt myself begin to wither, to die. If I know nothing else, I know that I cannot continue this way, feeling my way through the dark, cold world. I need the familiar warmth of hands that have never touched me, the embrace of a family I do not know.
I begin to understand that this now is my life, that I am unlikely to wake up, that the feeling that I am in not quite the right place will be with me always. I am beginning to understand that this is what it is to be kithain. I feel certain of a right to something greater, larger, than what I have now. A birthright of power, of nobility. I do not know, for certain what this is, though I know that it belongs to me, that it is truly of me in a way that these hollow memories that my body holds. It is one of the few things that seems to be mine, and when I look into the mirror at a face that isn’t mine, with eyes that are not mine, and memories that feel as strange and foreign as sleeping in a stranger’s bed, this one thing that I know is mine, this birthright, seems precious as a jewel.
I never intended to open the door to him, but there was something so sure in his gaze. There is so little that I can be sure of that I am forced to take my surety from a stranger, to accept his words as truth because I have no truth of my own. Borrowed warmth from a man so cold, but he is the closest thing to a friend that I have, so I shall take my cold comfort. Strange to think that this is the world that I belong to now, that these are the choices left to me.
I start to gather myself, to find the strength and wisdom I will need for whatever is coming. Because I have no memories of my own, I draw on her, this strange and sad girl who gave her body to me. I do not know where her soul has gone, but I hope that it is a peaceful and safer place than the world she lived in. Her dark mind, her terribly hungry heart, all call to me. Through her memories, through the beautiful art she’s left behind. The walls are covered with the fantastical world she imagined, lovely strange and sad, it looks more like someplace I would belong. Perhaps that is why she called to me, why her skin looked as though it could be mine. I do not know what the connection between us is, and I am hesitant to ask, though I would like to do her honor. She has given herself to me, and though it is only fitting, I would like to show her my respect.
This is the beginning of my journey. I cannot begin to imagine where life will take me. There is something between trepidation and exhilliration that meets in my heart tonight, in these last few silent moments before I commit myself to tumbling down this rabbit hole. He tells me that I am Sidhe, and though I do not fully understand, I feel the power in the word and in my blood. Tumbling down into wonderland, if I can be certain of nothing else, I know this. My destiny awaits.
I can remember, the accident, when I was three years old. A sudden orphan, mother, father, baby brother all gone in a sudden blink, an unexpected patch of ice on the road. A simple, uninteresting accident, a twist of fate that left a guard rail bent and splintered as it did my life.
Next comes the stark reality of my existence. Poor planning by my parents, no guardian assigned, shunted from one unfit and unwilling family member to another. The longest I stay in one place is with my father’s brother, the uncle who finds too many excuses to come to my room. He never touches me with anything but his eyes, but I come to resent the growing curves of my body, the things that draw his greedy, staring eyes.
I begin to draw, to reimagine a world that I could love. It is a surprising joy, a bright spot in my world. I stumble into the art room at my high school, I find others who coax the hurt and fear of their lives out onto the page, the canvas, into stone and wood. I find a teacher, a gentle aging hippy woman who encourages the fantastical images that I pour out onto the page. She is my mentor, she adds mythology, tarot, and the old ways to my palette, expanding my world and my art. She takes me in without question, when I arrive on her doorstep, crying and bloody. She listens as I tell her of my uncle, and the touches that finally got further than his eyes, the bloody fight that barely defended my innocence and the retribution that I fear. She makes one phone call to him, and I never see him again. I spend my last year of high school on her couch.
I never intended to go to college, my mentor presses me, forces the issue and we fight, I leave, unwilling to wrap my existence around her broken dreams, her missed opportunities. I am convinced that I can find a better life, free an unfettered. I am possessed with the same foolhardy optimism that ruins millions of lives. I fair better than most, worse than some. I spend a lot of my time in tourist areas, drawing cariacatures, reading tarot and scraping a small living from my skills. I go to clubs, I make friends. I never really notice that I am lonely.
I start to draw a major arcana, invisioning my own tarot deck. The art is beautiful, delicate and empty. Everyone I show it to nods, smiles, and moves on, untouched. My frustration grows by slow degrees, infecting everything. I drink, and smoke, too much, dance too late into the night, and make worse friends who I like even less. At a party where I have lingered too long, a dark eyed drug dealer covers my mouth, rips my clothes and takes what I was unwilling to give. No one even bothers to try and convince me to go to the police. A tired, older girl lends me a pair of sweats and drops me off in front of my apartment. Contrary to clichés, it takes me almost a full day and a half to shower, or cry. I draw all night long, and through the day, racked with dry, useless sobs. The deck is good, gentle, sad and true. I’ll never be able to look at it without feeling guilt, and it will never be far from my reach.
This is the end of my journey. Twenty years old, just beginning to find galleries, boutiques that were interested in my artwork, just beginning to piece myself back together. This is where my feet leave the path, a story so short it’s barely worth remembering. At least, in a strange way, I have fulfilled some promise, repaid some debt that I have owed since I survived the accident that took my family 17 years ago. I went, for one last time, to sit in the shade beneath a tree and draw, and that was it. One moment there, one moment gone. My destiny awaits.
I can remember nothing of the time before this. No matter how desperately I try, the past is lost within the thing that I’m told is called the mists. I may find it again, I may not, maybe I am lucky to have what little I do.
Next comes training, education. The one who found me will teach me, or so he says. I have no reason to trust his word, to trust him, but I also have no options left. Even in these few, lonely days I have felt myself begin to wither, to die. If I know nothing else, I know that I cannot continue this way, feeling my way through the dark, cold world. I need the familiar warmth of hands that have never touched me, the embrace of a family I do not know.
I begin to understand that this now is my life, that I am unlikely to wake up, that the feeling that I am in not quite the right place will be with me always. I am beginning to understand that this is what it is to be kithain. I feel certain of a right to something greater, larger, than what I have now. A birthright of power, of nobility. I do not know, for certain what this is, though I know that it belongs to me, that it is truly of me in a way that these hollow memories that my body holds. It is one of the few things that seems to be mine, and when I look into the mirror at a face that isn’t mine, with eyes that are not mine, and memories that feel as strange and foreign as sleeping in a stranger’s bed, this one thing that I know is mine, this birthright, seems precious as a jewel.
I never intended to open the door to him, but there was something so sure in his gaze. There is so little that I can be sure of that I am forced to take my surety from a stranger, to accept his words as truth because I have no truth of my own. Borrowed warmth from a man so cold, but he is the closest thing to a friend that I have, so I shall take my cold comfort. Strange to think that this is the world that I belong to now, that these are the choices left to me.
I start to gather myself, to find the strength and wisdom I will need for whatever is coming. Because I have no memories of my own, I draw on her, this strange and sad girl who gave her body to me. I do not know where her soul has gone, but I hope that it is a peaceful and safer place than the world she lived in. Her dark mind, her terribly hungry heart, all call to me. Through her memories, through the beautiful art she’s left behind. The walls are covered with the fantastical world she imagined, lovely strange and sad, it looks more like someplace I would belong. Perhaps that is why she called to me, why her skin looked as though it could be mine. I do not know what the connection between us is, and I am hesitant to ask, though I would like to do her honor. She has given herself to me, and though it is only fitting, I would like to show her my respect.
This is the beginning of my journey. I cannot begin to imagine where life will take me. There is something between trepidation and exhilliration that meets in my heart tonight, in these last few silent moments before I commit myself to tumbling down this rabbit hole. He tells me that I am Sidhe, and though I do not fully understand, I feel the power in the word and in my blood. Tumbling down into wonderland, if I can be certain of nothing else, I know this. My destiny awaits.