Post by River Tam on Apr 9, 2011 11:39:00 GMT -5
••River Tam
quiet brilliant quirky
[/COLOR]quiet brilliant quirky
••THE BASICS
NAME.River Tam[/size]
GENDER.Female[/size]
AGE.Fifteen[/size]
NATIONALITY.British[/size]
PLAY BY.Summer Glau[/size]
SEXUAL ORIENTATION.
Straight[/size]
••LET'S GET TO KNOW YOU BETTER
APEARANCE.
[/size]
River's wavy, brown hair hits right below her shoulder blades in a jagged line, as the last time sissors came close to her, she screamed and ran. Her surrogate-mother in New York had had to trim her hair in her sleep, resulting in the choppy look she now sports. Her pale skin, tinted almost-blue on the underside of her fore-arms, is accentuated by the black she always wears. Her eyes are dark brown, almost black. She's not tall, but not short either-- about five-foot-four-inches.
A scar stretches across her stomach, beginning right at the bottom of her ribcage on the left and ending at her right hip. There is another scar, this one almost imperceptible, around her skull. Her hair has grown back over it since.
River is slender, weighing only ninety pounds soaking wet. When she still lived with her parents, her father joked that she could crawl through the keyhole.
Most pants fall off of her slim frame, so she has taken to wearing dresses, usually in black. She either wears a pair of black leather boots, or goes barefoot. The latter is usually the truth, as stealth requires a light footstep.
PERSONALITY.
[/size]
She's very quiet, preferring to keep conversation to a minimum. When she does speak, her voice is low. She can usually be found curled in an armchair with her nose in a book, or wandering through a forest, stopping every so often to look at a feather, or an odd-colored stone. River can get distracted very easily, but can also sit for hours just staring into space.
She's an extremely picky eater, choosing mostly starch, without any sort of a garnish, save a bit of salt. She hates to be interrupted, especially from sleep, but gets over it quickly. No problem has gotten the best of her, as of yet.
Though thoughts race through her mind, hardly anyone knows about them. Her eyes glaze over when she thinks, tending to earn her a reputation as the neighborhood freak. Most of the time, she can shrug off insults hurled at her, but the few times they had struck deep, she had only enforced the reputation.
Some mistake her intelligence for arrogance when she corrects them, but that's far from the truth. She's very modest and conservative, but despises when things are left incorrect.
HISTORY.
[/size]
Born in London, England, River was always an odd child. She taught herself everything she knows, and was able to soak up facts like a sponge. At the age of three, she was correcting her brother, Simon, age fourteen at the time, when he misspelled. Her parents, recognizing her gift, sent her to a school when she was thirteen.
Unknown to them, the school operated on her. Trying to contact home, she sent letters with things she would never say. No one noticed. Giving up hope after a time, she escaped, coming back home. She was sent back faster than she could bat an eye. Escaping once again, but not before they cut open her brain, she ran.
For a year, she lived on her own, running all over the country, before fleeing to America. There, she lived in New York, with a woman-- Kate Peterson-- who took pity on the girl, for almost a year before hearing of Alexandria Academy. Wary about it at first, but wanting desperately to stop having to run, she set off to South Carolina.
LIKES.
[/size]
- The smell of rain.
- The way the sky looks at dawn.
- Books.
- Exploring.
- Solitude.
DISLIKES.[/size]
- Enclosed spaces.
- The smell of antiseptic.
- Blood.
- Questions.
- Rules.
STRENGTHS.[/size]
- Strategy.
- Memory.
- Stealth.
- Intelligence.
- Cunning.
WEAKNESSES.[/size]
- Enclosed spaces.
- When she was in the School, her mind was screwed with, sparking strange reactions to stimuli.
- Hospitals.
- Physical strength.
- Stamina.
FEARS.[/size]
- Going back to the School.
- Being helpless.
- Water.
GOALS.[/size]
- Going back home.
- Getting her mind back to the way it used to be.
POWER.[/size]
Omni-linguism-- As well as knowing human languages and computer languages, she can understand plants, animals, and secret codes.
••BEHIND THE MASK
ALIAS.Dawn[/size]
AGE.Fourteen[/size]
GENDER.Female[/size]
TIME ZONE.Central[/size]
HOW YOU FOUND US.Through Daze[/size]
OTHER CHARACTERS.None[/size]
•• ROLEPLAY SAMPLE
A small seven-year-old girl suddenly collapses. Her mouth opens in a scream, though she does not wake. The paramedics are there almost instantly. They manage to restrain the girl, somehow pulling her into a straitjacket. They strap her to a table in the hospital.
She continues to fight, to scream, to cry. Her eyes roll back into her head, the irises facing completely backwards. A man in white stabs a needle into her arm, and everything goes black.
It is two years later, two years full of treatments for various mental diseases, all of which this now nine-year-old had the misfortune to stumble across. The girl is in a padded cell-like room. Through a padded door steps a white-clad doctor. He reaches out, but she she jerks back. Every one of her instincts tell her to run. That's nearly impossible tied to a wall.
Music plays in the girl's head, a lyrical pan-flute piece. Never before had she heard this tune, or even heard of the pan-flute. The music calms her though, as her father had intended it to. The God Apollo. The girl does not know this yet. She believes her father abandoned her and her mother years ago.
The doctor's cold hand reaches the buckle on the straitjacket, and releases the girl.
"Dawn." he coos, voice as sleek and slippery as an eel. "You mom is waiting outside to see you."
Dawn's wary gaze flicks to the door, to the face of this man, this stranger invading her bubble or privacy, and back to the door again.
"Come, now." the snake whispers. "Come see your mom. She has a present," He says this word with distaste, curling his lip. "for you."
He reaches out for her hand, but she is already halfway across the room. She tugs open the padded door, and flings herself into the welcoming grip of Joyce Summers.
"Oh, Dawnie baby. I've missed you so much." It had been too long, far too long. Two years, in fact. The snake still kneeling in Dawn's cell had kept them apart, saying that 'A visit might bring up bad memories, and that would ruin all they had worked for.'. But how could a mother bring up the bad?
A large dog sits panting on a bench. Two orderlies hold a leash connected to the black leather collar on the dog's neck.
"I brought you a friend." says her mother, noticing the girl's wandering gaze. "Your father sent him. Wasn't that nice?" Stooping down, she whispers. "Apollo. Your father is Apollo. He told me to tell you."
She nods solemnly, then darts to the dog. His tongue lolls out of his mouth, and it slurps up Dawn's cheek. She laughs. "Shade." she says, not caring who hears. "His name is Shade."
She collapses, and the doctors tug her back into the cell.
* * * * *
The next year, after months of physical therapy, acupuncture, and the like, they release Dawn to the world. The dog, Shade, stays with her.
The ten-year-old girl had lost her sister in that place. Luna had been brought in a month or two after Dawn. She was still there.
She goes back to school. To sports. To her friends. But nothing is ever the same.
