Lily Red

Lily Rose Red

Red

23

She/her

Photographer

Esper

July 22

Morgan Crabtree

5'7" // 170 cm

Green

Red

Long, loose and very curly. Lily rarely has her hair up, and it’s always kind of wild and all over the place.

Fortuna Major on her left wrist
Fortuna Minor on her right wrist

Septum

Lily dresses fairly simply, and can usually be seen in skinny jeans and a t-shirt. Not with any particular need to stand out, she rarely wears crazy colours or combinations, and her style of clothing has more than once been described as plain (granted, by her mentally abusive aunt, but still).

So many freckles

My depression is a shapeshifter
On the one hand, Lily has an odd fascination with the past and things that have been abandoned or forgotten. She takes advantage of this fascination in her work, where she takes pictures of places and items that have been lost or are in a state of decay, such as abandoned buildings or animal skeletons. Most people think this is a little macabre, but Lily thinks there’s a certain beauty in dead or broken things.

I am standing beside her open casket
On the other hand, her abilities are so closely tied to this, it often gets overwhelming. Her abilities are also the reason she never buys things at thrift stores or brings home anything she finds outside - objects, especially old ones, that have been previously owned almost always have a history they’re desperate to share, and she’s just too perceptible to it.

I am not afraid of the dark
Lily doesn’t cry easily, but she is often angry, at the world and at herself. It is an internal fire though, the one that drives her, inspires and frightens her. She doesn’t scare easily either, has seen too many horrifying things, in her life and in the lives of others, to flinch at a raised fist or a raised voice. No, the fear comes later, after, when she’s alone and undistracted and it gets a chance to take a hold of her. It riddles her sleep with night terrors and the dark days with crippling panic attacks.

I am a party I don’t want to be at
Her depression is both friend and enemy, and it is ever present. It doesn’t pull her down with dark moods and it doesn’t hold her hostage in her own apartment. It does drive her to the edge and teases her with the sweet release that would be the end of it all. But she doesn’t make it easy for herself, for the depression, and therapists have argued that there’s a stubborn will to live hiding somewhere underneath the need to disappear. Lily just thinks she has an odd brain.

Insomnia has this romantic way of making the moon feel like perfect company
Most people would never know. These are secrets she would take to her grave if she could. She is a quiet girl, but not a shy one, and she does not hide away from the world. She’s cautiously curious and an outgoing introvert despite it all.

She likes the comfort of cuddling - once she’s comfortable being close to you in the first place.
She likes documentaries and books on history.
She likes the idea of home, the concept of home. It sounds cozy and nice, and even though she’s been in Snow Haven for more than a decade, she is still searching for the feeling.

She dislikes hugs by people she barely knows, or strangers grabbing her arm.
She wishes the past would stay in the past and not come haunt her with visions at the most inopportune of times.
She dislikes the thought of being bound to one place, and often finds herself wandering.

When she puts her mind to something, she is not easily swayed from it, even when she realises it’s not the best course of action, or might not lead to the best result.
Her abilities have granted her an insight in other people’s way of living and acting that most people cannot boast, a type of empathy and understanding that comes with witnessing too many tragedies.
Lily is strong-willed and does not take any bullshit. From others, that is.

Has an overall disposition that is both sweet and soft toward others.
Categorising herself as an outgoing introvert, Lily likes meeting people and getting to know them.

Her abilities have also granted her a strong dose of depression and anxiety.
She’s perfectly capable of degrading herself on her own, and she has a tendency to hold herself to too high standards, and treat herself too harshly when she cannot live up to them.
She is also a lot more vulnerable than she likes to show.
While making friends is easy enough, also lets go of them again a little too easily, having trouble forming deeper connections.

Pansexual

Meeting new people is fun, and Lily enjoys it. She enjoys learning about them and getting to know them, and she likes being social though she has no real need to. Forming actual connections is difficult, and she very rarely gets attached to people in a way that would make her feel obligated to them in any meaningful way. That said, I'd love for her to get some friends and acquaintances, especially of the more casual kind.
If anyone has reason to genuinely dislike or even hate her, I'm also very open to that. She has lived in Snow Haven for about a decade, so it's definitely not impossible.

Her camera

Freelance photographer

She absolutely loves it, wouldn't want to do anything else, ever

Lily has long been quite convinced her family is cursed. It is full of a long history of disappearances and premature deaths, and the only known living family member she currently has is her aunt, with whom she was sent to live when her mother died in a tragic accident eleven years ago.

July 22

Copenhagen, Denmark

Snow Haven, Alaska

Summer of 1997 - Copenhagen, Denmark: Briar Red, Mage, gives birth to a seemingly human child, except she knows better. The child’s father, whose disappearance is to this day unsolved, is - or was - a demon*. She hasn’t seen him for three months. She is now a single mother, with very little left in the way of family, and names the child Lily Rose Red. Shortly after the birth, she and her child move in with her sister on the island of Bornholm. During the first six months, things start to settle into an even rhythm, a normal everyday life of sorts.

Spring of 1998 - Bornholm, Denmark: While keeping the house in her name, Lily’s aunt moves unofficially to Snow Haven, Alaska, for work related reasons. Briar and the child stay in the house on Bornholm, though it doesn’t take long before she starts getting paranoid and agitated. There is a dark and ancient history of curses in her family, one that was supposed to be broken with the birth of her child, but something feels off and soon she cannot sit still much longer.

Autumn of 1998 - Strömsund, Northern Sweden: Briar has taken Lily from their home on Bornholm and found a job in one of the northernmost regions in Sweden, isolated and dark - surely here they will be safe, where no one can find them. She finds an middle-aged woman to take care of Lily while she works, but soon she is seeing enemies everywhere and convinces herself of the woman’s ill intention toward her child.

Spring of 1999 - Malmö, Sweden: Briar finds a new job and takes Lily with her to a much more public area, putting her child in daycare, because surely here they will be safe, under so many watchful eyes. It doesn’t take more than another eight months before she has convinced herself that the eyes that are watching them are not there for protection.

Briar’s intention was never to tell Lily that she is a half-demon, but over the years she grows yet more paranoid and yet more crazy, and one day she finds it necessary to tell her six year old child what the world is like. Where she comes from and why they move around as often as they do, but young Lily cannot make sense of her mother’s words when she starts speaking of the things that frighten her.

The two of them move to a new place all over Sweden and Denmark, twice all the way up to Norway, every 6 - 24 months. Whenever Briar’s sister is back on Bornholm for any length of time, that is where they go. Lily has never known a different life, but even at her young age she is feeling the strain. And the strain of her mother. She doesn’t understand her aunt, never connects with her, and feels uncomfortable whenever she has to spend time alone with her. And she tells Lily that her father is no demon, which she doesn’t know how to feel about.

Autumn of 2004: Lily is only seven years old when her abilities start manifesting. They are not mage powers, so Briar jumps quickly to the conclusion that they must be the result of her demon blood. Thus, she seeks no one to help learn to control them, and refuses to let her sister do it whenever they stay with her. She threatens staying away for good, and this shuts her sister up.

Winter of 2007 - Aalborg, Denmark: At the age of ten, Lily knows everything about her family history. Her mother’s version of it, anyway. When she asks her aunt, she refuses to talk about it, shuts down completely and can later be heard arguing with Briar over the decision to tell the child such things.

Lily’s schooling is sporadic, but she has the blessing of being a quick learner and happy to do research on her own. Certain subjects have already interested her, like history and psychology, even at that young an age. Most places they move to have a library, so what she cannot learn elsewhere, she seeks out there. But nothing tells her of magic or of demons in any real capacity, not in the way she knows it from home.

Home. What is home? Lily knows several different definitions from dictionaries and more abstract texts, from stories and movies and from the friends she so easily makes - and so easily lets go of again. But she doesn’t truly know, and a part of her doesn’t think it’s a mystery she’s meant to solve.

Spring of 2009 - Umeå, Sweden: The body of Briar Red is found in Nydalasjön, a lake just outside the central city. Cause of death is determined to be drowning. While Lily’s aunt makes her way to Sweden from Alaska, the girl herself is kept in the dark about her mother’s fate. When she is finally told, they tell her it’s suicide, that her mother was crazy. Lily’s aunt says the same thing and is granted custody of her niece. The moment the adoption is complete, the two of them move to Snow Haven.

Winter of 2016 - Snow Haven, Alaska: After years of extensive therapy, and help provided through Nightfall, Lily now knows her mother wasn’t crazy. Not truly. Well, not with all of it. Her father was no demon, but there is a curse in their family. A suspected curse, at least. Living past the age of 40 is a rare trait, and strange circumstances often surround the too early deaths. Except they’re usually only strange if you poke a little deeper than what is immediately seen upon discovery of the body. But there is no explanation, and no one has been able to track an actual curse.

Summer of 2020 - Snow Haven, Alaska: Lily Rose Red has lived in the same town for over a decade. She feels okay with this, but at the same time she feels no strong connection to the place. Or any place. No person, either. Sometimes it feels like she just… exists. There is no real love between herself and her aunt, though it isn’t hate, either. Lily has moved out and lives on her own, but she still sees her aunt from time to time. It never feels normal, like she thinks it’s supposed to be, but it’s normal for them. And they’re all they have left.

Lily has worked as a freelance photographer for four years, and she runs a fairly popular though more ‘underground’ blog, where she writes stories to all of the pictures she takes. Only she knows that the stories are not ones she has made up, only ones she has edited or added to slightly. She doesn’t see herself as a writer, storyteller or even a blogger, just a photographer.

• Lily’s father is not a demon, but a manipulative Esper. This speaks of Briar’s desperation, and willingness to believe the best for the good of her family.

Fully aware

Lily’s powers deal largely in history, the past and the dead - not in killing, but in that which is already dead. In truth, her abilities are linked to the souls of things - animate or inanimate.

Retrocognition:
In certain circumstances and through certain triggers, Lily is able to see the past and, to an extent, interact with it.

She is not able to interact with it in such a way that it would alter the present/future. She does not go back in time. There are instances, however, like dreams of the past, where she is able to move around freely within a certain area, and study any detail that is presented to her within this area. For example, she cannot open doors or pick up objects, and she cannot talk to/be seen by anyone. She can however pass through material (like walls and doors), and she can see every detail of, say a painting or the page of an open book.
One exception to this limitation is picking up and examining lighter objects, such as a picture or flipping the pages of a book.

If a person is the trigger, the vision can be very imprecise and a lot more limited, because it is based solely on how that person remembers it.

Other triggers include objects or locations that have a strong connection to an eventful past. It’s also possible that a series of events cause visions of the past, and Lily herself theorizes that this is what happens when she has retrocognitive dreams, even though she’s sleeping in a place she’s slept in a million times before.

These visions can appear both willingly or unwillingly. As a general rule, they are more intense when they happen on their own, and can be more difficult to distinguish from the present, but they are more easily controlled when she uses the ability consciously.

Clairsentience:
This ability is somewhat tied to the above. By touching/picking up an object (if it does not trigger the above), Lily can glean the general history of said object, including - but not limited to - the names and general information about the people who owned it and when, and different locations it has been to. This is a lot more vague/”soft” than the retrocognition, but it’s also a lot easier to control. She cannot, for example, tell where a previous/current owner of the object is now.
This only works with inanimate objects.

Soul Absorption:
In absorbing the leftover life force/soul of a recently deceased being, Lily is able to temporarily gain part of (one of) the strongest mental or physical attribute(s) of said being. This does not include skills based in knowledge, but it can be things like physical strength, enhanced hearing or stronger intuition.
Lily cannot control which power she gains, or how long it lasts, both of which are based on the deceased being and differs from time to time. It cannot happen without her intention. Whatever she gains, it is never as strong as it was for its original host.

Psionic Link (undiscovered):
A psionic link is a bond between the Esper and another person, with whom they already have a strong emotional connection. Both will be able to sense the other’s presence, state of mind, physical and mental well-being and similar.
The link does not form by any conscious effort, and cannot be broken by any conscious effort. It will only be broken if the emotional connection is truly broken, and is not affected by time or physical distance.