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Foxglove

Foxglove is a Loner.

History

In the confusion of birth, the girl was ushered into the world alongside two living brothers and one stillborn sister, who tempted a weak mother clouded with pain into the Beyond with her. In only a few weeks of being the sole primary caretaker of three squalling infants, their father realized that the burden was far too much for him, and he could not suffer the blow to his pride that asking for help would deal. So he then therefore sought to rid himself of them.

Misfortune appeared to follow the young family in the first few months of the children’s lives. A trip to the bend in the river and returned only two, with sooty-furred Elias said to have been swept away by the current. Several weeks later pale young Rodiron was said to have wandered off into the wilderness, though the unhealed wounds on his father's forearms raised suspicions, which might be confirmed if one saw the oily column of smoke raising to the sky miles to the east and smelled the faintest odor of burning fur and flesh on the wind.

When the girl was last in the father’s care, he found the hot attention of the entire pack upon him. Knowing this could spell the end of him but unable to leave his dread task unfinished, he turned to more subtle means. He began feeding the girl small amounts of foxglove in her meals, though the amount was at first too small to kill her. She fell deathly ill, wrapped in fever and plagued with cardiac arrhythmia. The father was caught in a compromising position after feeding his daughter the last bit of poison, however, and was run out of the pack. The girl was deemed too close to death and carried out to the woods so that she could pass to the Beyond alone, without coercing any other souls to join her.

Someone managed to find her before Death, however. An elderly woman, outcast for her expansive knowledge of both good and bad medicine, found the dying child. Though it is unsure which kind of medicine she used to restore her, the girl lived, and the woman—who she grew to call Grandmother—named her Foxglove, after the plant that nearly killed her.

It did not take the woman long to notice that the brush with death had left the girl’s mind strange, though she found that she had great aptitude and drive for learning the ways of medicine and how to live alone in the wild. When Foxglove was making her first strides into the realm of adolescence, Grandmother’s body was forced to give up her ghost and the girl was left alone in the world. She gathered up her things—and the things that Grandmother had left her in death—and ventured out into the world.

Personality

The girl’s brush with death has definitely left a lasting effect on her mind. Foxglove believes—because Grandmother had taught her to believe—that her spirit, anchored to her physical body, was caught between this world and the Beyond, where the spirits dwell. Therefore the fevered dreams and occasional confusion were justified.

To put it very simply, Foxglove would appear crazy to the normal outsider. She generally keeps to herself (to no detriment, as she is a very capable wilderness survivor), performing rituals and communications with the spirits that make sense to nearly no one else but herself. In the past she has been contracted by locals of the areas she passes through, to cast spells and curses and protections. She never sticks around long enough to see if they work or not, but she believes that they always do.

At her core, the girl is self-sufficient. Grandmother—having been spurned by a pack at one point—taught her that they would never be accepting of her and that she should instead find contentedness alone.

So far she has not encountered much trouble. Though she can take care of herself easily in almost any situation, she was never taught much in the way of defending herself. So far, no one has bothered to threaten her. Just a strange, crazy girl. What harm could she do?

Relationships

Family

• Parents —

Friends

Acquaintances

Enemies

Appearance

Foxglove is a slender girl, noticeably long-limbed and with all the supple grace of the willow bough. Naturally she has a flowing rhythm to her movements, but in many gestures in which the fragmented mind plays a part, she displays hesitation and tremor. To watch her move is sometimes like watching two beings struggle for control over the same form.

Her lineage is largely unknown, though her height and the agouti patterning to her fur suggests some leanings towards wolf, while her slightness and pointed features allude to some amount of coyote blood.

There is a strong amount of red in her fur, causing the general tones of her pelt to deviate from browns into cinnamons and ambers. It darkens to mahogany on her dorsal side, and further to black along the saddle of her back, as well as the tips of her tail and ears. The fur along her nape has grown long over the months, though she often binds it with bits of rope, cloth, or the fibers of plants. Her eyes are a green reminiscent of spring, of budding flowers and gentle rains.

One can assume, unless otherwise specified, that Foxglove is in her Optime form.