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Table of Contents
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Background
In a family engaged in constant war to regain their rightful place, the youngest daughter found her life shaped instead by the cruel touch of nature and disease.
Character Features
Physical Features
A tiny, unassuming young girl - no more than fifteen years old - with fox-like features that might one day be beautiful and striking. However, she is also wrapped with the reticence of one who has no regard for her own beauty. Her large, almond-shaped eyes are a bright blue, like her father's, and set between wide, high, and delicate cheek-bones. Her gaze is sharp and intelligent, but often self-involved and introspective - an introspection that saves her from a look of petulance, as her pert nose and naturally bee-stung lips would otherwise lend towards. Skin the shade of new ivory is scrubbed clean of any affectation of cosmetics, though her cheeks often turn rosy at the first hint of sunlight, and the fragile skin below her eyes can seem almost translucent when she is weary. Waves of auburn hair tries to fight every impediment to freedom; though she has managed to tame it into a thick braid, tendrils escape to frame her face in sun-dappled locks more akin to her mother than her father.
Though she is so petite as to seem insubstantial, movement betrays a certain lithe grace that hints towards unexpected athleticism. However, her clothing is fastidiously modest - in fact, she currently wears the voluminous white of a Temple acolyte, though sewn of very fine white wool. Her only pretension is a ring of silver worked in the form of a stag rampant - the symbol of House Westmark, and a clear sign of a noble daughter in training instead of a future Priestess.
Quirks
Atonement - Living for Two - Laurel is convinced that she was not the twin who was /meant/ to survive the White Fever. She feels guilty, as if she has cheated her family out of the better-born, and as such has strived almost obsessively to be the perfect daughter - as if she thinks she can make up for it and live for two.
Lost Half of a Whole - The Westmark family is almost characterized by intense pair-bonds. Laurel is the only one who has been left /alone/, and she feels the loss intensely. In her youth, she depended very much upon Lilum, and losing her twin was like losing her own arm.
Habitual Spy - Laurel listens at doors, eavesdrops, and reads anything she can get her hands on. It is an evil little habit, but one that she has tried to leverage in the family's best interest.
Mournful - She has a naturally morbid mien, is frequently pessimistic, and is melancholic bouts. Though she is /also/ naturally sweet-hearted and at times playful, this overall aura of sadness pervades her actions and thoughts. Though training in the Temple has smoothed many of her worst moods out and given her some better control over her emotions, she is… well, she is still a young teenager, and a Westmark, at that.
Naturalist - A dual meaning - both a philosophy, and a study. Though the philosophy is still half-formed in her mind, Laurel has come to believe, through her childhood illness and loss, and her studies, that the supernatural does not exist - only nature, and its uncaring laws, which strike down the good and the evil alike. Like her sister, she believes in observation and scientific process, and eschews spiritualism despite her time in the Temple. That said, she enjoys nature, be it harnessed in agriculture and husbandry, or wild like the bogs and swamps and hills of her home.
Too Many Books - Like talismans, Laurel collects books obsessively - and sometimes illegally. It is as much about the promise of betterment as it is about the knowledge within, and as such, she often lets them pile up around her living space like bricks in a literal wall against ignorance. Before leaving for the Temple, she bid her parents for permission to rebuild the family library, and in her years away, has sent acquisitions, or copies she has scribed herself, home to be cataloged upon her return.