 |
| Name: |
Melanie Williams |
| Genos: |
Revenant |
| Form: |
Sarkomenos |
| Theme Song: |
Money - Pink Floyd |
Melanie was once a very poor, but
very gifted mathematician looking for any job that
would pay enough for her to eat. Her parents died
when she was young, and she was thrust onto the streets
of New London to fend for herself. She quickly learnt
that maths has more applications in the real world
than most people realise, especially in a town with
gambling houses. She eked out a living at the card
tables and roulette wheels until the party came to
an end during the Depression. No one had the money
to spare, and the gambling houses folded like nervous
poker players.
She was offered a job working on the ledgers of a
shipping company. She never found out what they shipped
- all she ever saw were numbered codes in books. But
she moved numbers around with a devious and brutal
cunning and they always seemed to swell under her
fingertips. When you're living in a land of the starving
you don't look to closely at the hand that's offering
you bread or ask why it's there. She was a woman earning
good money in a man's job.
When she died in childbirth, Angharad had grown to
value her too much to let her go. He arranged for
her to be brought back, and promoted her. Over the
ensuing decades, she slowly became the person responsible
for his financial well-being, and slowly worked herself
out of a job. The system that she designed and built
for him worked so well that she was no longer needed
to run it. But Angharad trusted her - she was mostly
his own creation, after all - and she took to running
his personal affairs. People at the Court were quick
to catch on: Angharad was a busy man and didn't like
unannounced guests, and the only way to get announced
was through Melanie.
Unlife, though, didn't suit Melanie's constitution,
and she became increasingly . . . erratic. Clinging
onto life like a dog with locked jaws, people have
begun to quietly whisper that, as Angharad's P.A.,
she's far from perfect - messages get mutated, appointments
get lost somewhere in the paperwork - and so maybe
her job is something else. After all, while people
are concentrating on what she's not doing or what
she's doing badly, what aren't they concentrating
on?
To look at, she's tall for a lady,
wearing her black hair short and reserved clothes
more suited to styles that went out of fashion decades
ago. Although no-doubt she uses her supernatural grace
and splendour when hunting or greasing what mortal
wheels need greasing, to the majority of the Court
she almost seems drab, cut glass among diamonds. She
doesn't try, people say. She's far from living up
to her full potential. But then, Angharad never employed
her for her looks, her style, or her grace. It wouldn't
do for her to be distracted by such things.
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