Briar

There used to be a Garden here, when the Dreamtime land was young

And all Creation bloomed and grew, when the Dreamtime songs were sung

The children of the Dreaming have lost since been swept aside

With no-one to sing the Dreamtime songs, the Garden slowly died.

- Eric Bogle, The Garden

Personal Information

Briar
Seeming:	Fairest
Kith:	Archived-Flowering
Court:	Courtless Court --
City:	Brisbane
Title:	None
Entitlement:	None
Group:	None
Player:	NPC
Storyteller:	Brisbane VST

Appearance

Mask: Briar looks like an impeccably well-groomed woman of Scandinavian features and colouration in perhaps her early thirties, tall and slender, with short, perfectly-coiffed pearl blonde hair, who favours clothes that are conservative to the point of WASPishness. She is gracefully made, with a long neck and delicate limbs, but her manner is cool to the point of inaccessibility. Her skin, where it is bare, is marked by scratches, as if she had lost a fight with an angry cat. Her small, tight smile has a Stepford perfection, and there is something brittle-bright and broken behind her eyes.

Mien: Unlike her husband, the Spring Courtier Sebastian, the Changeling formerly known as Abby Lund has not been refined by her Durance but rather roughened. Her mien has a feral quality to it - the crop of white hair tangles around her head in a wild mess, and the slowly-healing scars of her very recent violent trip through the Hedge in the grip of Loyalists are visible on every patch of bare skin; a painful reminder to Sebastian of his failure to keep her safe. She dresses skimpily in scraps of green silk and brown muslin, reminiscent of her botanical nature, and she wears no shoes. A green tinge lingers around her eyes, lips, nails, palms and feet, and here and there, the leafy, thorned vines of eglantine twine about her bare limbs. There is an undeniable sense of the nubile savage about her, something both seductive and utterly primal.

Mantle: As Briar has neither yet claimed a Court, nor been claimed by one, she has no discernable Mantle of any nature.

Mentality

Poor, poor Briar. Yesterday, she was Abby Lund, homemaker, former surgeon and insecure wife, until her fears about the increasingly strange behaviour of her husband over the last couple of years led her to follow him to a Spring Revel, where her unwelcome intrusion saw her experience things she could not explain. Sebastian was left with no choice but to show her the truth, and for this, Mother Lupa threw him into the Hedge and proceeded to beat him bloody. Abby rushed in headlong to stop her, and was immediately waylaid by the Loyalist Jack Rover, who carried her off, shrieking with malevolent laughter, into the Arcadian sky.
That was yesterday. On this side of the Hedge.
The Freehold, led and guided by the immense sacrifice of Erebus, who blamed himself for her loss as Sebastian had entrusted her safety to him, determined to get her back. By invoking a tremendous Goblin Contract, they were able overnight to summon her forth from her Durance, whereupon she was drawn to a Trod to collapse, footsore and exhausted from the pilgrimage, at their feet.
This Abby had been seventy years on the other side, and no longer answered to her name. Briar is a Changeling haunted by a past she can't recall and a nightmare that she knows was all too real. She is deeply traumatised, and impossibly disoriented - such that she barely qualifies as sane.
The Freehold is concerned that Erebus' bargain may not have been a good one...

Mortal World

In the mortal world, Briar is told she is Abby, the trophy wife of society mogul Sebastian Lund. It is an identity far less real to her than her lifetime as a flowering plant on the other side of the Hedge, but she clings to it with the desperation of a drowning woman reaching for a life-ring.

History

There was a time when men were kind-

When their voices were soft,

And their words inviting;

There was a time when love was blind,

And the world was a song,

And the song was exciting;

There was a time...

Then it all went wrong.

-Fantine, I Dreamed A Dream (Les Miserables)

Timeline

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Mortal Life

See above.

Arcadia

She breaks down when asked to discuss her Durance, but occasionally gives vent, in answering questions, to small windows of information. She was a rose bush in the pleasure gardens of one of the Fae - of the details and nature of her Keeper, Briar refuses to speak. But they would pick her flowers, for their pleasure, or their servants would cut her back into pleasing shapes. The mind of a plant is an alien thing, and Briar seems to have brought mercifully little lucid detail of these ordeals across with her; at times, it seems as distant and indistinct as a half-forgotten nightmare - at other times, it is as immediate and terrifying as a bad trip.
It seems that her sudden and violent abduction by Jack Rover is more real to her, as a memory, than much of her Durance. Whether this is a good thing, however, is very much up for dispute.

Escape

Briar did not escape, not in the truest sense of the word. She was deep in her Durance when Erebus' magic ripped her roots free and summoned her forth on a days-long pilgrimage into a corrupted Trod, where he and Sebastian were able to intercept and recover her just as she reached collapse. As a result of this, she does not have the same level of lucidity as most Changelings enjoy, upon their return to the world; Briar is dazed, confused and frightened, as her reality has been ripped away. She has no better sense of where she is or what has happened to her than a sleepwalker, suddenly awoken in an unfamiliar place.
Subsequently, it will take a great deal of rehabilitation before she has any hope of passing for a functioning human being again.

Quotes

Quotes By

"How could I be loyal to Them? They tore off my arms!"

- a hysterical Briar, during interrogation by Alessandro Trabocchi.

"I'm not a flower, and...I'm not a woman...what am I? Please...please, can't someone tell me what I am? Can't someone help me? I don't know what I am, I don't...I don't know this place...and everyone is lying to me, telling me I used to be someone else...! These aren't my hands!"

- Briar, sobbing, during the same interrogation.

Quotes About

"???"

???

Rumors

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Inspirations and Soundtrack

• The Road Through The Woods by Rudyard Kipling: ...but there is no road through the woods.
• City of Ashes, by Cassandra Claire: “Desire is not always lessened by disgust. Nor can it be bestowed, like a favor, to those most deserving of it. And as my words bind my magic, so you can know the truth. If she doesn’t desire his kiss, she won’t be free."
• The Dangling Conversations by Simon and Garfunkel - Sebastian: It's a still-life watercolour of a now-late afternoon, as the sun shines through the curtain-lace, and shadows wash the room, and we sit and drink our coffee - couched in our indifference...Like a poem poorly written, we are verses out of rhythm; couplets out of rhyme
• Broken by Lifehouse - Erebus: I'm falling apart; I'm barely breathing, with a broken heart that's still beating. In the pain, is there healing? In your name, I find meaning. So, I'm holding on - I'm barely holding on to you. I'm hanging on another day, just to see what you throw my way, and I'm hanging on to the words you say; you said that I will be okay
• Evil Angel by Breaking Benjamin - Mother Lupa: Hold it together - birds of a feather; nothing but lies, and crooked wings. I have the answer, spreading the cancer. You are the faith inside me. No, don't leave me to die here, help me survive here alone - don't remember
• Island by Heather Nova - Jack Rover: There are parts of me he'll never know, my wild horses and my river beds, and in my throat voices he'll never hear. He pulls at me like a cherry tree, and I can still move but I don't speak about it; pretend I'm crazy, pretend I'm dead
• Thick As Thieves by Natalie Merchant - Changeling society: Remember how it all began; the apple, and the Fall of man - the price we paid, so the people say. Down a path of shame it lead us, dared to bite the hand that fed us; the fairytale, the moral end - the wheel of fortune never turns again...All follow, deep in trance - Lost in a catatonic dance; know no future, damn the past. Blind, warm, ecstatic; "safe" at last
• Finding North by The Civil Wars: Draw me a map that I can hold, lines that tell me where to go; my head is full of lonely harmonies, and questions no one's asking me. Who's going to take my hand, show me the way? How long will I have to wait for 'someday'? It's not the sky I'm asking for; I'm just having trouble finding North. I've gone as far as I can go, trying to find something that feels like home
• Rose Red by Emilie Autumn: A thousand years gone by - too late to wonder why I'm here alone. Within my darkest hour, she rose that fell a flower; I should have known. Tell me no more stories, and I'll tell you no lies. No one wants to hurt me, but everybody tries...for this wisdom, I have lost my innocence - take my petals, and cover me with the night
• Voices by Disturbed: Save me, God! I can hear the voice, but I don't want to listen; strap me down, and tell me I'll be alright. I can feel a subliminal need to be one with the voice, and make everything alright
• The Night by Morphine: A little girl, lost in the woods; you're a folk tale - the unexplainable. You're a bedtime story, the one that keeps the curtains closed...Unknown, the unlit world of old, you're the sounds I never heard before; off the map where the wild things grow - another world outside my door