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:	Winter Court •
City:	Brisbane
Title:	The Wild Rose
Entitlement:	None
Group:	None
Player:	thefreneticist@gmail.com P. Saunders
Storyteller:	Michael O'Dempsey Brisbane VST

Appearance

Mask: Briar looks like an impeccably well-groomed woman of manicured features and delicate 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 - a modern Grace Kelly; apparently incongruous to this is the large, elaborate tattoo of twining roses, boughs and thorns that covers most of her back. She is gracefully made, with a long neck and dainty limbs, but her manner is cool to the point of inaccessibility. A red rose motif often figures in her accessory choices, and even the fabrics of her outfits, and she is rarely if ever seen without deep red lipstick that throws into even greater contrast the luminous pallor of her complexion. Her skin, where it is bare, is marked by nasty lacerations, 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 much-longer mane of milky-blonde hair tangles around her head in a wild mess, threaded through with roses, and the silvery scars of her very 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 wears clothes as if they are unnatural to her; as little as she can get away with, in scraps of green and brown, and she dislikes 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. Where she walks in the Hedge, roses of the deepest, darkest crimson grow, their petals beaded - only to very close inspection - with droplets of blood. There is an undeniable sense of the nubile savage about her, something irresistibly seductive, vaguely threatening and utterly primal. She is explicitly and unmistakably a wild bloom, all tangled thorns and baited hook, rather than a domestic one, and the darkness of the ancient, wolf-stalked forest looms in her eyes.

Mantle: The barest whisper of a chill hangs around Briar, raising the flesh on the arms of anyone who approaches her, and her breaths steams almost imperceptibly when she speaks.

Mentality

Poor, poor Briar. Yesterday, she was Abby Lund, 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

• Born Abigail Spencer in Brisbane on the 19th of September, 1980.
• Graduates Somerville House Private Girls School in 1997. Accepted into University of Queensland to study medicine; undertakes a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery.
• Meets, dates and falls in love with the older but charming media mogul, "Sebastian Lund", in 2001.
• Graduates UQ as a qualified surgeon in 2003. Takes a job at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
• Marries "Sebastian Lund" in 2004.
• The couple try for a child between 2005 to 2010, resulting in two miscarriages and much heartache. They remain, however, very much in love, and the marriage - despite lacking the blessing of a child - is otherwise deeply happy.
  • In 2010, the real Sebastian Lund escapes Arcadia, eliminates and replaces his fetch and steps into his shoes as Abby's husband. Their fertility rate drops to zero. Abby blames herself.
• Between 2010 and 2013, paranoias grow in Abby's mind leading to tensions in the marriage over the increasingly furtive behaviour of her husband, until she is convinced he is carrying on an affair - due, she is certain, to her own failure to conceive.
• Finally, in desperation, she secretly follows him into a Spring Revel on the 5th of October, 2013. Things quickly go very wrong.
  • Taken by the Fae.
• 70 years in Faerie.
• Rescued on the 6th of October, 2013.
• Immediately cloistered into rehabilitative quarantine by the Janissaries.

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.

"This world, like Them, is beautiful, and awful, and it doesn't love us, Erebus."

- a rather more lucid Briar, in May, the next year.

Quotes About

"No, he has nothing to complain about; she now knows what it was like for him - he gets it all, while the rest of us get to pick up the pieces. He should have known better. We all should have known better."

- Mother Lupa, in her cups.

"I did the impossible to bring you back once, I'll find another way to do the impossible and stay here for you"

- Erebus comforting a traumatized Briar after discovering he is most likely dying

"It wasn't just a kiss Briar, I love you! I would stop loving you if I could, I would wipe it all away if I could but I can't! I don't know what to do but...all I know is that I still want you""

- Erebus confronting Briar after the falling out with Sebastian Lund

Rumors

• It's been a year of solid rehab, and she's still as fae as a Fae thing that is exceedingly fae, and it's creeping everyone the Hell out. Why is she still here?
• As soon as she arrived, things started falling apart. The little triangle she has with Erebus and Sebastian damned near tore the House of Janus motley in half. Why is she still here?
• She gets evasive when asked to give details about her Durance, or about her time with Jack Rover, like that's not suss at all. Why is she still here?!

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."
• Lithium by Evanescence - Sebastian: Darling, I forgive you after all; anything is better than to be alone
  • I Don't Believe Anymore by The Whitlams - Sebastian for Briar
• Wicked Game by Gemma Hayes - Erebus: I never dreamed that I'd love somebody like you, and I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you
  • Your Guardian Angel by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - Erebus for Briar
• The Only One by Paul Mac feat. Bertie Blackman - Mother Lupa: The best thing about this place is that it looks good from outer space, but there's nothing here for me
  • Scars by Papa Roach - Mother Lupa for Briar
• Through Glass by Stone Sour - for Channing: While you're outside looking in, describing what you see, remember what you're looking at is me
  • Push Me Away by Kutless - Channing for Briar
• Change My Name by Trading Yesterday - House of Janus: Open up to my heart's surgery; the waiting rooms of my reality
• ACF by Stabbing Westward - Jack Rover: I think I woke up screaming
• Flame Trees by Sarah Blasko - Abby Lund: Settle in to play "Do you remember so-and-so?", and number three is never say her name
• Thick As Thieves by Natalie Merchant - Changeling society: The wicked king of parody is kissing all his enemies on the seventh day of the seventh week; the tyrant's voice is softer, now
• Finding North by The Civil Wars
• Rose Red by Emilie Autumn
• Voices by Disturbed
• The Night by Morphine
• In All My Dreams I Drown by Jessica Lowndes and Terrance Zdunich