BROOKS, natalie

Name: Natalie Brooks

Age: 16 years

Gender: Female

Race: Human

Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual

Occupation: Student // Second Year

House: Glenice

Classes: Herbology, Magical Creatures I, Energy & Healing

Likes: She enjoys picking berries in the woods in the warm months of June, the smell of lilac, and finding shapes in the ever changing clouds. When the first daisies of spring bloom, she braids them into a crown, and there's nothing she loves more than singing, but only when nobody's listening. She likes walking barefoot in the grass and reading in the branches of old oak trees. No one can climb as high as her.

Dislikes: Cruelty is something she turns her back on, and she has little patience for those with foul tongues. She can't bear to see anyone's tears, and the sight of blood makes her dizzy. She loathes nothing more than being cooped up inside for too long, always restless, pulled on a leash by her girlish curiosity.

Strengths: There is surprising strength in her gentleness, in her ability to remain as innocent as a blossoming daisy in a world that has only tried to harden her. People sneer at how easily she forgives those who have slighted her, but that isn't what makes her weak. They don't understand that those who hold grudges will only choke themselves, while she floats as free as a feather in the airy, spring breeze. She has an uncanny knack for being able to see the best in even the ugliest of hearts. No matter how dark, she can reach inside and pluck out that one, small filigree of redemption.

Weaknesses: She is a terribly naive girl, full of idealistic whims that are made of no more than stardust. Willfully, she remains blind, hiding behind a rose-hued veil of ignorance. She can fall in love with anything that's beautiful, but it is only beautiful because she wills it to be. She shuts her eyes to the ghastly ghouls in her nightmares. She lives in a world all her own. She pretends and pretends and pretends. Her true weakness is not in the tremor of her hands or the way her voice breaks like glass when she is on the verge of tears, but in her inability to look into the abyss. She stubbornly clings to her dreams and lives in a snow globe where winter never comes.

Fears: The possibility of rejection makes her more anxious than anything else, and as such, she reserves her voice for a very rare few.

Secret: Natalie can bring dead creatures back from the grave, an ability she discovered when she was sixteen. After the other girls caught her cradling a dead bird behind the gardening shed, rumors started. She never breathed a world to another soul after the incident, conflicted about whether it was a blessing or a curse.

Description: Natalie has a rather plain, mousy appearance, and there is a simplicity in her pale-faced, rosy-cheeked prettiness. She is a demure girl, small in stature, who stands at 5 feet, 6 inches. Her hair is a shade of strawberry blonde, auburn undertones illuminating her appearance. She has soft, quiet eyes the color of an overcast day, which always seem to be angled toward her feet.

Power: She learned to speak the language of the sparrows on her windowsill at a young age. Oh, they would always be chattering about something, little messengers, little gossipers, and she delighted in eavesdropping on their conversations. The mourning doves sang the most beautiful songs at sunrise, and while the neighbors groused about the noise waking them too early, she memorized the words of their dainty ballads and recited them before her handheld mirror. It took her some years to realize anything was odd about her. She thought all children could hear the lyrical banter of the birds and the anguished pleas in the howls of stray dogs, but when the other children caught her speaking with a rabbit, they sunk their claws in with amusement. "Are you hoping to find Wonderland?" they leered. Of course, no one truly believed the girl was having tea with cottontails and conversing with foxes. She would grow out of it, like all children grow out of their eccentricities, when she was old enough. She didn't. As the years went by, she found that she related more to the docile creatures of the surrounding woods than her classmates. She could hear them, every one of them, whether they had feathers or soft fur or gruesome scales. She charmed even the most deadly of snakes by singing in their serpentine tongue, and while many feared the cries of the wolves, she was the only one with a heart tender enough to remove the thorn from the beast's paw. Some of their languages are more difficult to learn than others, but she's ever patient.

She also has the ability to heal and reanimate things that have recently become deceased, though she doesn't yet fully understand how it works. It seems to ebb and flow with the waves of her emotions. Perhaps if she stopped denying her gift, she would learn to control it, but she fears what potential power she may have. Of course, performing any act of healing takes a great toll on her, draining her own life force.

Belongings: She hides a white, stuffed rabbit that her mother gave her behind her pillow.

Personality: She is as pretty as a porcelain doll and every bit as fragile. She sits on a high, high shelf, always with the fear of falling. Like a princess in a tower, she is forever looking down at the world, wishing to be part of it. Her voice is soft, and there is something a little anxious about the way her fingers fidget, how she refuses to meet anyone's eyes. She is as timid as a doe, and gazes often catch her like headlights. However, while she carries herself with reservation, she could lay among the flowers and talk for hours. Oh, she wouldn't dream of trouble, but it's her childish flights of fantasy that often lead her to the lion's den. She lives in a house of glass, and all it takes is a single rock to make the entire thing shatter. She's a little flighty at times, head so stuck so far in the clouds that she finds herself forgetting this and that. Such is the curse of being a daydreamer. Many people would call her idealistic world delusional at best, but there is no denying her quaint charm. While her shyness is often mistaken for meekness, she's an incredibly stubborn girl, especially when it comes to her harebrained schemes.

History: Her mother used to read her stories about faraway places and girls who fell down rabbit holes before bed at night. When the woman passed away, no one was more distraught than Natalie. She was left with her father, who became a stifling, paranoid man after his wife's passing. His precious daughter's safety was paramount. "If anything were to happen to you," he would often say, never having the resolve to finish the sentence. He kept her preserved in a mock youth, and she watched enviously as life passed her by from her windowsill. The man hired her a private tutor, and for the sum of her childhood, she bid her time alone with her books, studying to keep her father happy. While she knew the man only wished for her protection, bitterness wrapped its angry tendrils around her heart, and one night, she found it in herself to disobey him. She packed a single bag full of clothing and food, and then she tied her bed sheets together to create a rope leading down from her window. By the time she reached the bus stop, her feet were sore with blisters. She meant to run away from that small town in Virginia, but despite the fact that she clutched a bus ticket in her hand, she never boarded the bus. She cried herself to sleep on the bench that night, and in the morning, she called her father from a payphone. The man was livid in his relief, though he decided it was best to send her to an all girls boarding school in Boston, where she spent the next three years of her life.

She never fit in well with the other girls. They were all from families with money, and they saw her as a child. While Natalie had always been attune with the voices of animals, never finding it odd, it wasn't until her dismal years away from home that she began to understand just how different she really was. Her dear mother had always humored her, and her father thought her to be a naive girl, but no one ever truly believed that she could understand the creatures with fur and feathers. It wasn't until the incident behind the old gardening shed of the prestigious, Boston school that she understood. When a group of girls stumbled upon her cradling a maggot infested bird in her hands, only for it to begin to squirm and fly away, they shrieked in horror. Rumors spread in the hallways, and she wasn't blind to the looks of fright other girls gave her. Once, she was cornered and presented with a dead shrew, which her attackers demanded she bring to life like the perturbed witch she was, though all she could do was weep and say, "I can't." Shortly after the rumors began to circulate, she received an invitation to attend another school, which claimed to be in the north of Maine. Thinking her guardian angels must have sent her a lifeline, Natalie didn't think twice about it. She fled, writing her father a hasty letter and then getting into a cab. Her driver warned her that it would be a shock, but nothing could have prepared her for what awaited on the other side of the gates, deep within the mountains.