Neve

From Changeling Venue

Seeming	Elemental Woodblood
Court	Winter Court ••••
Freehold	Canberra
Player	Cassandra Archer

1 Overview
2 Character Information
3 OOC Information

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Overview

Alias(es): Neve "Lifetree", Neve "Twigfingers", Neve Everett, Winter Queen

Original Name: Rosemary Nash (nee Pierce)

Apparent Age: Late 20s

Concept: Hedgespun Craftswoman, Purveyor of Goblin Fruits

Entitlement: None

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Character Information

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Current Activities

Neve is a craftswoman for the Canberra Freehold, creating hedgespun clothing and armour to suit the tastes of the various courts, earning herself some good regard, particularly with the Spring Court. She is also able to source various goblin fruits, either by cultivation or scavenging in the hedge.

In the mortal world she has a line of clothing that is available for purchase from a store that sells various new age and home-crafted wares.

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Merit and Ability Details

Mantle: Winter - 4. This manifests itself as a creeping tracery of frost, sugaring Neve's surroundings with delicate ice.
Court Goodwill: Spring - 3

Contracts: Elements (Water), Elements (Earth)

Craft Specialisations: Tailoring, Leatherworking
Survival Specialisations: Navigation, Foraging, Plants

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Known History

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Basic Timeline

1951 – Neve was born Rosemary Annabella Pierce.
1967 – Rosemary graduated Year 12.
1968 – Rosemary enrolled to study fashion design at the ANU, starting just before her 18th birthday.
1971 – Rosemary graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts.
1972 – Rosemary married David Nash and started work at a local fashion studio.
1974 – The couple gave birth to daughter, Molly.
1976 – Rosemary was abducted by the Lord of Bitter Chill.
1982 – David Nash divorced "Rosemary", the fetch, due to "irreconcilable differences"; he retained custody of Molly.
1986 – David Nash remarried a woman named Sarah.
1999 – Molly married Trevor Lane.
2003 – Molly gave birth to a daughter, Emily.
2004 – Rosemary escaped Arcadia and returned to Canberra. She assumed the name of Neve Everett (sometimes called Lifetree or Twigfingers).

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Background

He came for me just after my 25th birthday. It was the 70s, and I was a fashion designer and seamstress—but I also had an interest in gardening, growing my own vegetables for my family’s table, and cultivating some of my own dyes. I think it was this combination that attracted his attention.

He was the Lord of Bitter Chill, a beautiful pale sidhe with long dark hair and silver eyes. His interest in me, thankfully, was not romantic—I saw other unhappy souls that he had taken for that purpose, and though I was subject to frequent beatings and abuse, I consider myself lucky compared to them. No, the lust I sated in him was the lust to be the fairest of them all. I tended his fields—strange, cotton-like plants with sharp thistles—ensuring they had sufficient water and that the soil was nourishing; harvesting the crop; spinning the yarn, and weaving the cloth.

There were others in the fields, each of us working to produce the vast array of clothes that were required to please him. Some, with no talent for design or craft, grew hunched over with the burden of the baskets they carried. Others, like myself, spent as much time in the fields as they did in the workshops, and while in one sense we were treated better by the overseers because of our usefulness, in another we were given less time to rest and the demands upon us were greater—as were the punishments for a loose thread or poorly fitted tunic.

Over time I grew thin; my fingers grew elongated from time spent at the spinning wheel and loom, and a few small thistles began to sprout from my skin. I learned to fade into the folliage around me, better to avoid the Lord’s notice when he came to inspect the fields and our work, his aura of cold putting a tracery of frost on the leaves and my hair. And I developed an affinity with water and earth, those elements so vital to the care of healthy plants.

It didn’t feel like I was there for 28 years.

I don’t know how long passed, Arcadia-time, before I found my opportunity to escape. The Lord of Bitter Chill left his realm to attend a ball hosted by another of the Gentry, attired in a fantastic garment of white and blue shimmering cloth with white fox fur at the collar and cuffs. The overseers, who were normally so careful to guard the slaves when the Lord was gone, grew careless about their food and ate a special preparation made by the changeling chef, Nic — with ingredients donated by me — that incapacitated them so that several of us were able to slip away (including Deadlock, Rubens and Wroke of the Canberra Freehold), finding our way back to the Hedge.

Somewhere in the Hedge we lost Wroke; he had been badly beaten for destroying one of the Lord’s pleasure gardens, and when we fled into the Hedge he was unable to keep up. By the time we realised he wasn’t with us, he was gone.

Deadlock, Nic, Rubens and I wandered lost for a time. Again, I don’t know how long; certainly long enough that we despaired of ever finding my way home, and had started to consider how we might survive in the Hedge. Eventually we were able to find a door back to the mortal world.

Imagine my shock to find that the world I knew no longer existed. My daughter Molly—who had been a toddler when I was taken—was a woman full grown with a daughter of her own. Her ‘mother’, my fetch, was still alive, divorced from my husband after a strange change to her personality. He had taken another wife and seemed happy.

I chose not to disturb any of them—though I do keep watch on Molly sometimes, to make sure that she is ok—took the name Neve, and joined the Winter Court. He will never find me to take me again.

I still spend my time planting, growing, and making. It is what I did before, and it is what I am now.

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