Post by leah on Jun 26, 2010 18:16:38 GMT -5
ready to fight, a knife held close by your side
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LEAH ESTELLE PEMBERLEY
broken mirror, a million shades of light
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Name:: Leah Estelle Pemberley.
Nickname:: Lee, Leelee.
Age:: Seventeen.
Gender:: Female.
we can run to the end of the world
* * * *
Species:: Demi-God.
Olympian Parent:: Morpheus.
Years at Camp:: Five.
Claimed:: Yes.
the songs of the season are her only crown
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Celebrity Claim: Ginta Lapina.
Looks::
Leah is definitely a girl who stands out in a crowd. The first thing a person notices about Leah is that she is frighteningly pale. As far as first impressions go, many people even mistake her being albino. With milky white skin and naturally platinum blonde hair, Leah is used to the staring and whispers that go her way. She practically glows in direct sunlight, almost looking as if she stepped right out of a dream. After prolonged exposure to the sun, Leah neither tans nor sunburns, staying a frigid pale. Her hair is barely a shade lighter than her skin, being a blonde most people can only pay for out of a bottle. The soft-colored tresses reach down her back, ending abruptly at her at the bottom of her shoulder blades. Leah’s hair is naturally wavy and quite thick, acting on its own accord instead of her actually styling it. It pours from the middle of her head, going in any direction it pleases, but still managing to look decent.
Her lashes and brows are the same light color, offering very little dynamics when it comes to the girl’s face. The main contrast in Leah’s appearance is her eyes. They are a pale blue, almost translucent-like. In the right light, they appear grey and dreamy, much like her father’s. Leah always look wide-eyed and surprised, her blue eyes definitely standing out from the rest of her pale features. Her face is oval-shaped, squaring off at her chin. Her mouth and eyes are very prominent, while her mouth is petite and her lips are a bit on the thin side. Her ears are big and stick out quite a bit, though they are usually shielded by her hair. Leah likes her ears a lot, though, so it isn’t uncommon for her to tuck her hair back in an attempt to show them off.
Leah is built like a tree, with long limbs and a thin build. She is 5’8” and looks painfully fragile, despite her height. She is a few pounds from looking unhealthy, her time at camp having packed some muscle onto her thin frame. Leah has curves, though one practically has to squint to see them. They are noticeable moreso in her hips than chest, most of her weight being shifted to the lower part of her body. She has powerful legs and fantastic balance, with arm-strength being one of her major weaknesses.
As far as personal style goes, Leah leans more towards a retro chic, looking like she stepped out of the 50s. High-waisted shirts and shorts litter her closet, coupled with things like knit cardigans and polka dot tee shirts. Flip-flops usually adorn her small feet.
Personality::
Leah is awkward, to be frank. She always has been and probably always will be, which is something she is okay with. Due to a sheltered childhood and trauma in her life, Leah doesn’t exactly comprehend basic human interaction. She is painfully shy, though her natural curiosity tends to bring her out of her shell. Leah looks at the world in an almost phantasmic, often confusing reality and dreams. She finds almost everything to be oddly fascinating, from the way a person walks or how a tree moves in the breeze. Her infatuation with wonder comes off as childish, putting off many people. Some, though, find her general excitement about life to be endearing.
Leah isn’t usually one to start a conversation, unless she really has a question to ask. Leah speaks in mostly questions, having an almost insatiable thirst for knowledge, whether factual or opinion-based. Her voice is soft and low, relaying her words in a calm rhythm. It doesn’t take much to get Leah’s lips moving, though. As long as a person has a warm smile and a seemingly good heart, Leah will trust them with her life. She is naive and unassuming. In her world of dreams, everybody is nice and kindhearted, so she can’t see why it should not be the same in the waking world. Leah simply does not understand basic things like that.
When Leah really opens up to someone, it’s not hard to tell that she is an excited, life-loving seventeen-year-old. She doesn’t care much for what people think of her, shrugging off the weird looks she gets. As far as Leah is concerned, if they don’t like her then they just aren’t worth her time. It’s not uncommon to hear her humming a upbeat tone as she walks by on the way to the arena, or to see her simply watching clouds by the lake. Leah just loves living life, no matter the company she’s with or the situation she’s in. She’s learned to take everything in stride.
Leah is a few hours of being classified as completely nocturnal. She is tired at most points in the day, frequently taking naps or even nodding off during her training. She spends almost every hour of the night awake, reading in her cabin and trying to give privacy to the sleeping campers around her.
Family::
Lucille Desdemona Pemberley - Mother. [Deceased]
Morpheus - Father.
Robert Daniel Pemberley - Step-father. [Deceased]
Deacon Nathaniel Pemberley - Half-brother, Guardian.
History::
The Pemberley family was a pretty big deal in Manhattan. Robert Pemberley was one of the top financier’s in the country, but into big-time investments and making money like it grew on trees. Lucille Pemberley, his trophy wife, came from a predominantly upperclass and high-end legacy stationed in Manhattan. They had a perfect son, Deacon, who was already being groomed to continue the family business after the old man died. There lives were going according to plan. All it took was one nightmare to mess it all up.
It wasn’t exactly unlike Lucille to have affairs. Robert cheated on her all the time, so she easily did the same. As long as they looked perfect to the people around them, the couple were more than okay with stashing some skeletons in the closet. When Lucille began having horrific nightmares for many weeks, she couldn’t help but seek out a specialist. She wanted to know what was going on her in that little brain of hers. Her quest for knowledge came to a screeching halt when she met the god of dreams himself, Morpheus. The god was charming and a bit mysterious, something that made Lucille absolutely weak in the knees. His pale blonde hair and dreamy grey eyes didn’t exactly put the woman off, either. Of course, the two began a small romantic tryst.
For weeks, Lucille’s nightmares stopped, being replaced with fantastic dreams, all centering around the god himself. Lucille blamed the coincidence of sheer infatuation, having no idea that her love was anything but an ordinary human. After several weeks, Lucille broke things off, easily getting bored with their relationship. They parted without any burned bridges or bitter feelings, but the damage was already done. Two weeks after the parting, Lucille found out she was pregnant. She spun the pregnancy to be Robert’s doing, soaking up the attention from doting colleagues and family friends. For a little bit, Lucille actually convinced herself that the baby was Robert’s. Every night, though, for nine months, Lucille had an extraordinary dream.
On June 2nd, Leah Estelle Pemberley was brought into the world, taking the Pemberley family completely by shock. The predominantly brunette, brown-eyed family stared at the clear-eyed baby girl with small tufts of platinum hair sprouting from her head. Immediately, Robert knew she wasn’t his. The family accepted her, though, for the most part. Still, as soon as Leah was born, she was the elephant in the room - the ticking time bomb waiting to set the entire Pemberley family off. Lucille, though, was immediately smitten with the baby, despite her husband’s indifferent towards the baby girl. Lucille even insisted on having Leah’s crib in the master bedroom. Whenever the baby was near, Lucille’s nightmares stayed at bay. Leah became her little miracle and literal dream catcher, rarely leaving her mother’s side.
Another family member grew to adore Leah, her old brother, Deacon. Though he was twelve years her senior, Deacon spent a lot of his time playing with and caring for Leah. Throughout her toddlers years, Leah turned into a bright, bouncy child with curious eyes and a smile that could break a grown man’s heart. Still, when you’re a demi-god, all must good times must come to an end.
It wasn’t until Leah entered preschool that people began to notice that she wasn’t normal. Leah shied away from other children, preferring to play by herself, or simply nap in the corner. Naptime became Leah’s biggest ordeal, the small child unable to sleep while the other children did. Pictures would pop in her head, memories that weren’t hers - family trips she’d never taken, aspirations she had never had. Nobody really made anything of it until Leah reached the first grade, thinking she may have just had sleeping problems.
Still, throughout the years, Leah’s troubles sleeping only magnified, finding herself in a dream world not her own every night. One day, the young girl simply snapped. She was six and it was her second week on the first grade. In her tidy school uniform and shiny, blonde hair pulled back into a neat braid, Leah literally had a meltdown. With a box of crayons and a notebook full of paper, Leah began to draw furiously. It wasn’t silly houses or rounded clouds she was drawing - not even close. As her teacher and fellow students neared the pale girl, they were all shocked to see detailed drawings of events all too familiar to them. Slowly, they realized Leah was drawing pictures of their dreams, page for page, line for line. They were all there; the dream where Timmy was a Nascar driver, the one where Mrs. Thurgood was being chased in the woods by an axe murder; even the one where little Susanne Watson dreamed she owned a ranch full of kittens. Needless to say, Leah was pulled from school.
Being home-schooled was fantastic for little Leah, the dreams subsiding less and the restless nights lowering in number. She excelled in her studies, though her parents noticed a handicap on Leah’s social abilities. They put her into therapy, deciding any amount of money was worth not having a slightly awkward daughter. Therapy became a gateway for the young girl, helping her better control the thoughts that went on in her head at night. It quelled the demons in her head, almost to the point where they stopped completely. Her dreams suddenly became nothing to fear, easily turning into the most enjoyable moment Leah had.
Around the age of ten, Leah began to turn to her dream world for all the answers. It was easier for her, this dream world. Everybody was nice and nobody was afraid or taken aback by the little girl. Her parents' marriage wasn't dissolving before her very eyes. Leah could control pretty much anything in her dreams, leaving the waking world heavily undesirable by comparison. The little girl spent more and more time sleeping, something deemed good for her at the beginning. When she began to retreat from everyday life, almost to the point where she even spent her waking hours with her eyes closed, off in some other world, the doctors noticed that Leah's social handicap was becoming much larger.
Despite Leah's issues, her family still had to go on with life as if nothing was wrong. Parties and events were a normal staple in the young girl's life. As long as she stayed by her mother's side and smiled, just as Robert told her to, they were a relatively painless ordeal. In front of others, they were a family to envy. Robert and Lucille were loving towards one another and to their peculiar daughter. Leah had become somewhat of a spectacle at these events, her doll-like appearance found to be absolutely darling by all the high society folks. The Pemberley family was virtually flawless in the eyes of others'. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case at all.
After a party celebrating the success of a huge investment, the Pemberleys were on their way back to their Manhattan flat. It was a mere two weeks shy of Leah's eleventh birthday, so Lucille was discussing the possibilities of a birthday party with Robert. Their talking was actually civil, a major change from the arguments that dotted their conversations for those past ten years. Leah listened quietly in the backseat, eyes focused on the New York nightlife blurring by the window. Suddenly, the young girl had remember something she had seen in a dream, Lucille's dream. Turning to her mother in the front, Leah asked the simple, world-shattering question. "Is that blonde man, the one in your dreams, my dad?"
Now, Robert knew that Leah wasn't his. He had known that fact ever since she was born, choosing to not discuss it. Even Leah knew he wasn't. But, when little Leah's left her mouth, a floodgate was opened. The two began screaming and yelling. Lucille was crying. Robert was using such ugly words, directing them at Leah's mother. Leah didn't understand. She didn't know what she had done wrong, but she knew it was her fault. She just wanted them to stop screaming. That's all she had wanted. Closing her eyes tightly, the last thing Leah remembered was their voices suddenly fading off, only to be replaced the screeching tires coming towards them.
When Leah woke up, she was in the hospital. Besides a broken leg and minor injuries, the little girl was relatively unscathed. According to the official report, her parents had died on impact with the truck. Eye witness report stated that Robert looked almost as if he had fallen asleep behind the wheel. Somehow, Leah knew it was her fault. The little girl practically had no time to mourn, being whisked away for questioning and to aid her, then twenty-three year old, brother in handling funeral arrangements. A small-scale court hearing gave custody to Deacon, leaving the man with a business to run and a little girl to care for. He put the business on the backburner, allowing some of Robert's associates to handle things. Leah became his top priority.
Despite the death of her parents, Leah enjoyed living with Deacon. The two just understood each other. Her brother didn't dwell on her social shortcomings or weird occurrences, choosing to embrace them. He still kept Leah out of school and continued her therapy, so Leah's life stayed relatively normal for a few years. It wasn't until she was fifteen that things suddenly turned very odd.
It had been a normal day. The city was bustling in the streets below her and Deacon's apartment, the usual background music for her life. Leah had been reading a book in her room, while Deacon was getting ready for some frivolous business meeting. He called from the bathroom, wondering what tie he should wear. By the time Leah had gotten up and put her book down, everything was silent. Being the oblivious girl she is, Leah walked towards Deacon's bedroom, her upbeat humming filling the silent void. When she found her brother lying face down on his bedroom floor, two discarded ties laying beside him, Leah simply rolled him over, laying the appropriate tie on his chest. By pure instinct, she knew she wasn't going to be able to wake him up.
Leah decided to go for a stroll after this, walking by the sleeping citizens littering the sidewalks on New York. Her upbeat hum echoed off the buildings as she traipsed about. She was out when the first yells of war went towards the sky, though she simply shrugged it off and kept on her walk. Why was Leah so comfortable with the entire city suddenly falling asleep, and battle cries ringing out from all directions? Well, as far as Leah was concerned, she was probably just dreaming. Dreams couldn't touch her.
As the sun dropped from the sky and the battles grew louder, Leah walked back to her home, sidestepping the same sleeping citizens. She didn't sleep that night, listening as the war raged on in the distance. Leah simply read some more. Her mind constantly on the words on the pages, Leah was able to hold off from wandering into the dreams of the sleeping city around her. Everyone once and awhile, Leah would get a simple flash of a dream, but it'd be gone as soon as it appeared. Several times she'd catch a glimpse into a certain person's dreams, scenes of Poseidon's palace, May Castellan, and even Kronos himself. These dreams were harder to fend off, almost as if they were being forced. Leah waved them off, though, having no real idea of what they meant. And, of course, Leah thought it was all a dream, so it didn't really matter to her.
Leah went out the next day, the aftermath of the battles pretty evident around her. Leah continued her walk, her energy never wavering. The sleeping people around her seemed to revitalize her, making the young girl feel better than she had in years. A sort of energy surrounded each person, the power that was lulling them into a slumber. This energy felt warmly familiar to the unaware Leah, as if it was something that she had felt in her own dreams before. She reveled in the feeling, only returning to her apartment when she spotted the drakon wrapping itself around a building in the distance. Calmly, Leah turned away and began walking back to her apartment building, deciding that was something she didn't want to deal with.
The next few hours were spent mulling around her home, reading a book and playing video games. While Luke was killing himself for the sake of mankind, Leah was bowling a perfect game of Wii Bowling, completely unaware of the turn of events happening outside her window. Slowly, her brother began to come to, wandering out into the living room in confusion. Leah simply shrugged as he questioned, wondering why the Hades he was all up in her dream. She bid the confused man good night, suddenly feeling exhausted as the city became a buzz. The teen crawled into her bed and closed her eyes, entering a dreamless sleep for the first time ever in her life.
Leah slept for an entire day, waking as the city began to come to terms with what happened. She slowly realized it all hadn't been a dream. Instead of dealing with the gravity of the situation, Leah simply rolled over and went back to sleep. She stayed in an almost constant sleep for two weeks, waking only to eat and use the bathroom. Deacon became worried by the sudden transformation in his sister, but let her be, something his parents never would've done. When Leah finally did get up, it wasn't because she wanted to, but because she had a visitor.
Slinking into the front room, Leah was shocked to see the blonde man from her mother's dreams. He looked uncomfortable, almost as if he was forced to be there. He was, actually, with the sudden action that all demi-gods were to be claimed. The two chatted, awkwardly making small talk, before Morpheus simply said there was a place where Leah could go, a place where she could learn to control her powers. Wanting the awkward encounter to end, feeling small in comparison to her immortal father, Leah graciously accepted the offer to attend Camp Half-Blood. She knew she was burden on the mortals around her, even deadly in the case of her parents.
That was how Leah found herself at Camp Half-Blood. Despite having been there for two years, Leah is still adjusting and finding her powers go far beyond what she ever imagined. She can ward herself from what she likes to call "dream walking", which is entering the dreams of others around her. She has found herself becoming more a psychological warrior, hardly having any combat skills at all. Having much more control and assurance over her powers, Leah tries to focus on fixing her social shortcomings, Lucida to become a bit more normal. As far as camp goes, though, nobody is really normal.
broken sword and shield and tears that never fall
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Name/Nickname:: Gabby.
Roleplaying Experience:: Five years.
Sample RP:: See Gabby's posts. :]
