Thess

Tick-tock, little firefly...
''She couldn't move. Standing on one side of the creek with her hair ruffled and mud on her knees, Theresa watched the fading backs of the other girls running further into the woods shrieking with laughter. Try all she might, she could not bring herself to hop across the slip of babbling water that had initially seperated them. It was as if an invisible wall had erected, telling her 'No; you are not to follow.' ''

It would be two years before the bodies of the other girls were found, and their apparent murderer tried.

Theresa Lynsey Brookridge grew up in a city built on its dead. The stale scent likened to piss, she learned, was actually the scent of decay that liked to leech up from the heated pavement of the roads and walkways. In the shadows at night, as tourists oo'ed and aah'ed over ghost tours, Thess would watch from the windows as Root Workers dug up bones, their faces painted to ward away the wrath of a spirit whose name she was scolded for saying.

The city of the dead, Savannah, was a place of secrets amidst iced tea and lazy drawls. There were places she found she could not be compelled to go, people she immediately wanted to run away from. The incident with the girls of her youth led her to trust this instinct, and as she grew, Thess found it easier to not speak of it.

Out of the jar, into the sky...
''Thess watched the thrum and sway of bodies amidst the flickering lights, her pen drumming boredly to another beat. Here or there a shadow, something sharper cutting through into her attentions. At last, pen touched paper, and she drew what she yearned to see.''

''Satyrs leering from their seats, fey whirling and dancing. A demon with red eyes smoking lazily at the bar as he let a coin roll and flip through his fingers.''

And Lilith, masked, approaching her to sit for a portrait.

For all intents and purposes, life was otherwise normal and slow. She graduated high school, entered college, and began to attempt earning an art degree.

For one class, she took a trip to England and felt herself almost immediately drawn to a club called The Horned God. In counter to that, she found she could not bring herself to stride down into other areas of the city, such as the Haitian corner.

It would be left to debate whether some shades from those dark alleys followed her home back to Georgia.

Nature of the flickering light...
Thess is a generally quiet woman who is pleasant--possibly out of the assumption that it is a necessity--but at times terse. She can be swift to sarcasm, and does not always censor her speech otherwise. She will often keep others at arm's length, but when someone takes it upon themselves to latch onto her, she seems to have difficulty shaking them off. This often gets her into rather humorous situations.

Field work and observation are her comfort zones, enjoying gathering data rather than being up to her neck in trouble until necessary. Be that as it may, she often appears giddy when having done an extended performance of electric and fiery attacks.

Bees and Devils
''Sitting in the circle, several armed and masked men in sharp suits with pyramids marking the hem hovering back and ready should things go awry, Thess felt beads of sweat slide down her back and brow. Her eyes burned, her lungs ached. Her fingers tingled with the need to release an unseen charge, and before her, the demon crooned.''

"It is done," it said, and disappeared in a sulfuric wisp of smoke.

Dark hues drifted open at last, squinting against the residual pain.

''Illuminati did not buckle and break, they said. With her new powers thanks to a certain intervention, they wanted to shape her talents into something they could use.''

''Illuminati took power, afterall. Seized it.''

And now so did she.