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Elsewhere Accepted / Miriam Babel, Elsewhere Adult
« on: 04/05/2016 at 04:13 »

E L S E W H E R E   A D U L T

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Miriam Babel
Gender: Female
Age: 31
Blood Status: Halfblood

Education:  Homeschooled


Residence:
Sussex, England

Occupation
Cursebreaker

Do you plan to have a connection to a particular existing place (for example: the Ministry, Shrieking Shack) or to take over an existing shop in need of new management?
nope!

Requested Magic Levels:
Adult characters have 32 starting levels to distribute across these four categories (less levels can be used if you so desire, but no more than 32). The number of levels on the lowest ability must be at least half of the highest ability.

  • Charms: 8
  • Divination: 8
  • Transfiguration: 9
  • Summoning: 7
Do you wish to be approved as a group with any other characters? If so who and for what IC reason?
nope

Please list any other characters you already have at the site:
Lucifer Morgenstern, Elias Irigoyen, Rosamund Baxter...

Biography: (300 words minimum.)
The bazaar smelled like cinnamon and cloves and orange peels. The stifling heat trapped the mingling scents in the merchants’ stalls, nestled in the shadow of a sand-colored mosque; all around, the noise of footsteps and voices calling out above the din rose and fell, a most marvelous cacophony. Robes swished, scarves fluttered, and children scampered between the legs of oblivious adults. Vendors peddled their wares, waving vividly dyed fabrics beneath the noses of uninterested shoppers; the scents and sights and sounds were overwhelming, but Miriam slowly became aware of a voice calling her name.

“Miriam!”

Miriam rolled over in bed, kicking her legs free from the tangled sheets. Groggily, she pushed herself onto her elbows and ran a hand through her curls—tangled and greasy, she was due for a shower—before collapsing back onto the pillow with a groan. She felt tears well in her eyes as she returned to her surroundings; not the colorful bazaar from her dream, but the dusty attic room of her family home in Sussex.

England. Never had she lived in such a dull place, and she hated it more than anything. A mere dream of Tunisia was enough to remind her of the painful longing in her chest: a longing for cotton linens and sweet peppermint tea, rosewater cookies and saffron and narrow, stone streets. Outside, droplets of rain pounded against the walls of the seaside cottage—it was always raining in Sussex, Miriam had quickly learned. Water collected in muddy puddles in the garden. It dripped from roofs, pooled in ditches, turned the grassy bluffs into slush, slipped through the cracks in the walls. The house was perpetually damp, despite the fires that she kept burning all day. She longed for the scorching, parched air of the Tunisian desert, the red sand and endless dunes. She missed the—

“Miriam!”

The croaky, tired voice of her father sounded again. It was faint—he was downstairs, then, in his study. Miriam sighed, and languidly tore herself from her bed. The sky outside her window was dark, but the clock on the wall read eight o’clock; her nap had stretched longer than she’d planned, and Adrian Babel was likely expecting his dinner.

The wooden stairs creaked under the weight of her footsteps as she hurried to the ground floor, switching on the lights as she went. Strange objects hung from the flowered wallpaper: swords and sabers, framed pages of ancient text, and masks that leered down from their pegs on the wall. Adrian’s office was packed floor to ceiling with these foreign artifacts, brought back from his years of travel.

A historian by trade, Adrian’s work took him all over the world, and Miriam accompanied him every time. Most of her childhood was spent travelling with her father: she learned her alphabet sitting in the shade of palm trees along the Nile, her multiplication tables in the shade of the pyramids. Her father taught her what tutors could not—charms, ancient runes, arithmancy, and divination—and by the age of nineteen, she was working as a cursebreaker for an Egyptian bank.
Those were her glory days. Every adventure she’d ever dreamed of was locked away in the stone vaults of pyramids, and she loved nothing more than the thrill of danger that kept her on her toes. She spent four years traveling North Africa, breaking into vaults and retrieving the hidden fortunes. On a job in the outskirts of Tunis, she met Omar Akbar, a muggle student at a local university; the next time she visited her parents in Sussex, she was his wife and three months pregnant with their first child.

Yasmin Akbar was born in Tunis, in 1940, and for a few years their family was happy. They’d emerged unscathed from the war, and were grateful for their luck; Omar taught mathematics in an elementary school, and Miriam cared for their daughter and home. Her secret hung heavy on her heart, though: she’d never told her husband that she was a witch, and for good reason. The evening she finally caved and confided in him, he disappeared the next morning with their daughter.

The loss of Yasmin was a heavy blow for Miriam. She spent the next two years searching for her daughter, unable to come to terms with the fact that she was gone.  The letter from home arrived in the spring of 1947. Her mother was dead, and her father too old to care for himself; he wanted her to return to England and to forget about Omar and her previous life.  She followed the first par of his advice, and returned to England in 1947. Omar, however, she could neither forgive nor forget.

“Miriam!”

Adrian’s incessant call woke her from her reverie, and she hurried down the last few stairs to her father’s study.

“What is it?” she asked, trying to keep her tone patient. Her father was harder to care for than Yasmin had ever been, and it took all her self-restraint not to snap at him.

He glanced up from his desk, which was covered with books and parchment. Research, he called it, and spent all day pouring over old notes and maps. Miriam was content that he was occupied—him getting bored was one less thing for her to worry about.

“I’ve lost my glasses,” he said innocently. Sitting there amidst a mountain of books, he looked like the senile old man he’d described in his letter begging her to come home, but she was beginning to suspect that he had an ulterior motive. Namely, rescuing her from the depression that filled the hole left in her chest by her missing daughter. Now that she was living under his roof, he took on the responsibility of making sure she didn’t mope in bed all day long.

“They’re on your head, dad,” she told him, a hint of exasperation crawling into her voice. He patted his bald crown, and made a show of acting surprised when his hands found the glasses.

“I’m going to sleep,” she told him, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Don’t call unless it’s urgent.”


Roleplay: 

Option Two -
The snow had been falling steadily all morning and it didn't look like it was going to stop any time soon. Joshua Campbell scrunched his face up in a frown as he lifted his gaze to look to the sky. Snow. It really was quite a bother.

And it certainly didn't make it better that Diagon Alley seemed to be getting more and more crowded. Joshua sighed and pointed his wand at the large box that was currently placed on the doorstep of his shop. He had to get going. He had an order to deliver.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" The elderly man muttered and watched the box hover in the air for a moment. Honestly, did St. Mungo's really need that much tinsel? And with glitter of all things? He sighed again. If it hadn't been for the rather convincing stamp on the order, he would have been likely to believe it had been a prank by one of those orphaned rascals living up there. 

Oh well, there was no point in waiting. Joshua deftly stirred the box down the doorstep and out onto the street, carefully levitating it above the heads of the crowd.

"Coming through! Coming through!" His voice sounded over the chatter of the crowd. "Keep out! Move ahead! Go on!" This was going way too slow. People were in the way and walking like they had all day! He huffed. Luckily the road was down hill.

"Coming through! Coming th--- arrrgh!" Joshua let out a loud shout as his feet suddenly slipped in the snow and sent him, the box, and several long strands of tinsel tumbling into the person who had been walking in front of him.

"For Merlin's sake!" Joshua muttered angrily as he hurried to his feet again, red and gold tinsel now decorating his black coat. "I am so sorry! This blasted snow!" He looked apologetic at the person he had crashed into.

Roleplay Response:
Miriam shivered beneath her heavy coat as she hurried down the cobblestone street, slipping and sliding on the fresh snow. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d experienced an English winter—she’d avoided the UK like the plague for as long as she could remember—but she did know that she didn’t like the cold one bit. Since arriving in England, she hadn’t had the time (or motivation) to go shopping for clothes more appropriate for the weather. Underneath the coat, her thin cotton dress provided little warmth, and her calfskin shoes were already soaked through by the freezing slush.

Miriam felt decidedly out of place in London; she could not familiarize herself with the sights and smells of the city that had become foreign to her; she’d gotten lost twice that day, and had to ask for directions from patient locals.

Lost in her thoughts, Miriam paid no heed to the crowd that had gathered for holiday shopping, jostling pedestrians as she moved down the street. Tall and broad shouldered, it was easy for her to pave her way through the crowd—most stepped aside to let the imposing figure past, so the collision came as a surprise to her.

The weight of another person came crashing into her, and she lost her footing on the slippery ground. She hit the snow with a heavy thump, suddenly covered in glittery, festive tinsel. Beside her, the perpetrator of the collision regained his footing, swearing under his breath.

“For Merlin’s sake! I am so sorry! This blasted snow!”

Miriam agreed with him there: the snow really was an inconvenience, miserable compared to the mild winters of Tunisia. Pulling herself to her feet, she straightened out her clothes—luckily, her coat had taken the worst of the fall, and her dress underneath was still dry.

“It was my fault,” Miriam insisted, fishing tinsel out of her hair and returning it to the man’s box. “I should have been paying more attention.”


OTHER
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