E L S E W H E R E C H I L D
CHARACTER INFORMATIONCharacter Name: Nancy Selridge
Gender: Female
Age: Nine
Bloodline: Halfblood
Parents/Guardians:
Mother: Nina Selridge - Muggle - NPC
Father: Unknown - Magical - Non-entity
Residence: Prior to the Time Warp, with her mother in a King's Cross slum.
Afterwards, in the care of St. Mungo's.
Do you plan to have a connection to a particular existing place?St. Mungo's
Do you wish to be approved as a group with any other characters? If so who and for what IC reason? N/A
Please list any other characters you already have at the site:Current: None
Prior: Bridge Sloane Antillar; Dani Parker; Ashling Sinclair; Genevre McBride
Biography:Nancy huddled on the curb, wrapping her arms around her skinny knees and missing Jasper.
Jasper was Nancy's whole world. He was her only family. There was Mam, true, but she had no place in Nancy's idea of Family. No, Nancy had a very specific idea of what having a family entailed: a mother whose world revolved around you, and who smiled all the time, and a father with wavy hair and a white smile, and lots and lots of siblings, the big ones who looked out for you, and the little ones who were always getting into mischief, but then learning important lessons about life. She wasn't entirely certain where she'd gotten that impression - it wasn't from books, for she could only barely read and had no interest in reading for pleasure, and it wasn't from radio, for she had very vivid mental images to go along with her made-up happy family. Eventually, she simply decided she had had a very strong imagination.
Wherever it came from, there wasn't much in Nancy's life that matched up with her imaginings. Her mother barely recognized her on the good days. On the bad... Well, Nancy had learned long ago to stay well away from the tenemant on the bad days, and to take Jasper with her. There was no father in the picture for Nancy to compare against her wavy-haired figment. The only person who came close to her picture was rambunctious, mischievous, good-hearted, Jasper, and there was only the one of him. And now, Nancy supposed, not even that much.
Nancy
always knew where Jasper was. It was just one of those things she
knew, like when Mam was about to have a bad day, or how to sometimes unlatch the back window without reaching it if you concentrated hard enough and had to sneak out badly enough. Jasper called it her magic, but Nancy scoffed. Magic was baby stuff, and she - at a lofty nine years old - knew better. It was instincts was all. Anyone could do it if they tried hard enough. But she could
always rely on her instincts to tell her where Jasper was, even when he ran away, and now he just... wasn't there.
Neither was Mam, for that matter, but Nancy didn't care about that. Losing Mam was like losing one of your socks next to losing Jasper. She hadn't spared more than half a thought for Mam's whereabouts, but she'd spent she-didn't-know-how-long - weeks? months? - combing first King's Cross and then all the rest of London for any sign of Jasper, and was just... gone. It had been a surreal, spooky time for Nancy. She thought she knew King's Cross better than anyone, but around the same time Jasper disappeared, everything else seemed to change. Buildings and streets she thought she knew were gone, or different. People seemed to be dressed strangely, and to talk strangely, and to look at her strangely, but she could never put a finger on what, precisely was strange about them. She wondered often if she was going mad.
Nancy refused to cry. She hadn't cried once since she'd lost him. She'd barely cried in all her nine years. But now, absorbed in her failure to be the sort of big sister her made-up family told her she ought to be, she came the closest she ever had.
Dragging her dirty sleeve across her nose and firmly telling herself that it was only running because of the weather, Nancy forced herself to stand. Sulking wouldn't find Jasper, and it wouldn't keep her alive long enough to keep looking. She hadn't been keeping as close track of how often she should find food as she ought to have been, and her stomach was complaining mightily.
The best bet, she'd learned, was to find a hospital. They were so obsessively concerned with having the bestest, freshest, healthiest food, that they often threw away whole trays of food that were barely spoiled at all, and Nancy was sure she'd passed one a few blocks back.
Retracing her steps, Nancy found the building again and squinted at the sign to make sure of herself, puzzling out the letters one by one. Saint Mungo's Hospital. A foolish, silly name for a place that was supposed to be all learned and dignified, but that wouldn't change the quality of the food. Nancy slipped into the shadows until an approaching copper passed by on his beat, then darted off into the alley behind the great building to hunt for its waste bins.
Roleplay Response:Nancy sniffed scornfully as she watched the other little girl drift along the ground in her direction, then busily pretended to be occupied with her mud pies as the girl drew closer. Watching out of the corner of her eye, she snorted to herself when the girl gave up and stuck the broom in the ground, then glanced up in mild shock when the girl actually addressed her.
Concealing her surprise, she quickly looked back down to the piles of dirt and grass in front of her.
"No," she said shortly in response to the abrupt question.
She returned to her mud pies for a few minutes, then paused and considered a moment. She glanced up again at the upright broom and the sulking child, then down at her pies, then back up at the broom. An idea occurred to her.
What she
really needed, she decided, was a proper mud pit. Prior to being taken into the orphanage's care, she'd never had much an opportunity to play in the grass and dirt and sunshine, and was taking to it with enthusiasm. The answer was
always "create more mud." There was a little park-sized pond not far away, and if she could dig a hole just at the edge of it, the dirt and water would mix beautifully. All she needed was a big stick to dig with.
"But I'll
let you play with me," she said suddenly, as though the intervening time had not passed, "If you let me use your broom."
OTHERHow did you find us?
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