Maybe we should always assume the worst.
– Chuck Palahniuk, "Fight Club"
Better terrible truths, than kind lies.
– Leigh Bardugo, "Six of Crows"
The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak.
– The Darkling, "Shadow and Bone"
Background
Born in 1927 into -the- Rockefeller family (though by her mother's marriage to a distant cousin of the wealthy and well-known dynasty), Darby (Mary Daisy Rockefeller) grew up with a strange juxtaposition of solid middle class home life with her Rockefeller Great Uncle's generous financial subsidies of her private schooling and Finishing School. Used to being the odd one out (due to a significantly lower social status in her home life than among her school peers and extended, famous relatives), she quickly learned to compensate with her genuinely friendly, girl-next-door demeanor and trustworthy friendship. Several friends through the years in the uber-wealthy set included her in family trips and experiences.
At age 20, her famous Great-Uncle held a high-society Coming Out Ball for his distantly related, but favorite niece (then named Mary Daisy Rockefeller). On that night of her birthday and societal 'introduction', the 31st of March, 1947, she was abducted, a Fetch left to live her life, while she was Taken by The [Darbykeeper.jpg Master] of the Hunt to serve as servant, revelry companion, and inevitably to be game,
hunted daily in her Runnerswift form. Think a life similar to those serving the Fae with the Thistledown Hair in the story of 'Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell', adding a recurring punishing, bloody Hunt, servants turned to beasts (some prey, some hounds, some eventually graduating to lesser members of the Hunt itself. Each day, another Great Hunt.
Eventually an unexpected (and guilt-ridden) escape returned Mary (now Darby) to 2016. Fortunately for her, she ended up taken in and provided the support and aid of a close-knit, Winter Motley in Maine. She spent the majority of a year with them, earning some Goodwill in the Court. However, she lives in constant, anxious vigilance, certain that her Keeper will successfully, inevitably hunt her down again. At one point in early 2017, she was so certain of pending capture, her new 'family' in Maine, sent her to Vermont with letters of introduction for a few members of good standing in the Winter Court there.
She has only recently arrived. Jobs were arranged for her; she subsists on a small budget with a new identity: 'Darby Nash'. She works part-time as a barista and also is an off-season conditioning coach for collegiate athletes at a local university. In her free time she runs. And then she runs more.
In social, public situations, it would be easy to initially identify Darby as an introvert, given her tendency to observe and listen rather than initiate most interactions. Although her smiles are fleeting, she is most often pleasant, even when reserved. There is a hint of stubbornness to her that appears now and then, and paranoia lives constantly behind whatever she is doing, clear in her perceptive, roving gaze. Remind me how to breathe again.
For those who have the patience to prove themselves (no simple task) of the beginning of trust, who can tolerate her distracted-paranoid vigilance (squirrel!) and the time it takes to get her to open up beyond polite small talk, there are some interesting layers to patiently discover.
She is marked with tattoos some of which are visible to all, and some only to those with fae-sight. Any who get a glimpse of her inner ankles; at her inner wrists and the hollow of her throat is a slightly different, stylized tattoo also of another arrow.
Those with fae-sight may also see some or all of an elaborate tattoo in silvery green from her shoulders down to just above her ankles. Dense, dangerous and thorny foliage that may suggest dense forest or the danger of the Hedge covers all but the arrows and a place high on her back. There, peering through an opening in that tangled, vicious foliage is the head of a doe, eye's aleart, ears wide, and even the almost too-vivid sense of a twitching nose from Darby's Runnerswift form, complete with delicate moonlit coloring. It would take some ignorance not to infer that this doe is hyper-attuned to the inevitable return of the Wild Hunt, senses attuned. One might even imagine with long enough scrutiny the heavy puffs of breath from running.
What is left is an elaborate tattoo of green foliage across all of her skin. And high upon her back peering through an opening in that foliage are the alert doe’s eyes, the wide ears and narrowed, twitching nose of her beast-form, complete with delicate, moonlit coloring ever-vigilant for the inevitable return of the Wild Hunt. At her wrists, her ankles, and beneath the hollow of her throat are the arrows of her Master, the Hunter. And painted above her heart on her chest, one of these inked arrows pierces into her chest, inked trails of blood sliding downward.
Finally, visible to all who glimpse the space on her chest above her heart, there is a detailed tattoo of a heart stabbed through with a dagger, the tattoo including streams of blood sliding down her abdomen over green foliage as if she were actually bleeding.
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