[Emmeline Lowe]

WELCOME TO LOS EUROSIA,

EMMELINE LOUISE LOWE

"I'm four-fifths of reckless and one-fifth of Jack
I push like a daisy through old sidewalk cracks
Yeah, my kinda crazy's still running its courses with
Wildflowers and wild horses"

BASICS

NAME: Emmy Lowe

AGE: 29 years old

BIRTHDATE: November 7th (Scorpio)

PRONOUNS: She / Her

SEXUALITY: Bisexual

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single

OCCUPATION: Night Clerk @ Whispering Pines Motel

It’s the last thing she expected to be doing with her life, but she’s just trying to make ends meet. Besides the occasional shady after-dark crisis, the hours are (usually) quiet. There is always a vacancy. NO VACANCY does not exist at the Whispering Pines, at least not as far as Emmy’s ever seen. The neon NO on the rusted sign is perpetually burnt out, or just turned off, because there is always, always at least a handful of empty rooms in this shithole, and does she use that to her advantage? Yup. She does. Because night shift gets torturously boring, lending her far too much time to think about things she’d rather forget, but there are always people sleeping. And so, there are always people dreaming. Sometimes she visits motel guests in their sleep, through their dreams, feeling out what makes them tick, gently coaxing things in one way or another – for better, if they seem to need it; or worse, if it suits her. Sometimes it makes it easier to talk to people in the morning. Sometimes it makes it harder. Or sometimes, if she uses her ability too much, it makes her forget things.

NEIGHBORHOOD: The Lowe family ranch, located 30 miles outside the city.

MEMBER GROUP: Gifted

POWERS: Dream Manipulation

Emmy’s ability of dream manipulation means that she can lucid dream, and she can also slip into the dreams of others. She might simply sense and observe someone else’s dreams, or she might go further and choose to shape and alter them. The latter is much more difficult, and although she has become more resilient and controlled over the years, it is a delicate craft and easy to over-exert herself. She has had to learn to work subtly (it is more of an art than a science, in that way) with a gentle touch so that whatever she alters or manifests does not seem out of place or alien in the dreamer’s mind. She has used it for good and – though rarely – for harm, or even just as a way to get back at someone she’s exceptionally irritated with. But she’s mostly kept to one side of a self-imposed boundary ever since she made a nearly-disastrous slip in her brother's dreamscapes several years ago. Sometimes she’s used it simply because she’s bored or curious, fascinated by the inner workings of peoples’ minds. If she is not careful, though, draining herself or using her ability too often, she can suffer from headaches, disorientation, and even memory loss. Most common is a bone-deep exhaustion in the hours after use.

THE LOOKS

HEIGHT: 5'6"

WEIGHT: ~125 lb.

HAIR COLOR: Deep auburn-brown

EYE COLOR: Blue

FACE CLAIM: Riley Keough

OVERALL APPEARANCE: 

Long wavy hair, smoky-blue mood ring eyes that seem to shift in hue with her moods and make her emotions more readable than she’d like them to be. Her style is somewhere between practical and wishful thinking, the kind of girl who always wanted to wear dresses but could never quite shake the ranch dust and grime, so she’s settled for down-to-earth, a little tomboyish with a feminine flair. Earth tones, faded jeans, a favorite frayed denim jacket, vintage lace, busted-up cowboy boots, and always an array of earrings in both ears.

Tattoos: Right wrist (Hope, for a beloved horse that passed), right ring finger, a bracelet on her left wrist (for her mama) and a tattoo beneath her left collarbone (TBD).

INSIDE

LIKES:

• Music: mixtape CDs, old stacks of dusty vinyl, having the radio on in the background, playlists.
  
• Being on the road, night driving, windows down, probably singing or listening to music; if not actually in a moving vehicle, she also likes just hanging out tailgating (parties, bonfires, outdoor concerts, rodeos, etc.) and has been known to spend a whole night in the cab – or bed – of a truck. Usually hers or Michael’s.
  
• Stargazing: she’s always had a fascination with the cosmos, always found comfort in the way the incomprehensible vastness of it makes her feel small.
• Horses, thrift shopping, guitars, rowdy bars, whiskey, neon light, riding shotgun, people who make her laugh, smoking in silence, listening to voicemails on repeat.

DISLIKES:

• Feeling cornered: be it in a fight or just in general, Emmy always needs a way out, and being cornered makes her feel – and act – like a wild animal.
  
• Judgment: especially these days, the Lowes’ reputation has withered. She can’t stand the looks of condescension or, worse, the pity. Honestly, where she used to enjoy small talk and catching up with people, nowadays she finds herself dreading it. She hates the questions she knows everyone’s thinking, even if they don’t ask them.
  
• Bill collectors and cops: because they’re always a bad omen. One of those sorts showing up on the ranch doorstep these days can only mean bad news.
• Being told she can’t: she’s headstrong and never one to turn down a challenge, so telling her she can’t is a surefire way to guarantee she will try.

STRENGTHS:

Fiercely Loyal — She’s got a heart of gold and a backbone of steel. Her love is the stubborn, ride-or-die kind and to those who’ve earned it, she’s loyal to a fault. While she doesn’t invest her heart easily, when she does do it, it’s with reckless abandon, and there’s not much she wouldn’t do for someone she’s decided is worth that.

Easy to Talk To — Emmy has a familiar ease about her; honestly, she can talk to just about anybody like she’s known them forever (CAVEAT: when she’s in the mood to). While she isn’t always easy to crack open, she manages to be really relatable while (usually) keeping her own cards to her chest. Intuitive, receptive, a damn good listener – which can have its downsides, too. She remembers details about people, can recall tidbits and names with uncanny accuracy, and rarely forgets something somebody says… so choose your words wisely.

Optimistic — Once a girl of relentless optimism and silver linings, these days, she’s a lot more jaded. While her optimism has certainly faded, a lot more worn around the edges and poked through with holes, the light of it still shines through every now and again. In the right moment, anyway. When Em swings down and lands close to rock bottom, sometimes it’s the only thing left she’s got to cling to.

WEAKNESSES:

Temporarily Out of Reach — Sorry, the person you are trying to reach is not available. Please leave a message after the tone. Emmy, especially these days, is moody. Maybe it’s the downside of her dreaming tendencies, all that music she listens to or all the stories her mama told her of people she'd met or places she'd been – or wished she could’ve. More than likely it’s got something to do with the weight of regrets and guilt on her shoulders; she swings hot and cold, high and low in a way that she never really used to. At least, not to this extreme. Sometimes she just can’t face the world, or the landmarks back home that remind her of how things used to be. It’s usually something small that does it, but whatever it is, sometimes Emmy just retreats and withdraws into herself and shuts out everything.

Emotionally Intense — Likely the reason for her tendency to withdraw, lately. She’s always been emotionally intense but she’s a bit more ragged around the edges, nowadays. Emmy’s never been the sort of person who can do anything halfway, especially when it comes to her feelings – whether negative or positive. When she’s good, she’s really good; and when she’s bad, it can get ugly. Emmy never was the type to be able to let anything go, and caring deeply means… on the other side of the coin… she can also hold a real mean grudge. Somewhere deep inside of her there’s a fear of neglect or abandonment, or some insecurity about how vulnerable all her emotions make her feel, and so lashing out has become her defense mechanism. She’ll dig and coax and provoke to get the reaction she wants – needs – out of someone, and she doesn’t back down easily.

Reckless / Impulsive — Also related to the above is her tendency to act recklessly or impulsively when she’s emotional. She’ll say things she doesn’t mean, lash out a bit too wildly, has probably had the cops called on her – or almost, more than once – for making a scene, throwing some things, stealing somebody’s car for an angry spin around the block (she totally returned it later). But she’s also a bit reckless in a kinder, more heartfelt way. Emmy tries like hell to see the best in people – which is why it cuts her so deeply when someone slights her. She’s the sort to believe in good intentions, and she can see past a whole lot of bad in people. So yeah, she’s been taken advantage of before, and she’s been known to get herself into some stupid-dangerous situations. Wouldn’t call her gullible, and she can hold her own pretty dang well most of the time, but sometimes her silver-linings approach momentarily blinds her.

OVERALL PERSONALITY:

Sweet, feisty, moody, and brutally honest – the type of person who can deliver, and soften, a hard truth with a smile. She’s easy to talk to, easy to laugh, and honestly, could probably hold a conversation with a brick wall. It’s easy to feel like you’ve known her forever, but it’s not often she really, truly lets somebody in – at least, not these days. The blow of losing her best friend (see also: The End of the World As She Knew It) created scar tissue, hurts that healed over tougher, made her more cautious and unreachable than the Em of before. Because when Emmy is in, she’s all in, and a person like her does not recover from a loss like that… really, ever.

But when she’s with somebody, she’s with them. She has a way of making people in her presence feel like they’re the center of the universe, at least until she’s onto the next thing, or some mood strikes and she’s suddenly, inexplicably unreachable again – retreating into herself and, most likely, her music. Not many people have the ability to tug her out of that place, either.

Mix a reckless free spirit with a ride-or-die caliber friend and you get the confounding concoction that is Emmy Lowe. Most likely to stop and give a stranger a ride off the side of the road, even if she’s a little too drunk to reasonably be driving and even if it’s far enough past midnight and dark enough to be serial-killer-level stupid. Has she been known to get herself into sketchy situations? Hell yes. Unfortunately her relentlessly (and almost naively) optimistic outlook on the world, and its people, have historically led her into disappointment, disaster, and outright danger. Emmeline once believed in second chances but she’s been walked all over enough to have spurned that idea quite a while ago. And nowadays, she is as relentless of an enemy as she is a relentless friend and lover. As much as she cares for those she loves, she just as passionately can hold a nasty grudge for those who have deeply hurt or done her – or her family – wrong.

There's nothing she won't do to help the people she cares about, but she does expect the enthusiasm to flow both ways, and that doesn't always happen. That can, at times, cause her to anticipate the worst, and feel as though she’s done something wrong, and she’ll push until she figures out what. Somewhere inside her is a deep wound caused by feeling she couldn’t be enough, couldn’t save someone, and indifference and quiet from a loved one makes her feel self-critical and paranoid which she, in worst case scenarios, has been known to project onto the other person. Be prepared for intensity (both good and bad) if you want to get close to her. She’s not the sort to let things die easy.

BACKGROUND

HOMETOWN: Los Eurosia, California

FAMILY:

• John (Hank) Lowe - Father (56), Human.
• Margaret (Maggie) Lowe - Mother (55), Gifted (Dream Manipulation). Deceased.
• Colton (Cole) Lowe - Brother (34), Gifted (Death Vision). Missing.

There are things that people know about the Lowes. A once-decent family, a once-prosperous ranch, all of it fallen into disrepair. Seemed like the matriarch of the family kept them all stitched together; without her, they’re coming apart at the seams. Emmy is the youngest, and the only one left who seems to be trying to keep the Lowes together since her mama’s illness took her. Her father’s well-known for overstaying his welcome at the local bars; her brother got tied up in the wrong circles a few years back, and now he’s gone, too.

PETS: An Australian Shepherd named Ranger that belonged to her mom before she passed away; two barn cats (Church and Sly); and a couple indoor cats (Huckleberry and Luna), plus some kittens; two horses (Gretel and Atticus), two tired goats, a handful of chickens, and one old cow.

HISTORY:

I.

She is born Emmeline Louise, named after her great-grandmother on her father's side, called Emmy Lou affectionately. The name’s been passed down to every daughter born in the Lowe bloodline, just like the ranch has been passed down through every generation, to every son whether he wants it or not – right down to her daddy, Hank.

As for her mama's side, the only things she inherits from Maggie Lowe are the kind you can’t see. A wistful singing voice like something out of a dream and – speaking of dreams – the ability to manipulate them. She’s pieced together by fragments of both parents, a girl whose Gifted mother plants dreams in her mind, a father whose gruff grit keeps her rooted firmly to the ground. A tenuous balance.

There's bad blood to inherit, too. A feud between the Lowes and the Vaels, whose ranch borders theirs. For centuries now and reasons not entirely known, the families have been at odds, grudges and border disputes haunting every generation like bad omens. But somehow, Hank Lowe and Howard Vael have broken the curse and become unlikely friends. Maybe it happened when Hank met Maggie, a Gifted taking refuge on the Vael ranch back in 1984. The Lowes, historically skeptics, had long criticized the Vaels’ position as sympathizers and protectors of the Gifted. In the end, Hank Lowe married one, and so maybe Maggie was to blame for overturning stubborn minds and curses somehow.

The two of them, Hank and Maggie, make a family. Their oldest, Colton, is like an oak tree. Emmy’s like dandelion seeds scattered to the wind: ripped jeans, scraped knees, dirt-streaked skin. Bangs in her eyes, mud on her boots, wind-tangled hair, pocketfuls of broken windflowers. The fences separating the Vael and Lowe properties may as well not exist anymore; none of the kids on either side honor them, if they even notice they’re there at all. The land’s all one big sprawl for the new generation. They scale those fences without a thought, without a hitch – Emmy included.

The first time music moves her is Johnny Cash on her daddy’s record player. It’s the scratch and hum of the needle finding its groove, that guitar strumming her heartstrings. That’s the day she starts singing; the same summer her daddy buys her a guitar. The farmhouse is never quiet then, and from then on she’s got guitar-string calluses on her fingertips, songs thrumming through her veins, music to sustain her.

Still, she learns to rope cattle, break a horse, spends endless humid hours tending to blossoms in her mother’s ramshackle greenhouse. At sixteen she fails her driver’s license test and bums rides off Cole all summer instead, sneaks out and drives the pickup into town one night, kisses a boy she shouldn't, crashes into a fence on the way home. Despite the down-home nature of her parents, she’s an untamed thing.

II.

When she first takes hold of someone else’s dreams, it’s an accident. Changing the beats of her own dreamscapes is nothing new; she’s been lucid dreaming for a long while, but this is different.

Emmy and the neighbor girl, Marianne Vael, have been best friends since forever. Inseparable ever since they were old enough – big enough – to climb the fence that separates the families’ ranches. By now, on the precipice of high school graduation, they’ve almost outgrown sleepovers. Almost – but with childhood slipping fast through their fingers, they’re hanging on. Their girlhood rituals don’t look quite the same anymore, and tonight, Marianne’s in bed and Emmy’s on the roof outside her bedroom window, too restless to sleep. Smoking, thinking; the dizzying sprawl of stars making her feel incomprehensibly small. It soothes her, Emmy, whose constant storm of emotions make her feel too big for her own skin.

She tips her head back against the siding and loses herself in the calm, the ranch so quiet she can feel it breathe. Or maybe that’s just the sound of Marianne dreaming through the window and, eventually, Emmeline falls asleep too. It’s not long before her cigarette, forgotten between two limp fingers, burns down to her knuckles. She wakes with a start and the realization that she’s just been inside Marianne’s head. Walking her dreamscapes. Maggie’s gift, passed down to her only daughter.

Years later, Emmy tries to do the same to Marianne’s older brothers. When her mama falls sick, and the outlook ain’t good, and even a Gifted healer like Amelie Vael can’t stave off the worst of it. When a volatile Gifted hiding away on the Vael ranch sets fire to their barn one night, and the money’s already tight, and the shit’s already going downhill, and it’s the last straw. When the Vaels and the Lowes have a fiery falling-out, dreamwalking feels like all Emmy’s got left in the tatters. She’s twenty-five years old, bewildered and lost. Generations-long tensions between the families that seemed, for a couple decades, to be at a stalemate, have inexplicably come to a head and left them all splintered and Emmy can’t – won’t – understand why. Where once she was like a second daughter to the Vaels, now she and Marianne slowly drift apart. And maybe it’d hurt less if Marianne cut her off clean, like a severed limb, but it seems like neither one of them can bring themselves to do it.

So it’s a slow decay. And in the empty ache of the loneliest nights, when she’s wrestling with the aftershocks of it all, missing her other half, aimless and furious and lonely, Emmy sneaks out. Across the fence, through the pasture, up onto the roof of the Vael house where everyone is – or should be – sleeping. It’s in their dreams she feels close to them: the only place, these days, that she can. Marianne, even Daniel. But one of them remains a mystery. Michael’s mind is like a fortress around his dreams.

She can’t scale him, can’t crack him, and that intrigues her. Keeps her coming back for more until, one night, Michael catches her. The rest, as they say, is history. Maybe something inside one calls to the other, maybe it’s an unexpected spark of soul recognition, but whatever it is, it takes flame, and it burns hot and hungry. The intensity of it seems to send almost everybody around them into a panic. Their parents warn them off each other, but it isn’t long before friendship intensifies into something more, and there’s nothing anybody can say or do to stop them.

To her parents, that Vael boy is nothing but hot-tempered trouble, a loose cannon with a hairpin trigger. To the Vaels, Emmy’s a flight risk, a girl with her head up in the clouds and the potential to take their boy right along with her. Maybe she thinks she’s too good for the ranch, maybe she’s just unsettled; whatever it is, she’s got a combustible kind of restlessness, and the potential to tempt him into leaving. Their families don’t agree on much anymore, but on this, they’re united: Michael and Emmeline are a dangerous concoction.

And sure, maybe they’re bad for each other. The wild fights and explosive arguments leave no question in the court of public opinion: they’re doomed, they’re bad news together, and everybody knows. But what they don’t know is what they don’t see: that in the still moments, when everything’s right, when their wavelengths are in sync instead of at war, they’re good for each other. So good. There’s a kind of calm within the storm that nobody can comprehend but the two of them. An acceptance the likes of which neither one of them have ever found anywhere, or with anyone, else. Something to push against. Someone who’s so much like themselves that they won’t be scared away. Faced with Emmy’s brand of emotional intensity, anyone else would abandon ship, but Michael’s so much like her, he doesn’t seem to blink an eye. It’s both familiar and infuriating. Whatever kind of paradox it is, only Emmeline and Michael seem to understand it. Them, and maybe Marianne. With a kind of bittersweetness, she can see that they make sense to one another… perhaps even more than she and Emmy ever did.

III.

Emmy’s working at a local dive bar, trying to keep it all together. All around her there’s a slow rot in the wake of her mama’s passing – the ranch, Hank, Cole – as if they’ve all lost their true north. At the center, keeping Emmy grounded, is Michael.

Her job leaves much to be desired, shit pay that supplements the bills just enough to keep the ranch from going entirely under, but Cole’s not doing much to help make ends meet besides selling things off behind his father’s back. The ranch grows smaller, piece by piece, and Hank Lowe just grows angrier. He’s taken to drowning his sorrows, and when he’s sober enough to have his wits about him, he and Cole are constantly at each other’s throats.

Soon, it seems like Cole just quits trying. Emmy doesn’t know where he goes when he goes, but he starts disappearing. First for a weekend, then for a week, abandoning his duties, letting the bills and the work pile up for Hank and Emmeline. Maybe he’s picked up a bad habit himself, or maybe he just wants to escape. Whatever it is, after a while, Emmy’s had enough of it. Tired of watching her life’s dreams dwindling along with the slow fade of the Lowe family’s luck – and the whole ranch, really. Tired of cleaning up Cole’s messes. She’d always dreamt of one day escaping to a big city, bright lights, the possibility of a music career. Michael had dreamed it along with her.

She never guessed for a second that he’d backtrack, that he wouldn’t be all-in and ready to come along with her. But when the time comes, he isn’t. And whatever his reasons, in that moment, they don’t matter to Emmeline. It shatters her. The fight they have that night is like none they’ve ever had before, and Emmy packs her things and hits the road before sunrise. It’s excruciating to stay and excruciating to go, and the ranch looks so impossibly small in hindsight, nothing but a tear-streaked blur in her rear view mirror. She stops on the highway to fill up on gas and quit her job, via voicemail, as an afterthought.

They’d talked about Texas, maybe even New Mexico, but Emmy can’t bring herself to go any of those places without him. In the end it’s Las Vegas. Not so far. Just getting her feet wet. Close enough she could come home on weekends if she needed to, but, when it’s all said and done… she doesn’t.

In the end, she finds out: the world isn’t the same 400-some miles from home. Dust motes suspended in the spotlight, on-stage in a hazy dive bar, and fame doesn’t come easy, the gigs few and far between. Most days her home is her car and she’s scrounging for loose change between the seats just to eat. But she’s doing it. Writing songs scraped up from the bottom of dreams and a heartache that never leaves her. Holding tight to those dreams, even if it isn’t pretty.

She goes on that way, living night to night, crashing on strangers’ couches, and eventually settling into a cheap apartment above a bar with a few roomies. Every now and then she brings somebody home, a man with a particular drawl, that certain curl at his lips, eyes that same deceiving shade of deep blue, and deep down she knows it, but she won’t admit it to herself: that she’s looking for Michael in every man she sees. She finds pieces of him, but she never finds a way to forget him. Her notebooks fill up with songs, and somehow, they’re always about him – but she can’t seem to write him out of her heart. Despite the years she spent dying to get off that ranch, it seems like every goddamn melody she writes, every quiet thought in the dead of night, is always about home.

Her daddy’s phone calls grow few and far in between until, eventually, she’s the one chasing after him. Most of her calls go unanswered. Emmy leaves rambling voicemails, carrying on endless one-sided conversations, just hanging onto that invisible thread of static connection.

Eventually, it’s not enough. More and more, Hank is radio silent. More and more, she realizes that, in her absence, Cole hasn’t pulled himself up by the bootstraps and taken care of all the shit he needs to. In fact, nobody seems to know where the hell he is these days, and it’s been too long. Something’s just not right.

When Emmy rides back into town, she's been gone two years, and it seems like everything’s changed. It feels like nothing is the same:

when the house is too quiet without mama, and Emmy’s voice sounds hollow in the wake of her passing;

when the ranch sits forlorn, when everything’s been auctioned off to pay the bills;

when she takes a motel job to make ends meet;

when she moves back into the old farmhouse to keep an eye on her old man, seeing as he gets lost in the bottom of a bottle more often than not these days;

and when she realizes Cole’s been gone for a year, and there’s nothing left to do but fill out a missing persons report, and keep on wondering.

One sideways shaft of melancholy afternoon light slanting onto the wall and she’s overcome with nostalgia, some empty yearning she can’t describe or will away. There’s a guilt, a constant companion, that never leaves her. The Lowes aren’t what they used to be, anymore. They don’t have much, but what they do have, they can’t afford to lose, and Em’s got claws and grit stubborn enough to hang onto every last shred of it.

She cares far too much to let anything rest: for better or worse.

THE PLAYER

NAME: Nix

AGE: 37

TIMEZONE: EST (US)

[Mirror]

[attr="class","th th-flower-1-o"] ACCEPTED

A super in-depth and well written app! Welcome to the site c:

FACE CLAIM • MEMBER DIRECTORY • POWERS CLAIM