All smooth words and easy smiles, anyone’s first impression of Birdie would be of how charming she appears. To many, she’s instantly likable — she’s fun and friendly and sharp enough to keep a conversation going. She isn’t afraid to put herself out there and loves chatting with strangers, seeming to make friends wherever she goes. The confidence she has in herself is evident in everything she says and does, and she looks to be having a good time no matter the scenario. She’s frequently teasing - a habit that only rarely borders on mockery - and she speaks as if the target isn’t the butt of the joke but is in on it themself, something that can take the edge off all but the most pointed insults. By all accounts, she’s a genuine extrovert!

But as affable as she seems, she rarely has anyone she can call a true friend. As much as she talks - trust, it’s a lot - she will never let slip a word about herself or her past. If asked, she will either brush off the question, change the subject, or outright lie in response. She intentionally keeps herself impersonal, afraid to let anyone get too close. Likewise, she does her best not to get attached to anyone she meets and will recoil at any attempt to forge a deep connection. She grew up under the reality that anyone could vanish at any time, regardless of who they were or how much she cared for them, so by her logic it’s best to simply not care at all.

Still, she holds a genuine curiosity for just about everything and everyone she comes across. She loves to meet new people and loves to learn new things. She can even be a good listener if she wants to be! She’s smart, sure, but almost too smart for her own good. She’s a very quick thinker but even quicker to jump to conclusions, connecting invisible dots in order to support whatever she believes. This can be to her detriment: she’s prone to skipping over the obvious answer as she spirals into overthinking. When stressed, she tends towards cruelty and paranoia.

At her core, Birdie is self-destruction committed in the name of self-preservation. She sabotages her own friendships, distorts her past to the point of amnesia, and invents enemies where there are none, all in a backwards attempt to “protect” herself. Believing that no one can be trusted and no life is more valuable than her own, a cold sort of apathy underlies her warmer front. If she sees someone as a threat to herself, no matter if they're family, lover, or stranger, she will not hesitate to throw them to the wolves — and she will lie about whatever guilt she feels until she’s numb to it entirely.

(Full history here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bBn0WR_YP-Ju7-_37R4_6PrPSc0kjIJhQnLs7AaPGmI/edit?usp=sharing)

Before she’s born, her father Jennison kills Dante- leader of their colony- and takes over. Robin, sister of Dante’s wife Thalia, courts Jennison and they have Emily soon after. She has two older cousins, Vern and Leona - Thalia and Dante’s children.

Emily is taught from a young age to be Jennison’s informant — she finds dissenters within the colony and tells Jennison. He dispatches the threats by drowning them in a nearby river. To most cats this is only a rumor, but Emily knows it to be true, as she accidentally witnessed it when she was six months old.

When she’s a year old, she overhears her mom and Thalia discussing plans to overthrow Jennison and restore Vern and Leona’s status as heirs to the leadership. She tells Jennison, and both Robin and Thalia disappear by the next day. Vern and Leona are spared.

Emily falls into extreme denial over what happened. She refuses to think about her mother at all after this, and over time she completely forgets her face, voice, and name. She continues her duties as her dad’s informant.

When she’s a year and a half old, Jennison asks her to get close to another young molly named Clementine. Jennison suspects she might be a rebel but wants to confirm before doing anything severe. Emily does as she’s told and becomes friends with Clementine, though their relationship quickly grows into more than that.

After a few months, Clementine confides in Emily that she actively supports sentiment against Jennison. Having grown too close to her, Emily goes through some internal conflict over whether to go through with ratting her out. Ultimately she does tell Jennison, and Clementine disappears.

She is careful not to get too close to anyone after this, deeply aware that anyone could vanish at any time. She can’t risk caring.

At around two years old, a stranger named Rally is allowed to stay with the colony temporarily. He starts to kindle ideas of rebellion and, unaware of Emily’s position, tells her about it. She tells Jennison, of course, and Rally disappears.

When she is two years and four months old, she runs into a stranger named Sundog at the edge of the colony’s territory. Curious, she flirts with the girl. When Sundog asks her name, she gives her a fake one: Birdie. The two are quickly enamored with each other, and they start to meet semi-regularly.

Emily believes that her relationship with Sundog is safe — Sundog has no ties to her colony, and Jennison doesn’t even know about her. Although Emily keeps up a front of emotional distance out of habit, internally she starts to care deeply for Sundog. They see each other for five months.

A few days after Prism appears, Vern invites her on a walk and leads her to the river. There, he tries to drown her.

His attempt is disrupted by a sudden upheaval of the natural world: the sky is clear, but rain begins to rise from the river and soil itself. It quickly is falling upwards at storm-force, and is accompanied by lightning shooting from the ground to the sky. One bolt explodes up through a tree. It’s enough to distract Vern, and Birdie runs.

She returns to camp to find Jennison on the verge of death, Leona standing over him. He desperately reaches for his daughter. Emily stands still and watches as Leona kills him then and there. Leona chooses not to kill Emily after all, instead offering her mercy as Jennison once did to her and her brother. Emily flees.

She goes to her and Sundog’s meeting place, hoping to stay the night or even run away together, only to realize Sundog is nowhere to be found. Knowing she can’t stick around, she abandons the area entirely and starts to wander. From this point on, she only introduces herself as Birdie.

At one point she runs into Rally again, and is shocked and delighted to find he’s still alive. They travel together for a short time. Through Rally, she hears of the Holocene and decides to seek them out herself.

At the Holocene, Birdie finds Sundog and Leona — the two have been traveling together for months in search of her. Birdie feels deeply betrayed that Sundog would ally with Leona, and convinces herself that the two must’ve been conspiring together from the start.

She resolves to join the Holocene and gain supernatural powers of her own in order to protect herself from Sundog and Leona’s wrath.

She was fading.

Vern had been holding her under for nearly a minute now. She could feel it rushing past her mouth, her nose, her eyes squeezed shut. Currents warping in her ears, surging whispers down through her canals. Proffering.

Give up. Every burning flash of lung, every desperate mental spike for air, made the offer sound more tempting. It would be so easy. So, so easy.

Let me take you. The rush of the water fell into a thrum. Shapes and colors that swam before her eyelids were eclipsed by total dark. A haze in her mind. Screaming pain, and quiet. Getting hard to think now. Getting hard to care.

Let us go downstream. At long last, she took a breath, and the river filled her.

No pain, only quiet now. Only dark, and peace, and nothing.

Until.

The weight of her cousin suddenly lifted off her body, leaving nothing between her and the surface. The surface. She remembered now. The air. Instinct clamored back to her and wrenched her up out of the water. She felt the cold break against her fur as she returned to the wind. Remembered what it was to truly breathe.

Her lungs choked on oxygen. Violence wracked her body in an attempt to rid itself of the water, spine contorting, organs turning inside out. It wasn’t until she stuttered to the shore that she saw Vern again. He was standing in the current, still. Staring at the space between the river and the sky. And it wasn’t until then that she saw it, too. The water was rising.

Droplets flew up from the river, turning amber in the fading sun. From its pebble banks, too, they emerged, pelting her pre-soaked belly. With each heartbeat they grew in strength and speed until all the force of a storm was there beneath them, pouring towards the clouds. Over the din of the up-pour something else rumbled, distant, growing closer. She turned towards the trees.

And here, with half-felt humor she realized, what is a storm without thunder?

A great flash came in answer, exploding up through the ground above the riverbank and sending earth flying over the rocks. Another right after, this one through a tree, shrapnel everywhere. The scent of fire and charring and ozone burnt her nostrils. It was enough to break Vern from his stupor and she looked back to see him turned around, his wide eyes meeting her own. Something like awe and terror in them, then the spark of what he’d come here for.

It was enough for her to remember herself. It was enough for her to run.

A summary of events for your character during Round 1 and its interim.

Can you feel the repeating change?

It comes to pass again.

Do not be long now...

. . .

. . .