Profile
After feigning a disability for the majority of her childhood, social isolation left Wren craving any sort of human interaction. After years of not having many close friendships, Wren can be a bit too trusting and often latches onto any sort of warmth that she receives from others. This opens her up to the ability to be hurt easily, and though she has seen the horrors of both this world and the spirit realm, a shred of naivety lives within her. Because her unique ability separates her from those who cannot relate to her otherworldly experiences, Wren often feels alone in the world. For this reason, Wren spends the majority of her time on an online paranormal experiences forum, where she seeks to connect with others who claim to have experienced spiritual phenomena. Wren feels most herself when she is online and connects with others world-wide who accept her word at its value. She has developed many close friendships online and has become the rock that her internet friends lean on; she tends to attract broken people and helps them to cope with the toll of everyday life.
Because she knows what it’s like to share genuine experiences and be scorned, ridiculed, and disbelieved, Wren has always been an advocate for the ‘little guy’ and believes peoples’ stories even when no one else gives them any credibility. She rarely questions others’ morality, though people often assume she has the worst intentions in mind because of her haunted appearance. On the contrary, Wren often expects the best of people and is personally offended when she misjudges someone to be of good character and they betray her trust.
Others avoid Wren for her troubled and haunted appearance; she seems to look right through people when she is focusing her sights on someone from the spirit realm. Her glazed-over eyes and disheveled appearance may seem uninviting, but Wren is actually extremely outgoing and empathetic. She engages in loud, vivacious conversations and deep, emotional talks with equal enthusiasm. Her empathy runs so deeply that she can hardly make it through a movie, let alone a private talk, without spilling tears. She is really sweet when given the chance to be, but is often sarcastic with people inappropriately quickly. She does not feel the need for time to pass to build a bond with others and believes she has a good enough “read” on people within only minutes of interaction to determine whether or not they are kind-hearted. Her sense of humor is off-putting to some, who believe that she is rude, strange, or otherwise unappealing.
Because she did not spend much of her childhood with others, Wren is excellent at self-entertaining and is a self-taught artist and comic writer. She publishes a comic online, which she updates weekly, and has drawn quite a following with her well-developed art style. She spends a great deal of time obsessing over research and seeking to find the answers to her own problem, but often feels that she is not significant enough to deserve the solution to her very personal issue. After all, Wren’s unique ability affects her deeply, but has negatively affected very few people outside of herself. After years of searching for a cure, Wren is unsurprised by most things that her ability exposes her to and has come to expect the unexpected. She can only hear the spirits when she acknowledges their existence, so if her eye’s vision is obstructed she cannot acknowledge their existence, and thus cannot see or hear them.
Wren is excited by small things, and enjoys stargazing, animals, and developing her own sense of style. She has a strong athleisure chic wardrobe mixed with vaporwave Japanese aesthetic, and she dreams of going to Japan. She likes to wear stickers, sequins, and glitter on her face, even when she is not going out. She also subscribes to a glittery, colored lipgloss delivery service, which brings new glosses to her doorstep each month. She spends too much time sleeping, and while she would love to have a pet, she is probably not responsible enough to care for one. Wren is a heavy reader and enjoys immersing herself in fantasy; she loves to take worlds that authors have created and imagine they were her own.
Wren is extremely goal-oriented and is easily frustrated by skeptical, self-righteous people. She does not like being given directions because most of her life she has not had the opportunity to determine her own fate. For the majority of her childhood, Wren’s parents made every decision they felt was best for her, and now that she is an adult who makes her own choices, she fears losing the control she has finally reclaimed over her own life. Thus, Wren is assertive when she feels she is being treated unfairly, but is also an excellent listener and is willing to hear others’ ideas even when she does not agree with them. Because she has not experienced any material losses, she does not know how to cope with loss and would have an incredibly difficult time recovering from the death of a family member or friend. She clashes most with her mother, who enjoys obscure and unconventional healing remedies and has always forced them on her. She loves spending time with her boyfriend Demarcus, whose hoodies are never far from her reach.
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An herbalist by profession and naturist by choice, Wren's mother gave birth to Wren in the familiarity of their home's bathtub. Though she believed in the practice of modern medicine, she felt most comfortable delivering her baby herself with the help of her husband, a kindhearted physicist. When Wren first opened her eyes, the pair were shocked and startled by the presence of a second pupil in her right eye, but they were never disgusted. The two agreed that they did not want their child to be turned into a spectacle by click-bait internet advertisements; unwanted media attention; and requests to research her medical anomaly. They vowed to shield the truth of her second pupil from the world, hoping to provide her with the most normal childhood possible. When the couple took their new baby to the physician to receive her immunizations, they paid the physician a large sum of money to keep quiet about her medical anomaly. In return, he vowed to continue as her primary care doctor for the entirety of her youth, and he soon became a close and trusted family friend. As Wren grew up, it was not difficult to hide her condition from prying eyes with covered strollers, dark glasses, and white lies. Wren's mother Alathea resigned from the apothecary which she called her second home to homeschool Wren and keep her from the exposure of local public schools. However, the summer before Wren entered the second grade, her father Jeremiah was unexpectedly laid off from his job during an economic recession. Knowing that her position at the apothecary was always guaranteed, Alathea returned to the shoppe as an herbalist and Wren's father assumed a full-time job search. Knowing that they could not afford to continue homeschooling Wren with Alathea as the sole breadwinner, they enrolled her in the local public school. The two contacted Wren's physician and asked him to declare her legally blind so she could wear dark glasses in public. While being known as blind might inconvenience Wren, it was not so unusual a condition that it would attract much unwanted attention. They understood that her life could not be quite as normal as theirs, but they believed they were shielding her from a slew of uncomfortable exposure if the truth of her double pupil were revealed. In spite of the couple's best intentions, feigning the disability had many negative ramifications for Wren: learning to act and speak as though she were blind by avoiding mentioning the appearance of things, keeping her glasses on at all times in the presence of others, and accepting that she would not be allowed to test for her driver's license as a teenager. Wearing the dark glasses for long periods of time also caused significant strain on her eyes; her eyes became extremely photosensitive, and it became difficult for her to adjust to normal lighting after a day of wearing them. She often experienced migraine headaches after taking off her dark lenses. Knowing that trips outside of the home necessitated her dark lenses, Wren preferred spending time in the comfort of her bedroom over trips to the grocery store, shopping mall, or park. She was a quick learner and understood how she was expected to act in order to maintain the lie at school, but she occasionally slipped up by implying that she could see. One day, she complimented a little girl's dress; another day, she commented that the cafeteria food "looked" disgusting. Her parents covered for these incidents by stating that she had a very limited range of sight, and those inexperienced with blindness did not question their excuses.
With the exception of becoming a homebody and experiencing terrible headaches, Wren lived a relatively normal life as a student for three years. At the end of fourth grade, however, an incident led to Wren's withdrawal from the school. Wren claimed to see a frightening man in her classes whom other children were not able to see. The man seemed surprised that Wren could see him, and he started to taunt her during class. The man became a fearsome distraction, and Wren's grades began to slip. One day, she grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer and took it to school, hoping she might frighten the man away from her. When he began to taunt her, she pulled the knife from her backpack and held it threateningly towards him. The teacher of the class, unable to see the man whom Wren was threatening, believed that Wren was pulling the knife on another student. Frightened and horrified, she confiscated the knife from Wren and sent her to the principal's office. She was determined to be a danger to other students, and the school agreed not to make the incident known to the public if her parents withdrew her from school and enrolled her in therapy. The school's counselor referred her to a psychiatrist, and Wren's mother once again quit her job in order to homeschool Wren. Jeremiah had since found a new job working in a laboratory which could provide more than enough income for a comfortable lifestyle for three.
During her sessions with the psychiatrist, ten-year-old Wren did her best to explain what had happened at school. She told the psychiatrist that a tall, scary man had been making mean faces at her and threatening to hurt other children in the classroom; she'd brought the knife from home to scare him away and protect her fellow students. The psychiatrist, believing that Wren was blind, asked her, "Don't you mean that you imagined a man? Or that you heard him? Or felt him?" Wren responded adamantly that she was certain that she saw him. The psychiatrist, believing that Wren was experiencing some sort of hallucination, diagnosed her with schizophrenia and prescribed her various medications. Unfortunately, none of these medications prevented Wren from having the visions; they merely left her feeling drowsy and dizzy all of the time. For a few weeks at a time after changing medications, she was often bound to her bed and unable to think clearly. After seeing that none of these remedies worked for Wren, her parents withdrew her from treatment and ended her use of the medications, asking her primary care doctor to sign off on their decision. They began to consider that perhaps her second pupil was contributing to her strange visions, and though they certainly did not want to accept that what she saw was real, her mother believed it was worth exploring other options. When an eye exam revealed no concerns, Alathea considered that Wren might be experiencing something supernatural. As a scientist, Jeremiah was skeptical that Wren might be seeing an otherworldly presence; however, her mother was open to the existence of spirits and ghosts, and she believed that taking Wren to consult with a medium might help.
After searching for someone who not only professed to connect with the spiritual realm, but also appeared to fit the part, Alathea arrived at a run-down building coated in layers of ivy on the corner of a busy main street. Outside of the quaint brick building was a faded sign which boasted, "Madame Moon's Medium & Divination." Alathea and Wren, then thirteen, sought a consultation with Madame Moon. Wren's dark glasses hid her unique condition, and Madame Moon welcomed them into her shop. As Alathea explained many of Wren's strange experiences, Madame Moon listened intently. However, when it came time for Wren to reveal her second pupil, Madame Moon shriveled up in fear. She tossed a vial of holy water at Wren and screamed, "Begone!" She muttered something unintelligible about the "evil eye," saying that Wren would bring the curse upon her entire house if she did not leave soon. Alathea, frightened and protective of Wren, sent her daughter out to sit in the car. She tried to calm the seer, but she could not be consoled. She explained hurriedly that she believed Wren had been cursed by the 'evil eye' and that those who came into contact with her would experience misfortune. Though Alathea did not believe her daughter to be hexed, the experience unsettled her. She had hoped to gain answers on how to stop Wren's visions, but neither medicine nor the supernatural seemed capable of giving her any information.
For years, Wren continued to be captivated by the things unseen by her parents. She spent the majority of her time secluded in her room, connecting with strangers on a paranormal experiences forum. She enjoyed spending her free time researching apparitions and phantoms. Wren believed herself to be the only person alive with what she had learned was called 'pupula duplex.' The condition was so rare that many doctors argued it was merely a myth. Wren found mention in one chronicle of the Salem Witch trials of a woman executed for a similar condition; a man in Tibet with the condition was seen to be a great prophet and was regarded to have godlike powers until his death. Aside from these two instances, Wren could not find any more information on her condition. However, she firmly believed that the people who she saw and interacted with were spirits, possibly even 'ghosts.' Her online connections allowed her to create the social life which she had never experienced in school, and within the screen she did not need to pretend to have a disability. She utilized the internet as her safe space and began creating digital comics and working freelance online transcript, art commission, and typist jobs. Though she enjoyed a fruitful life on the internet, Wren asked her parents on her seventeenth birthday if they could move to a new town. She was tired of being known as the crazy blind girl, and she wanted the opportunity to live out her bright and happy social life outside of a computer screen. She reasoned with them that, now that she was approaching adulthood, there was no reason that they should need to conceal her identity from the world anymore. Fortunately, to Wren's surprise, her parents conceded. She relocated from her childhood home to a home three hours away. She began exploring the town bit by bit, styling her bangs over her right eye to avoid wearing the dark glasses. She felt more joy and vitality than she had ever felt in her life.
However, a new town meant new spirits to encounter; while most were friendly, some were not. Wren's continued curiosity about her visions combined with childhood trauma from being forced to repress her identity led her to seek out a therapist for anxiety and depression. It was during an anxiety support group that Wren met the love of her life, Demarcus. Though initially drawn to him by the sight of another 'strange' eye, the two found that they had much more to talk about. After hanging out for a while at underground coffee shops, old CD and record stores, and Demarcus's cushy basement apartment, the pair officially became an 'item.' The two vowed to find a way to understand, and perhaps even suppress, Wren's ability to interact with ghosts. However, their research led them to undertake a much longer journey than expected.
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Trivia:
- Her second pupil does not have its own set of sphincter pupillae and dialator pupillae muscles. The second iris doesn't work on the physical realm, so the other is photosensitive. She can only see into the spirit realm with her right double pupil - her vision on the spiritual plane is blurry or incomplete because she does not have a second spirit realm-seeing pupil.
