Élisée Gottschalk

About

Élisée comes from a very loving satanic family, comprised of her mother Christine, a pottery craftswoman, her father Yves, a History Researcher at the University of Picardy Jules Verne in Amiens, and her younger siblings, Éloi, Théophile and Stanislas. Due to her family’s religion, Élisée was persecuted from a very young age, especially from the town’s parishioners, and came to face many different kinds of discrimination. It was as if it somehow gave people the rights to disrespect their own personal values and no longer treat them as humans. She was scolded for committing the sin of gluttony simply because she was a chubby child, her classmates ripped her clothes and pushed her around, she witnessed townsfolk shaming and being ableist to her mum, you name it. The more she grew and lived through these injustices, the more she began to distance herself from the world, gradually surrounding herself solely by books and cats.

Élisée has always been described as a sweet, sensible and extremely gentle child. Her mum regularly talked of how, from her very first breath, she was the most calm and radiant baby, with the quietest cries. She gushed about her beautiful daughter and her doll-like features with the nurses and midwives, in her journal and letters to her loved-ones, and for the first few days seemed to not be able to detach her gaze from her beloved daughter for even a minute, cuddling her in her arms and caressing her pretty face with the gentlest touch instead of sleeping.
It goes without saying that Élisée was loved, and both her parents made sure to show her the same amount of love and care even as her siblings came into the world, as they wanted to give the best of themselves to their children. Without great surprise, Élisée proved to be a wonderful big sister, even with Éloi who is just over a year younger than her, and prouded herself of being their protector against the rest of the world, cladding herself in a fierceness that she seems to possess for this purpose only. Even when she was the most closed-off, she still remained close to her family, and clearly shared a strong complicity with Éloi.

On the first day of middle school, a dynamic and joyful girl named Lilith was assigned a seat next to her. But as Élisée was preparing herself to once again being made fun of by her new classmate, Lilith discreetly slipped her a note jokingly making fun of how boring the class was and, one thing leading to another, the two girls spent the entire class exchanging little notes and quietly laughing together, and, at that moment, Élisée felt like she finally could be able to open up again to someone. Since then, the both of them became inseparable and shared a strong and pure friendship, which could easily be mistaken for romantic love.
This, on top of the stigmas around Élisée’s religion, put the both of them in the direct line of fire of a lot of people in their town, teens and adults alike, which filled Élisée with a great sense of shame and guilt. If most of the time this harassment consisted of a few bad names being thrown around, there’s been a few times when the two friends actually had to physically defend themselves against some particularly spiteful people. Luckily, and thanks to Lilith being the daughter of one of the teachers there, the more aggressive bullying seemed to have subsided as soon as they entered high school.
Nowadays, even though Élisée still suffers from the persecution she faces, she’s able to live a happy and fulfilling life alongside her best friend and family, slowly gaining faith in her future and opening up to the rest of the world.