a short history...
Amara was born poor in Chicago in 1983 and her mother died in a house fire six months later. She was untouched by the flames, but they left her older sister Samantha disfigured and blinded. At 14 her father abandoned them, and Amara took up thievery and whoring to support herself and her older sister. At 16 she unknowingly made a deal with a crossroads demon posing as a john, and afterwards moved to London, England with Samantha to earn a respectable living in two disreputable professions: courtesan and informant. On the 10 year anniversary of the crossroads deal, a pair of hellhounds came for her but found themselves uncharacteristically cowed in her presence. Unable to drag her to hell as per the contract, they turned on her sister and tore her apart before Amara's eyes.
a longer one...
April 8th, 1983 was dreary and cold, with water falling like slurry over grey Chicago windows. The sun was weak on the horizon, and a new baby was crying. Rachel Amara Hollande was born in the back of a taxi on the way to a hospital that her mother could never afford to give birth in. The taxi dropped mother and new baby off at the emergency room, and watched them go through the fogged up glass doors and then carefully drove out of the parking lot, thinking that the night had been far more than he had bargained for. Amara's mother was thinking the same thing...
Amara's sister Samantha was old enough to remember her mother, dark skinned and stoic, holding the newborn close to her breast and whispering that although her often explosive husband insisted on calling her Rachel, that she would always be her mama's Amara, and that Amara meant forever.
Samantha also remembers the house fire that violently erupted one Autumn night when Amara was 6 months old. She remembers the flames that roared across the ceiling and licked at her arms and face while her mother was screaming and screaming. She remembers her mother's face and the way their eyes locked. She remembers the funeral and the closed casket, and holding her little sister in her arms because her father refused to so much as look at the baby.
Amara remembers nothing of that. Her childhood took place in cheap motels that they were quickly tossed out of when money dried up, and then stinking couches of 'friends' who were never very friendly, and then sometimes long nights in a fast food restaurant where they would spend the night ruminating uncomfortably over a medium fries. There was school sometimes, where she would squint at the blackboard and scrap with kids at recess. Most of the time though, she would stay home with her sister. Sam needed her. Poorly treated burns had turned into thick, shiny scar tissue that roped its way up her arms and chest, crawled up her neck and ruined parts of her face leaving her eyes mostly blinded and clouded over.
Sam couldn't make friends, not like that, and so Amara would pretend that her sister didn't look like a monster to the rest of the world and play as her best friend while Samantha played mother. In this way, they took care of each other when their father was too drunk to strike them, or when he disappeared for days.
And then one day, just like that, he disappeared and never came home. Amara was 12, Samantha almost 17, and now it really was just the two of them. Two girls who had already grown up far too quickly were forcefully shoved into adulthood. They learned the art of squatting in abandoned buildings and half-way houses, of living in shelters and on park benches. Sam would sometime pan handle, but it was Amara who learned to cut purses, reach effortlessly into pockets for wallets, to spirit away groceries and toiletries and clothes. When she was 13, Amara learned that some boys might give her money to do more than kiss. When she was 15 she learned that men would do the same.
A year later, she was sleeping with a man in an up scale hotel room. It was the nicest joint she'd ever worked in, and she'd always remember it: The Meridian Crossroads. The john had a British accent, and wasn't particularly nice afterwards when he smirked at her and wagged a hundred-dollar bill just outside of her reach.
"I could give you this," he said, "but why don't I try to help you out instead? I can make you a deal..."
