Is that MARGARET QUALLEY? No, that’s just KEZIAH MARLOWE. They were born on 11/11/1990 and are a SIREN living in Northknot Town. They work as a WORLD FAMOUS CONDUCTOR. Some say they’re BRILLIANT and MAGNETIC, but I’ve heard others say they’re OBSESSIVE and SELF-SACRIFICING. When you think of HER, don’t you think of THE LONG QUIET PAUSE BEFORE THE START OF A SYMPHONY, SCARS BENEATH BALLROOM GOWNS & FINGERS TREMBLING ABOVE A BATON IN FRONT OF A SWEEPING ORCHESTRA?
Name: Keziah Delphine Marlowe Pronunciation: keh-ZY-ah del-FEEN MAR-loh Nickname(s): Kez, Ziah, Kezzy, Maestra, Song Birthday: November 11th, 1990 Age: 35 Zodiac Sign: Scorpio Sun, Virgo Moon, Leo Rising Gender: Cis-female Pronouns: She/Her Species: Siren Orientation: Bi-curious, Demiromantic Occupation: World Famous Conductor Faceclaim: Margaret Qualley
HEADCANONS
Keziah never conducts with the exact same interpretation twice. Musicians who work with her regularly say every performance feels like a new emotional landscape
She still keeps the hospital bracelet from the day she was discharged in a small velvet box with Jonah’s name written on the inside
When she composes late at night, she often leaves the windows open even in cold weather because the sound of wind reminds her of breathing
She is terrifyingly good at rhythm games, anything with timing, pattern recognition, or beat tracking
Keziah cries very easily during live music but almost never during movies or television.
She hums absentmindedly when she’s thinking, often fragments of symphonies that don’t exist yet
Despite being world famous, she hates celebrity culture and forgets that people recognize her sometimes
She loves cooking but is terrible at following recipes. Everything becomes instinctive improvisation
Her niece and nephew are the only people who can make her drop the composed, elegant persona completely
She instinctively conducts with her hands when listening to music in the car, sometimes without realizing it
Keziah has perfect pitch and can identify a musical note even if it’s played inside a noisy room
She has written several compositions inspired by Jonah, but only one of them has ever been publicly performed
When she’s overwhelmed emotionally, she goes for long night walks near water
She owns dozens of beautiful formal gowns for performances but prefers oversized sweaters and loose pants when she’s off stage
Keziah has a quiet habit of touching her sternum when she’s nervous, like she’s checking whether her heart is still steady.
She secretly funds music programs in children’s hospitals, including the oncology ward she once stayed in
When she’s conducting at her most intense, her voice takes on an almost hypnotic musical quality without her realizing it, something that may be connected to her siren nature
She is incredibly affectionate once she trusts someone, the type to lean against shoulders, link arms, or absentmindedly play with someone’s hair while talking
She still struggles with the idea of planning too far into the future, a lingering habit from when she believed she wouldn’t have one
The only people who have ever seen her truly furious were musicians who treated their craft carelessly
APPEARANCE
Keziah’s presence is soft in a way that still manages to command attention without trying. She has a long, elegant frame shaped by years of gymnastics and discipline, all clean lines and controlled grace that never fully left her body. Her face carries a kind of quiet luminosity, expressive eyes that always look like they’re hearing music no one else can, and features that feel delicate but not fragile. There’s something cinematic about her without it feeling staged, like she just naturally exists in slightly better lighting than everyone else. Her hair falls in soft, lived-in waves that shift between polished and undone depending on how recently she’s been on stage or traveling. If you know what she looks like, you might think of someone with effortless, slightly ethereal screen presence, but translated into someone who seems more at home in concert halls than film frames
PERSONALITY
Keziah feels like she was built out of sound before she was built out of bone. She’s the kind of person who walks through life like she’s always listening to something just beneath the surface of it all. There’s warmth in her, real and immediate, but it’s guarded by instinct now, like she learned early that holding too tightly makes things break faster. She gives herself fully to music, to moments, to people she trusts, but there’s always a quiet restraint in the background of her emotions. Not coldness, exactly. More like she’s constantly aware that anything beautiful can also be temporary, and she’s learned how to live gently with that knowledge without letting it hollow her out completely
AESTHETIC
the hush of an orchestra before the first note - salt air clinging to silk gowns - sheet music scattered across hardwood floors at midnight - candlelight flickering against polished instruments - the echo of applause long after the stage is empty - hospital bracelets tucked into jewelry boxes - wind slipping through open windows during a storm - trembling hands steadying just in time - lullabies hummed to no one and everyone at once - two heartbeats hidden beneath a quiet ribcage - grief folded carefully into velvet - the sound of something beautiful ending too soon
CONNECTIONS
The Doctor Who Knows The one person in Northknot who knows the truth about her diagnosis and pregnancy. Whether they respect her secrecy or push her to tell the people she loves could create a lot of tension
The Musician Who Hears Too Much A local musician who plays with her or around her and starts noticing something… off. The way her conducting feels heavier lately. The way her timing lingers like she’s stretching moments. Maybe they don’t know what’s wrong, but they know something is
The Stranger She Can’t Shake Someone new in town who doesn’t know her reputation, her past, or her fame. They just see her as Keziah. That alone makes them dangerous in a way nothing else is
BIOGRAPHY
tw: cancer, terminal illness, death, hospitalization, depression, pregnancy
“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”
Keziah Delphine Marlowe was born the youngest daughter in a warm, loud, music-filled household. Her parents adored both daughters equally, but the age gap meant the sisters orbited different worlds. By the time Keziah was learning to read, her older sister was already navigating late high school and early adulthood. They loved each other, but they rarely understood each other. Music showed up in Keziah before memory did. At three years old she could reproduce melodies on the piano after hearing them once. At four she corrected a violinist during a children’s orchestra rehearsal her parents had taken her to see. By five she had already developed an eerie instinct for rhythm, phrasing, and musical architecture. Teachers called it talent. Her parents called it a miracle. Then life shifted again.
A few months before Keziah’s 6th birthday, her sister gave birth to Hollis and then Ashtin barely a year later. Irish twins who grew up practically as Keziah’s shadow. She helped bottle-feed them, carried them on her hip, played piano while they napped in the living room. In many ways they felt more like siblings than nieces and nephews. And somewhere in those years, Keziah fell in love with movement. Gymnastics became the second language of her body. Where music lived in her mind, gymnastics lived in her bones. Coaches noticed something strange about the way she performed. Her routines looked choreographed to music that wasn’t even playing. Every flip, landing, and extension flowed like choreography inside a symphony only she could hear. She dominated competitions. Undefeated since the movement she first stepped on the mat. Local meets became regional wins. Regional meets turned national. Judges talked about her “musicality in motion.” By fourteen she was already on the radar for the U.S. Olympic development pipeline, with real discussions about a possible Olympic appearance at sixteen. Then pain arrived.
“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
It started small. An ache in her leg that stretching didn’t solve. A tightness that grew sharper over weeks. Coaches assumed it was overtraining. Rehab didn’t help. Neither did rest. Doctors eventually ran deeper scans. Ewing sarcoma. She was fifteen. Her world shrank overnight from gymnasiums and orchestras to fluorescent hospital hallways and quiet rooms filled with machines that hummed through the night. The pediatric oncology ward had an unspoken rule: the kids who stayed the longest were usually the ones who were running out of time. Keziah quickly became one of the oldest patients there. Most teenagers her age came and went quickly. Not because they recovered. Because they didn’t. Depression followed like a shadow that refused to leave. Music, the thing that once lit up her world, became painful to think about. Gymnastics was gone entirely. Then she met another patient, Jonah Keller, in the pediatric oncology ward. He was one of the only other patients close to her age, which made him stand out immediately in a place where most of the teenagers didn’t stay long. Just as stubborn. Just as aware of the clock ticking over their heads. They made a quiet pact together: if they were going to die young, they were at least going to live loudly until the end.
They started as late night conversation partners, passing time with bad hospital food and whispered jokes after curfew. Over weeks that turned into something deeper. Both of them knew the statistics. Both of them knew that their futures were short. Instead of pretending otherwise, they made a quiet pact to live as fully as they could with whatever time they had left. Somewhere between watching old movie recordings and sneaking out into the stairwell to escape the smell of antiseptic, they fell in love. Their first kiss happened in that stairwell. And even though most of their nights together were spent watching movies online, listening to symphonies, laughing too loudly during visiting hours, making lists of ridiculous things they wished they could still do; months later, when the floor was quiet and the nurses thought everyone was asleep, they lost their virginity to each other in his hospital room. It was awkward, tender, and frighteningly real for two people who had been told they might not have much time left to grow up. Keziah discovered conducting during this time too. She became obsessed with videos circulating online of Marin Alsop, one of the first women ever to break through the historically male fortress of top-tier orchestral conducting. Alsop had also won the MacArthur Fellowship, something Keziah found both hilarious and fitting. A genius award for someone who literally commanded orchestras like storms.
“Where there is great love, there are always miracles.”
And then, a miracle felt like it’s happening. Jonah started improving. He was the first one whose doctors started whispering about remission. Hope crept carefully back into the ward. Then one morning his condition suddenly collapsed without warning. Jonah died before Keziah could say goodbye. Losing him shattered something in Keziah that chemotherapy never could. For a while she stopped talking entirely. But the pact lingered in the back of her mind like a melody she couldn’t forget. So when Make-A-Wish Foundation eventually came by her room and asked what she wanted, she didn’t ask for a trip or celebrity visit. She said she wanted to conduct a real orchestra. A massive one. Not a small hospital performance. The real thing. The request somehow reached *Marin Alsop* herself. Instead of sending a polite decline, Marin flew to meet the girl and officially ask her to conduct. She planned to tutor Keziah for a week before allowing her to guest conduct a piece during a concert. By the second rehearsal, Marin realized something unsettling. The girl didn’t need teaching. Keziah understood phrasing, timing, and emotional architecture instinctively. She could hear balance issues before musicians even finished playing a passage. At one point she suggested a tempo shift that made the entire orchestra sound fuller. Marin later admitted she had never seen anything like it. The concert happened in Carnegie Hall in New York City after Keziah was, very carefully, flown out to the states under heavy medical supervision. The audience knew they were witnessing something fragile and fleeting. A dying teenager standing in front of a full orchestra, baton trembling slightly in her hand. She dedicated her first performance to Jonah. His loss had carved something permanent into her. Even now, some of her most emotional performances have been quietly dedicated to him, even if the audience never knows his name.
The performance was breathtaking. Then something stranger happened. A few weeks later, after her 16th birthday, Keziah’s cancer began responding to treatment. Remission followed slowly, cautiously, like dawn creeping across a horizon no one dared trust yet. When she was finally strong enough to leave the hospital, Marin Alsop invited her to study under her directly. Keziah finished high school online while traveling with orchestras, rehearsing backstage, absorbing music like oxygen. What began as mentorship evolved into partnership. Within a decade she had become one of the most talked-about conductors in the world. Her style is emotional, theatrical, and hypnotic. Musicians often say performing under her feels less like following a conductor and more like being swept into a current. She composes as well. Massive orchestral pieces. Film and musical scores. Experimental neo-classical works that blend classical traditions with cinematic scale.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Keziah’s life after remission moved quickly in ways most people her age never experienced. By the time many of her peers were applying to college, she was already traveling the world with orchestras twice her age. Her friendships formed in rehearsal halls, backstage corridors, and hotel lobbies rather than classrooms. Because of that, her social circle has always been small but intense. The musicians who know her well describe her as fiercely loyal, deeply empathetic, and unexpectedly funny once she relaxes. But there is also a distance about her that never fully disappears, a quiet instinct to keep part of herself protected. Romantically, Keziah generally considers herself straight, though the fluid emotional environment of the arts has made her open-minded about attraction. She has occasionally questioned whether her feelings could extend beyond men, but most of her relationships have been with men she met through music, film, or other creative spaces. She has fallen in love since Jonah, but never with the same reckless openness she had at fifteen. Losing someone that young changed the way she attaches to people. Even in her happiest relationships, some part of her seems to hold the door half closed. And through it all, she kept returning home, and eventually to Northknot once they moved, every so often. To see Hollis and Ashtin. To breathe. To remember who she was before the world started clapping. Sometimes even staying for months to work on small projects with the locals.
Now she’s thirty-five. Last week, during a concert, she fainted mid-performance. At first she blamed exhaustion, the kind that comes from weeks of rehearsals and travel. But the symptoms had been building quietly for months. The lingering cough. The strange tightness in her chest. The fatigue that sleep never seemed to touch. Doctors confirmed what she had already begun to suspect. The cancer is back. This time it’s in her lungs. The news alone would have been enough to shatter anyone else. But before Keziah could even process the diagnosis, the doctors returned with something else. Her bloodwork had shown elevated hormone levels. They had run another test, then an ultrasound to confirm. Keziah is pregnant. And not with one child. Two small heartbeats flickered across the monitor in the quiet dark of the exam room. Twins. For a long moment she couldn’t speak. After everything her body had survived, after years of believing she might never live long enough to build a family of her own, life had found its way back to her in the most impossible way. But so had death. The doctors explained the risks carefully. The cancer. The pregnancy. The treatment options that might save her but endanger the babies. The ones that might protect the babies but cost her precious time. Keziah listened to all of it in silence. A few days later she took a sabbatical. Told no one why. Not Marin. Not even her babies’ father. She ended her relationship with him without explanation, telling him her life had become too complicated and she needed space. Anything except the truth. She packed quietly and returned to Northknot Town, telling people she just wanted to rest for a while. No one realizes she may be here for good. Not yet.
