Name: Elyse Imogene Kerr, AKA Elysium Age: 31 Birthday: August 1 Pronouns: she/they Species: Human Night Fae Faction: Court of Dusk, apparently Occupation: Clerk at Humble Bumble, Social Media Maven/Dungeon Monitor at Stinger Hometown: Banbury, England Sexuality: Pansexual Relationship Status: Single Personality Traits: Creative, Determined, Energetic, Stubborn, Egotistical, Distrusting
Headcanons [COMING SOON] ~ Wanted Connections
[TW: mild dysphoria, murder, parent death]
Tenebrescence is the quality of rare gemstones to change, to deepen in color and darkness, when exposed to the right conditions, generally light.
Elyse Kerr was always a peculiar child, her parents said.
Quiet, observant, creative. But a little dark, a little moody. The doctors had labels and diagnoses, there were medications, but Elyse was "just our dear Elyse" when the problems proved too much for prescription. The family moved from Banbury to Eden Ros when she was fairly young, so her mother could work at the art museum in town. The displacement didn't bother Elyse much -- she was uncomfortable everywhere, and so could make herself comfortable anywhere.
She grew up like any typical young woman would, a bit troubled but doing her best. Elyse had few but close friends, liked to go to parties, was good at getting boys to do what she wanted because she was disarmingly beautiful and persuasive. Her grades were average, but she excelled in the arts. Painting particularly, but she learned some sculptural disciplines and even graphic design as the years passed and technology advanced. Her most personal projects had a dark edge to them, paintings of surreal, shadowy figures -- an exploration of the self, she said. The self that was yearning to break free. Obscured shapes, bright, unblinking eyes, and a dalliance between the borders of human flesh and the lingering, lurking night of death.
Elyse was mostly content with this life, not really questioning anything. She had a beautiful tugtupite necklace -- her mother recognized the stone from her museum work. It was a piece of jewelry Elyse had had all her life, never questioning where it came from and never taking it off. She wasn't particularly compelled to, but she never seemed able if she tried. It was a versatile piece, the gem ranging from soft milky whites to deep raspberry reds. As if by magic, it always matched her outfit, from formalwear to club casual. She worked at the local honey shop and its stickier counterpart to make money. Elyse was a peculiar person, but her life was just as human as any other.
Except all of that was a fucking lie, apparently. At least, most of it. It all blew wide open the day, by chance or by some cruel design, Elyse Kerr stumbled into the Realm of Fae. A chance encounter with someone otherworldly -- and yet so much more familiar to Elyse than anything human -- revealed that she was actually a night fae child switched with a human infant who had just been born. The changeling Elysium was placed in the bassinet by hands whose warmth she never really knew -- if it was even there to begin with. And the necklace? It's an albatross around her neck, bound with a Geas that kept her permanently glamoured, completely in the dark about herself. At least someone let her be a beautiful freak all these years. No wonder she never felt human!
Immediately her life unraveled. 31 years of lies, of grief, of self-hatred, misunderstanding, and a miasma of her own personal darkness, her own private hell. Elyse was furious. What was the point of it all, and who was she really? Lacking the words, the understanding, the right outlet for her tidal wave of feelings, she did the only thing she could think to do. She killed the human parents who raised her. They didn't know, it wasn't their fault. But she wasn't going to be the one to tell them that they never really had her in the first place, that their real daughter was somewhere out in the wilds (if she was even still out there at all) and that the baby in their arms had been a black hole, a shadow of humanity the whole time.
Newly awakened but drowning in a world turned entirely on its head, Elyse is determined to find out who the fuck she really is, no matter whose lives she has to ruin to reclaim her birthright. Now if only she could get this fucking necklace off.
