@c23intros || task one || pinned post
{Yaya DaCosta, 35, female, she/her} || SELA MUSA is a mutant with the ability of STONE TOUCH. They’ve been in New York for EIGHT YEARS where they spend most of their time as AN UNDERGROUND "ART" DEALER. When I think of them, I think of PUDDLES IN A BACK ALLEY; MARBLE COLLUMNS LEFT IN RUIN; EMPTY BOTTLES OF WINE; WEIGHTED BLANKETS IN PLACE OF REAL PHYSICAL CONNECTION *brotherhood affiliated
Sela was born to Idara and Milton Musa on September 23th, 1962 in Seattle, Washington. Her parents, wanting to give their precious little girl a good, clean upbringing, left their jobs working for corporate America and moved to a small town in Montana when Sela was just a few months old. Looking for the classic simple life, the newlyweds bought a dozen acres and a decent sized heard of cattle and started their dream ranch.
While her parents worked the ranch, Sela lived the life every little girl dreamed of; She had two horses, a buckskin quarter horse named Peanut Butter and a bay morgan named Tootsie-Roll, that she rode daily as she explored not just the property she lived on, but the beautiful forests and mountains that surrounded them. Their community was tightknit- and her family was very involved in every town event. Whether it was participating in school bake sales or the Fourth of July bonfire festival, or Sela and her mother winning the annual mother/daughter pony pageant- the Musa’s were always there.
At least, that’s what she told herself every night in order to fall asleep in the cold, somehow always itchy bed in the foster homes and halfway houses where she actually grew up.
See, while Sela knows that her mother’s name was Idara Musa, she has no idea who her father is. Or was. All she knew- all she still knows- is that her mother gave birth to her in Seattle on August 24th, 1962. And that on August 25th, 1962, she was left in a basket on the steps of a church with the clothes she was wearing, a worn baby blanket, and a birth certificate. She bounced around between foster homes and group houses ever since.
Up until 1972, that is.
She’d only turned ten about a month before- a birthday that had been largely ignored by the staff that ran the group home that she’d been in for the last year and a half. This had been her least favorite ‘home’ yet; It was run by a small organization that cared more about the money the government gave them than the conditions that the children were kept in. Sure, the houses were clean- thanks to the dozen kids that lived there- and always had the bare minimum needed to pass a visit from social services. But the bare minimum often meant mealy food, lukewarm baths, and thin and scratchy blankets. And a lack of proper supervision, which lead to a rampant bullying problem. As was the case one hot, September day.
Herself and a couple of the other smaller, younger kids were cornered in one of the bedrooms by the current leader of the band of bullies. Sela no longer remembers the boy’s name- not his real name, anyway. But she remembers the fear she’d felt at the prospect of another beating from the boy and group of hooligans. Fear that had been reflected in the kids who’d been rounded up with her. She remembers the way he laughed when he threw a fake punch and they’d all flinched. How smug he’d looked right before the fists started colliding with faces still lined with baby fat. How her own hands had come up to try to stop him.
Then she remembers how that smug look melted into something of pained horror, as his skin turned dark grey and gritty under her own hands. The lackies ran, the other victims screamed and edged away from her. She screamed and tried to round the now stone child- his fists still balled up in the air, mouth twisted in fright for all eternity.
Shaking, she made it past the statue, only to almost run into the most prude, meanest of the staff. She remembers the older woman yelling out in shock, the other two kids pointing at her. Then the wrinkled woman started yelling at her, accusing her, grabbed her hard by her bare arm-
Then the screaming stopped. And she was stuck in the cold grasp of another statue. This one with perfectly carved stone winkles, and downward turned open mouth.
The panic started kicking in then. She didn’t know what was happening, what she was doing. And now she was stuck, forced to face whatever the hell she’d done. Her free hand reached for something- anything- that she could use to get her out of the statue’s grasp, and found a baseball bat that a lacky had dropped. Sela grabbed it and brought it up, slamming it as hard as she could into the stone wrist. After a couple of hits, the thumb crumbled away and she managed to slide free. The young girl grabbed her emergency go-bag and ran. She didn’t look back.
For a long while she wandered, learning what she had to do to prevent more accidents. She began wearing gloves and long sleeves and pants all of the time. Avoided the bigger camps of vagrants. As a transient child and teenager, she was treated just as well as she had been at the group home. Some gave her scraps of food, a scratchy blanket. Some tormented her, showed their disgust. Most ignored her. Very few knew that she was really different. Not human. And the ones that found out threatened her enough that she’d had to take measures to make sure she stayed safe.
Eventually, she made her way to California. And her life changed.
Sela found her niche amongst the wild and unhinged, party loving rockstars and socialites of California’s upper-class. She started selling her statues, at first under the guise of a middlewoman, a private and exclusive seller for the mysterious master sculptor, Medusa. She’d spread her own legend, create her own supply and demand chains in dimly lit private rooms and rooftop parties, with no handshakes. It satisfied her for a few years, made her enough money for an apartment in LA and all the food she could want.
And when the President made his announcement, she took her chance. After finding out most of them were mutants themselves, or at least knew their place around them, she exposed herself to her private clients. Told them just enough of the truth to trigger their need of one-of-a-kind collections and bragging rights. A replica, normal sized statue of David whom she’s pretty sure was actually named David before he’d said the wrong thing to her. Or the Aphrodite that she’d presented draped in real silk, some human woman that had called a man and child with moon white eyes freaks.
She started charging more and her clients happily paid. One of her best was the first to make a request for a.. commissioned piece. There was a loan shark that had tried to blackmail the millionaire for a debt his daughter owed. The proposed mark was a slimy, rat-faced, lowlife of a human. The kind of sleaze that you’d only ever go as a last resort, and only because he liked to lurk around the dumpsters behind actual loan sharks. In short- Sela had no qualms with ridding the world of him and his copious amounts of hair gel. For the right price. That first commission got her two-hundred-thousand dollars, and invites to secret clubs and parties that only opened more and more doors for her.
Things stayed like that for a while. The parties and sun and backroom deals. But then she grew bored, stagnant. So she finally took the offer of her best client and moved her brand across the country- to New York. Where she found others like her, who knew the superiority of mutantkind over man, and actively did something about the injustices their kind were tormented with. It was a no brainer when she officially joined. She helps fund the brotherhood’s needs, and has a few longstanding, free commissions available whenever they need one.