HATCHETFIELD TAROT: OC EDITION
Imogen Zeal
fc Devin Lytle
TW: Blood, Gore, Child Abuse
Nibbly's cult has seen some unrest amongst members throughout its history. The Zeals had a decent hand in trying to make deals with god.
They owned a small farm, tended to poultry and pigs. They provided those pigs for the Honey Queen festival. Their father wasn't satisfied with an annual bestowing of wealth. He and other grumbling members got greedy and wanted to invoke the physical form of Nibbly at any time they pleased, in hopes he would grant them more riches.
Imogen Zeal, the youngest daughter, was the farmhand and the scapegoat. Her older sisters pinned things on her when they wanted to get out of trouble. Sometimes just for fun. She was made to do the most labor amongst them three, forced to slaughter pigs for the Honey Queen festival and, eventually, for these other ritual attempts.
The Zeal patriarch and his circle of friends began eyeing the women and girls for their participation in the ritual when the pigs weren't enough. But the Zeal girls, the most obvious choices, needed to hunger first.
They were taught to be The Most; the prettiest, the smartest, the most cunning... the ideal daughter. And they'd be punished for falling short. What none of them knew was Imogen's connection to The Gift, and how it was her savior and her failing.
The Gift manifested for Imogen in a very specific way. She used it to be invisible. Sometimes that was literal, and she'd physically vanish. Other times the thought of going to yell at her or blame her for something just happened to... slip the person's mind. She used it so intentionally over the years that only the Best of her would come to the forefront for others. Imogen would be perceived only when she wanted to be perceived, and exactly how she wanted to be perceived.
It didn't do much convincing for her older sisters. They still ignored her. Put her down. Made her feel small to make themselves feel big. So she gave up trying to win any love from them. She'd be The Most.
None of the Zeal girls had actually seen a ritual attempt, either on the actual night of the Honey Queen festival or any of the others. They didn't know what went down, other than what they were told to do: slaughter the pigs, exceed in every facet, and--when the cult got really desperate--bathe in pig blood and eat honeycomb. Anything to hunger.
The night of their most zealous attempt: the three girls were brought to the ritual. Surrounded by their flayed farm animals, staring at a pit of fire. Nibbly began taking form. But something was wrong.
The half-formed corpse of a god summoned too soon stared down at its worshippers, who were so convinced their pathetic, botched attempt and half-hearted offerings would please him. Furious, he set sights on the eldest of the Zeals, the one who tried as hard as Imogen, if not harder, to be the hungriest. She was the only of the three that didn't back away upon his forming. And Imogen watched her oldest sister devoured from the waist up.
Nibbly took every victim he could, swiping and slobbering and gnashing teeth made of swine hooves. Imogen barely dodged the onslaught, other people in the line of fire. But she knew sooner or later he'd come for her. Even if she hid, Nibbly would find her. She'd seen others duck behind trees and into the brush. Nibbly could smell them. Trees were torn and bushes were yanked from their roots. Nibbly was forced here prematurely. Nibbly would feast.
For some time, Webby had been fading. Imogen was now fifteen. But she remembered, under a bed of rotting carcasses, her waning gift. She was terrified, stifling sobs and the urge to retch under the filth, and thought, Please, god. Webby. Help me. Don't let him find me. PLEASE.
It took all of Webby's ability to help Imogen avoid the detection of her brother. But she used it to her fullest, until the fleshy, contorted amalgamate was pulled down by gravity once more and landed with a wet thump on the soil. Imogen felt it like a mini earthquake; it reverberated, shook her bones. She was safe. And Webby was gone.
That was the last time she was able to access The Gift. In all of the trauma, that loss was felt just as strongly. For now she was an orphan farm girl with no clue what to do next.
Imogen was placed with a new family. She'd go to school. Kept to herself at first. Faded into the background against her will. She couldn't let that happen.
She began showing symptoms of NPD. She'd be her own superpower. She'd learn how to control how she was perceived all on her own.
Over the years, those anxieties grew. But it didn't matter. Others didn't matter. Others were less important. She needed to be The Most.
She gained and lost friend groups because of this, fell in and out of bad relationships, and eventually had a collapse in her mid twenties. It took a lot of time, and a lot of therapy (with mental health professionals who actually treated those on the NPD spectrum as human fucking beings), and maybe a run-in or two with a red-headed witch, until she started to really put her life back together, nearly a decade long overdue.
She went back to school to become a psychologist. The field fascinated her. Humans, to Imogen, were monsters for a very long time. Lesser. Studying psychology demystified some of those beliefs. At the same time, they were a hard reminder of how easily the human mind can be manipulated. She knew how to do it. She did it for her own safety for years.
In her healing journey, she worked through a lot of toxic behaviors that affected people in her life she cared about, but she also learned to accept the parts of herself that were entirely her that she couldn't make more savory for others' comfort. Empathy didn't come naturally. She'd grown very skilled with compassion in its stead. Making those logical conclusions of how a person could feel what way and why.
She knows, in her form, how she exists now, she's human. Maybe even a superhero. She has the power to heal her clients. With the right prodding, she can lead them to the right conclusions, help them realize the best choices they can make for their lives. This is especially satisfying with her male clients. She takes on very few men, for obvious reasons, but the ones she does she's deliberate about. She's found the balance in knowing when to protect her mental safety and when to be the person who can prevent assholes from continuing cycles. Like her past life, she thinks it best to leave those things in the mud. The rot will not be carried onward. For her or anyone else she looks after. She need not hunger.
