morgan āmorayā blackmore // skeleton // playlist
lighthouse keeper. photographer. harmonica player. amateur whittler. ocean swimmer.
ā³ played by ishmael. 22. they/them. est.
ā« character basics
skeleton: driftwood
character name: morgan "moray" blackmore
age & birthdate: 27, feb 11th
pronouns: he/him
birthplace: port vale
length of time in port vale: lifetime
occupation: lighthouse keeper
fc: jonathan majors
āŖ character history
HISTORY
(cw; parental death, drowning)Ā
Newton said every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and though Morgan Blackmore never took to textbook physics the way he took to the shapes it drew in the sand, he always found some comfort in the notion. That every drop in the bucket had its ripples. It instilled all of life's bitter trades with a pattern and purpose he found helped with the grief. The fact his birth was followed closely by his mother's death left the boy wondering what would make his life so equal and opposite an event.
The family of three she left behind grew ever tighter for it. Samuel Blackmore was a great many thingsā beloved community member, accomplished mayorā but he knew himself as a father first. At sunrise every morning, when the cool surf hit their ankles, his boys knew him as an ocean swimmer. Where the older Xander flanked their father with ease, Morgan had no hope of keeping up. "No man left behind," Samuel would remind them, and so he'd wrap his hands around one of his father's ankles to be towed right along, head popping up to steal breaths like the diving seabirds. In those days they'd start near every morning with a lap to the lighthouse and back. The day he can do it on his own, taking his post at his father's other flank, is like a rite of passage. From that day on, they call him Moray.
As they boys grew, they found every sibling had their equal and opposite, too. Where Xander seemed to step into the world with his path unfurling as he willed it, Moray was always picking his way through the dunes, armed with his harmonica and film camera, driven more by curiosity than any sense of direction. Where Xander was burning the midnight oil with his studies, Moray was doing the same in the darkroom he'd built into his bathroomā documenting the yellow-billed terns and scuttling mole-crabs. Capturing their coastal town as it changed. Grew. Flourished under the careful hands of his kin. Perpetually striving to capture the perfect portrait of the lighthouse that led their ships home. His prints he sold from a stand by the boardwalk, their rustic charm proving popular with tourists.
Despite their little trio's diverging linesā mayor, prodigy, photographerā there was always that lap around the lighthouse to weave them back together. It came as no surprise, then, that Moray Blackmore became its keeper as soon as he was able. After all, the lighthouse was the nexus of all things that rooted him to this place; and in time, it would become more Home than the Blackmore house and all its empty spaces.
PRESENT
To those who watch it closely enough, Port Vale is always changing. Like any town built at the edge of the lapping tide, to come from it, to trace your origins along its latitudes, is often an exercise in letting go. Of sand dunes. Of seawalls. Of Mothers and Mayors, too.
Samuel Blackmore washes up by the lighthouse. He must've done the swim alone,Ā they say. But the brothers know better. Why would he have done the swim alone?
At least, Moray knows better. Xander won't even consider the possibility his death was anything but an accident. Simply a stressed man's ill-advised attempt to clear his head alone. He sinks into his work, but since finding their father that day, all Moray can do is float. No man left behind, rattles through his head morning and night. The Blackmores were never good at letting go.
The lighthouse used to feel like a mirror. In the last year, it's become him. Or he's become it. His castle and confinement, both, sometimes he can't fathom where it ends and he begins. And for as long as it takes to uncover the truth of his father's death, it will be the safe haven of his conspiracy ā photographs and red thread painting the walls between working hours. Its timbers his sanctuary, its belly his bed.
PERSONALITY
Thereās always been a hunger to the way Moray takes things in through the lens of his film camera, like heās trying to hold the world the same way you hold water. If every action has its equal and opposite reaction, so must every person. He is his brother's foilā where the other charms Port Vale with ease, Moray melts into every nook and cranny of the place; as much a part of its fabric as the seagrass that holds the dunes together. Where the other hunkers down in churning seas, he throws his arms wide. The perfectionism long held by his family finds no home in him ā Moray is a whirlpool of thought and feeling. A maelstrom of a man whose attentions are as flighty as the town's seabirds. Who wears his heart on his sleeve, bruised by every blast of sea breeze.
