#moon servant

The Identity V design of the day is:

Dream Witch: Moon Servant (B-Tier)!

NAME: Tessa Clarke AGE: 24 / 1356 SPECIES: Moon Servant OCCUPATION: Owner of Voodoo Moon YEAR OF DEPARTURE: 1924 RESIDENT FOR… forty-five years. FACECLAIM: Elizabeth Olsen

t i m e  i s  a n  i l l u s i o n,  b u t  n o t  o u r  s t o r i e s…

Her life had been easy. Simple. She was a part of a village - a group, one that had been in the same pace for as long as they could remember. Their cobbled together huts and easy clothing provided them all that they needed to get by, and they provided the rest. Hunting, fishing and gathering were the soundtrack to their days.

Tessa was not born Tessa Clarke - she was born Sunngifu, daughter of the village leader and his second wife. She was born in the winter, a bright light in the midst of a terrible darkness that had long taken over their corner of the world. Sickness plagued them throughout that winter, and it soon carried her mother off with it.

She survived, even as a portion of her fellows didn’t. The sickness worked quickly, and it was a period of rebirth that she was born in to. Her childhood was an odd one - most of the children did what they could to work with the others, to help the village and make it better, and she was hidden away, fiercely protected by a father that was too scared to lose her as well as the wife that he had loved so dearly. Tessa was quiet, and reserved, someone who obeyed her father for years until she had learned enough to think for herself.

The world was too enticing for her to experience solely through the slats in the walls of her home, and she started rebelling. It started innocently, as she snuck out at dusk to watch the sky fade to black and the stars emerge. She fell in love with the stars and the moon and the idea of how much world there was - so much that she had yet to learn about, so much that she craved to learn about.

Sneaking out at dusk turned into running off when her father was busy and joining the games of the other children, games that ended with scrapes and bruises she had to cover to avoid revealing how much time she really spent outside. She had to rely on the others to keep her secrets, hope that they wouldn’t rat her out to a father whose greatest fear was realizing that his daughter had a life.

As she grew older she participated more, falling in love with nature each moment that she spent in it gathering food. She was young and naive enough to still believe that the world was overwhelmingly right. That there couldn’t be so much beauty and it still be terrible or terrifying like her father liked to pretend. The moon and the stars spoke to her, whispered through the trees like a light wind, drawing her out each night.

She was in love with the world and all its pieces as she slowly became an adult, still hidden away, denied a chance at love and life like the rest. She had to fight for every bit of freedom that she had, claws out and at the ready to sink into the little things that she couldn’t let go of. The feeling of the morning dew under her feet before she had to run back to the hut and pretend that she hadn’t seen the glorious sunrise that morning.

The plague that hit the village a second time struck her almost as soon as it struck the others. Her father couldn’t believe it - he had been so careful, but he had never known that his daughter disobeyed him at every opportunity and ran with the young boys of the village, doing all that she could to have a taste of life before it was stolen from her. As she lay wasting away in her cot, within the same walls that were supposed to have kept her safe, the witches came to the village.

She could hardly hold onto her focus long enough to understand what they were saying, but her father was desperate to believe that they could succeed in their goal of curing his plague, and he allowed his only daughter to be taken from him. Under the full moon her body bent and broke and burned from the inside out until she found herself rising, freed of the fever that had kept her body hostage. Her body felt unbelievably strong, like new, and it was with happiness that she returned to her father.

Her sudden recovery gave her father a sense of happiness that he thought would cause his heart to burst. He watched the entire village rejoice at the return of their beloved, as all of them had grown to know and love Tess as though she were their own. The happiness lasted all month - she was allowed out of her prison to rejoice with the rest of the ones who still stood, wholly healthy and ecstatic beyond measure.

The happiness lasted for a month until the full moon rose again revealing that all was not as it had seemed. Her body bent and broke and transformed until she stood a wolf, one hellbent on blood and destruction. The sun rose the next morning to reveal her naked body covered in blood, leaves and twigs woven into the strands of her blonde hair. She couldn’t understand what had happened - the last that she had remembered, the moon was rising and she had felt an unbearable pain.

She found the others, those that had been saved along with her as they realized that they hadn’t really been saved at all - they had been cursed to be slaves of the moon for the rest of their lives. Each full moon brought with it a terrible pain, the feeling of every bone in her body breaking over and over again, the guilt that came the next morning as the bodies piled up and the horror she felt overwhelmed her each time. The months turned into years and the years into a decade and she did not fight as the witches who had turned her dragged her into her own jail to rot.

Years later, freed from the prison by a time traveler, she set off for the hills. Hidden in the far reaches of the highlands she stayed there, with the silver shackles that she knew could control her on her worst nights. Years passed, her solitude the only thing that kept her sane. She couldn’t rust herself with anyone else, couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t become just another person that she had killed along the way.

The world changed around her even as she never did, remaining the twenty-four year old she had been when she was turned from human to Moon Servant. That’s what she had been told she was - a Moon Servant. A kind name for something so wholly terrible. The world did not care that she sought to separate herself from everyone else, and as it changed around her she was forced to integrate. To not let on that the passing years with their advancements made her squeeze her eyes shut and wait to wake up from the nightmare her life had become.

She adapted, changing into exactly who she needed to be over the years. From peasant to nun to prostitute, up until the 1600s, traveling all around the world.  There wasn’t a country in Europe that she hadn’t called her home, learning the language and assimilating herself into each like her life depended on it. She didn’t want to be different, she wanted to be normal, to have some sense of belonging even if she didn’t.

Being normal, however, was not something that was always an option. Sometimes she had to use her curse for good - a deep-rooted need to atone for the things that she had done that lead to her turning those who were dying, those that were sick, and those that begged her for a chance to be different and better. Through those choices, the Kensely pack was born. Serving as alpha, her pack traveled the world with her, some coming and going as the winds took them, spreading the gift of the bite in the ways that she had taught them.

It was in the 1600s that she found that she could sail the seas - to see more of the world and make a name for herself as a woman, a successful woman, in a way that hadn’t been done before. Most feared her - she had a taste for violence against those who took slaves or abused women, and the numbers were all too common in those days. Those that didn’t fear her were those that lived good lives as honorable humans, and they benefited immensely from interactions with her. She was very generous with her money, her winnings, her gold, and she allowed everyone to take what they needed to make a life for themselves and their families.

When the golden age of piracy came to its end, she moved to the New World - America, somewhere that she had yet not explored, and she made a home for herself in Virginia, with the few members of her pack that were with her. The pack was always different, always changing, each bringing something new and exciting to her life before they aged and died or followed their fate wherever it took them. She cherished each of them - supported them as though they were her own children, because in a way they were.

Years came and went and as the country devolved into a civil war, she did what she could to support the north, her children signing on to give their lives in what ways they could. The war drained her, emotionally and physically and she found herself retreating back to a quiet life in the mountains, the numbers of her immediate pack dwindling slightly. She couldn't bring herself to care for anyone that could so callously be ripped from her, and the entirety of the human population made her sick.

She couldn’t stay hidden forever, as much as she wished to, and it was in the early 1900s that she found herself in New York City, readjusting to the city life as best she could. Things were taking a turn, there was a change in the air, and the first World War proved to her once again that humans were nothing - that they would never learn from their actions, that she would never understand them or the way that the world was turning slowly into a technological hellscape.

The year 1924 dawned with a feminine revolution in full swing. Women cut their hair and wore shorter dresses and flaunted that they couldn’t be controlled in the way they were before. Tessa related to it - she had never been one to be controlled and she accepted the movement with a happiness in her veins and a wicked grin on her lips. It was late on New Years Eve, a glass of champagne in her hands as she descended an abandoned stairwell, seeking the door at the bottom that would provide her with a solitary space in which to smoke her cigarette outside.

When she opened the door, she knew that something felt off. Wrong - in a way. There was something in her chest that told her the door had taken her to somewhere far different than the alley that she had been smoking in all night long. The first person she stumbled across tried to explain it the best that they could. That she was somewhere where reality was just different. It wasn’t the first time - she had been locked in an alternate reality once before, but this didn’t feel quite like purgatory.

A night of rest and a strong cup of coffee the next day were what she needed to process - to really understand where she was and that her life was now different. It shocked her, to find members of her pack there in the city that had slipped away in the night and found themselves just as stranded as she was, but happy nonetheless. The liminal space as they called it was nice - different, a reprieve from the realities of the world.

She became comfortable there, spending time reading and writing and doing whatever she wanted to. She became intimately familiar with the city, its ins and outs, its inhabitants, some that she had known before, but most that she hadn’t. The years turned to decades, and though she felt a strong urge to explore more, farther, she did find herself at home in the space, the claustrophobia never becoming too overwhelming.

It was in the 1980s that Tessa opened Voodoo Moon - a bar for those that once a month were inclined to find themselves on four legs once a month, running through the woods. She trained her pack well, giving them jobs at the bar and helping them anywhere else so that they would have stability in their everyday life. Her pack was her family and she supported them in a way that they had never been supported, training them and ensuring that they would never harm other human beings. The liminal space was meant to be safe, and she would be damned if she would be the reason it wasn’t anymore.

Now, ninety-four years have passed and she remains in the liminal space, entirely happy with her decision, at home surrounded by her pack and the friends and family that she’s made and chosen throughout the years.

t e l l  m e,  a r e  w e  a  p r o d u c t  o f  w h o  w e  u s e d  t o  b e?

positive: adventurous - Tess has long lived for adventure. She doesn’t say no to many opportunities and she thinks fondly on the times she spent roaming the seas and making a life for herself in ways that weren’t considered appropriate for women in her time. Pushing boundaries is something that she’s intimately familiar with. 

objective  - being an alpha means that she has no choice about being objective, but she does it well. she balances the wants of each of her pack members and ensures that they’re all happy without being walked all over. she does it outside of the pack, too - she’s able to speak to customers at the bar and provide insight that they may not see themselves. 

trusting  - she trusts easily. it’s a gut instinct of hers, one that she follows without hesitation. she knows that her sixth sense is something to be relied on, given the amount of time spent on the earth. she does, also, believe in second chances - though it depends on what they’ve done to need a second chance. 

negative: cynical - there are things in life that Tess has become cynical of. she doesn’t fully believe in the overt goodness of mankind, or that anyone in politics cares for the best interest of the masses. she has lived too long to still fully believe that the world is a wonderful place. 

demanding  - she expects a lot from her pack, and those that work for her. she doesn’t accept half-assed attempts at their jobs or slacking when it comes to training. she has become used to having a set amount of power - has worked hard for it, and she doesn’t accept less than other’s best.