#zilker

Age: 28

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She / Her

Neighborhood: Zilker

Occupation: COO of Texas American Resources

Triggers: Death, Drugs

BIOGRAPHY

YOU’VE NEVER SEEN UPPER CRUST LIKE THIS-- 

Dark brunette tendrils fell over slender shoulders, maybe too slim but no one ever had the balls to mention that. A pale manicured hand, wrapped around the handle of a core rotted shovel, while the other was wiping beads of perspiration from a furrowed brow (a good way to get wrinkles early, according to her mother). The end of the shovel, and the fractured tile beneath it splattered in a dark blood, too dark to be human, but that was evident by the crudely chopped head of a snake lying lifeless near the spade of the shovel. Scarlett Sutherland stood there, conflicted on how she should have felt about the whole situation.

The daughter of an Oil Tycoon and a transplant Southern Belle, Scarlett Sutherland wasn’t ever expected to kill her own snakes. Then again, the girl was always doing things she was never expected to do. From a young age, the Sutherland girl always had a small layer of dirt living under her nails, much to the distain of her mother. Her father on the other hand, never minded. He was always happy to bring his daughter with him whenever she wanted to go with him, but her favorite places were the oil fields.

Not a place you’d usually find a three year old, but maybe the source of her complete mess of a life, a young Scarlett could almost pinpoint the exact moment her thoughts on dirt and grime changed. In the middle of an oil field, next to a derrick, surrounded by men in hard hats, complaining about the heat, the young girl also stood, a hand grasping the denim on the outside of her dad’s pant leg, her own child sized, pink hard hat on her head, so she looked like everyone else, or at least she thought she did. They didn’t expect to hit anything that day, it was the only reason her mother let her go, but there was something a little unpredictable about drilling oil, that’s where the thrill was. Drilling through the rock, hitting the petroleum oil exploding from the ground, it was the only baptism the girl would ever have.

The dirtiest the girl would ever be, her mom took over after that. Seeing her daughter drenched in oil was something a mother never wanted for her daughter, especially her blue-blooded daughter who was supposed to be in dresses and not in pants and a hard hat. The seismic shift that took place in the Sutherland girl’s life after that would change everything. From once being able to go wherever she wanted, outside, in the dirt, in the mud, to the ranch, in the oil fields was now not allowed to do any of it. The girl was kept inside, only allowed to go places her mother approved, even if her father protested.

Three more, what felt like, torturous years, and her parents had another child. Another girl, and finally, Scarlett was free. With the birth of her sister, her mother had someone else to constantly concentrate on, which gave Scarlett the chance to do whatever she wanted, so of course, that meant going everywhere with her father, like she was the son he always wanted but never got. Since two children was what was expected, another wasn’t going to be in the cards, so her father was stuck with two daughters, so at least one of them lived in a constant film of dirt.

Scarlett continued her adolescence much the same. Glued to her father’s side, covered in dirt, wearing a hard hat to oilfields. It wasn’t the charmed part of their lives, but it was her favorite part. Her mother let her continue this way until she turned 13. She hated the fact that her daughter wasn’t doing things she thought a girl should do. She was a teenager now, the girl needed to get ready for the societal part of her life, the part where her mother thrived. She needed to do more ladylike activities. Playing with the boys outside covered in mud wasn’t going to fly anymore. As much as Scarlett hated it, she couldn’t fight her, and her father was always on her mother’s side, despite him being her favorite parent. If she insisted on being outside, the girl was going to be funneled in what her mother thought was more acceptable.

Now into more feminine outdoor sports, horseback riding and tennis, she was on a path her mother deemed acceptable. The brunette didn’t necessarily like the idea that she couldn’t go out with her father anymore, but her new schedule was taking up so much time, she almost forgot that she was missing something. She started riding lessons, by all means and purposes, late. Most girls started when they were practically toddlers, and when they were her age, they were past children’s and onto youth whatever they wanted. But Scarlett was never one who liked being left behind, and it helped that her parents were more than wealthy. She started with two of the best Hunters money could by, and the best coach and trainer to pull it all together. Being a quick study, in two months the girl was competing in low-level hunters, and the following year, the Sutherland girl was donned the queen of equitation.

Once she started in the higher levels of competing, she was switched from her private high school, and moved to homeschooling with a tutor. She spent her winters in Florida at WEF and her summers overseas competing with the best around Europe. She continued like this until she was 18 and graduating from high school. She couldn’t show horses forever. As much as she loved it, and the horses, it wasn’t plausible. She didn’t want to go pro to make money, and she didn’t want to be coined as one of those amateurs that had too much money and not enough life. So she started looking at colleges, and applying, she picked the obvious Texas choices, UT, Baylor and Rice. She’s spent her life in private schools, so a private school was her obvious choice. She didn’t know how to function in a public school, but she applied to one just for kicks, because she could. Getting acceptance letters back from them all, she quickly threw out UT. She had no business going to a public school, and really—when it came down to it, no one wanted to live in Waco, but Rice didn’t have an equestrian team and Scarlett didn’t want to completely give up the horses, so off to Baylor she went.

University came and went like a blur. A slew of Equestrian team MVPs, a sorority presidency, every semester sat firmly on the dean’s list and the girl graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Environmental Engineering, she was ready to go back to her first love, the oil fields. She’d done all the steps her mother insisted upon, but now she was ready to go back to her father’s life, this time as an intern. Her father had told her she didn’t have to actually work in the field. He’d never done it, he didn’t expect her to either, but she wanted to. She wanted to know what it was like in the field. How could she be the force of innovation and change if she didn’t know what needed to change? She knew the science of it, she knew the environmental impact of it all, but she knew nothing of the manual labor that was required to keep it going.

The Sutherland girl was a sight in the oil fields. She’d always been slender, and you could even say she’d always been good looking, but as she aged she just got better. Her, in hard-toed boots and a hard hat went from being cute to being oil field Barbie. All the guys were always offering to help, and she had never been a huge fan of lifting anything by herself so she let them. As it went on, she got closer and closer to a particular guy. He’d been hired as a manual labour, but he was moving up quickly, as much as someone could without owning the whole operation. One night of payback drinks turned into a second date, which turned into months of dating. She’d never planned on dating an oil guy, especially one that looked like one, but that’s how her life was working out, doing things she didn’t expect to. But as life would have it once again, she was being taken out of the field. Her father decided she’d had enough hands on experience after 2 years, and just as suddenly her relationship was over. She didn’t do long distance, and moving back home to Austin, their oil fields were hours and hours away, she wasn’t going to take a helicopter or drive every weekend. It was irresponsible, as much as she thought she loved him.

Moving back to the city, she was named COO of the family company, and a new office in the Frost Building, a nice desk, and a small drug addiction all came with it. As it turned out, leaving who she thought was the love of her life, and everything she’d ever really wanted to do was harder than she thought. She knew the whole situation was temporary. She was never supposed to be working out there anyways, her father was against the idea, she has to convince him it was a good idea. Hell she’d made a power point. But here she was, in her perfect desk, in her perfect building, a bottle of whiskey in her bottom drawer, and a Xanax always freshly sitting in her stomach.

At first she couldn’t function with both. She had to pick, the crippling pain, because she refused to deal with any sort of emotion, or a cloudy numbing high. She was a Sutherland, if she couldn’t pay for it, she probably didn’t have anything to do with it, and she couldn’t pay the emotions to go away, she could however, pay for the Xanax under the table with zero strings attached. But after awhile she got good at juggling. She learned how to function on the pills and she found just the edge that she needed.

The brunette soon gained a reputation of cutthroat. Maybe a little too much, if they couldn’t send it to her in an email, there was a chain of rock paper scissors that picked the person who went into her office. She might have learned to be a little ruthless, but it got the job done, it helped everyone—or at least that’s what she told herself. She didn’t like to admit that maybe the drugs were bad and she needed to heal herself.

So standing, standing there—weather-worn shovel in hand, shattered tile floor, death victim in front of her, maybe there wasn’t a question of how she should have felt, because deep down she already knew. It made her finally feel alive.

PERSONALITY

( + ) Attentive, Driven, Strong-Willed

I’ve seen a few of these around town...they’re so cute.