Post by lydiaagostini on Jul 22, 2012 16:40:08 GMT -8
x Lydia Raffaella Agostini
x twenty
x female
x Assistant Editor/Freelance Writer for the L'Arena
x heteroflexible
x local
x Venice, Italy
x Lyddie is extremely pale, as she spends very little time outdoors. She is meticulous with her skin regiment which consists of washing her face with green tea, using witch hazel as a toner, and a light, peach scented moisturizer. Consequently she has a fantastic complexion and frequently smells of fresh peaches. Her hair is a warm, light brown that tumbles down her back in thick, wavy curls. Unfortunately she most often keeps it pulled up in a severe knot on the back of her head. And though she'd never admit it, she thinks that her hair is pretty and is, by far, her best physical attribute. Lyddie has grey eyes. She wouldn't call them "storm cloud grey" or "moonlight grey". They are in fact, just plain grey. No pretty flecks of blue or green or any other such defining features; just grey. Her eyelashes, which she inherited from her father, are rather long. Too long, as Lyddie would say. When she opens her eyes widely, her lashes almost touch her eyebrows. She is currently a slender person, however she was not always. As a youngster she was always fairly heavyset and extremely conscious of it. Over the summer between when she was fifteen she made a point of losing most of the weight. At the beginning of the year she weighed around 150 pounds, and on her 5'0" frame, that's quite a lot of extra weight. After her major weight loss, she now weighs only 115 pounds. A huge difference. In order to stay thin, she eats very little, indeed some may be lead to assume she doesn't eat at all, and goes running every morning. She has small hands, and relatively small feet, though she only ever complained about that when she was trying to learn to play the piano and her fingers couldn't reach the keys properly. Her only other defining feature is the small birthmark on the outside of her upper-left thigh. It is a peculiar birthmark, comprised of a grouping of small freckles, and shaped in the likeness of an angle fish.
FEARS: Losing anyone close to her, not being good enough for someone to love, goats
SECRETS:She has been trying to locate her mother for the past two years, but to no avail.She also doesn't want anyone to know that she keeps a journal detailing all of her emotions and feelings, she'd rather pretend that she doesn't have any of the "negative" emotions.
LIKES:rainy days, hats, black coffee, striped socks, food, cheap-trick magicians, astronomy
DISLIKES:iced tea, awkward silences, hot weather, the concept of the tooth fairy, losing at cards, drinking alone, smoking
FLAWS:bottles up emotion, stubborn, frequent drinking
QUIRKS: Lyddie is constantly playing with her hair. She tends to take a strand of hair between her fingers and twist it for hours at a time. You know she's stressed when she has both hands twisting the hair on their respective sides of her head.
Lyddie is ambidextrous, but she only uses her left hand for writing and her right for everything else.
She goes on a run every morning to stay in shape. Running also helps her to feel focused and ready to go for the day.
GOALS: Lyddie wants to become Editor in Chief of L'Arena. But sometimes she can't decide whether she wants to be an editor or a full time writer.
FAMILY:
Florence Agostini, 57, editor of L'Arena, deceased.
Aimee McConnell, 54, Artist. Location unknown.
Vittorio Agostini. 10, deceased.
HISTORY:
Lydia Raffaella was born to Florence Agostini and Aimee McConnell on April 1st at exactly three in the afternoon. Lyddie was the second child in her family; her brother Vittorio was three at the time of her birth. At first Vittorio felt a little jealous of his new sister, as she was getting all the attention of their parents and relatives. By the time Lyddie could toddle around, he was completely over that jealousy and very much in love with his younger sister. As they grew up, they became very close, thick as thieves as the saying goes. They balanced each other well, Vittorio was quiet and sweet where Lyddie was wild and rambunctious. Lyddie often got them both into trouble by suggesting they play jokes on their parents. When Lyddie was five her mother had a miscarriage, followed shortly after by a hysterectomy. Florence and Aimee could not have been more saddened by the realization that they could not have any more children. Though Lyddie was too young to remember the day her mother came home from the hospital exactly, she does remember how upset her mother was. It is because of this that Lyddie has decided she wants to have many children and live a cozy life as a mother and wife. Aimee was unable to manage her depression over the miscarriage and one day while Florence took the children out for ice cream, she packed her things and disappeared. At the time they lived in a small cottage of a house, the two children sharing a bedroom. They weren't rich, but they got along well enough, the children never wanted for anything. The three of them had to learn to move forward with their lives, as a family of three and not four. Soon enough the sadness ebbed and they returned to being a happy family. However, the happy little family would not be together long. On Lyddie's seventh birthday Vittorio walked to town to pick up the cake he'd picked out for his sister. He'd been gone two hours when Florence received an call from the hospital saying that there had been an accident. While he was crossing the street to the bakery, a car skidded over a puddle and collided with the young pedestrian, killing him instantly. Both Lyddie and her father were devastated, for lack of better word. Their whole world was gone in a moment. Not wanting to stay in a house that felt emptier with every day, Florence moved them into a small flat in busy Venice, far away from their little home outside of the city.
As a consequence, Lyddie made it her duty to become the woman of the house. She taught herself to sew and knit, She convinced her new neighbor to teach her how to cook, and the older woman happily obliged. Lyddie found herself spending more and more time at her neighbor's, Mrs Cathaway's, flat. The woman soon grew to love Lyddie and treated her as the grandchild she'd always wanted. at the same time, Mrs Cathaway became the person Lyddie depended upon for everything. When she was ready to talk about her feelings following her mother's leaving and her brother's death, she went to Mrs. Cathaway. the woman was kind and gentle in spirit, a second mother to young Lyddie. And she always knew to have a pot of coffee and a plate of cucumber sandwiches ready when Lyddie came over. However, her relationship with her father became more and more distanced. They hardly spoke. He went to work and she stayed at home, taking care of things around the house that needed tended to. She did the cooking, the cleaning, and the mending. Her father went from being one of the tidiest people she knew, to one of the messiest. To Lyddie it seemed as if he'd given up on life completely.
When Lyddie got her letter stating that she'd been accepted into a prestigious boarding school, she was proud of herself for the first time in her young life. She'd been worried that she'd not get in. Yet there sat the cream colored envelope, holding in it her entire future. Her first few years at school passed without any major events. She had made a few friends, more than she'd expected, and a few enemies. Sometimes her self esteem would dwindle, and prevent her from realizing that she had in fact made lots of friends and that they loved her as she loved them. It was an area that Lyddie had always struggled in.
When Lyddie got home from her first year at school, she found her father much changed. He had started to care about his life again. He took a post as the editor of one of Venice's papers, L'Arena, and had been taking care of himself. He claimed that the absence of Lyddie had forced him to realize that he was letting his depression get the better of him. Lyddie felt like her life was finally looking up again. And yet life was not through playing cruel tricks on her. She was fifteen when her father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And even in all the medical world, there was no known cure for the disease. He died the fall of her sixteenth year, leaving Lyddie homeless and without family. The headmaster of her school allowed her to return to their flat to collect her belongings and find a new place to call home. Mrs. Cathaway, who had helped nurse Florence Agostini during his final days, offered to have Lyddie move in with her. Lyddie gratefully accepted.
YOUR ALIAS: Mina
FOUND US AT: Between the Flames
