Grave Lilian

Appearance:

Lilians Mask shows a pale girl of medium height and weight with dirt brown hair and dark brown eyes. Her skin is soft and smooth and she always smells like lilies and other flowers you'd find at a graveyard. Regardless of those delicate details, Lilian never really sticks out and isn't considered particularily good looking.

Behind the Mask her Mien reveals her skin to be like a white lily's petal. Her hair is like the earth of a grave, greyish-brown and full of little roots and worms. However, here and there you can see lilies pocking through the dirt, blossoming fully and intensifying the smell of flowers whenever she gets excited. Her eyes are of a dim black and her mantle subtly radiates a solemn calmness not unlike the quiet mourning found at funerals.

Life before the Durance:

Lilian Rusk grew up in a supportive and protective home. She was a smart kid but never grew warm on anyone - she stuck to her books. Ghost stories in particular interested her and while her parents worried about "little Lily wearing all black and dyeing her hair", but they also remembered how they acted when they were young. At school, however, she was called "that scary freak" or "devil girl". She told herself that she was okay with being an outsider. But when three of the more popular girls at school invited her to a sleepover she was as overjoyed as she was surprised. The sleepover was pretty awkward; there wasn't much Lilian shared with the others and she started to wonder about the appeal of such events when one of the girls asked the others if they could do it already. The hostess nodded, and pulled an Ouija-Board from under the bed. "We thought you might know something about this stuff." she said and the other girls looked at Lily expectantly. Lilian knew something about such boards all right, but she didn't want to spoil the fun by telling them that those boards never work and are just an easy way for charlatanes to make money off of naive schoolgirls. So she made a big deal out of it, talking about the great beyond and contacting spirits of relatives long gone. This had gained her quite some attention.

Durance and Keeper:

The session was pretty fun: there was this weird blackout after "the ghost" has spelled out some weirdo-message, but after that the board quickly lost it's fun-factor. The girls had a pretty good night and after she got home the next day, every popular girl agreed that Lily wasn't so bad after all. Except that it wasn't Lilian who went home. Lilian got taken by a Fae lord, who reigned over a vast medival kingdom. He was a being of pure white and radiated grace and warmness. Lilian got treated well the first few (weeks? years?) and quickly grew to like her keeper. But some day he told her that he was at war with his evil brother and that he needed the help of his loyal servants lest the 'd end up beneath a cruel tyrant. The details were kept scetchy at best but Lilian (and, from what she had gathered from other Lost she talked to during her time there, everyone else) didn't question her Keeper - she had experienced his charity after all, so why would he lie? She was in charge of burying the fallen of the cause, to hide the gruesomely mutilated bodies of those fallen in the battle for their Lord and she had to decorate the graves most beautifully, for her Keeper wanted to honor his servants . Lilian did face punishment for doing her work not properly only twice, then she learned her lesson. Although she suffered an ugly scar filled with dead lily-buds across all of her back, she wasn't angry at her Keeper - due to his charming personality, probably.

Escape:

The war went on and on for several years (decades?) and Lilian got used to all the violence and most of all to tending the dead. She almost became her work. She probably would have been doing this forever or at least until her Lord grew bored of this game if it hadn't been for a most talented spy in the Lord's ranks. To please his good King he made it to the tyrant's castle and even got back before the mortal wounds he suffered on his escape brought him down. Lilian cared for him during his last hours, his grave already dug. But before dying, the spy told her what he has seen on the other side of the country - the Lord himself, and he was giving the same speech Lilian and the other servants have already heard. The same empty words about a tyrant living far away and about the others having to defend their lives from this mortal danger. Lilian didn't know wether to believe this story. She pondered about it as she buried the dead spy, she pondered about it the weeks after the incident and although she did not want to believe this, the seed of doubt was planted and from day to day the glamour of her Keeper weakened - she saw that this glorious kingdom was a barren field of dirt and hard stones, saw the chains of love for their Keeper which held the others in check, saw her Keeper as the monster he truly was. He didn't notice her knowing; her luck was that he played this game too long without being found out to even think of the possibility. Luckily Lilian also saw her chains getting rusty and weak the more her doubts grew.

One day, after considering it for quite a while, she finally broke them all and started burying, for she realized that this was the way the other, dead servants got out of here, too; she dug and dug, thorny roots scarring her skind and her souls and the forsaken ghosts of her former Lord trying to hold her back. She was afraid she would not get out at all, but then she dimly remembered how her books about ghosts and occult stuff scared her at first. This feeling felt so familiar, like an old pair of shoes. She clawed at this feeling, more and more memories rushing in as the earth got looser and Lilian was able to dig even easier. After who knows how long she felt resistance, and saw a wooden board, but it was old and rotten, so with one last act of strenght she threw herself against it to land in her childhood closet.

Life after Arcadia and her Fetch:

It turned out she crashed into another sleepover at her house. Through the cracks in her closet-door she saw a girl like herself, only tanned and with blonde-dyed hair sitting with the girls from this evening many many years ago, only that they haven't grew older much - a year, tops - while the decades at her Lord's have taking the toll of at least a few years from her. They seemed to be having a really good time, this girl that looked like Lilian seemed to know perfectly well how to deal with people without having to be shy, a skill Lilian lacked that time.

All night she remained silent, praying that noone would open the closet and when everyone "out there" hast left the next day, Lilian sneaked out of the house, sadness welling up in her with every beloved detail of her home which she saw and remembered. Only that it probably wasn't her home anymore. She resigned her life to her Fetch; the other "Lily" seemed to be doing pretty well. She quickly got found by the Winter Court, which helped her get over the first few years of her freedom and got her a new identity: Rosemary Denton. Lilian found a job at a nursing home, tending the dying like she used to in Arcadia. It gives a sting of having been betrayed but she figured that by doing what her Keeper taught her, but doing it for anyone but him she could pay his betrayal back as good as she was able to. She has kept a pretty low profile in Changeling politics, as she wanted to arrange her live first, but now she is ready to repay Winter's kindness.