Marya Obecna

Childhood
Maryas family didn’t catch a break since they emigrated from Czech in 1938, but they never lost their pride. For two generations now, they’ve kept the dingy little apartment clean, gave their best at underpaid jobs, went to church every Sunday, in short they clung to their remaining respectability with desperation and the vague hope that all was according to gods plan. Trying to do the right thing instead of joining their scheming co-workers in the rat-race was certainly noble of them, but it also meant they never got the promotion they deserved.

Marya grew up wearing the cast-off clothes of her elder brother and playing with whatever toys could be found in garage-sales. Once puberty hit she got some clothes of her own, dresses and skirts mostly, but the restrained family-budget meant she continued wearing cast-off unisex-clothes most of the time. She didn’t really mind, with a few alterations even those could look quite fetching and she didn’t want to call attention to herself anyway. Her school was in one of the poorer districts of Atlanta, and that meant a lot of students who thought being meaner than everyone else was the key to a good life. All Marya wanted was to get through school without a hassle, and get the education that would allow her to get the most out of life. One of the defining moments of her school-life was when Marya tried to dilute some acid by pouring water into it, during chemisty-class in 9th grade. Luckily most of the resulting acidic spray hit her labcoat, but some got on her neck and hands. The resulting scars are by no means disfiguring, just patches of oddly coloured skin, but they were very noticeable. And the last thing Marya wanted was people staring or, in case of the mean-spirited, call her ‘Pizzaneck’ and similar nicknames.

New friends
Without the scars she would, never have spoken with Zoe Soteira(born Zoe Cragg), member of a circle of selfproclaimed urban shamans. The day after Marya came back to school with a bandage around her neck, Zoe offered Marya some herbal tea with healing properties and assured her she would pray that Maryas undeserved suffering would end fast. Marya wasn’t sure what to think about the quiet girl with the fake animal-skull in her dreadlocks, at first, but Zoe tried her very best to be a spiritual and physical healer in a mumbling self-conscious way. Depriving Zoe of her only chance to help someone, would have been cruel indeed. Zoes beliefs would have given Maryas grandmother a heart-attack, but Marya wasn’t her grandmother, as a third generation immigrant she firmly believed that religion shouldn’t be allowed to come in the way of friendship. She even agreed to join Zoe at her Circle-meetings after a while, even if that meant telling the occasional white lie to her family.

The Circle wasn’t big, a few serious members and about a dozen who came out of boredom or curiosity. The hodgepodge of Voodoo and Wicca they practiced, was bizarre, but Marya couldn’t find anything wrong with the underlying message: Evil deeds attracted evil loa, and the only way to heal the world was by attracting good loa with deeds of charity. The priest at church said basically the same thing, but with less style. And Atropaia (born Anna-Olivia Steed), the woman leading the circle, was good: Marya had never seen such amazing applications of the placebo-effect and self-fulfilling prophecies. At times Marya nearly believed the priestess could talk with Loa, herself.

When the real-estate bubble popped and the economy plummeted, the Circle did its best to help the neighbourhood but there wasn’t much a few people could do. Most members came just for the thrill of a mystic experience, and disappeared whenever there was any real work to be done. Still, Atropaia, Marya, Zoe and a few others did what they could to alleviate feelings of despair and hopelessness when someone they knew was laid off.

The change
Then one year ago, when Marya was close to finishing high-school, Atropaia returned from a vision-quest, with teriffic news: She had translated an ancient family-heirloom, a scroll of leather detailing the ritual to ask the powerful goddess Srf’Srf, Mother of the desert, Bringer of Balance, Womb of Nations and Bane of Oppressors for help.

Marya was still no believer, but joining the various prayers and ceremonies had become a habit over the years. The ritual plea for Srf’Srf to restore balance, was one of those intense evenings were Marya could almost feel something powerful watching the proceedings: Atropaias captivating voice singing in some African dialect, the sharp smell of the herbs burning in a small brazier, the countless masks staring at them from the walls. When a clay-bowl with some foul-smelling liquid made the rounds at the end of the song, Marya took it and drank before she really thought about it. The taste was salty and bitter, and it took all her willpower not to retch. Marya doesn’t remember much of the rest of the evening, her intestines prickled as if she had swallowed a antcolony. She excused herself soon after, to lie down.

By the time she reached home Marya was burning up and hallucinating, electric light seemed like the scorching sunrays, there was constant dry whispering in her ear and the prickling sensation had spread from her stomach to the rest of her body. Her parents gave her some antibiotica and brought her to bed. The fever-dreams got worse during the night, she was a disembodied mind flying over gaunt figures watering rows of cotton with their own blood. When she reached for a glass of water her arm dissolved into locust. Saw men and women craddeling cattle like children before men with spears tore the animals away from them. Saw her room shrinking around her. Saw dozens of hollow faces stare at her, longing glimming in their sunken eyes. Felt their hunger for the riches that should be theirs by right in her own stomach. She was flying over some mountains, towards the blood-soaked plains beyond and a swarm of locust darkend the sky behind her.

When Marya emerged from her fever-dreams the evening-sun was illuminating a disaster-area. Just when she thought her fever had broken, her whole skin split open and she was floating through her room surrounded by a swarm of insects chewing up her skin and furniture. The next thing Marya remembers is lying naked in her trashed room. Her bed sheets and mattress were half gone, the clothes lying on the floor had gaping holes in them and every wooden surface had shallow furrows chewed into it. But the mystery of her thrashed room had to wait, Marya fell back into bed too tired to care about anything but sleep. The dreams were less disturbing this time. Her parents were clearly upset about the financuial burden of repairing the damage, but Marya wasn't the type to vandalize her room and in the end they just tried to ignore it as a freak accident of some kind.

Some careful probing showed that nobody else in the Circle had suffered from any fever, or woken up to destroyed rooms. The sign at her little tea-shop said she was gone on a vacation, but it wasn't unusual for the shaman to disappear on some kind of vision-quest. For a while Marya tried to put the whole episode behind her. Not to worry to much about the flashes of intense anger she suddenly had. Or the unbidden daydreams about people comitting petty acts. Or that her skin felt always dry and hot now, as if she was still running a fever. Or that she was having seconds at every meal now.

Ignoring all these disturbing little symptoms, worked for a few days. But after a week she couldn't blame it on the aftereffects of the fever any longer. As much as she'd have liked to talk with Zoe about her condition, the idea that some godess had chosen her instead of an actual believer sounded conceited. Getting the stuff out of her system where nobody could see her, seemed the prudent hing to do. Once she tried to exercise whatever mythical power she was supposed to have and failed, she could put this behind her once and for all. Marya felt rather foolish, sitting crosslegged in a clearing near the suburbs, listening to the woods around her and the traffic in the distance, trying to summon some hidden power. When her body actually changed she got the shock of her life. The last few days she has done some experimenting, these abilities are as amazing as they are frightening, and has got the basics figured out. Marya's still struggeling to decide what to DO now, she should probably tell the Circle about it, but being some vesel for the will of a god sounds like a really awkward position to be in. For now she is putting off the decision, waiting for Atropaias' return. The woman is supposed to be the expert after all.

Appereance:
A young woman with bushy black hair and a boyish figure. Her clothes are nonedescipt and always cover her neck.

Maryas' Sheet

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