Information

Cook has a minion!

Minion the Baby Maera

Cook
Legacy Name: Cook

The

Graveyard Kora
Owner:

Molly

Age: 19 years, 1 month, 1 week

Born: March 15th, 2005

Adopted: 13 years, 4 months, 2 weeks ago

Adopted: December 5th, 2010

Pet Spotlight Winner
December 23rd, 2016

Statistics

Level: 18
Strength: 13
Defense: 11
Speed: 12
Health: 18
HP: 18/18
Intelligence: 13
Books Read: 13
Food Eaten: 0
Job: Unemployed

I was born in Sheffield in 1857. My father was a steel worker and my mother was the third wife of a wealthy businessman twice her age, married off at sixteen for twelve goats. She was 25 when I was conceived, and it was not long before we found ourselves out on the street, with one valise and nowhere to go.

Having been orphaned just after her birth by the cholera epidemic, my mother had no family on which to rely, and, encumbered by a child, had little hope of remarrying. My father had not the means to raise a family, and so my mother took us to the Bar Convent in York. She claimed to be a widow whose husband had gambled away their money and been stabbed in a brawl. Lying to nuns, can you imagine?

It was to be a temporary arrangement, until my father could secure enough money to come and find us. But he never came. My mother told me to wait, that father was almost ready, that he would come. I was seven when news reached us that my father was dead, just one of 270 bodies that had been recovered in the aftermath of a flood in Sheffield.

We stayed there in the convent for many years, and there I learned prayer, Latin, and little else. In the evenings, I sketched anything I could find. My sketchbooks were filled with pencil drawings of vases and wildflowers, porcelain cups and folds of cloth. And charcoal silhouettes of my best friend. Ruth was Danish, and more pious than I.

She was the daughter of the convent's groundskeeper. We often
spoke of philosophy, and of God. She believed if a God existed,
he was not constantly involved, nor did he have plans for each of us,
individually. Rather, this God created and watched, observed.
Those were dangerous things to be professing in a church, I told her, but she was so passionate in her beliefs that I came to believe them, too. We stole books from the nuns' library and read about existentialism and about anarchists and about love. I did not belong.
BR>When I was fourteen, my mother woke me up one morning and dressed me in a clean linen shift, a high-collared dress, and a pair of stiff shoes that chafed my soft feet to bleeding. "Lisa," she whispered, "you must listen to me. You and I know that this life is not for you, that you are not given to prayer and would wither should you take vows." She drew a breath and smiled, touching my face and hair. "The nuns have seen you and Ruth. They say that you two bring out the worst in
each other - that you strain her faith, and she yours. They say that you
must take vows and devote yourself to prayer. But I know that this
place cannot be your true home."

It was many miles to Dover, on the coast, and then many more
by boat to Calais. Two nuns accompanied us, faces impassive
and too serene. When we reached Hallein, Austria, my mother
called to the driver to stop. The horses stamped.

My mother turned to me, and for the first time since we had left the convent, looked with her brown eyes into my green ones. She touched my face lightly, almost apologetically, and then stepped out of the carriage. She helped me down, and the nuns stepped out after, and they walked me to the church door. It seemed strange, to be going from one holy place to another. She told me to wait, kissed me on the forehead, and turned away.

I never saw her again. The priest raised me as if I were his own, and he never tried to force his faith on me. He understood me, somehow. But the priest grew old and eventually passed away, and when I was eighteen, the new bishop gave me the same ultimatum with which the nuns in York had presented me - I had to take vows, or he would no longer house me.

"Isn't this a place of God? Can you turn me out with a clear conscience?" I demanded. "God does not look kindly upon those who do not care to serve him," he replied, cooly. I knew my choices. I would not survive the harsh Austrian winters without lodging; I had no relatives and scarcely any friends. I packed my single bag and slipped from the church. That night, I hid in a traincar belonging to a traveling carnival, and never looked back.

The train eventually reached the ocean, and I bought a ticket on a ship that took me to the United States. Things were simpler back then, and I hardly needed any paperwork. When I reached the states, I found a job as a waitress and sent in a portfolio to an art school in the city. I had been drawing, sketching, painting on whatever I could find for as long as I could remember, and I suppose it paid off.

Two years later, I met Arthur. He was a young and charismatic politician. Our relationship was quick and intense, and after ten months he asked me to marry him. I didn't know what to do. I loved him, but he embodied the life that I had never wanted for myself. I didn't simply want to be the woman by the side of a great man; I wanted to do great things.

Nevertheless, I had hope for a fairytale ending, in which we would both get what we wanted. He told me he understood, that he wouldn't expect me to simply stay at home and wait for him. That he would support me and help me find a job. Arthur said that once he was elected, every design company in the city would want me. He was so confident. I believed him.

We set a date for the wedding. It seemed he would win by a landslide. And his campaign manager felt that the prospect of a young, happy couple about to be married would be the perfect story to accompany his

victory in the papers. After the controversies that had surrounded the 1876 presidential election, just about everyone had lost faith in the integrity of politicians.

He lost the election that year. He got the news sitting in a bar with his friends, watching the television, all set to celebrate. He called me from the hotel, and he sounded heartbroken. I was, too. I should have known it all would have been too good to be true. But instead of coming home, his friends insisted on finishing the trip. And when they got back, I found out that events at the strip club had progressed... further than I found appropriate.

I called off the wedding. He was sorry, apologized a thousand times, but I couldn't do it. Every time he tried to touch me I thought of him with another woman and I... I had to leave him. I took the money that I had and I bought a ticket. My friends saw me off at the harbor. Arthur was there, too, but I didn't speak to him. I got on the ship and left, back to Austria. There was nothing else for me in the city, and everything reminded me of both the life I had failed in and the one I had left behind.

When I reached my town of Hallein, I hardly recognized it. The tavern was there, and the clinic, but the vendors' carts I'd always remembered parked in the cobblestone square, overflowing with life, were empty

and weathered, as if they had been there for years and buckled under snow and cold. I saw more houses, and less community. I saw new faces and questioning, nearly hostile looks. I didn't understand. This was not the home I remembered, but it was the only one I had.

I found a job as a nursemaid. They placed this beautiful baby girl in my arms, and I came to love this child who was not mine by blood more than anything in the world. Her name was Charlotte, but I called her Lotte, and she's gone by that name ever since. I haven't been the same since she grew up; I've felt useless.

Nowadays, I take photographs whenever they need taking. I like the

peace of it, the images slowly appearing from the darkness.

You ask Cook whether she might have snapshots of the townspeople, to help you better organize your thoughts. She shakes her head.

I did, but I don't anymore. My film was ruined just the other day. Some practical joker swapped out my darkroom chemicals for hydrogen peroxide.

You know, I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help to you. Perhaps you could walk up the road and speak to Franz. He knew the victim, I think. Better than I, no doubt.

ID : 36068 | Owner:

Molly | Adopted from

Fashion | Overlay by

Vela

{Visit the mansion down the road} {Head back up the fire escape}