Lynette, the Storyteller Lost in the Story

[Lynette Elise]

Name: Lynette Elise Richardson
Age: Chronological: 37 years. Apparent: 19 years.
Personality: Lynette is fiercely loyal and protective of those she cares about.  It's an astonishing thing, in fact, to see those few times when she does get roused to "Mother Bear" stature because she more often restrains her impulses to the point where she might as well not even *have* impulses.  Still, when pushed she can push back in defense of her friends.  She's highly intelligent and capable of intellectually examining just about any absurd thing, which is what allows her to maintain her fragile hold on sanity in these... unusual circumstances.  When she's stable, she's happy and upbeat and generally pleasant to be around.  New situations do cause her a great deal of discomfort, though, so she's initially shy and silent until she feels comfortable with her surroundings.  She also has a tendency towards stubborn determination.  Sometimes this is a good thing.  It means she holds on to friends no matter what.  Sometimes, though... it's not.

Lynette, though, does have a dark side, one that is disturbingly close to the surface in the chaos that she has found herself in.  She has a tendency towards bleak depression and when she falls, she falls very hard indeed.  She calls it "the Nothing", because that's what it feels like.  Like everything that means anything to her is swallowed up in this giant, inescapable Nothing.  She sits and barely moves, no expression on her face, no interaction with others unless she is given no choice.  She fears the Nothing.  She has very few weapons against it.  But she's able to keep it at bay with the one weapon she has that actually works.

Lynette is a storyteller, a creator at the most basic of levels.  That ability keeps the Nothing away from her.  So long as she is building Something, then the Nothing cannot take her.

Lynette is devotedly Good in her moral outlook.  She might not always live up to her own standards, but she is still determined to adhere to what is Good.  Granted, that leaves a lot of judgment calls open and she's not quite so strict on her adherence to the moral rightness of what is In The Rules.  After all, the world is a rather flawed place.  The ideals of What Should Be don't always measure up to the facts of What Is.  She tries to walk the path of merciful justice between the two tyrants.

Appearance: Lynette is an attractive young woman with long, thick blonde hair and eyes that seem to shift from blue to green with her surroundings, a side effect of the strange blending of the two shades so that they actually create a hue closer to that of turquoise, erring on the greenish side of the spectrum.  She always thought they were blue, though, until she got to looking closer at them while under the effects of certain pharmaceuticals following a personal tragedy.  Her preferences in clothing run towards skirts, and full ones at that, mostly because she likes the romantic, fairy tale imagery associated with the flounce and drape of them.  That sort of look, though, has never been particularly ideal for the mundane nature of her life... until things got all turned around on her and she landed... here.  She always wears a simple chain necklace with a gold ring on it, a ring with three diamonds.

Primary Elements
1.) Light
2.) Fire
3.) Moon
4.) Water

History: Lynette comes from a place outside the worlds of Kingdom Hearts, a place where all the things that are so familiar and unsurprising to the residents of the various worlds are not only unfamiliar, but are judged outright impossible.  A place without magic, without keyblades, without Heartless or Nobodies or Unversed… a place where such things are found only in stories and video games.

In this world, Lynette was as close to a mage as one of theirs ever got.  She was a storyteller.  She knew about other worlds because she could reach out and touch them, but she knew that she could never walk them.  That was why she used others to walk them for her.  Characters did things in her stories that she always thought that she'd never get to do.

She grew up, got married, did all those things she thought were expected of her.  She thought she was happy, content.  She got a college degree in English, wrote her stories and eventually was able to get them published.  She was celebrating the release of the first novel when everything came crashing down on her head.  She got a call one mid-April morning that her husband had been in an accident on his way to work.  A salt-water truck had turned into his path.  He'd stopped, but the truck hadn't.

At the age of thirty-three, Lynette was a widow.

She sank into a deep depression after that, especially as she watched the rest of her family members drift away themselves.  In the end, only she remained and she pulled herself back to sanity only with the help of some powerful pharmaceuticals and the writing of her second and third novels.  By this point she was gaining something of a following as a writer, something which both surprised and humored her.  But still, the Nothing was just on the edge of her awareness, always waiting for her to slip up... until a four-footed angel showed up on her doorstep.

The Yorkie was barely more than a puppy and she'd been wandering around in a neighborhood looking for a home.  Someone had thought of her and by the mysterious ways that miracles happen, Annie landed in Lyn's arms and it was love at first sight, for both of them.  Annie needed her, and being needed by the little dog helped Lyn more than any pharmaceuticals could.

She was just past her thirty-seventh birthday when something completely outside the spectrum of possibility intervened and Lynette found herself facing a military escort at her doorway one summer morning.  Apparently there was an excavation somewhere that she wasn't allowed to know the details of, but strange runic engravings were found on the walls.  Undecipherable engravings until a graduate student assistant entered carrying one of her books with those same runes on the cover.

She was barely given time to pack a bag before she was whisked off, with Annie in tow at her insistence, for this mysterious location so that she could translate the runes that apparently no one else knew.

--- --- ---
Lynette couldn't believe her eyes as she looked around at the structure, the stone walls and the intricate carvings.  "What in the hell...?"

One of the researchers, a pompous self-important looking man, looked up at her and shrugged.  "That's what we'd like you to tell us.  You're the one who knows the runes."

Annie squirmed in Lyn's arms, eager to explore and greet each and every person that she saw.  Annie was, quite possibly, the friendliest former streetling dog that Lyn had ever known.  She set the dog down, but kept a tight hand on the leash she held.  She didn't want Annie getting lost.  Needless to say, Annie wasn't too happy about not having the freedom to sniff at everything.

Lyn shook her head.  "You don't understand... I created these runes when I was in high school.  Dreamed them up out of my own imagination."

"This structure's at least two thousand years old.  Just tell us what they say.  We'll worry about the other stuff."

Lyn barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes at the patronizing tone to the man's voice.  Obviously her lack of a Piled Higher and Deeper meant that she was beneath him, or some such nonsense.  She took a deep breath and wandered over to one of the walls, one of the more intricately decorated ones, where the runes formed a large circle taller than she was, with concentric writing inside that.  Out of habit she located some of the more familiar runes and her eyes widened.  "This is not possible..."

"What does it say?"

She chuckled softly as she quickly confirmed her initial suspicion.  "Do you want it in the runic language, in the direct translation, or in the familiar English form?"

"There's no need for you to get smart with me.  What does it say?"

She did roll her eyes at that.  "The first line is 'Ym Dareth nal Elalom sytarren...' literally translated it's 'Our Father by Heaven encircled...', you might be more familiar with the words 'Our Father who art in Heaven...'."  She started to say something more when she realized that the researcher had stopped breathing.  She looked at him and followed his gaze and realized that the runes for the phrase she'd spoken were glowing on the wall.  She took a step backwards, startled, and the glow slowly faded.

The researcher looked at her and narrowed his eyes for a moment.  "What about the rest of it?"

Lyn looked back at the wall and frowned slightly as she examined the inner circles.  "Oh this is just ridiculous... these are words I've only created in the past couple of months... this one 'darrimareth', it's a compound of 'darrim', the plural for World, and 'mareth', which is Mother."

"So it would be... 'Worldsmother'?"

"Yeah, a lot of the words in the language are like that.  The creation of compound words was supposed to be something of an art form in the culture I was building to go with it."  She frowned.  "This makes no sense to me whatsoever.  Literally this reads 'Worldsmother, Keywielder, speak the words and let your Heart lead the way'."  She rolled her eyes.  "How is someone supposed to actually wield a key of all things?  The phrasing is specific to weaponry."

Well, okay, she knew one way for that to be possible... but that was even more absurd an idea than her own personal language showing up carved on a building more than two thousand years old.  After all, this was real life, not some silly video game, and the one thing she knew about real life was that expecting any actual magic in it was an exercise in futility.

So why was she looking at a wall of her own runes written in her own language on a structure older than Europe?

She reached into her pocket on reflex, to the keychains she kept there.  From an early age she'd collected keychains because she liked some of the designs.  A large butterfly, the symbol of the House of El, and her newest addition... a large Disney emblem that was simply the three linked circles.  For some reason she'd found herself drawn to the Mouse of late.  She knew why she reached for butterflies, and owls, and feathers... but she wasn't sure yet what lesson her subconscious was trying to teach her through the Mouse.

The researcher looked at her strangely.  "What are you doing?"

She tightened her hold on the mouse ears keychain and reached down to pick up Annie from where she was sniffing curiously at the wall.  The Yorkie promptly tried to catch her on the nose with a very quick pink tongue, but Lyn'd had a lot of practice dodging that trick.  "I walk by Faith."  She took a deep breath and very purposefully spoke the words that were carved onto the wall, watching as the runes lit up one by one in response.  With the final word, the carved words began to slowly spin on the wall, like they were the edge of a round doorway.  She ignored the researcher, ignored his shouts and the sound of booted feet running towards them.  She took a step towards the wall as the wheel of runes spun faster and used the edge of the keychain to write the runes she'd given herself for a name.  The single word flared brightly on the wall and the carved rock melted away revealing a stone pathway floating in the middle of a star-lit darkness.

There were shouts, and commands, behind her, but they sounded like they were worlds away from her as she calmly stepped through the doorway.  There was another bright flaring of light from the spinning circle of runes and the doorway closed behind her, leaving her and her dog alone on the pathway.

For a long moment, Lyn simply looked around at the impossible environment in disbelief.  What was she doing here?  What was she thinking when she'd spoken the words and then written her name like that... it could have so easily fallen flat, making her look like an idiot when nothing happened.  But nothing didn't happen... something did.  And here she was with the keychain still in her hand and her dog squirming to get down.

She didn't think Annie would be stupid enough to try jumping *off* the stone path, not when she still had issues simply jumping down from the top of the bed... but she couldn't bear to take the risk.  Well, she couldn't stand there forever, and she certainly couldn't go back the way she came... so the only way to go was forward.  Forward into who the hell knew what.

Other Notes:
Weapons: Keyblade

Fighting Style: Lynette has no formal, or even informal for that matter, training in combat of any sort.  She has a somewhat basic understanding of the physics of blunt force objects, like the staff, the mace, the hammer, that sort of thing, so she tends to use what she does understand.  She vastly prefers to stay out of combative situations because she is so uncomfortable with conflict of any sort.  When pushed, though, she lets her Keyblade wield her and uses her magic through an instinct that she does not understand but cannot question... because to question it would be to court the Nothing.

Affinities: Lynette has a vast magical potential, though her ability to harness that potential is lacking because she, quite simply, is completely unfamiliar with the mechanics of actually going about and doing so.  This means that growth will tend to happen by momentary instinct and inspiration as opposed to careful study.  Her magics tend to present in ways reminiscent of the Bardic tradition given her strong tendencies where language and storytelling are concerned, and the way she reacts so strongly to music.

She's very creative and highly intelligent and capable of analyzing just about anything in a somewhat logical manner.  She is a writer, a storyteller, a scholar and archivist by nature.  She's an amateur linguist. Put her in a library and she's lost for days, let her organize said library and she's good for a couple years at least.  More, depending on how much cataloging she has to do and just how often she gets distracted by something shiny.  

She has, though, a knowledge base that exceeds what would be possible... if she had actually come from one of the worlds she's suddenly landed in.  In conventional understanding, Lynette "metagames", but only in reference to that which is canonically familiar.  She knows about the Kingdom Hearts games, though she has a limited understanding since she has never personally played them all the way through.  She's familiar with the Disney movies, and with the fairy tales and other literary sources from which they were pulled.  She would not be familiar with anything which is not canonically based, though.

Weaknesses: Physically, Lynette is undeveloped, so to speak.  Quite simply, she's Squishy.  She has no physical training, no athletic aptitude, nothing.  She never participated in sports of any sort.  Never really did anything that didn't involve a pen or a computer keyboard if she could help it growing up.  If it weren't for the Keyblade itself, and the fact that it can simply wield her instead of the other way around, she wouldn't even be able to use a weapon at all.  In time, this will likely change as she becomes used to her new environment and the Keyblade teaches her how to fight, but she’ll likely always be at least a little bit Squishy for one of her experience.

[Game Master]

Approved. Approved.
Get the hell in here.

[Lynette Elise]

Note: Elements altered since the clarification of Moon's capabilities. Lyn is going to need those transformative effects and she's a Healer above all.

[Sponsored content]