Lucasta Mallory [Civilian]

[Minxie]

[ Lucasta Mallory ]

[ If this is how we think we make amends
We're in for a race that never ends
Where is it we think we'll go
What is it we think we know
It'll never change until we change ourselves
~ Poets of the Fall ]

[ Catch Me As I Fall ]
[ The Basics ]

Name Meaning: “Unfortunate light” (Mallory: “Unfortunate” // Lucasta: “Pure light”)
Nick Name: Lucy, Cassie

Age: 26
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Lesbian

[ Sweet Ruptured Light ]
[ Appearances ]

Hair: Lucy has poker-straight hair that reaches her shoulders, with a long fringe. Her hair is generally parted in the centre, the fringe kept out of her eyes. It is a very dark blue (nearly black) in colour, with natural lighter blue highlights and electric blue streaks dyed into the front. She likes to braid it with coloured ribbons when she is off-duty, but when working she either wears it down, or in braids each side of her head.
Face & Eyes: Lucy's face is a short oval-shape, with a slightly pointy chin and square jawline. She has a straight nose and barely-defined cheekbones. Her eyebrows are naturally thin, but come low over her eyes, leaving little room for the make-up she loves to wear. Her eyes are very typically western-shaped, but are unusual in colour; one eye is a dark blue (so dark as to appear black), the other is a pale lilac-blue. It often unnerves people, as it seems as though her pupil has completely taken over her iris on one side. Her lashes are the same colour as her hair and brows, though are usually covered with mascara.
Her skin-tone is paler than that of those around her; her boss and his children are very tanned, whereas Lucy is only very lightly tanned. Her skin tend to freckle more than tan, so her arms and face are rather freckle-y.
Body Type: Walking to work and being on her feet all day ensures that Lucy is not overweight, but unfortunately her love of cake and anything carbohyrdrate-shaped means she is not exactly skinny either. She just can't quite exercise enough to offset how much she loves her food. She weighs in at 175lbs and it could easily be argued that the majority of that weight resides in her bust and hips; she has been told that she has a very 'classic' hourglass figure, with a bust-waist-hip ratio of 38-28-38. She stands at a relatively average five feet and five inches. Although she is nothing near skinny, Lucy's upper body is very toned thanks to both the weights she lifts at home, and due to having worked in a pub back in England where she was expected to carry the kegs of alcohol from the cellar to below the bar.
Clothing Style: Her style tends to change with the weather, the season, her mood, and whether or not she is at work. When working, Lucy will wear either smart black trousers (usually bootleg-cut) or calf-length black skirts (usually full-circle skirts) with a white shirt or blouse.

When the weather is warm, Lucy tends to break out the summer dresses in practically every colour under the sun teamed with pretty, often floral, sandals. She often accessorizes with sun-hats, again often sporting floral themes. On occasion, and when she is feeling particularly feminine, she will include a lacy parasol.
If not in the mood for dresses, Lucy is quite happy to show off her shapely (if not incredibly-long) legs in shorts (generally denim ones). She teams these with any number of brightly-coloured t-shirts or strappy vest-like tops.

When the weather is cooler, she alternates between wearing warm and comfy trousers (often army-surplus combats) or jeans of various sorts. Lucy loves to layer, so she enjoys wearing short-sleeved t-shirts above long-sleeved ones (mix-and-matching colours in the process) and adding wither cardigans or jumpers to the mix. If the weather is very cold, she accessorizes with scarves, hats and gloves, in all sorts of colours and styles. If the weather is not too cold, she might risk wearing a miniskirt with warm tights or leggings. She loves to team these with cute boots.

In addition, Lucy has three piercings in her right earlobe, one in her left, and five down the side of her left ear. Generally she wears simple small gold hoops in them, occasionally exchanging them for pretty studs. On her left wrist she wears a gold watch with a heart-shaped face, and a golden charm-bracelet with numerous charms on her right.

[ Don’t Turn Away ]
[ A Look Deeper ]

Personality: Would you like a cake? How about a brownie? Scone? Apple pie? Hot chocolate? Maybe a pot of tea? If food is the way to a person's heart, Lucy is all about that. Her mother taught her to cook from an early age, showing her how to put all her love and care and Lucy into what she's making, and that presentation is incredibly important. She approaches life in a similar way; put all her love, care, and attention into whatever it is she's doing, and make it look good. Lucy loves to make people happy; she genuinely believes it's what she was put on the world for. Whether it's baking a cake for the elderly lady next door whose children don't visit nearly enough, to giving a great big smile to the tired-looking cashier at the supermarket, Lucy just wants other people to be happy.

Lucy puts on the appearance she feels is what is expected of her in any place or any time. At work she is the ever-helpful waitress, for whom nothing is too much trouble, and she truly acts genuinely happy to see you and hear what you have to say that day. Going shopping, she is the customer who is always smiling and polite, who will do what she can to avoid making any extra work for the workers (up to and including folding any clothing she has tried on, and returning it to its shelf/rail). At functions with her mother, she is the quiet, politely-spoken young woman who is clearly a credit to the woman she is with. Lucy feels that, like with cooking, appearance counts for an awful lot, and she wishes to be remembered in a positive light, no matter what she is doing. It can be genuinely difficult, however, for people to figure out exactly what she is like, given that she changes her outward demeanour on such a regular basis. Unfortunately, this means that many people decide against befriending her, as it's too much like hard work trying to figure her out.

The difficulty of keeping up all these various appearances is that Lucy is always tired. It isn't as though her waitressing job is hard work, or that the walk there or back is long, but she is always on-the-go, always giving of everything she has, and a person only has so much to give before they are worn out. In the comfort of her home, Lucy can usually be found curled up on a chair dozing, or playing a logic puzzle game of some shape or description. She quite often feels guilty that she is “not doing enough” for either her mother, or the people she meets and greets in the street and at work, and so tries to push herself further, and so therefore feels more tired, and has to rest more, and then feels more guilty...lather, rinse, and repeat.

Lucy loves luxurious things like velvet cushions, silky bedsheets, and long soaks in a massive bath filled with bubbles and surrounded by scented candles. When she can come down out of her “ERMAGERD FEEL SO GUILTY” cloud, Lucy enjoys little more than relaxing in the bath with with a nice cup of tea beside her. The bath might not be as huge as she would like, but it's close enough, and it gives her time to clear her head and recharge before she hurtles off to do everything again.

Whatever the reason for causing it may be, Lucy hates confrontation. To her, it's like a spilled sauce or a soufflé that hasn't risen. She will go out of her way to avoid it as best she can, soothing tempers and smoothing ruffled feathers. Although it really takes takes a lot for her to lose her temper, when she does, it is easier to see what sort of a woman she is. Lucy gets very, very cold when she is angry. Her determination shines through, the light of a woman whose world may not be disturbed by others' arrogance/rudeness/callousness/cruelty/etc. That anyone should dare overstep their mark and have the audacity to cause her soufflé not to rise is something that will not be tolerated. She rarely swears, but having a mother with a Phd in English Language doesn't hurt; using her most scathing or condescending tones, Lucy will tell the offending person exactly where they can stick it. Of course, afterwards, she will be mortified.


Strengths:

• Cooking and baking
• Craft (particularly knitting, crocheting, and sewing)
• Great with people
• Physically strong
• Logical
• Verbose

Weaknesses:

• Cakes
• Can't carry a tune in a bucket
• Couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler
• Chatterbox
• Can't leave the house without her phone
• Almost-illegible handwriting.
• Overworks herself

Dreams: Owning a house with an amazing, top-of-the-range kitchen, and a huge bathroom with a large corner bath and a shower.

Fears:

• Heights.
• Insects of all kinds.
• Losing her mother.
• Losing her job.

[ Candy Clouds of Lullaby ]
[ Present History ]

Lucasta Mallory is the only child of Ambrose and Vivian Mallory, an army sergeant and a Japanese-to-English legal translator, and was immediately the apple of her father's eye. It had been thought that Vivian was unable to have children, and the pregnancy had not been an easy one. On more than one occasion they thought they were going to lose their unborn child. She came three weeks early, but was kicking and screaming and healthier than they could have hoped for. She was their miracle, as the pair said.

Though the family was not rich, Ambrose did absolutely everything he could for his daughter. He was the one who pulled all the night-wakings when she was a baby (and again whenever she was ill), changed most of her nappies, usually bathed her, and (when she was older) tended to be the one to read her bedtime stories. No matter how tired he was, he made time for his beloved daughter. Ambrose was silently relieved that he had managed to accrue a decent amount of leave time from his position in the army; he doubted he would have been able to live with himself had he missed seeing the little things like Lucy's first step, or her first word (“cake”).

From an early age, Lucy showed an interest in cooking. Noting this, Vivian and Ambrose saved up and purchased her a play kitchen and all the appropriate paraphernalia. She “cooked” frequently, graduating to Play Dough from plastic fruit and veg, then to actual food in the kitchen with her mother. Ambrose, though a loving and doting father, was always banned from the room (due to an unfortunate incident with the toaster and the fire brigade) so cooking time was reserved for mother and daughter alone. Growing up, Lucy learned every recipe she wished to either directly from her mother or from the family's (very battered and stained) copy of “The Good Housekeeping Cookbook”.

As a young girl, growing into her teens, Lucy had not acquired her shifting and changing personality; she still loved to make others happy, and was usually the girl in the lunch hall with extra cake to share with all her classmates. She was not the most popular girl in the school, but then she never tried to be; she enjoyed just being her, and it suited her down to the ground. She had a few boyfriends (initially of the hold-hands-and-have-awkward-dances-at-the-school-disco variety) but nothing ever came of it, even when hormones came into play as puberty hit her yeargroup like a wrecking ball. Boys just...didn't interest her. Girls, on the other hand... Girls definitely interested her. At sixteen, Lucy had her first 'proper' kiss with the older sister of one of the boys she played ruby with at college, behind the bikesheds (which, she thinks now, was a rather ridiculous and cliché place to do so, but at the time she hadn't minded).

Being honest and open with her family at all times, Lucy told her parents after it had happened, glowing with happiness. It wasn't quite what the traditional pair had had in mind for their beloved only child, but their love of her out-shone any prejudices they might have had, and they assured her they would stand by her whatever she chose to do - as if she had thought they would do any differently! So, through college, Lucy had a slew of girlfriends, each being labelled as “not good enough for my daughter”. She had her heart broken once or twice, and each time she cried to either Vivian or Ambrose or both, and was supplied with as much tea and cake and love as she needed, until she got up and carried on with her life again.

Their relatively idyllic, if simple, life was brought to an abrupt halt by the arrival of the War on Terror. In Lucy's first year of university, Ambrose's regiment was immediately deployed after the terrorist attack on the London Underground system, and so both Vivian and Lucy began their daily fretting and panicking over his safety. Unable to concentrate on studying, Lucy dropped out of university and returned home, taking a job at the local pub and working her way up to supervisor.

In her twenty-fourth year, two gentlemen arrived at the house, and Lucy and Vivian's lives were shattered. One was a military chaplain, the other was a sergeant they both knew who was in another regiment from Ambrose. Neither Lucy nor Vivian remember the exact words spoken, all they remember is that those two gentlemen delivered the news that Ambrose Mallory had been killed in action. They might have told them they were sorry for the loss - indeed they probably did - but it meant nothing. No words could bring him back.

The funereal was probably an appropriate affair, but Lucy has no memory of it. She had been so depressed at the loss of her father that she had taken the Lorazopam tablets he had been prescribed to prevent the post-deployment panic attacks and shakes, and had drugged herself into a haze. For three weeks she drifted, completely numb, detached from her mother and her friends. It was lucky she had been given a month worth of compassionate leave, or she would have been fired. When the pills ran out, Lucy went into dreadful withdrawal, and that was when Vivian found out just why she had been acting so strangely. It had nothing to do with mourning, just the medication. Although sympathetic, she refused to allow Lucy to acquire any more, and instead helped her through the withdrawal and into the 'healthy' stage of mourning. Unintentionally, in the way that she coached her through the withdrawal and mourning, Vivian set Lucy on the path that would create the ever-changing façades her daughter feels necessary to utilise.

A year later, Vivian's company negotiated a new contract with the law firm they provided translators for, and she was offered the opportunity to move out to their offices. She and Lucy discussed the prospect; it was considerably better money than what she was earning, but a huge leap. In the end, she decided that she no longer wanted to live in a house that now held more sad memories than happy, and both she and Lucy moved to Tokyo. Immediately, Lucy was completely overwhelmed. She had lived in a sleepy little English village all her life; this massive city was like nothing she had ever seen before! She had visited London, of course, but Tokyo was just so different! It took her months to settle in.

Initially, she found a job working in an English-style pub, and that suited her to a degree. However, the manager refused to let her do anything more than serve at the bar, and it was obvious to her that she would never get any further there. She left, and began searching for another job, whilst also taking part-time classes at university with eyes to getting a culinary qualification. There, she bumped (very literally) into Koray Ignis, and the pair hit it off. She accompanied him back to the little cafe/bakery/cake-store his parents owned, and after being a very regular patron for a few months, she applied for a waitressing position.

[ My Soul On the Other Side ]
[ Player Information ]

Player Name: Minxie
Player Age: 26
Contact Information: porcelainteaset/@/gmail/./com ; theminxiekitten (Skype)