THE BASICS

Name: Lily Birch

Nickname: Her Father calls her Peanut but that's not exactly a Nickname.

Age: 27

Birthplace: Shaddingham, UK

Sexuality: Labels are for soup cans.



THE PHYSICAL

Hair: Lily has been dying her hair since she was 11. She would have started sooner but pocket money back then just hadn't cut it. For the last several years she has committed to a single look and it has become a bit of a trademark. Lily's hair is ombre. Beginning with a vibrant red around her crown, the colour then fades down through burnt orange and into a pale blonde at the tips.

Eyes: Lily's has her Mother's eyes, which her Father likes to remind her of in times of drunken anger. It's painful for him, to look at his Daughter and see his Ex. Lily doesn't much like it either, knowing the pain it causes him. But, it's not like she can do anything about it. Her eyes are and will always be a warm brown.

Physical Description: Looking back through the photo albums, Lily has found pictures of herself wearing all the typical little girl things. From lace to tulle, when she was young, she wore it all. Of course, that was when her Mother was dressing her and she really had no say in who she was or what she wore. This is common for most little girls though one would think. It isn't until they start to grow, that they begin to develop a sense of their own personal style. Now where that style gathers its influences from, is another matter.

Anybody who knew Beth Birch will tell you that her Daughter looks exactly like her. Anybody who knows her Father however will tell you that these days, she looks a hell of a lot more like him. Both statements are probably true. Lily has her Mothers eyes and the same pale skin but that hand-me-down leather jacket she wears and the way she pairs acid wash denim with her beloved band tee's is all her Daddy influence.

In fact a lot of what makes Lily Lily came from her Daddy. Sure, her 5'9 frame, her slim hips and her pale skin are all genetics. She had no say in the fact that her two little toes are a touch crooked and it's unlikely that her breasts are ever going to grow more than the handful they are now. She will always be prone to burning and her lashes are never going to curl without assistance but it's who she is and for the most part, as any 27 year old is, she's comfortable enough.

The things that Lily chooses though are the band tees that she seems to pair with everything, her tattoos and her piercings. Her style of music is punk and rock 'n' roll and when she isn't at work, it bleeds through into her fashion. The fact that she can work an item of black into every outfit and make it grunge and not goth is a talent. She chooses to have a nose ring and she chose each and every time she went under the needle to get her tattoos. Lily chooses to wear make-up and she chooses to go heavy on the eyeliner from time to time.

Honestly, she's gorgeous but stand her up against any blonde with big tits and a toothy grin and Lily would disappear into the shadows. Truly, it's how she'd prefer it. People tend to take one look at Lily Birch and upon her lack of a smile, spying those ripped tights and noting who her Father is, they judge her unworthy or too much trouble. Nothing could be further from the truth but why is it her job to change people's minds?



Distinguishing Features: Lily fluidly adopted the fashion known these days as Grunge in her early teens. There is little doubt that she has, in part, taken inspiration from her Daddy, who still dresses like his idol James Dean. She stole his leather jacket and often bums his cigarettes but even though she subconsciously attempts to emulate him, she manages to do it in her own feminine way.

Lily didn't grow up with much and she sacrificed a lot to save up for her body modifications but she's happy with them. They make her unique and if Lily Birch has ever done anything, it's stand out from the crowd while simultaneously attempting to fade into obscurity.

Other than the multiple ear piercings and the nose ring, which she only removes for work, Lilly is the proud owner of two half selves, both from elbow to wrist. Each is a collection of things that either means something to her or privately make her smile. The greyscale watercolour peonies, she will admit to being her favourite flower. The UFO floating against a background of stars is in solidarity with her Father and his stories. The etching of the cross symbolizes her faith and the sketch of David Bowie is something she got done the day after seeing The Labyrinth for the first time. The little quote on the inner curve of her right wrist is from her favorite books. "Sometimes people care too much. I think its called love." This sweet little quote is from Winne the Pooh, a series that Lily believes people can learn a lot from.


THE PERSONAL

Personality Description: Rarely smiling, non-conforming, hardly wealthy and daughter of a drunk, people don't tend to think much of Lily Birch. They expect even less. That's their mistake however because Lily is smart and more than capable. Few know that she graduated Highschool with a 4.0 or that she is one of the most talented and qualified Nurses at her Hospital. Nobody seems to care however that she is one of very few Kids her age who still attend Church every Sunday or that despite her clothes and the fact that she dyes her hair, she doesn't drink and rarely sleeps around. In fact, nobody seems to care much about Lily at all.

Lily is a complicated little creature. She isn't always forthcoming with her feelings and her heart is hidden away from those who haven't taken the time to be delicate. That's not to say that she is always so cold and brash. Lily is affectionate towards those that she has grown close to. She has a small group of friends that she can smile and laugh with. At work, she shows the appropriate level of compassion towards her Patience but it's very rarely genuine and always a drain on her already strained psyche. Like most people, Lily is the most herself when she is either in the company of a Partner or her Guinea Pigs, Christopher and Robin.

It's obvious that Lily displays her thorns before her petals and there is little doubt that beneath that flaming red mane of hair is a mind full of cracks. She has spackled those cracks with many things throughout her life but none have ever stuck. People have a tendency to label her crazy, simply for being different. Despite the fact that few mental illnesses truly run in the family, many are of the belief that 'like Father like Daughter', Lily's nuts. These slurs hurt more than the truth of course. Lily would rather people call her a junkie than crazy but nobody knows she uses and nobody ever will. She can't afford for her life to implode, not again.

Honestly, because she isn't smiling, doesn't mean she isn't happy and just because she doesn't cry, doesn't mean she doesn't care. Since the age of six, Lily has wanted to be a Doctor, Pediatrician to be exact and that dream, while shifting slightly due to a sheer lack of funds for Medical School, still remains. Lily can be very sweet but she isn't going to turn on the charm for every stranger on the street or hot guy who wants to get friendly. One of the worst things that you can tell Lily Birch is to 'smile sweetheart'. It's condescending and frankly rude.



Stubborn and loyal to a fault, Lily will persist when the rest of the world has turned its back. She believes in love, despite witnessing nothing but the absence of it between her Parents. She has her Faith even when she knows that those who believe the strongest are often only faking it. She believes in the supernatural, even when the rest of the world calls her crazy.

To her friends, she is selfless, often to the detriment of herself. She has never stopped to wonder why she continues to help those who time and time again show her that they neither want her help nor are they willing to help themselves. Lily sees it as a rather black and white situation. If she cares about someone, she isn't giving up. Maybe she hopes that one day, someone will do the same for her. You can trust her to be candid and honest but trustworthy and determined as well. She has made mistakes in the past for which she has paid for in pain and turmoil but that's life.

Lily is a woman with a strong personality that she often keeps undercover like a candle within a glass lantern. Her flame has never gone out but it is protected from the elements.

Likes: Lily likes a lot things. Drugs would no doubt come first. Lily will snort, swallow or inject just about anything she can buy, find or steal from the Hospital where she works. There's more to her though, she'd like to think. She prefers night to day and winter over summer. She's a coffee addict and will admit to occasionally smoking a little weed. She can often be found popping sour gummy worms. In fact, any kind of sour candy is her thing. She will strongly insist that making it past that puckering coating to the sugar beneath is well worth the effort. Lily loves her Guinea Pigs. She owns two boys, brothers that she named Christopher and Robin after her favourite books because Lily has held onto her childhood love of Winnie the Pooh. While she doesn't have stuffed animals on her bed, she does own a set of well-worn books. Lily likes both boys and girls and she's a fan of holding hands though that's a pretty moot fact given that not a lot of guys nor girls give her a second look when there is easier prey for the picking.

Dislikes: Surprising to most people, Lily doesn't like to drink but when you grow up with a Father addicted to the sauce, it might change your view of it too. Lily doesn't like beer or vodka and she isn't fond of cigarettes either. She can't suffer idiots quietly and she doesn't like bullies. Lily hates puzzles and has never been able to stomach mayonnaise. Mostly she hates people who judge but that's like saying she hates people because everybody judges everybody, all the time. So who knows, maybe she does.



THE BIOGRAPHICAL

Characters History: On Christmas Eve, 20 years ago, Lily was born in a hospital to Bobby and Beth Birch. As far as anyone could see, they were a perfect little family. Bobby worked at the docks and Beth was a Sunday School teacher at their local church. Their little girl was perfect. Some might say the fact that she rarely ever cried might have indicated a problem but honestly, Beth was just grateful to have an easy child. See Beth Birch wasn't what one would call a natural Mother. She'd never wanted kids, never really wanted to get married either but after you get knocked up with another man's kid, you just kind of have to take that leap.

Bobby Birch is not Lily's biological Father. They both know this but they don't exactly talk about it. In fact, as far as Lily can recall, it's never even been said aloud. Beth had a habit of being a little wild. When she finally ran away with the Preacher when Lily was seven, that was that. Lily and her Dad were on their own. They never had much but they made do. Bobby loved his little girl and he worked hard to keep their roof over their heads and their bellies full of spaghetti O's and string cheese. Every night he would read her one of her favourite books. Without fail, it would be one of the many tales of Winne the Pooh.

As she grew and when clean laundry was scarce, Bobby would wrap his little girl in one of his old band tees. She loved sitting on his lap as he played his records. Honestly, she'd rather do that than go outside and play with other kids. Even at such a young age, Lily could pick up on the stares and the whispers. They called her Mum a whore and while Lily wouldn't exactly disagree, she didn't have to like it. Even as she was inching closer to becoming a teenager, she still missed her Mum but that wasn't a relationship that wasn't going to be healed. Honestly, Lily hasn't heard peep nor squeak from her Mother in over a decade.

She tried not to care. Why should she? She had her Dad and that was enough. She was doing well in school and while it couldn't be said that she had an abundance of friends, she wasn't totally on her own. The Stoners took her in willingly and so Lily picked up the habit of smoking weed. Maybe it was bad luck or a lack of impulse control and self-esteem but it's no doubt that this was where her life started to go wrong. It wasn't until she was an adult though that the drugs began to consume her. Not unlike alcohol had consumed her Daddy.

Bobby always liked a drink but he was a hard-working, red-blooded, Brit. Why wasn't he allowed a beer or six after a long days work? Honestly, it was never something that Lily paid much attention to. As she grew older she began to assume more and more responsibility for the household but she saw this as normal too. By the time her Father came home, dinner would be waiting and the house would be clean. It had never been easy fitting all that extra work around her own schooling but she was happy to do it and to be honest, if she didn't do it, it wasn't likely to get done. By the time she was 12 she was paying the bills. By 15 she may as well have been in charge.

Lily kind of wished that this wasn't true though when it came to the night her Daddy returned home in a panic. He was late. Dinner was cold, Lily had waited up but in the end, even she had fallen asleep in the tattered recliner by the door. It was 4am when her Dad burst through that door shouting something about how they were coming to get him again. Lily did what any good Daughter would do. She sat her Daddy down, took off his boots, got him a beer and asked him to tell her what happened...

...And then came a tale of aliens and spaceships. By the time Lily had been able to calm her Dad down, she'd missed school the next day and was ready to fix them both something for lunch. As she fried up the bacon, she found herself missing the days when her Daddy would hold her on his knee and read to her. He used to tell her not to worry about the kids in their building and what they said. If somebody was going to like her, they were going to like her for who she was and one day, somebody would because she was extraordinary.

Life moved on. Bobby drunk more than ever. He lost a few jobs, found a few more but the fact that he talked about little else but aliens and abductions meant that keeping them was hard. There were very few people in Shaddingham who didn't know that Lily was the Daughter of a Dunk and a crackpot. What made it worse was that she insisted on defending him. It got her into more than one fight. She believed. How could she not? To do otherwise would be to call her Dad crazy or worse still, a liar and Lily had enough of liars for one lifetime.

Lily's 27 now, all grown up but she still lives at home. Somebody has to take care of her Dad. Lily broke away long enough to finish her education and get her Nursing degree but even that hasn't changed some peoples minds. She's still the Outcast, the Believer, the Loner. Time doesn't change everything, Lily will say. She still loves her Dad. Still believes his stories. She still wears second-hand clothes and dyes her hair. Lily still goes to Church every Sunday, the very one that remembers her Mother so unfavourably. She works long hours in an exhausting, challenging and thankless job but she loves it. Not only does she like the work but the access to free drugs is a bonus she just can't deny.

Lily walks a dangerous line, balancing on a knife-edge. One day she is going to fall but until then, she'll keep pushing. Pushing forward, pushing her luck. In Sunday School, she learnt about the Saints but she really only remembers one. St. Augustine is her personal Saint. Not for any of the reason that he was Canaoized for but because of his confession. 'Please God, make me good, but not just yet' Words to live by.