Nickname/Alias: Nora
 Age: 26
 Age apparent: Mid Twenties
 Gender: Female
 Sexuality: Heteroflexable
 Occupation: Journalist
 Languages: English, broken French, broken Spanish
 Species: Plain old vanilla human
 Powers: It's all in the acid that drips from her pen when she writes

 Overall Appearance: Nora is youthful.  Her eyes are bright blue and vibrant.  Her gaze shines with promise but there is a shadow behind them that tells a different story than what the girl lets on.

 Her hair is a rich brown color, silky - the kind of hair that women would kill for.  It falls in thick waves down her back, slightly curling at the ends as if she'd just stepped from the salon.  This doesn't come naturally, of course.  Everything about Nora's outward appearance is planned and carefully put together.  From the gentle line of kohl under her dark lashes to the sweep of peach across her high, regal cheek bones.

 She has white raised scars on her left shoulder, evidence of an attack in another lifetime - and so she always wears shirts with sleeves that covers this, even in hot weather.

 Her waist is trim and her legs are muscular, but not overly so.  It's a strength she prefers to keep hidden under tailored pants and long a-line skirts.  Nora is every bit the professional.
 Height: 5'7
 Weight: 120
 Eye Color: Vibrant Blue
 Hair color: Brown
 Hair Style: Long/wavy
 Complexion: Pale with a soft sunkissed glow even in the middle of winter
 Body shape:Slender, gently muscled
 Clothing: Business casual, usually.  Wears jeans when she is home relaxing or other casual lounge wear.
 Character Model: Alexis Bledel

 Basic Personality: Nora comes across as a gentle woman.  Her voice is soft and unimposing.  She has a knack for making people feel relaxed when she interviews them for various articles and papers.  Her manicured hands are soft and her touch is feather light when she reaches for someone.  She appears timid and shy, almost nervous when out in a crowd.  She has a habit of seeming fearful, her posture making it seem as if she'd rather be anywhere than where she currently is, but once she smiles and sets her gaze on a person it expresses her devotion to them in that moment and her companion realizes that Nora is exactly where she wants to be.

 Unkind words rarely pass her lips.  She has been described as a humanitarian.  A giver.  A 'nice girl'.  She's not one to stand out in a crowd but people always seem to remember her eyes.


 Merits: Determined.  Motivated. Stubborn (yes, that's a merit)
 Flaws: Secretive.  Silently judgemental.  Fearful.


 History: If asked about her past, Eleanor would tell people about her quiet upbringing.  She was raised in the flats of Utah on a humble ranch.  Her mornings were spent helping her mother tend to animals before her days were spent among her peers at the local public school.  Nora had grown up as a member of FFA.  She loved her family deeply, her parents and her three brothers.  She was a quiet girl, popular but reserved.  She starred in the school musicals but always made time for her duties to the ranch and to her family.

 But there were pieces of her family that she didn't know about.  Not, at least, until it was too late.  Her parents, Robert and Amelia, along with her older brothers Patrick, Jacob and Robert Jr, were members of a secret group that ran their town. The Smith family had ran the town for generations, keeping the community safe and free from outside forces.  Technology wasn't something big in their lives.  Sure, they had electricity, they had heat and television but everything had its limitations.  Computers were limited to one per family.  Televisions didn't come with cable.  For all intents and purposes, Nora's town existed separately from the rest of the world.

 They weren't Amish... they just... were.

 Violence played no part in Nora's life, so the night she lost her parents shook her to the very core of her soul.

 It had been a hot and stick July night.  Nora laid in bed awake, sheets balled at the foot of her bed and a fan blowing the humid air through the bedroom.  The window was open wide though it did little to help cool off the attic bedroom she'd chosen to claim as her own.

 She'd been fifteen, her brothers each a year apart.  Four children in four years.  Patrick had been due to leave for University that coming week, something his parents were strongly against.  Yet another heated discussion was taking place around the kitchen table, the rise and fall of their shouts coming through Nora's open window.

 The fight had escalated so much that she almost missed the sounds of growling in the fields.  Almost miss the bray of her father's heifer as it screamed in pain.  Almost.

 She knelt on her bed, looking out the window to the barn below.  A dark shadow raced across the yard.  Then another.  And another.

 Nora cried out for her mother, ran to the door and climbed down the first flight of stairs.  That's when the screaming started inside the house.  She could hear her mother first, she could hear the crack of wood as the door of the kitchen exploded inward.  Her father shouted, her brothers scuffled around.  But Nora crouched down on the stairs, peering through the railing.  She walked slowly, creeping do the landing of the stairs so she could try and see what was going on below.  The only telephone had been in her parents bedroom and she knew that she needed to get to it.  She needed to call someone.

 Her father grabbed her and Nora screamed as the man shoved her deep into a closet and piled coats upon her.  It was his farming clothes and the pile reeked of manure, hay and urine.  He warned her not to move.  He commanded her to stay silent before closing the door between them.

 The light in the bedroom cast shadows across Nora's face as she stared, wide eyed, at the closet door.

 Her father's hands rose in self defense before she could see anyone else.  Someone, some thing, came at her father.  All she could remember was it was a man, but the man had razor sharp claws - claws that sliced through her father's throat like a hot knife through butter.  Blood sprayed across the bedroom, decorating the white bedspread and dotting across the walls and floor.  The sight made Nora bite sharply on her fist, tears blurring her vision now to the point that she almost missed the man shrinking, transforming, into a wolf.

 Nora hid in the closet long after the house fell silent, her eyes never moving from her father's pale, lifeless form sprawled on the bed.

 Only once the house was quiet did she let the grief and horror bubble up, resulting in a thick and pain colored scream.  She shook the clothing from her and pushed open the closet door to crawl to her father.  She screamed again, her words muffled to her own ears as she babbled through her tears.  She grabbed the phone, the emergency number having been drilled into her mind since she was a small girl.  Still, she babbled, her words not informing the dispatcher of the situation at all.

 She carried the phone with her as she ran down to the kitchen, her eyes fixed on her mother even as she slipped in a pool of blood and fell.  Her arms wrapped around her mother and she rocked the woman, the screams becoming silent shrieks, her throat sore from tears.

 A growl behind her made her turn and she found herself nearly nose to nose with a massive wolf.  His amber eyes bore into her blue ones and Nora trembled.

 Nora would tell people that the phrase "my life passed before my eyes" was complete bullshit.  In that moment, faced with her death, all she saw was the color amber.  All she felt was the hatred that radiated from the beast.  All she felt was the sharp slice of the beasts jaws as his teeth sank deep into her shoulder.

 Distantly she heard a strange popping and the wolf jerked, pulling Nora with it as it fell lifelessly to its side.

 When she opened her eyes again, Nora was in the hospital.  She learned about shifters.  She learned about vampires.  She learned about the entire world that was outside her small town.  She learned about the vaccine the hospital had given her to counteract the fetid disease that lycanthropes carried that would have turned her into a wolf too.

 The officer who had shot the beast sat by her bed, only speaking once the hospital staff had left the room.  He placed a small bottle in Nora's hand, careful not to jostle the girl's bad arm which had been stitched and bandaged.  Later, when she finally looked at the bottle she found the mushroomed silver bullet and a sharp tooth.  She never spoke to the officer and she never went looking for him, content to know that he had killed the beast who had slaughtered her family.