info;
her only hope's to start another tale.
Scheherazade inspects her store of words;
half-built, half-baked ideas and dreams combine...''>
basic
Name: Velvet Amandine Lyon.
Nickname: Vel.
Age: Twenty-three. (February 18, 1985).
Occupation: Student of Literature at NYU, seamstress.
Location: New York, New York. (Roommates with Cygna Jones.)
fairy-tale
Fairy-Tale Character: Scheherazade.
Fairy-Tale: 1,001 Arabian Nights.
Position: Head Librarian of the Arabic Tales.
Velvet and Scheherazade: The common denominator between Velvet and her Tale past is the telling of stories. Velvet would be nothing without her writing, just as Scheherazade would have been decapitated if she hadn’t postponed her doom each night with a new yarn. She is very good at telling stories - writing, yes, but if she were ever to tell a story aloud (which, given her shyness, she never has), it would be almost magical.
Velvet feels she lacks the Arabic storyteller’s self-confidence and courage, but in truth it peeks through a lot more than she might imagine, which is why (despite her fears otherwise) she won’t completely mess up this Head Librarian gig.
Status: Vel's high-profile status as Librarian means that, well, pretty much everyone knows what her Tale is. No secrets here.
personality
Velvet is a very quiet, shy person. She's a classic introvert; she keeps to herself, and she likes it that way. Having spent her childhood (and much of her adulthood) buried in books and notebooks and helping her mother, she doesn't really know how to interact with people beyond an individual-to-individual basis. Even then, however, she tends to be distant, and hides her discomfort behind blithe witticisms and friendly, superficial barbs. She hardly ever goes out of her way to talk to anyone she doesn't have to, and she is perfectly content to be just a pretty face in a crowd. Velvet doesn't really pay that much attention to the grand scheme of things in the world around her; rather, she takes in little instances, stuff that could unroll into one of her stories.
When people do get to know her, however, they'll find she's a kind person, if someone that is deeply entrenched in the worlds inside her own head. She's humble, and doesn't like to make too much of herself; she's a deeply private person. She has a good heart; she'll give what she can to the homeless, help children untangle their kites from tree branches. Tiny good deeds that no one would notice.
Likes: books, pens, new notebooks, Edith Piaf, black and white movies, cats, stories.
Dislikes: rejection notices, being in the spotlight, people that are nosy, television, computers.
history
Amandine St.-Henri lived her whole life in a small town in the southern part of France, the youngest daughter of a milliner and a seamstress. She grew up skilled with needle and thread, and although she dreamt of Parisian fashion shows, there was always something keeping her at home. That is, until a tall, dark man from the East arrived and stole her (and her heart) away. He took her away to Spain, Morocco, Algeria and back again, but when she finally arrived in Paris, she was left with nothing but a broken heart and growing belly.
Isolde St.-Henri grew up in a small, dark apartment surrounded by fabric and spools. At a young age she learned to stitch buttons and patch elbows, so she could help her mother eke out a meager living. She, too, had big dreams: dreams of America, and its vast, wide-open fields where memories of dingy, crowded apartment buildings faded away into the distant horizon. But her mother was alone, and nearly blind after decades of sewing, so her dreams, too, were unreachable. Until, again, M. Guillaume Lyon crept into their quiet life and took them both away into the new world.
Marianne Lyon hated rural Kansas. She hated the never-ending flatness, she hated the small-minded townspeople. She hated quilts, and she hated frilly white wedding dresses, and really just about the only thing she liked were her grandmother’s stories about Parisian fashion, and the haute couture dreams she once had. But even those unfulfilled dreams inspired bitterness in Marianne. So, she took off to New York City to get into the fashion business as well. But she, too, would be waylaid by a lover that would, eventually, break her heart and leave her alone.
So it was that Velvet Lyon came into the world, in a small, dingy apartment in Harlem, surrounded by piles of fabric and pincushions and the endless buzz-clack of a Singer sewing machine. It was just her, and her mother, and pictures of old women in Kansas and France. And always, always, stitches and thread and thimbles.
Velvet was a quiet child, and she did not mind helping her mother with various mending and tailoring odd jobs. She didn’t mind, but she would much rather be at the library, hidden away among the books, or in her room scrawling stories in one of countless black-and-white composition notebooks. She loved to read, and she loved to write--especially stories about her mysterious father. When she was six, he was a handsome king in a faraway country, waiting until she was old enough to start training how to be a princess. When she was ten, he was the captain of a glorious sailboat (the sleek circumnavigator, Velvet), and when she was old enough, she would climb on board and travel the world with him, and their cantankerous sea cat, Salty. When she was thirteen, her father was a mere shadow of man, that watched her as she walked to school, and from the corners of her window at night--cursed, trapped in the shadows, unable to do anything but watch. When she was sixteen, she stopped writing stories about her father: he was nobody, a meaningless fling with her too-young mother, and knew nothing and cared nothing about her.
Velvet’s favorite stories were fairy tales. She read them voraciously, again and again. Her notebooks filled with re-imaginings, with notes and questions sometimes motivated by an uneasy sense of 'it didn't really happen that way'. When she came upon The Thousand Nights and a Night, she imagined herself as that witty, eloquent weaver of tales, Scheherazade.
The transition of these notions from fantasy to truth in her mind was seamless - it came as no surprise when a representative from the Atheneum met her at the school gate, one autumn day in her sophomore year. What was a bit disconcerting was the fact that there was a whole community of people like her. Nevertheless, from age 15 on, Velvet has been a part of the New York Tale community - if not the most visible one. She wasn’t a very big presence on the journals, but she would sometimes go to the Pentamerone to curl up in a big chair in the Library and ignore the outside world.
High school was… well, not a trying experience, but not an entirely unpleasant one, either. Teachers spent far more time on problem students than they did on her, and so she quickly grew bored with the whole institution and aimed only for mediocre grades (except for English, where she shone). Socially, she didn’t have very many friends, and - in spite of all the crude pubescent attention lavished on her - only one, sweet, very awkward relationship. It wasn’t until she graduated that she really began to come into her own.
Of course, that took a while, too. She started working at a used bookstore in the Village to pay for college, and even moved out into her own apartment (her mother’s small business was really beginning to take off, and she needed the room). Partway through her second semester at Hunter, however, the bookstore closed and her grandmother fell ill; Velvet’s mother went out west to care for her mother, and Velvet was left to take care of her mother’s business. Things did not improve over the summer, and she decided to take the fall semester off. One semester turned into two, and Velvet still wasn’t back at school and she still was without a real job. Unable to pay rent on her tiny apartment any longer, Velvet moved back in with her mother. This was by far the least ideal situation she could think of, and so she finally took the Arabic Head Librarian’s advice and moved into the Pentamerone. It was there that she began to piece things back together, managing to get sufficient loans and scholarships (and perhaps with some help from Edward’s own wallet) to get into NYU. She also met Cygna Jones there, and eventually the two of them became roommates outside of the Pentamerone.
Now? It’s been a while since she’s spent an awful lot of time at that old stone building, but that’s going to change considerably now that Edward’s passed on to the next life and Velvet has been made Head Librarian of that rag-tag group known as the Arabic Tales.
appearance
Height: Five foot six.
Weight: 120.
Hair: Long. Dark.
Eyes: Dark brown.
Dress style: Velvet is a very pretty young woman, but it's not an eye-catching beauty, not one that stands out in a crowd. You could instead compare her to a violet: shy, retiring, hidden in the shadows of brighter blossoms. Although she makes many of her own clothes and has garnered much admiration for them, they tend towards muted, earthy colors and modest designs. In fact, every air about Velvet is modest: her posture, her quietly graceful movement, her long dark hair (loose, or loosely pulled back), and her dark eyes. She's not the most approachable person; most people understand that she would rather be left alone, but she isn't stand-offish or hostile.
Manner of Speech: Soft-spoken, well-read.
romantic
Status: Single.
Orientation: Heterosexual.
astrology
Sign: Aquarius.
Attributes: Friendly, honest, inventive, independent, emotionally detached.
ooc
Portrayed By: Virginie LeDoyen.
Player: Emily.
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with Virginie LeDoyen, and 1,001 Arabian Nights does not belong to me in any way whatsoever. Quotations on her userinfo page and LJ-cuts come from Neil Gaiman's Inventing Aladdin.
join:
fairlytales