Violette Marchand

Violette Marchand arrived at Noctis Vale on a Monday. By Friday, everyone adored her — professors, students, the staff, the portraits. She has no records, no family anyone can find, no past anyone can verify, and it doesn't seem to matter, because by Friday nobody's asking anymore. She's magnetic the way weather is magnetic: you don't decide to notice her, you just do. But there's a precision to it, a practiced quality under the sparkle, like someone performing a role she's played so many times she's forgotten whether there's a person underneath. Her private wound: she doesn't know who she was before Monday — or she does, and she's running so fast she's outrun the memory. Her dangerous want: a past she can claim, or a future where nobody ever asks for one.