Athela Buchanan (Accepted)

Submitted by Heather on Thu, 08/07/2003 - 19:06

Posted in

FL Character Proposals

Name: Athela (Ela) Buchanan
Born: 25 January 1985
Height: 160cm (5'3")
Weight: 49kg (108lb)
Played By: Ellen Muth

Mother: Erin Buchanan (nee Murray) (b. 11 May 1955)
Father: Gary Buchanan (b. 24 October 1952)
Parents Married 7 December 1976
Brother: Jacob (Jake) Buchanan (b. 7 June 1979)

Grandmother: Miriyan (Miriam) Murray (b. 12 March 1918)
Grandfather: Brian Murray (b. 25 March 1910 d. 6 October 1985)
Grandparents Married 22 November 1936

Athela is a shy, quiet girl who appreciates the beauties of nature and is moved by music and the arts. Crudeness and vulgarity are repulsive to her and she is very particular about little things. She suffers from lack of confidence and self-consciousness. She craves affection and understanding, yet because she can be so easily and deeply hurt she has learned to keep her true nature hidden; therefore it’s hard for people to really get to know her. People may consider her haughty and aloof because of her sensitivity and reservation. If she does talk with others it would usually be light conversation, rarely daring to reveal her deeper thoughts or take others into her confidence for fear of criticism or ridicule. She is very empathic with a kind and gentle nature, yet is still a lonely and reserved person.

Athela loved her childhood. Growing up on a sheep station in outback South Australia meant she was surrounded by boundless beauty and few people. From as early as she can remember she felt drawn to sick and injured animals, often bringing home wounded birds, lizards and marsupials to look after. Athela’s powers are genetic in nature. Her powers were passed to her from her mother, who in turn inherited them from her mother, Miriam Murray. When Ela first manifested her talent at fives years of age, her mother Erin told her the tale of the origins of that gift.

*****

March 1990 – Alpana Station, South Australia

“Mummy, mummy!” Ela ran in from the stockyard, a large, bedraggled bundle of black and white feathers clutched in her arms.

Her father was in the woolshed and as she ran past he rolled his eyes at his five-year-old daughter’s habit of picking up wounded animals. Erin had explained that their little girl would probably be like this, but Gary Buchanan had hoped that it would end with his wife. Their son – eleven-year-old Jacob – seemed perfectly normal, but he was worried about Athela. “Damn fool woman should never have insisted on naming the child like that. Should have called her Anna. Only encourages her, having a name like that,” he muttered to himself. He sighed heavily and turned back to the repairs he was making.

Erin emerged from the back door of the house and ushered the frantic Ela inside. Their footsteps echoed on the scarred wooden floor of the kitchen, the worn boards gleaming with years of use and heavy scrubbing. Erin pulled out the makeshift wooden box Gary and Jake had built for Ela’s strays, as they called them, and Ela carefully placed the frightened magpie she held onto the shredded newspaper in the box.

The bird fluttered and croaked its protest, but calmed as Erin placed her hand lightly over the magpie’s body. Ela watched with interest, and put her own hands on the wounded bird’s head. “His tail is broken, mummy,” she proclaimed, “That’s why he can’t fly.”

Erin looked at her young daughter sharply. “Yes, quite broken through,” she confirmed. *Has the time come?* “What else do you know, Ela?” she asked quietly.

Ela felt the tingling in her fingertips, much stronger this time. She’d felt it before with other of her rescued creatures and sometimes with the sheep, but only as a faint tingle, nothing more. This time it was as though she just knew the bird’s tailbone had snapped. She could almost grasp the ends, even though she knew her fingers were only touching the feathers on his head. The magpie squawked in pain and fear as she brushed her ‘fingertips’ over the shattered ends of bone and Ela nearly pulled away in shock, but her mother held her steady and encouraged her to continue.

So she gently manoeuvred the two ends back together and held them as if she were holding together two bits of wood she’d just glued. After just a few moments Ela released the rejoined bone and although she’d never done this before she was aware that this was how it should be.

She looked up at her mother, her eyes shining with delight, to match eyes equally aglow.

“Very good,” Erin murmured, “But there’s not just the bone to worry about with a break. Ligaments, muscles and tendons have also been damaged. You must reattach those, too. Here, I’ll show you how.”

The long words meant nothing to Ela, but she could sense the torn bits of tissue near the newly joined tailbone and was quietly attentive as her mother showed her how to recognise where they should go. Soon the magpie was sitting in its box, sore but fully healed and able to fly once more. Erin followed her daughter outside and watched as Ela took the bird out of the box and released it, where it fluttered into a nearby gum tree and warbled its thanks.

“Ela,” she said, gathering the small girl into her arms, “The time has come for me to tell you about your grandmother Miriam.”

Erin held her daughter close in her lap and whispered to her, keeping the words simple so the child could understand the complex ideas, “Many, many years ago when your grandma was very young – much younger than you – she was with her mummy and daddy out in the bush. But there was a nasty accident and her mummy and daddy went to Heaven, leaving their little girl all alone.

“The local aboriginals found her, but back then white men weren’t out here much and they had never seen one before, though they had heard tales from other tribes about the white folks who were taking all the best lands. Not knowing where or how to return the baby girl, they instead adopted her, calling her Miriyan. She lived with them for many years before white settlers found them. I understand that the separation was terribly sad, but the settlers insisted the girl be returned to her ‘proper’ people. She couldn’t remember any name but Miriyan, so they called her Miriam instead.

“One problem that was later discovered was the prevalence of mutation among that group of aboriginals.” Erin paused at Athela’s puzzled look. “That means some of them were born not quite like the rest. It wasn’t until many years later when uranium – a kind of metal that’s very rare and has special properties – was discovered at Roxby Downs that anyone knew what the cause was. It seems that there were some very shallow deposits of the uranium and they contaminated the water supplies in that area. Most of the people just got sick or had deformed babies, but occasionally children would develop an odd gift or two.”

Ela squirmed in her mother’s arms, “You mean like the way we healed the magpie?”

“Yes, just like that. Your grandma was so young that she was affected by this, and as she grew she started being able to heal things, just like you did today. The white men who’d taken her in thought she’d been possessed by an evil spirit the aboriginals had put in her and were afraid, but she learned to hide her gift and eventually she married your grandpa. She tried for many years to have a baby of her own, and finally managed to have a little girl – me.

“Your grandma didn’t think her mutation would pass to her children, but it did. I developed the same gift she had. And I’ve passed it to you.”

“What about Jakey?” Ela asked, “Did he get it too?”

“No,” Erin shook her head and hugged Ela closer to her, “No, he didn’t. Just you, my precious girl.”

*****

Life on Alpana Station went on each year in much the same manner as the year before it. Stock were mustered, shearers filled the woolshed at shearing time, lambs were born each spring and had to be wormed and docked. During the days Ela and Jacob – until he dropped out at 16 – would go inside for their time with the ‘school of the air’, which operated out of Port Augusta. Doing her lessons over the crackly radio always fascinated Ela, though she felt she could never learn enough about biology. The family installed a computer when she was ten, and a whole new world opened up for her as she trawled the rapidly growing Internet. It was here that she first learned there were other people out there with ‘gifts’, and that not everyone was happy about the situation.

Much of Ela’s time, however, was still spent out with the stock. She would run her hands through the soft wool of the merinos whenever they were mustered in the yard, feeling for that tingling sensation in her fingers. Over the years she had honed her gift until she was highly sensitive to injury or disease in others. Though whenever she’d scraped her own knees or injured herself she just couldn’t seem to do it to herself. But her mother was always there to take away her hurts.

It was something that wasn’t really talked about much, but those who lived on stations around them knew that if something was seriously ailing any of their stock they could drop the animal at the Buchanan’s place and it would get better. And the vet never seemed to have to pay a visit to Alpana Station. Sometimes the neighbours themselves would pay Erin and Ela a visit. Ela remembered clearly the day Mrs Williams showed up at the back door, her son in her arms. The woman had just driven 100 kilometres from the hospital, where they had told her that Trevor’s tumour was inoperable and he was dying.

The seven-year-old had lain in the bed in the spare room for three days while Ela, then fifteen, and her mother tended the sick boy. Julie, his mother, stayed in the house, watching anxiously as each day her boy seemed to improve. And cried with joy on the third day when Trevor sat up and asked for his mummy. Ela would never forget the look of gratitude on Mrs Williams’ face. No sign of fear. And Ela knew this was how it should be.

*****

October 2002 – Alpana Station, South Australia

It was spring shearing time and the yards were full of the men who travelled around the stations, filling out the numbers necessary for the labour-intensive work of shearing thousands of head of sheep. Ela was looking forward to this year’s wool harvest – it looked like being a good one, and she hoped to be able to splash out a little for her 18th birthday coming up in January. Her father had promised her a trip to Adelaide to visit the opera if the sales were good.

Another long day had drawn to a close and the itinerant shearers had mostly settled into their dormitory for the night. Ela listened to the crickets chirp as she settled the rug on her horse and patted him on the nose before she left to return to the house. She was tired and more than ready to collapse into her bed.

As she crossed the yard an arm snaked around her waist and a grimy hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her cry of surprise. “Hush, sweetie,” a gruff voice whispered in her ear, “I just want a little companionship, is all.”

The breath that washed over her stank of booze and cigarettes, and Ela struggled, trying to free herself from the man’s grasp. But he held her tight and pinned her arms against her sides, pushing her face-first into the dusty ground. The night was dark, and Ela knew nobody looking from the house would see her, so she fought frantically, trying to free her arms or her mouth so she could at least scream.

But the man looming over her was prepared. He straddled her prone body, locking her arms against her sides with his knees. Then he removed the hand over her mouth. She inhaled sharply, ready to yell, but before she could utter a sound his other hand had stuffed a wad of torn flannel into her mouth, effectively gagging her. Her eyes widened, then, as she realised there was no way to get help.

A sharp pain shot through her spine as he knelt in the small of her back, and her face was pushed against the ground, mashing her nose. In her mouth she could taste the coppery tang of blood mixed with the dust of the yard. With his free hand he tugged at her jeans, ripping the fabric, and Ela whimpered. *No, no, no, no, no,* was all she could think.

For a moment the pressure on her back eased slightly and she flailed, trying to gain the use of some of her limbs, but all she got for her trouble was a sharp blow to the side of the head that made her ears ring and induced a sudden nausea.

The voice spoke again while hands pulled her jeans from her legs, “Hush, pet. Don’t struggle; it’ll only make it worse. Be a good girl and I won’t hurt you too much.”

Ela’s only response was to whimper again. A trickle of salt tears traced a clean line through the grime on her face, but as her fear mounted so did her anger. It was when a hand slapped her bared bottom that it burst out of her in a bright, white light. The familiar tingle rose, but throughout her whole body and much stronger than ever before. It was as though she could shape it, like a lance, and she thrust the end of that lance into the man above her as forcefully as she could.

The next moments passed as slowly as if they were hours. She heard the man gurgle, but more than that – she could ‘see’ blood vessels rupturing inside him. They bulged and popped one by one, like rosebuds bursting into bloom. He slowly toppled onto his side at right angles to her on the ground, his eyes staring straight ahead, unseeing.

Horrified, Ela scrambled away from the man and dragged the gag from her mouth. She sat panting heavily for a minute before she stood, grabbed her jeans and ran for the house, crying. She knew this was not how it should be.

*****

Rumours abounded about what happened to the shearer at the Buchanan’s, but the coroner confirmed that the man had simply died of massive aneurysms and no charges were ever made. But people began to whisper. One day, just after Christmas, two men in crisp business suits arrived early in the morning asking for Athela Buchanan.

29th December 2002 – Alpana Station, South Australia

Gary Buchanan, grease from his breakfast eggs still on his chin, stood in the doorway like a bear, blocking the two men who were demanding entry. “I told you, she don’t live here any more,” the sheep farmer reiterated.

While he argued loudly with the pair, Erin dragged her daughter from her own breakfast and opened up the coffee tin she kept in the back of the pantry. Thrusting all the money inside at Ela, along with a packet of ginger nut biscuits, she hissed, “Get out, quick! Take the ute and drive away as fast as you can.”

Ela just stared at her mother. “Why? Who are those men?”

Erin glanced nervously towards the front of the house, where she could still hear her husband stalling the suited men. “I’m not sure, darling, but they almost certainly want you because you’re a mutant. They may belong to one of those groups that want to ‘control’ all mutants, or they might have heard about… you know… and think you’d be a good weapon. I don’t know,” Erin talked over Ela’s protests, “Just go. Before they find you.”

Tears welled in Erin’s eyes as she kissed her daughter for possibly the last time, “God knows when I might see you again. Don’t contact here, though, and don’t use your bank accounts. They’ll be watching for some time. I love you, my precious girl. There’s so much I haven’t told you, and now there’s no time. Quick, run.”

“Mum…”

“Go, please.” Erin handed the keys to the utility truck to Ela and tried to smile bravely. “I love you, always. Stay safe.”

“But, Mum…”

“Now!” Erin hissed. The voices from the front of the house were becoming more strident. Gary wouldn’t be able to keep the men much longer.

Unsure why she ran, but pushed by her mother’s insistence, Ela dashed out of the back door. She passed Jake on the way and he hugged her fiercely before propelling her on her way. “Keep driving, Ela,” he said, “Don’t let ‘em get you.”

Completely at a loss, Ela moved purely on automatic, climbing into the Ford ute and driving around the side of the house to reach the road to Adelaide. The packet of biscuits rolled around incongruously on the passenger seat. Her numb brain was barely able to comprehend what had just happened. She drove on autopilot, not daring to think that she was leaving her home, possibly forever. And she was supposed to be going to the opera for her birthday in a few weeks!

The men at the front of the house cursed when they heard and then saw the ute disappearing down the driveway with a plume of dust billowing behind it. Erin appeared at the front door behind her husband, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

“You’re after Athela?” she asked. “She’s not here any more.”

The lighter-haired man snarled, “We can see that,” gesturing at the receding car.

“Oh, that’s just our son Jacob…”

Erin’s words were spoken to thin air as the two sprinted for their own car, a late-model sedan that looked very out of place on this outback station. They wrenched open the doors and the tyres spun, churning up a vast cloud of dust before they took off in the direction the ute had gone.

Jacob emerged from the house behind his parents, a sombre look on his face. “Well, at least they won’t catch her,” he commented. He pointed to the ground where the sedan had been. A huge puddle was slowly evaporating in the summer sun, a trail leading off down the driveway. “I reckon they’ve only got enough petrol left to get ‘em about ten or twenty clicks, tops.”

*****

Ela ran and kept running until she finally reached Melbourne. Although she hated the big city and its multitudes of people, she could hide here. The wad of cash her mother had given her was a limited resource, however, so once she’d found a place to live – a small, dingy, cockroach-infested apartment in Footscray – she cast around for somewhere to work.

With no ID and being unwilling to give out her tax file number for fear that she’d be traced, she was limited to accepting cash in hand work. After spending a fortnight cleaning out filthy toilets for a sports complex, she got a job at a bakery, packing bread all night in time for the morning deliveries. Aside from being cash in hand, it had the added bonus of supplying her with more than enough bread to live on. And she no longer had to deal with shit-smeared walls. A definite plus.

Her days she often spends at the local hospital as a volunteer visiting the cancer and paediatric wards. The nurses often comment to themselves how much the patients enjoy Ela’s visits, and how much they seem to perk up afterwards. Ela is careful not to overdo it on the patients, to avoid raising suspicion about their rate of recovery.

*****

Healing: Ela can heal any living creature – except herself – of any injury or disease, provided there is the merest spark of life remaining. This gift, and its associated 'anti-healing' variant, works only by touch. The greater the amount of damage to be healed, the more energy it takes. If Ela heals too much at any one time she becomes quite fatigued, and if she seriously overdoes it she can cause harm to herself. In any one day, Ela could completely heal a multitude of small wounds (eg, a single superficial knife-slash) or one person who was near death. In the case of disease the healing process usually takes a little longer, as the damage is often system-wide as opposed to acute.

Anti-healing: So far, Ela has only performed this once (see history for effects). It was under extreme circumstances and she’s not sure she can do it again. The trigger for that instance was a high level of fear and anger (that way leads to the dark side :wink:).

Psychic Resistance: Ela herself has no idea of this element of her gifts, but she is virtually immune to any psychic interference. Her mind is impervious to being deep-scanned, and it is very difficult for a psychic to glean so much as her true emotions from her.

Enemy: Ela knows only that some organisation or other is ‘after her’. She has no idea who they are or what they want.

The Player: Heather - most of you know me from LA By Night. I've read some comics in my time, though not nearly as many as most of you guys. After much prodding, cajoling, threats and pleading from Shaun and Robin, here's Ela at long last for your perusal.