name: jane / sinead :: organizations/affiliations: none :: occupation: tinker and doctor (not liscenced).
infected: maybe, maybe not.
contact: attizzikah | meghan | attizzikah@gmail.com
appearance: typical dirty irish with brown hair and blue eyes.

B A C K G R O U N D :

Once upon a time there was a little girl with a father, who lived in a small apartment somewhere near where London used to be, a little girl who had spoken Gaelic as her first language, with the rough burr in her voice even when she was speaking standard. 

Some things don’t change – and she has never been one to forget anything. Grudges, fights, reasons to hate other people, all of these things are catalogued in her brain for always. She always remembers. 

This is what Sinead remembers of her father (because when she remembers her father, inevitably, the entire story pours out like blood and puss from a boil):  

He was a tall man, much taller than she could ever hope to be. She remembers that he had dark hair, and pale, pale blue eyes. Irish, he’d laugh inside their home, as he rocked her back and forth and told her about the Green Isle that wasn’t there anymore.  

We’re the people of the Green Isle, Sinead. Descended from the Fae. 

But outside of their home (that tiny, tiny apartment) she was called Jane – nothing more spectacular or exotic about her than there was about any other girl with thick brown hair and pale blue eyes, save for the Gaelic that danced on her tongue, a language dead long before now that her father sung her into. 

He told of her of religions, and wars – how it shaped their family and history. She read forbidden books, heard tales, learned of the decimation of churches, airports, the killing of Catholics and Protestants, that now all seems so small and silly, compared to what was happening to the people around them. She learned how to be smart, how to keep her mouth shut, how to clean and bind wounds, how to fire a gun at a distance and keep herself from getting caught, but most importantly, she learned how to love. 

Her father didn’t have the disease.  

His young ward, Cousin Fearna, who was seven years older than Sinead, did.  

Cousin Fearna gave Sinead her first kiss, at the sweet age of five, he kissed her lips and told her she was the prettiest girl in all the world, as he danced with her and tossed her up – always his arms caught her. He was twelve, then, and adored the little girl like she was his own sibling.  

When Sinead was ten and Cousin Fearna was seventeen, he gave her another kiss – this one was soft, and quiet, and that night Sinead slept with him in his small bed, curled up against him as her fingers played in his long, red hair.  

Her father said nothing, but smoothed her brown hair in the morning, kissed her head, and told her that he loved her in the language that they both loved so much. She remembers it vividly, and treasures it – because the next time she saw her father, he was covered in fire, and boils, and burns, and he was dead.  

A terrible accident at the government building, someone had blown something up, and he’d been caught in the explosion, trying to shield someone else who died anyway.  

She screamed, and screamed, and screamed, but the only one who came was Fearna – the only one who held her close and kissed her hair and took her home.  

Sinead was fifteen, and Fearna was twenty-two, the next time he kissed her.  

In a world where Sinead was afraid, where her name was Jane and there were no Gaelic songs, no fatherly laughter, no happiness at all, she took shelter in his bed and in his heart, as he whispered Tá grá agam duit against her lips in the darkness of the room, and Sinead sobbed to hear the words.  

But Fearna had the disease.  

It killed him.  

At twenty-five, when Sinead had just celebrated her eighteenth birthday, he was killed – heading home on their afternoon walk, he was killed by a man in a black outfit. Sinead, in a blue dress, screamed for him, dragged away from his body, she wasn’t infected, she wasn’t, but Fearna had been, and as they lifted his body, she tried to hold on, and she tore his ring from his finger, a lock of his red, red hair from his scalp, his necklace from around his throat.  

Go n-éirí on other leat, it said. May the road rise to meet you.  

She wears the pendant at her clavicle, now, his ring strung onto the leather. She keeps his hair in an envelope at the bottom of her bag that she carries – to have him close to her, always.