I grew up in Chinatown, in the Mott St Orphanage. My parents? Well, I only met them once, and but considering that I was 3 days old at the time, I remember them rather well ... My mother was absolutely beautiful: long blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, tall and just thin enough to still be beautiful. my father was charming and handsome -- an elf from the Old Country with wavy red hair and deep green eyes. Both had aspects of magical talent: they were aspected telepaths, though they really only were tied to each other ... They lived in Southie, and were on the poor side, even for that neighborhood. Their goal in life was to earn enough to buy two tickets to Tir-na-nog, where my father had a reasonable claim to some land that his great-great-grandfather had held. This is why they jumped at the offer made by : two tickets on an old 737 to Tir-na-nog, and $10,000 if they participated in an experiment in genetic magic. At the time, this was far from legal, but they were desperate, and agreed. I was the result. I wasn't what they were looking for -- I wasn't telepathic, which they could tell, and I seemed to have the same chance of having magic skills as any other Elven baby. They dumped me in an observation room, anyway, paid my parents, and sent them off. This did *not* please Leia and Matthew, who had expected to be taking their infant girl, whom they named A'leia Anora (after Matthew's family, whose female members had been named Leia Anora since time immemorial) with them to Tir-na-nog. They threatened to reveal the corp's action to police and press, but had no real recourse--the contract was signed, and the obscure wording about the legal status of the child would have taken years to work out, especially in the corporate legal system when they couldn't afford corporate lawyers. They visited me once, and were sent off on the plane, which "mysteriously" crashed over the ocean, killing all 100 passengers. Corporate politics kills more people than anyone realizes, I think... By the time I was a year old, the corp realized I wasn't a good investment, and dumped me in the orphanage. They didn't know MY name, so I was called "baby" for a long time, until someone started calling me "Melody." I earned this nickname because I was very musical--even as young as three years old, I sang all the time, with the radio, the corporate themesongs, anything. I lived in the orphanage until I was 14, and learned a lot about how to survive on the streets. My "sisters" in the orphanage taught me how to use a knife, how to run from people who looked sketchy, and who to run to if you got in trouble--since Chinatown is heavily mob-controlled territory, you can't exactly run to the cops if some thug is harassing you. When I was 6, 1 got permission to take karate lessons from a local sensei, after I accidentally ran into him running from a gang of teenage boys and he saved me from them. I took lessons with Master Yamamoto for 8 years, up until the point where I couldn't make it to lessons because I was working to pay rent, after I left the crowded orphanage. I worked in a bar as a singer and a waitress/bartender for a while--a pretty shady place, but they paid decently, and my street skills were only occasionally useful, since they paid big guys to make sure nobody was bothering the staff. I got to be well-known by the management, since my voice tended to calm the patrons, and bring them back more often. The tricks I could do with it were also worth a lot when the big bosses came by--little games with lights and colors that were amusing, if nothing else. I got the attention of one of the big bosses, Don Giambrone, when I was 16, and held a private concert. He really liked me or something, and I was hired anytime he needed a performer for the next few years. He still has people contact me, sometimes, though the bar closed down not long after my first performance there, and my Irish luck started turning up. I'd been lucky since I was about 12. I'd find money on the street, or get left a $100 tip at the bar by some people I happened to get talking to. This time, though, it was more permanent luck. I was hired as a professional mage by this paranormal investigation agency. I had been looking for work as a rent-a-mage, but I didn't have the money to get a license, and working when you don't have a real SIN is hard enough. $2000 for an id that would pass an employment check in a bad neighborhood hurt, and I still couldn't afford to even get pulled over. Anyway, I got hired by this overenthusiastic rich girl who runs half of the company, and who seemed to already know a lot about me ... (Not that that is unusual these days) Anyway, now I work for them, and have the last three years. It's exciting sometimes, and frightening sometimes--T thought I'd seen everything there was on the streets, but we have a were-fox, a talking computer-thing, and all sorts of odd people, just in this little company. Recently, though, we've been a bit short on cash ...