Post by Ark Industries on Mar 5, 2011 12:16:28 GMT -5
Esther Whidbee
Full Name- Esther Fiona Whidbee – née Radcliff.
Age- 81 years old (b. August 19th, 1929).
Civilian or Special- Special.
Location- Los Angeles.
Affiliated with- Ark Industries.
Celebrity Claim- Smith, Lois.
Relation to you- Member of Ark Industries' board of directors.
Personality-
Motherly is perhaps the term that best describes Madam Whidbee. She’s an extremely kind woman, almost to a fault, which has proven to be her downfall at least once before. The passing of the years, however, has slowly worn away her acute inability to see ill intentions where they are present, but the old lady still clings very much to the idea that every person is capable of good if pushed in the right direction, even if their past is marred with what she oversimplifies as “a string of bad decisions” which have led the individual in question down the wrong path, so often times she makes it her business to steer those that she can find into what she regards as the righteous way of life.
Having been raised a devout catholic, religion is a very important part of her life; nonetheless, she has long forsaken the small-minded notions and prejudice spurred by the fanaticism of religious institutions and misguided, overzealous individuals. As a result, the woman is very open-minded and welcoming of all people regardless of creed, philosophy, race and ethnicity, political stances, age, gender or sexual orientation. She believes very firmly that God has put people in this world and made them the way they are for a reason, even if sometimes that reason isn’t clear to her. It is spirituality that matters the most to this old lady, not blind ritualism.
It’s very easy to find the woman endearingly unassuming and innocuous upon first impressions, but taking Esther for granted and believing she can be can be made a fool of, would be a gross misapprehension and a grave mistake. She’s an extremely cunning old lady, an astounding observer and a highly accurate judge of character; she can tell with remarkable ease when she’s being played with and is very good at leading people into a false sense of security around her. Vulnerability, she believes, is the base of true understanding, so having people raise themselves before her and then forcing them to disarm is among the things that she does best. Some might consider this Machiavellian, but she deems it necessary for achieving real trust.
As a retired teacher, not only is she very cultured and well-informed of the changes and events of today’s world, but she’s also very patient. Due to her old age and her previous line of work, she tends to see most people around her as children, but not under a patronizing light, quite the contrary; she sees potential where others would see empty idealism, and perhaps that has turned her into an idealist herself, driving her to believe that if people come together, great things can happen. For this, she’s often as loving and kind, or as forbidding and uncompromising as she feels she has to be in order to make a person understand where their wrongdoings are and how to make the most of themselves.
Esther is, as hinted previously, very open to new ideas, and as such she has seen fit to use the wealth left by her late husband and children, and her talent to make it grow, to finance several projects, charities, entrepreneurial initiatives and so on, the main and most lucrative of these being Ark Industries. Impassioned by Neville Reeves’ drive and pushed onward by her own idealism, she’s deeply involved in the decision-making of her business, and while she’s not one to shove her opinions down people’s throats, she does like to have her words heard. She just asks for a small measure of politeness and deference in exchange for the utter kindness and respect that she treats others with.
Appearance-
Esther has the archetypical image of a loving grandmother. Standing at a measly five feet and five inches (5’5”), she possesses a rather robust frame, though by no means is she overweight. Her skin, once soft and creamy, has been worn out by the passing of the years and grown creasy and earned a certain aging pallor, though it still retains a few traces of the old complexion and the warmth hasn’t yet abandoned her touch. Her hair, once illuminated in a lovely shade of brown, has lost most of its hue and turned gray by now, though its silky texture still remains. A few vestiges of her youthful beauty still shine through her features, like her hazel eyes full of life, her rosy cheeks and the broadness and candor of her smile. She’s an old woman, but a lovely one at that.
In spite of her considerable resources, Madam Whidbee lives a rather frugal comfort-driven lifestyle, and this often reflects on her wardrobe. She shies away from designer dresses (not that there are many who would design anything for a woman close to her eighties), though she does possess a few for occasions such as formal dinners and parties; but mostly, it’s floral patterns, whites and cuts reminiscent of the years of her youth. Make up is only a must as far as her lips and cheeks go, and her hair is often done to a very conservative style evocative of years long past. As far as footwear goes, she wears what she considers comfortable, heels being almost always a never.
Accessorizing, conversely, is something she indulges in quite eagerly; she needs to wear glasses most of the time in order to read or watch the television, or even use her phone, so they’re always clinging to her neck from a white-gold chain when they’re not set upon her eyes. Under her garments she keeps a locket with the pictures of her family, while outwardly she tends to adorn her neck with one of her assortment of pearl necklaces, and her ears with matching earrings. She carries a small purse, with only her wallet, powder, lipstick and her phone, and almost never wears a watch as she considers them constraining.
Abilities/Powers/Skills-
Precognitive Dreaming -- Esther has the ability to receive psychic visions of the future while dreaming. Her ability allows her to foresee events days, weeks, months, and sometimes even years in advance, which permits her to prepare accordingly and intervene to either steer events in the direction of her vision, or change things in a way that alters the vision, and therefore the future, altogether. She can also use her ability to take advantage of her knowledge of the future and better her own or someone else’s life conditions, as demonstrated by her seemingly keen investment skills, which are in truth a mere by product of being able to foresee changes in the stock market weeks or months prior to their occurrence.
Farsight -- In addition to being able to dream the future, Esther also has the ability to see the present beyond her immediate vicinity. Also known as “Remote viewing”, this power allows Esther to psychically project her own consciousness several miles away (sometimes hundreds or even thousands, beyond country borderlines and oceans), and witness events occurring in real time that she would otherwise be unable to know about by any other means. Before her husband and children died she used it to make sure they were safe. Now she uses it to find other people her that are in need of help.
Limits-
Precognitive Dreaming -- The power to have dream-visions of the future is very rarely willed, and as such, Esther has very little control over it. Sound sleep is always a must for the ability to be triggered, which means agitation and anxiety will only make it harder, and even then, the incidence of a dream is still required. There is no telling exactly what she will dream or whom she will dream about, though over the years she has discovered that guiding her thoughts towards a single subject (e.g. a specific person, place or event) prior to sleeping can steer the ability in the direction that she wants, though this is by no means infallible. Ultimately, what she dreams isn’t what she wants, but rather what she must.
Farsight -- Unlike her Precognitive Dreaming, this ability is always willed, but that is not to say that because of it, it becomes any easier to use. To project her consciousness away and witness distant events, Esther requires a great deal of concentration and most often a focus, like an image of a person or a place. Once she’s made the connection and her power is in action, she can only sustain it for a few minutes at a time, usually no more than fifteen, and after that the link is broken and has to be remade, which may turn harder the second time. Her ability also makes her especially susceptible to shock; witnessing events that are particularly traumatizing can drain her faster and have adverse effects on her health, which are exacerbated by her old age, so she tries to be careful with it and uses it with caution.
History-
Esther Fiona Radcliff was born during the early hours of the morning of August 19, on the year 1929 in the city of Virginia Beach, in the State of Virginia in the United States. Her mother was a twenty-three year-old waitress named Ruth, and her father a young school teacher called Hugh, also aged twenty-three. She grew up to a rather austere childhood, though her parents always ensured that she would never be without anything, and not once did she feel belittled as a result of their financial situation. They may have been short of money at times, the Radcliffs, but they were never short of love.
From a very early age she was taught that religion and spirituality were important and that she should always keep a good relationship with God, but at the same time, through her father’s education she came to appreciate that the world is neither black nor white, and that there is not one single correct answer to every question. She was taught never to be judgmental or treat others with less respect than they deserve solely because they didn’t talk, or look, or think like she did. It was a highly unusual manner of upraising, considering the times, but perhaps it wasn’t without reason, as Esther’s mother Ruthie had a secret; she was gifted with an extraordinary talent unlike anything she or her husband had ever seen.
The girl’s own ability manifested at age fourteen. She went to bed on the night of June 5, 1944, young Esther went to bed. She hadn’t seen her father for the last year and a half since he’d enlisted in the army and parted for Europe. She closed her eyes and drifted off peacefully into the realm of her dreams, and new nothing else of the world around her. Then, all of a sudden she heard a gunshot. She felt cold. Her eyes snapped open and she looked up, realizing that she was no longer in her room, but in a large field, surrounded by grass and trees. And then she heard it again; a gun shot, and two more, and four, and eight, and so on and on, until it turned into a veritable storm of whizzing bullets.
Soon the field was washed by flames and darkness took over the skies above her head, filling her mind with fear as the visions of large birds of metal flashed before her eyes and dropped heavy tubes into the earth and made it explode. Then men in green began jumping from the metallic birds, all hanging from giant umbrellas. One of them was her father. She could see that he was scared and wanted to go to him and meet him where he would land, but before he even reached the ground, a bullet reached the side of his neck; he writhed while descending, prompting tears to stream out of her eyes and a loud, piercing scream to make its way out of her mouth. By the time he hit the ground, he was moving no more.
Esther woke up with a start and her mouth parted to unleash a demented shrill. Her mother rose from her bed and ran to her side, slamming open the door to her bedroom and taking the girl in her arms. They both cried for an hour as she already knew what her daughter had seen. She herself had been looking at the same vision not minutes prior, and like her, she felt that it was all real. The woman and her little girl had just lost their husband and father. By the time the letter reached them a month later, they had already mourned enough.
Not long after Hugh’s funeral, the girl and her mother packed their bags, sold whatever belongings they couldn’t carry with them and drove away from Virginia to the west, to the warm beaches of California where they could start a new life. It didn’t take them more than a few weeks to fully adapt to the bustling atmosphere of Los Angeles, the lights of the Hollywood sign becoming a beacon of hope for the growing Esther. Her mother eventually remarried with a Studio Executive, though she never gave up the Radcliff name, and the girl suddenly found herself enveloped in a world of tinsel and flashlights.
At age eighteen, after graduating from the private girls’ school her stepfather had enrolled her in, Esther decided to take a trip to the north, to the slightly colder though nonetheless magical city of San Francisco, and spent her entire summer there. One night while sleeping soundly on her hotel bed, she had another dream just like the one where she’d seen her father die, but this one was different; this one felt nice. It was of a park, and a man sitting on a bench overlooking San Francisco Bay. Golden Gate Bridge was shrouded in fog, and the man was the only one sitting there. He turned to her and smiled, and she instantly knew that she should be there.
She dashed out of bed and haphazardly changed, running down the stairs from her hotel room and past the lobby into the street where she hailed a cab. After hopping in, she relayed a highly detailed description of the place in question to the driver. The man listened with close attention, determining that the place where she wanted to go must’ve been Golden Gate Park. He got her there just time for the sunrise. She jumped out, thanked the driver and gave him an unknown amount of money, telling him to keep the change before dashing for the hilltops.
Her search grew desperate after a few minutes. She ran and ran, but couldn’t find him anywhere, and after about half an hour, she gave him, walking over to a bench and sitting. She sighed in defeat and started crying. As she sobbed, she felt a shift in the weight of the bench and turned her head to the right. And there he was, sitting by her side, smiling with his hand extended and a tissue tugged by the fingers. She chuckled and took the handkerchief, wiping her eyes clean of tears, and then they started talking. His name was a Harry; he was just four years older than her and business major over at Berkeley.
They sat on that bench all morning, talking and laughing, and then he invited her to lunch, which soon became dinner, and the day became night, and then day again, and then a week, and then a month, and by the end of the summer she called home and told her mother that she wanted to stay in San Francisco with Harry and go to Berkeley like he did. Highly unusual for a girl in her time, but it didn’t matter; they had always been unusual.
Together, Esther and Harry started a life. Following on her father’s footsteps, the girl went on to become a school teacher four years after obtaining a Bachelor of Arts from Berkeley’s Art History program. In the meantime, Harry went on to take over his father’s business, a newspaper. They got married almost immediately, and three months later Esther showed up at her mother’s doorstep back in Los Angeles to announce her pregnancy; much was her dismay when she learned that Ruthie was sick. She had cancer and wouldn’t make it past the year. From then on she stayed with her, and ultimately gave birth to her daughter, Caroline, in Los Angeles, just a week before her mother died.
Following the death of her mother, the proprietary period of mourning, she parted from her still-living stepfather, whom she loved dearly and was thankful towards for all the things he’d done for her and her mother, and returned to her husband’s loving arms. She resumed teaching, dividing her time between her first-grade students and her little girl, and for the next ten or so years, her life was normal; or at least, about as normal as a life could get for a woman with the power to dream the future and transport her conscience hundreds of miles away from her body.
Then, at age ten, Caroline manifested. Esther was already aware of this fact, having dreamed about it at least twelve months prior. It happened in the middle of a soccer match. One of her daughter’s teammates kicked the door the wrong way and sent flying straight into the middle of a street. Caroline, being the one who was closest to it, volunteered to pick it up, but unfortunately, she didn’t bother to look both ways before stepping down from the curb onto the asphalt. By the time she saw the moving truck rushing towards her, it was too late to run back, or at least it would’ve been, if her legs hadn’t kicked into high gear reflexively and sent her body dashing across to the opposing sidewalk.
In spite of having known full well the outcome of the incident, and of using her power to watch over her from her house as it unfolded, Esther couldn’t help but feel terrified at the prospect of something so horrible happening to her daughter, and ever since she made a point to look at her from the distance with her ability when she was at school. She used to do it in-between classes, or during study hall periods, though never once did she do it more than once every day. She knew her daughter needed her freedom, and after having a conversation about the nature of their uniqueness, Caroline was quite to point it out, and Esther decided to respect that as much as a mother could.
More years went by again, Caroline graduated High School and went away to college in New York, and Harry and Esther were left alone in their home in San Francisco Bay. At this point she saw fit to tell him about her gift, to which he didn’t react all too calmly, but after a few awkward nights at the dinner table, he seemed to ease up to the idea. Her dreams told her that there were others like her; thousands of others, in fact, but many of them needed guidance. So after convincing her husband to make a few investments, she tried, albeit difficultly, to use her ability to increase the value of their assets in order to gather the sufficient funds to start a series of projects to help people in need, whether gifted or ordinary.
Over the span of a couple of years the value of their stocks multiplied, all thanks to her ability to predict the changes in the market, and then the two of them started several charities and foundations across the United States . Esther stuck to teaching, however, until she was too old to stand in front of a classroom. Caroline made her life in New York, but would often come back to the West Coast to visit her parents, and she too became involved in her mother’s enterprise. And so, a decade came to pass.
There was no warning this time; not like with his father. Tragedy struck fast. Esther woke up one morning, got out of bed, headed down to the kitchen and prepared herself some coffee. She was fifty-six, the old lady, and she was still a teacher. While she waited for her coffee to be ready, she started thinking of Caroline. She hadn’t seen her daughter in almost three months, not since the winter holidays. It had been years since the last time she’d used her Far Sight to look over her, and curiosity suddenly struck. Closing her eyes and concentrating on Caroline, Esther waited. There was nothing.
Again, she concentrated, this time harder, trying to picture the inside of her Manhattan Apartment. Within moments she found herself strolling through its white corridors, making her way to her daughter’s bedroom. She couldn’t find her there. Turning, she walked over to the kitchen; perhaps she was having breakfast. She wasn’t there either. Now she was panicking. Her office, her best friend’s apartment, her boyfriend’s home; nothing, there was nothing. Tears started streaming from her eyes, she couldn’t take it anymore. She stood up and ran back to her bedroom to wake up her husband, and together they started making calls.
It took them a month to find her body; by the time they reached the abandoned portion of the subway tunnels where it had been ditched, most of it was decomposed beyond all chance of recognition, devoured by sewer rats. She could never find out exactly what happened to her daughter, but she blamed herself. Esther blamed herself, because unlike her father, there was no dream. She blamed herself because she didn’t look over her, because she got comfortable, and because for the first time in her life her power to see the future wasn’t there to warn her.
After that, she could no longer teach. She turned her back on her charities, on her friends, on her students. She even turned her back on her husband. And for a long time the dreams didn’t come; all Esther could see while sleeping were images of her daughter being tortured, screaming for her life, begging for her mother to come and save her, to stop the suffering. None of it was real, she could never see the past; it was just her mind oozing cruelty and flogging at her conscience. And she knew, but not once could she bring herself to stop. For weeks, months, years, she dreamed the same. Until half a decade had passed.
Then, one night she had a dream of Caroline, though this one wasn’t like the ones before. She was sitting on that bench in Golden Gate Park, on the hilltop overlooking San Francisco Bay, watching the sunrise with the bridge shrouded in fog. Fearing what she would say, but yearning to see her face again while it wasn’t marred with bleeding gashes, Esther made her way to the bench and sat down, reaching over with her shaky hand and placing it on her daughter’s lap. Caroline turned and smiled, and told her to stop crying. She told her that she needed to dream again because there were still many people out there that needed helping; people that, like her, had fallen into darkness, and without her guidance they too would follow in the young girl’s footsteps.
The next morning Esther woke up, kissed her husband on the cheek and greeted him with a breakfast, and then she went to work with him, back to her charities. Now she was sixty-one, and he was sixty-five. He was so happy to have her back after five years of loneliness, but unfortunately their newfound joy wasn’t meant to last. Waiting had worn out the old man’s body; it had worn it out to the point that only one year of life was left in it. She dreamed this on the night after that first day they spent together again, and blamed herself once more for wasting so much time. Now, however, she was determined not fall again into depression.
A few days later, Esther told Harry of her dream, she told him that he would die in a year, but that he would do so with a smile, and not alone like she’d seen him. He cried for her, she cried for him, and then they packed their bags, and left. They left San Francisco and for the next twelve months they travelled the world and saw everything they’d never had the chance to see before, all those things Esther had told her students for so many years, all those things his father had spoken to her about when she was a child. And then, one morning, one year later, he died just like she said. They were in Paris, he was by her side, and they were both smiling. And then she knew that the future wasn’t set in stone; that change was possible, even if it was a smile instead of a tear.
It was hard coming back home alone. When she returned to San Francisco, the city had lost its luster to Esther. They would always have that sunrise on the bench at the park, but beyond that there was nothing left for her there; there was nothing left for her in California, so the woman sold her house, packed all her things, and like her mother had done so many years before, she left the land that had been her home for so many years to return to the place of her birth. She went back to Virginia Beach, had a new house built for her where her parents’ home had once stood, overlooking the ocean, and moved there.
And for the next year or so she didn’t do much of anything other than resting, leaving her charities and her businesses to be managed by others while she enjoyed some peace. And then she had another dream, this one of a young man she hadn’t met before. He spoke of the future, of revolutionizing the world and making the impossible possible, and he did it such passion that she found herself captivated by him in her dream. His name was Neville Reeves. She spent the next few months looking him up, and when she finally found him, she gave him the chance to say those same words she’d heard so many nights ago, and once again she was captivated.
And he gave her dream a name. “Ark Industries”. She thanked him for his passion by giving him the resources to make that dream come true. Now, sixteen years later, it’s beginning to unfold.
