name: Edith Blum, though she'll certainly tell you it's...
--nicknames: Eddie!
--nicknames: Edy
--nicknames: Edie, for friends, and as opposed to the previous (though in all honesty it doesn't really matter unless you read and write - Eddie doesn't)
age: Well, ten years or thereabouts is certainly old enough for a young 'un to be scampering about causing mischief, isn't it? She's not really sure how old she is, although she remembers eight summer solstices for sure.
appearance: She's a scrawny scrap of bones and skin, muddied canvas clothes and tangled hair. Eddie doesn't own more than a few outfits - she doesn't have anywhere to store them, anyhow. A (rare) thorough washing reveals a thick smattering of freckles and gaunt cheeks, and a pointy nose. She dresses like a little boy, because it fits best and it's easiest, and no one tends to question it.
occupation: street brat! Eddie trains birds and steals.
history: To be honest, she doesn't remember the beginning: how could she? She's just a girl. In her sleep maybe sometimes she'll mumble something about a Madam Reynolds (a proud matron with heavy skirts) and if she concentrates she can remember kicking her legs up at a cold mess hall.
Of course, she's long past that. She grew up in debt, she's pretty sure, to the boy (he was a boy) who taught her to steal and look innocent when her face began to become familiar to shopowners and occasionally the constable. She lived off of him and his gang, smart, streetwise boys with hearts of gold (otherwise why would they have picked up yet another orphan?), and she learned quickly to shear her hair and shed her skirts when they did. That way she blended in; that way she wasn't memorable. That way no one would pick her up from the streets like some charity project and tell her to do things some other way. She left him when she paid him back: found him a door to
respectability and the real world. They haven't seen each other since. She expected as much.
She found her own group mostly because Sunderland's supply of homeless children isn't
infinite; spend enough time in a city and you learn who's who. It was simply the most optimal method of going about it: if they didn't cooperate, they wouldn't have prospered (infighting isn't cool; collaboration makes their whole greater than the sum of its parts, cheesily enough). The group gravitated toward each other, and while they're not necessarily bonded by any particular sentimental feelings (its constituents certainly still operate on their own), they still look out for their own, and they're a place for her to vent and make a living, now. It's an even better place for her to be, now that some among their numbers have gone and gotten themselves Chosen.
Sometimes, Eddie feels like a Hero, too...
personality: You could call her a tomboy - she's certainly the sort, a girl who roughhouses with the boys and wouldn't be caught dead in skirts. But she'd say it's quite inaccurate; she doesn't disdain femininity, after all. It's just impractical for the sort of lifestyle she needs to live, she explains. Eddie would wear the skirts if she wanted to beg and not steal: girls look more pitiful; she's not that dumb. And she'd sit and sew if it would help her get by, but she's not one of them girls what has money and food on a table at night. See, she's gotta earn her keep, girl or no, she explains, though
quietly. Having it get out would defeat her purpose.
Clearly quite precocious, Eddie's a sly schemer and nimble of foot to boot. Ah, no, she's not a con-girl, or an orator. She schemes in the other way, preferring to stay out of the affairs of people she doesn't actually care about, and to still provide the best possible benefit for herself. She'd be a shrewd businesswoman if anyone ever gave her the chance to be, and years surviving as an only (female) child on the streets have only sharpened her skills beyond where they'd ordinarily be. Her permanent male disguise helps her stay away from predators or people who might want to take her in to her "benefit" - she knows too shrewdly that wealthy families take far better to adoptees that don't actually stand a chance of inheriting. (She wouldn't mind the life of luxury, but she'd much prefer to have it through her own means - it gives her, she says, the best feeling).
She's got a loud, streetwise charm - although no one would go so far as to say she's a leader (Eddie hasn't got the time for that; she's got her own business too, y'know! And besides, someone has got to give
Gabe something to do) - but it's usually hidden around the people she's closest to, which is...pretty strange. (She's the girl who'll let go in public and when she's all alone, but can't stand to have her friends think she's weak). She genuinely enjoys running and exploring and finding strange nooks and crannies between structures built at different times and claiming them for herself, and she even dabbles in visiting the Wardwood at times.
Around her closest friends, though, Eddie's always felt the need to be organized and
mature instead - she comes up with a number of their schemes, and is generally the first to shoot down impractical tangents. She loves her friends lots but it's always created a large amount of stress for her, and Eddie isn't sure quite how to bring it up. She also finds it quite difficult to unload her own problems, whether to herself or to her friends themselves, and similarly, she has trouble accepting advice from people that aren't her. She tends to meet others with doubt and distrust, and this is generally what prevents her from making friends that aren't already somewhere within her small fold of friends.
