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Character Name: Nevada DiMocelli

Character Appearance (Human): Nevada is petite at only five feet tall. Her body is pear-shaped and slender. She has an oval-shaped face and delicate chin; a small, pale mouth; and large, expressive eyes the cool color of raw jade. Because she is so fair and washed out naturally, she looks nearly dead when she is slightly sleep-deprived or remotely ill.

Her most striking trait is her wavy, pure-white hair. As a child, it was blonde, so the change was not a great leap. It is a strange inherited trait on her mother's side that causes hair pigment to disappear around the age of ten for girls. Her hair grows very quickly, so she can experiment with it if she wants, but she usually keeps it at a length around the middle of her thigh, sometimes with a bang. She wears it loose, but also styles it in various ways: curls, loops, fastened with clips on each side, or woven in full or partial French, English, rope, and fishtail braids. Usually at least a part of her hair is allowed to be loose and long.

Nevada is fond of wearing soft clothing. Flannel or silk pajamas are her favorite. She loves fitted tee-shirts, tank tops, sweaters, worn (but not torn) denim jeans and shorts, spring dresses, bold prints, lace, ribbons, sandals, moccasins, and boots. Her style is quite feminine and tailored. However, if she could have it her way, she'd travel the world wearing nothing at all.

Character Personality: Nevada, in spite of her charisma on stage, can be quite shy, especially when people ask pointed questions about how she feels. She doesn't mind being naked because that's natural, but she doesn't like her feelings and memories being probed. She has a wonderful intellect and loves to discuss things when she warms up to people. Her temperament is mostly calm and pensive, and she carries herself with dignity. She can sometimes be more serious than she needs to be, but she can also enjoy a joke.

She often switches the subject when others discuss parents, and when people ask about her childhood she mostly focuses on the happier summers she spent with her grandparents or the beautiful aspects of her Italian home. She’s very touchy.

She doesn’t like to ask others for help, mostly because she doesn’t want to inconvenience or pester them. This stems from her coping habits with her squabbling parents. However, on the same note, Nevada has a great desire to please people and keep peace. It is not in her nature to be assertive because she doesn’t want to cause trouble, and so she seldom sticks up for herself and sometimes gets taken advantage of. She will fight for other people because she wants to protect the well being of her friends. As she gets older, she’s learning she must speak up to ensure her own happiness. And feeling her exercise her influence is creepy. Her wrath is filled with years of latent anger. It’s like being offered the fluffiest scarf that strangles you; Nevada seems so harmless and yet one look can make you pee your pants and squeal.

While not an immediately brilliant attention grabber, it is in Nevada’s quiet charm that she captures her audience, be it in conversation or on stage. She may pale against more vibrant and outspoken people, but it can be intimidating to feel the power she casts unnoticed.


Character Background: ((This includes some of Nevada’s pivotal memories.))

Nevada was born in Siena, a city Toscana (Tuscany), Italy to Liam O’Bryant and Felicity Ellingham. Nevada’s parents met when they both attended the same university. Her father mentioned Tuscany often, where some of his family was, and when they visited Tuscany her mother knew instantly that she wanted to live there.

Her parents chose her name for its meaning: snowy. She was a very light-skinned baby, and Fee knew Nevada’s hair would turn just as her hair and her mother’s hair had.

Nevada is an only child. She is the only grandchild on her mother's side, and the only granddaughter of eleven grandchildren on her father's side. She always missed having another female relative near her own age, but was very spoiled because she was the only girl.

Both of her parents loved tradition and family outings. One of her fondest memories was attending the Palio di Siena each year, an annual horse. They always rented an apartment overlooking the Piazza del Campo, where the race was held. But there were always more festivities than just the race: feasts, dances, bets, and parades and performances where the participants wore medieval livery. Each family always cheered for the horse and jockey that represented their city ward. The race itself was exciting and dangerous, but her mother never liked that the riders could use their whips to distract the other horses and riders.

In spite of their many family traditions, her parents often bickered. And so starting when she was four, they sent her away to visit with all of her grandparents the whole summer long.

Her maternal grandparents, whom she calls Grandfather and Grandmamma, live in Paris. Grandmamma Charlotte grew up in the French countryside and Grandfather Simon met her when he was studying abroad. They settled in Paris after their wedding. Both are great lovers of the Arts and their home is filled with paintings they’ve bought. Charlotte has covered many of the walls with lovely, delicate murals. Nevada’s time with them was spent going to the Theatre, the Opera, many concerts, and studying music or painting.

Her paternal grandparents, whom she calls Pop and Granny, live south of Dublin, Ireland. Pop Galvin is an Irishman, and met Granny Bianca at a stable in her native Tuscany, when he went there to buy an Arabian stallion for show and for breeding with his Welsh ponies. He noticed how gently she handled the horses, quickly fell in love with her sensibility, and after only three weeks asked her to marry him. Bianca returned with him to Ireland, where they saved money and bought many acres of land, and they still run their own horse farm and stable. They make their living breeding, boarding, and training horses to do competition riding and jumping and the difficult “Airs Above the Ground”. Nevada’s time with them was spent working hard and learning about horses and training. Both of them took great pride in teaching her to ride well, and often accompanied her on early morning rides through beautiful, lush woods and across open hillsides. When she was eight they even gifted Nevada her very own Welsh Pony of Riding Type, a granddaughter of the Arabian Galvin bought in Tuscany. She especially enjoyed when her boy cousins visited and raced with her, even if the horses they chose often beat her pony, and even if they teased her afterward.

As Nevada grew older, the fighting at home only got worse. She longed and prayed for summers to come sooner. Her grandparents, all four of them, were her refuge.

She took to minding herself so she wouldn’t bother her parents and set them off into another argument over something so small. She became highly self-sufficient.

She learned early on it was best to hide herself and block out the hateful things her parents screamed. Whenever they started arguing, Nevada threw herself in the pile of stuffed animals in her closet, partially shut the door, covered her ears, and sang. When they yelled louder, she sang louder. Several times, after the fight was over, she still sang and one of her parents would have to come, pry her hands away from her ears, pull her into a hug, and utter a faithless promise not to yell anymore while she cried.

One night, when she was ten and hiding again, the sound of the door slamming made her quit singing. She heard a car door slam and cautiously peered out the window, seeing Felicity start up the car. Liam threw one of the bricks that lined the garden through the rear window as Fee drove away. He came back into the house and Nevada heard more glass break. When he came and leaned against the doorframe, a bloodied towel wrapped around his hand, he only said, “Get in the car.” She saw Mama’s grandfather clock busted; Dad had punched the face of it. On the way to the hospital, Liam said repeatedly, “Your mother’s a whore. We don’t need her.” Nevada gaped in horror.

What girl doesn’t need her mother?

Fee didn’t return the next day, or the next week, or even a month later. There was no phone call, no letter, no postcard, no explanation. Liam only said, “Your mother left us both. She doesn’t love me any more, and she doesn’t love you enough to come back. She’s a terrible parent. You’re better off without her. Both of us are.”

Liam took up drinking and filling Nevada’s head with horrible thoughts to cope with his own feelings. Nevada felt she didn’t have any, or, if she acknowledged them, wasn’t entitled to them. Dad never asked how she was anymore and never listened when she tried to defend Mama. He argued with her the same way he argued with Mama, partly because Nevada so resembled her. She grew numb to it all.

Liam continued to distort Nevada’s image of her mother, and by the time he stepped back and realized how he was hurting his daughter the damage was done. A year after Felicity left, he called Fee’s parents, Simon and Charlotte, and they agreed she could come to live with them.

The girl they received was not the same Nevada they had known. Both of them tried to cheer her and refocus her. They offered love and encouragement that Nevada had not felt in some time. Mama was mentioned periodically, but Nevada was usually unwilling to discuss either of her parents. The only question she ever asked was, “Has my mother called or written me yet?” But she even quit asking that, when she couldn’t handle the disappointment anymore. Liam made frequent phone calls and visited every two or three months while he got his own life straightened out.

Under her grandparents’ influence, she renewed her interest in music. Spending hours practicing distracted and calmed her, and by the time she graduated high school she was acclaimed for her skills in piano, flute, cello, and voice. After her graduation, Pop and Granny, who had not seen her since she was a child, invited her to stay the summer. One evening in July there was a knock at the door, and Bianca rose quickly to answer it. All of them were expecting Liam to visit. But he did not look like his usual self. Nevada was surprised at his stiff manner, so she stood and faced him. “Dad?” He crossed the room, embraced her, and cried, apologizing for his decisions and for everything he had said in the past that hurt her. Nevada was so speechless she could only hug him. The familiar numbness wrapped her heart; she smiled pleasantly as a good daughter should, and said he was forgiven. Everything, after all, was okay. She had turned out okay.

Nevada adopted Granny Bianca’s maiden name, DiMocelli, because she believed it would be a better stage name than O’Bryant, which was a too common Irish name.

Nevada spent her gap year playing and singing all across Europe and several times in America. Prestigious concert halls and schools invited her to perform, and even before she went to a conservatory her name was becoming well known. She decided to go to Julliard because of its reputation and change of scenery. On the eve of her departure from Paris, Charlotte called Nevada downstairs. There, sitting at the kitchen table, having coffee with Grandmamma was her mother. Her white hair only seemed to make Felicity look much older than she was, though her eyes were filled with a powerful sorrow. “Nevada…”

Nevada said nothing. Being face-to-face with a person she’d long ago given up on was too much for her.

“You’ve grown so much.”
“Without your help,” she said coldly.
“I’m sorry. Nevada… I never should have abandoned you. I was angry with your father. I wasn’t happy with him, and so when I met a man who treated me better… I never stopped loving you. I didn’t begin as a bad mother, but I certainly became one.”
Nevada took the chair across the round table and only stared at her mother. There were so many questions she had wanted to ask, so many feelings and thoughts unspoken… but she couldn’t bring herself to speak any of them. She couldn’t remember half of them, not in this shock. She only offered a meek smile and asked, “So… what have you been doing these last nine years, Mom?”

Presently, Nevada has been going to Julliard for two years, and she is still working hard to reconcile and forgive her mother, a difficult task when she often doesn’t want to talk about the past. She has refused to meet Peter, the man Felicity ran away with. She feels alienated from both her parents—her mother for abandoning her and her father for his mistreatment afterward. However, she is closer to Liam because he let her go. Her true well being, gratitude, and love rests with each of her grandparents.

How does your Character get to/why was your character chosen for the Island?

Nevada comes to the Island by accident. She was flying to Bermuda to meet her mother on vacation in Bermuda. Peter paid for Nevada’s trip, and Fee had pleaded for weeks, otherwise she never would have gone. It would be the very first time she met the man who stole her mother. Peter and Fee though the beautiful surroundings and easy conversation might make the meeting easier before diving again into the past. Nevada took a plane after an evening concert and planned to fly through till morning. An unexpected storm for the inexperienced pilot sent the plane off course and into the Bermuda Triangle. Nevada remembers little—the doors being forced open, people jumping out into the choppy waters as the plane lost altitude, her feet nearly touching the water before she herself leapt from the plane as it skimmed the water. Somehow she lost consciousness. She wakes on the beach with a lump on her head and no idea where she is.

Describe your ideal 100% appearance:
Welsh Pony of Cob type
The dapple gray coat

Nevada will look like a typical Welsh pony. She will stand at 12 hands (4 feet) tall, have a dapple gray coat with some patches that are more white than others (which is typical in the graying process; she will eventually be entirely white as time passes), and have finely feathered white feet. She’ll retain her wavy white hair, which will hang at just above knee length, and keep some of it in loose braids that she’ll ask others to help her with. She’ll also keep her jade eye color.

(Reserved.)

(Reserved.)