[hider=Maren][color=lightcoral]Name:[/color] Maren (Mars) Elizabeth West  

[color=lightcoral]Appearance: [/color] [hider=MarenItisbigsorry] [img]http://www.walldevil.com/wallpapers/a13/lily-collins-women-actresses-faces-portraits.jpg[/img] [/hider]
Maren stands at a proud 5'7" and has a lean and muscular appearance. She got her mothers hazel eyes and her father round face and brown hair. Style wise, she usually just wears whatever. Most of her wardrobe is made up of 'outdoors' clothing. Comfortable shorts, tee-shirt and tanks. When she isn't lounging  or hiking, she usually wears 'cute and comfortable' hating to be restricted in her movements by any article of clothing. 

[color=lightcoral]Personality:[/color] Like any child who grew up guarded, Maren rebelled. Not in the 'I'm going to smoke and party all the time' sort of rebellion(although there was plenty of that). But in the 'I'm going to do it BECAUSE it is dangerous' way. While she isn't overly stupid about what she will or will not do, she doesn't put a lot of thought into it either. Jump off a bridge? Sure! Walk home in the dark? Of course! Camp by oneself? Yes! 

She also loves to be around people. The more company the better, but she isn't going to wait around for others to make up their mind and is fine going off to do something on her own because it is what she wants to do. Which is why she does do so much solo hiking and camping. She like to be fast paced in everything she does and has little patience for people who cannot commit or decide quick enough. She is a leaper before a looker. 

[color=lightcoral]Likes:[/color]  Fall, baggy sweaters, warm drinks, open fires, stars, cat snuggles, hikes, gum.  
[color=lightcoral]Dislikes:[/color] Smoking, rain, being still, not moving forward, debates lasting...longer than five minutes.  
Hobbies: Hiking, biking, fourwheeling  camping, anything that can be done in nature. She also loves learning, not school per say, but learning about what ever catches her fleeting interest. 
  
[color=lightcoral]Background:[/color] All Maren's parents wanted was a child. Both of them were doctors in their individual  non medical fields.  Having put their career first until much later in life and struggled with getting pregnant because of it. Maren's mother, Elizabeth,  had over eight miscarriages before the comet passed over the sky. When all of the babies started dying it was all Maren's mother could do to get up every morning, fearing that [i]this[/i] was the day when she'd lose baby number nine. She stopped going to her doctors appointments before the first ultrasound, too afraid of what the doctor might say. 

She kept far away from others the entire pregnancy.  She kept it a secret and she tried to keep it safe. Babies were dying and no one knew why. It was all she felt like she could do.  The months passed by and one week shy of full term,  Elizabeth gave birth to twins. A boy and a girl. A sickly one and a healthy one.  Her father named them Maren Elizabeth for her mother and Caleb Warren for him.  Caleb lived for three years, in that time Elizabeth and Warren drug their sickly son from one side of the country to the next, trying to save him. But it didn't help, Caleb died. It wasn't dramatic, one moment the twins were playing in the sandbox and the next he was gone, shovel still in hand and all. Maren doesn't remember much of him and most of the memories she does has aren't really her own, rather, stories that have been told to her so many times that she only [i]thinks[/i] she remembers him. 

 Maren and her parents spent the next five years far away from Greenbriar, fearing that the place was the reason for their infertility  and the illness that took their son.  But everyone always goes back to their roots and when Maren was twelve, they returned to the small oceanside town.  Afterward, her mother returned to the field and her father became a stay at home dad and started writing a book. With no other family but each other (both of her parents were only children whose parents passed long before Maren) there was really no where else for them to go anyway. 

Maren's family is fairly well off and, unlike most who have had a child who died, the ordeal brought her parents closer together as a team.

On another note. As her senior years dies down, Maren has been spending her time arguing for a travel gap year before starting college. Her parents are less thrilled with that idea. 
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