Tavia was born and raised in Glasgow. Her mum was adopted and her da was the childhood best friend. Her mum, Lorna, was always an intellectual type and became an engineer while her da, Emrys, just loved being a cook. They were very clearly happy in the city and their careers clearly left them minted because they could comfortably afford seven kids in the city. Tavia's the second youngest and spent her early years running around after her sisters and brothers. It was in primary her mum decided Tavia needed a hobby and, after seeing how she interacted with music, sent her to dance classes. Second youngest became youngest when her sickly twin brother died. None of the others are fully over it, but Tavia is. She understood grief, she celebrated it every birthday, but she's grown more exasperated over the years.
When Tavia was ten, her older siblings Hype-Gene started manifesting. Mum's fault, of course, and her da was very upset she hadn't told anyone about her own power. Her mum was also upset because she hadn't even known she had one. It was her oldest, Aurelie (16; gold manipulation), who figured out it was fortune. As Tavia's siblings grew up they gained their abilities around the same time, and eventually it was only her and her da who had no powers. They bonded over that and their apparently strange indifference toward academic excellence.
Around the time Tavia was fifteen, her mum was offered a better-paying agricultural engineering job and the whole family moved to Crestwood Hollow. American high school was disorienting at the beginning, especially since Tavia's previously A grades in Glasgow became C's at Mather Memorial and much of her vocabulary and slang were met with blank stares. Eventually, Tavia learned to mostly get rid of her thick Scottish brogue but not her slang. No one gave her much fash about her grades and she joined up with every dancing group she could find. A year later and she touched a mirror and fell into the mirror plain, thus discovering her own abilities. Most of her siblings had all gone off to university when she was sixteen so the only ones to help her hone her powers were her da and two of her brothers, Vincent (20; sound manipulation) and Damien (20; word manifestation). For her last year at Mather, Tavia just wants to get better at her power and move on with her life.
//ABILITIES:◼ Catoptric Transportation | Tavia can utilize mirrors to, in essence, teleport. To do so, she has to make contact with the reflective surface and will herself to pass through. When she enters the mirror plain, she is met with the world she left behind her, just flipped as anyone would expect of a realm of reflections. However, this world is patchy, only showing up where the mirrors can reflect, with the missing parts so blurry she can only make out shapes and blotches of color. This world has no sensory information other than sight. Time passes, but at a fraction of the speed of the real world. Because of this time difference, she can run through one mirror to another in what seems like barely a minute but what would actually be longer for her; people in the real world can catch a fleeting glimpse of her in mirrors if they look at just the right time. The plain is populated with reflections of people and things she cannot interact with no matter how hard she tries. To leave, she just has to find another reflective surface and will herself back out. She has found she can bring inanimate objects inside the plain and leave them in there as well. The items are not flipped to match the world and have a certain sheen to them, making their otherness obvious to any who might see them as they look into a mirror.
//SKILLS:◼ Athletics | Tavia's a dancer. It's her one true passion in life and every free moment she has is spent on practicing her moves. It's not surprising that she's got a lot of muscle and is generally extremely flexible. If there's one thing going for her, it is her peak physical condition. She's also taken up recreational ballet and she's learning to move differently as well.
◼ Keen Eye & Good Sense | She has very good intuition with visuals. She doesn't know how to articulate what she feels but she knows that this color goes with that one and how the spaces are interacting with one another in ways that don't seem right. It helps with her fashion aesthetic and is now helping her with her illusions.
◼ Simple | She trusts what she feels and goes through things one at a time, lending her relief from the typical anxiety of the future. She also likes things kept neat and clear, without layers upon layers of steps and intricacies. When other people are thinking about the details, she proposes the most simplistic and, occasionally dumb, idea.
◼ Charming | Sometimes her straightforwardness and simplicity is very charming. People generally find a beautiful fool of a girl, one whose emotions are obvious and who has no secrets plots, someone they can trust.
//LIMITATIONS:◼ Concentration | The mirror world is suffocating. Tavia doesn't belong in it and it's as if the plain knows this and tries its best to expel her out if she leaves her mental guards down. She has to concentrate on staying inside and getting to her destination or she'll be spat out at the nearest opportunity. Mental fortuity is not her strongest trait to say the least.
◼ Size Matters | If she wants to enter the mirror plain, Tavia needs to find a reflective surface that will fit. She can get around this with smaller surfaces if she tries to dive into it, thus minimizing the total space necessary. If she does dive, she has to brace herself to land correctly or else collide with something on the mirror plain which will still hurt her.
◼ Glass | It's the only surface she's been able to use. Clean glass is easiest but mirrors are always the best option. Ice is of a moderate difficulty but water is the hardest to achieve and Tavia hasn't been able to do anything except fall into a lake.
◼ Full Body Retrieval | Those inanimate objects Tavia can leave behind in the mirror plain? She can't just stick her arm in a mirror and grope around to take them out. She has to go into the plain, find the location she left them, and then leave to bring them back to the real world.
//WEAKNESSES:Disorientation | Tavia has to focus but prolonged exposure will result in disorientation. So far, she has been able to remain within the mirror plain for 15 minutes on her side with only the beginning of a headache. If she were to go for longer, her headache would worsen until the mental pain becomes excruciating and she loses herself inside the plain as blacking out means she is not focusing on staying inside. Instead of being forced into the real world, she is stuck in a mental limbo inside.
◼ Only One | She hasn't even thought of trying to transport other people with her because just her has been so hard to do. If Tavia were to try bringing someone in, they would need to hold onto her the entire time as well as strong mental walls to pass through the plain. The mental strain on Tavia is double the force it normally is and when she succumbs to the fatigue or her guest lets go of her, her passenger will be regurgitated out of the plain while Tavia is stuck within the mirror.
