Appearance:
Nova is a petite girl standing at about 5’2” and weighing a mere 108 pounds. She is, by nature, very thin, with a small bone structure and a high metabolism to match. She holds hazel eyes and dark auburn hair that reaches just below her shoulders.
Before the fall, Nova would often wear articles of clothing one would find in a Goodwill department. Sweatshirts that were far too big for her, knitted leggings with unusual patterns, combat boots, and of the likes. Now, however, she wears whatever she can manage to find – i.e. a loose grey tank top, a stained black sweater, somewhat fitted jeans with several holes, and battered sneakers.
Name: Nova Penelope Wayland.
Age: Eighteen.
Noteworthy Skills: Nova is small, and can fit through many places that other are incapable of.
Weapons: Nova was never one to be great with any sort of weapons, as neither her mother nor her father bothered to teach her how to use even the smallest of knives. On her person, though, she carries a switch blade and a Beretta Px4 storm gun.
Personality: To put it simply, Nova is a very timid girl. She is not one to be very sociable or put in the efforts to get to know others. While she is not a closed person, it is very difficult for her to find anyone to be trustworthy. Before the fall, Nova was notably a very kind and warm hearted person. While she was still quite shy, upon being met, she was known to care deeply for those around her. Perhaps she cared a little too much.
After the fall, Nova shut down. Despite being incapable of being cold towards others, she has learned to protect what is her own and ward off those who threaten that. How she has come to survive this long is an utter mystery, as Nova does not know how to ultimately fend for only herself. She is not a fitted leader, and exemplifies as such even without having meant to. She lacks a strong backbone, but with each passing day, it can be said that she is gradually coming about one. Nova has the potential of surviving, but whether she’ll reach that point is unknown.
History: She was an infant conceived in hopes that the conflicts between the two lovers would end. Little did they realize, the birth of Nova seemed to only worsen their issues. The mother, of twenty-two years, was a heroin addict. She spent the many dollars intended for her baby’s necessities on that of drugs. The father, just barely twenty-five, was a raging alcoholic, and while he did not present as such at work, the minute he got home from his eleven hour shift, he grabbed the nearest cheap vodka, and began to drink away his sorrows.
Nova never saw much of her dad. Tucked away in her small room with only the spare kitchen bowls and spoons to keep her occupied, the girl was raised to be nothing more than a nuisance. Her mother, neglecting her child, tended to her friends at the many small get-togethers she would throw with the many drugs they took part in and sold. This went on for quite some time. Years of Nova deprived of both parents, years of her mother insisting to her father that she quit her drug use, and years of her father beating her mother to compensate for his shitty job.
Her father didn’t harm her until she had reached pre-school. While her father refused on many cases, he was obligated to both take and pick her up from school, as her mother did not have her license. The years prior to this, Nova had gone unnoticed by her father, as she was nothing more than the failed attempt to resolve issues they couldn’t bother to do themselves. With this, Nova was brought into a world of physical and emotional abuse, the words of “mistake” spewing from her father’s mouth. Despite being relatively sober in the morning, he still managed to be perceived as intoxicated, for his anger was often caught on the mother as well as their lone daughter.
Nova, by the time she was nine, knew her place in her home, and grew accustom to the beatings, the words, and the raping. However, it did not stop her from crying hysterically when her father was gone, and writing about it in a journal she’d acquired from a teacher at school. School in itself soon became her only escape, as those hours were times when neither her mother nor her father could reach her. She did not tell a soul, as her father had (on multiple occasions) informed her that they would put her in foster care, and there was a very good chance that she’d be thrown out and left on the streets.
In middle school, her outlet was weed. She’d run out of room in the multiple journals she had, and afraid that her father would one day find them – she hid them in a small opening behind her closet door and never wrote in one again. In all her years of middle school, weed was her only friend. Nova did not talk much throughout her school days, but had somehow managed to befriend other smokers who had stolen weed from their parents. The very little money she was given (for lunches and school supplies) Nova spent it on weed, and would smoke before and after school, as well as before she went to bed.
It was a daily routine for young Nova. She even found that the drug numbed the pain and allowed her to think of other things when her father came to her. Nova was forced to stop smoking upon reaching high school, when her parents were utterly furious about her spending their money on drugs. She was called selfish, a little bitch, as well as many other things, and although Nova so desperately ached to scream back, she could not find the courage.
Entering her sophomore year, her mother was arrested for dealing and drug usage, leaving Nova’s father as her sole caretaker. With no other women in the house, Nova became the primary solution to all his anger. Her father was smart. He did not leave bruises or other marks anywhere but her stomach, upper arms, and legs, knowing that Nova was bound to hide them (she exposed very little skin). The end of junior year proved to be both a blessing and a curse, for this was the age at which the fall occurred.
Returning home from a rather unordinary day, Nova walked through the doors to find her father leaned over some sort of animal, ripped to shreds with a pool of blood beneath them. His head perched up the moment she opened the door, and after a battle of trying to run elsewhere, she located a kitchen knife and stabbed it through his skull. He did not move after that.
The incident left Nova frightened and confused. She locked herself in her tiny little room with nothing more than that kitchen knife and enough food for forty-eight hours. The helpless girl stayed there until others came to inspect her home. She’d thought them to be burglars and hid in her closet until one man discovered her. He and his team contemplated what they were to do with the shaken seventeen year old, and after much discussion, decided to have her tag along. Their reasoning was simple. She would prove to be useful for things only a small child could do – and besides, she was bound to die eventually, right? She wasn’t fit for survival.
Perhaps they were right, but out of all of them, Nova was the only to survive. Their group had been ambushed by another pack of survivors. Nova had fled the minute she saw her friend, Isaac, hit the ground. She knew he’d been killed. Equipped with both a switch blade and a gun given to her by her team, she went on by herself.
In a span of a year, Nova had been a part of two teams, both that had the same reasoning behind her joining them in the first place. She was small, and she would not survive for very long. She thought this was the case, as well, and thought that she would die in no more than a few days. Those days turned into weeks which then turned into months. Nova prospered, while her teammates were not so lucky.
They’d been in the process of heading north, a recommendation by other groups, as according to them, there was ‘safety’. She, as well as a few others, did not think this to be even remotely true, and in an argument which she did not partake in, the group headed back the way they’d came. Nova’s group died just outside of Kansas, attacked by the very things that they could not escape.
Nova, both hopeless and angry, decided against her previous statement, taking their advice, and walking north. Famished and exhausted, she encountered yet another group. A band of people who were unlike anyone she’d ever been with, barricaded by the four walls of a local airport, where the creatures could not reach.
She’d found north.
Other:
