Character Prof., Adelaide H. Ramsey

Names - Adelaide Honora1

Family Name - Ramsey2

Aged 14-17 through the main course of the story.3

Blue eyes. Long brown hair, usually braided or otherwise pulled back. Freckles, medium-fair skin. Average height. Somewhat thin. Decent looks.4

Lives in "west Texas" in an alternate universe from our own. Europe is in a constant state of religious war, America is composed of a confederacy of the East, Texas as its own country, and the West and Southwest are still mostly wilderness, where Indians, French, Spaniards, and outlaws from the East roam freely. 5

"Addie" was probably born in Louisiana or east Texas. About a month after being born, she was left in an orphanage in the desert wilderness of west Texas, which was run by a notoriously non-questioning man named Mr. Quigley. She was left with a note that had her full name written on it - Adelaide Honora Ramsey. The note was written on stationary from a hotel in New Orleans, and that's all anyone knows of Addie's past. 6

When Addie was about seven, a boy already about fifteen named Damien Fitzgerald joined the orphanage. He had lost his father when he was young and had just lost his mother and sister, who had been about Addie's age. Damien adopted Addie as a replacement for his sister, and the two have remained very close ever since. When Mr. Quigley died suddenly when Addie was eight, Damien took over the orphanage, being only sixteen but the only one who cared for miles around.7

The same year, Addie met a gypsy woman in a frontier town that she and Damien had gone to to buy supplies. She was sixteen too, and very ill, so Damien and Addie brought her back with them. Though she was only eight, Addie truly enjoyed taking care of the woman - named Kayin - and enjoyed her company. Damien apparently enjoyed her company too, and after the orphanage began to emptied out and they turned eighteen, the two married and took Addie with them to a farmstead slightly farther north and west of the orphanage. 8

Damien and Kayen were largely occupied with each other and the farm during that year when Addie was ten and eleven. Mr. Quigley had been an avid collector of books, however, and Damien had brought almost all of them with him. Addie immersed herself in them while she wasn't at work. It was the books she read those years that shaped her mind and her life from that point on.