Nadine Blumenthal spent most of her adult life treating her ability as a condition to manage rather than a gift to use. She was good at it — the tamping-down, the careful maintenance of a life that asked as little of her as possible in return. Humble. Divorced. Excellent with coffee. Not especially happy, but not especially not-happy either. Just: careful.
She arrived at Halcyon as a new hire. She will leave — or rather, she won't leave, which is its own kind of story — as something the clinic didn't have a word for yet.
What Nadine can do, at full capacity, is transmit and receive across almost any distance or barrier. Emotional states, impressions, memories, the specific flavor of another person's inner life. The problem is that this works whether she wants it to or not. She has been absorbing the world her entire life. What Halcyon is trying to give her, among other things, is a choice about that.
Book I of the Halcyon series is about the year between the careful version of Nadine and the other one. It is not a comfortable year. It is an interesting one.
Full-spectrum emotional and psychic broadcast. Can transmit her own state across distances; more commonly receives involuntarily from others. Range and clarity are exceptional. Control is a work in progress.
Absorbs the emotional states of people in proximity. In crowds, this is debilitating. With training, it becomes diagnostic — she can feel what's wrong with a patient before they can articulate it.
Takes on the psychic residue of a space or person. This is why she has coffee first thing every morning — not the caffeine. The ritual of taking something in deliberately before the world starts doing it to her.
Learned at the Sweat, refined over twenty years. She knows how to hold what she absorbs without letting it change her. Mostly. Halcyon is teaching her the harder thing: that she doesn't always have to use it.
Best friend since the Sweat. Not clinic staff. Has opinions about that. The blue snakes come alive in her hands at night and she will not discuss it.
View file → Claire RedbudDirector. Primary supervisor and, eventually, something more complicated than that. Claire recognized what Nadine was before Nadine did.
View file → Jeremiah TarquinThe black sheep. She likes him more than she admits. His knowledge of places, her knowledge of people. Neither has fully said so.
View file →