Dahlia Byrnes

**Dahlia Byrnes** is a character in The Smoke Room. She is the youngest living member of the Byrnes family and works as an astronomer and Echo School's librarian.

## Appearance

Dahlia is a petite red fox with orange and white fur, brown paws, and golden eyes. She has a tuft of red-brown fur on her head and wears round silver spectacles. Dahlia wears a yellow shirt with vertical stripes, a light green skirt, and a large yellow bow tied loosely around her neck.

While getting ready for her sister Holly's wedding, Dahlia is shown wearing a simple white dress with a translucent neckline and ruffled sleeves.

## Personality

Dahlia is intelligent and secretive, although she can be excitable when discussing her interests. She greatly enjoys math and astronomy and seems to have a knack for developing coded puzzles. Though Dahlia sometimes fades into the background while in group conversations, she is rarely idle in her thinking and her ability to "disappear" may function as a ward against her often overbearing family. Dahlia is determined and resourceful, and uses her quiet nature to disguise her deeper thought processes.

### Before The Smoke Room

Dahlia is the third child of Red and Gretchen Byrnes, making her the younger sister of Holly and Murdoch and the older sister of Seamus. Growing up, Dahlia's parents made sure she was well-educated and provided her with many opportunities to further her academic career. One Fourth of July, Dahlia was away at an overnight finishing school when her brother Seamus drowned in Lake Emma after sneaking aboard a steamboat. This seems to have caused a shift in the family's dynamics, leading Gretchen and Alfred to become much harsher and more demanding of their remaining children to meet their high expectations.

Dahlia eventually went away to a prestigious college on the east coast to study science, particularly astronomy. Despite the university's telescope being off-limits to women, Dahlia taught herself to use the device by sneaking in after-hours when her professors and peers weren't looking. After graduating, Dahlia returned to Echo to work under her mother as a teacher at Echo School, as well as the school librarian. Around 1910, the school secured a grant to have an observatory installed on the roof, finally allowing Dahlia free access to her own telescope.

In addition to her regular duties, Dahlia offers special classes in astronomy for gifted students who do well in arithmetic and runs an extracurricular astronomy club. Despite her achievements, however, Dahlia tends to be derided by Gretchen for her lack of initiative and outwardly scatterbrained behavior. Dahlia also joined Echo's historical society alongside Holly, Porter Moore, Cordelia Hendricks, and many other citizens of Echo, sometimes including Murdoch as well. During the society's meetings, they frequently discuss Echo's paranormal nature. At some point, Dahlia began creating puzzles and secret codes to allow her to discreetly send messages to others, including to her astronomy club students, most notably Blithe, and later to Murdoch in particular.

### Murdoch's Route

Sam first meets Dahlia during his first visit to Echo School. She takes an immediate interest in him and gives him a poem that actually hides a coded message. Later on, Dahlia meets Cliff during the school's celebration as part of picture day and discusses academic concepts with him. She notes that he and Sam would likely get along.

The following day, Dahlia attends church with the rest of her family and Cliff before going to lunch with Cliff and her siblings. Upon Sam's arrival, Dahlia invites him to join her astronomy club's meeting that night. At the meeting, Dahlia explains to Sam how telescopes work and shows him Saturn. She encourages Sam to complete an activity she has created, really another hidden message, before the two are interrupted by Blithe, who departs with Sam in tow.

Later, during Holly's bachelorette party, Sam overhears Dahlia talking to her sister in the Byrnes' back garden. Dahlia brings up the possibility of Holly moving away from Echo as a result of her marriage to Jim, and expresses frustration about the way Gretchen constantly exerts influence over their lives. Dahlia later finds Sam and directs him to the garden so he can meet up with Murdoch, but cautions him with a cryptic warning to be patient before announcing his presence. This allows Sam to also eavesdrop on a terse conversation between Murdoch and Holly.

That night, Dahlia reappears with Cliff in Echo's cemetery, examining the potter's field of unmarked graves. She mentions offhand that John Begay may have been buried there anonymously, but also alludes to a rumor that James Hendricks I moved the body for unknown reasons. Cliff bids her a polite farewell to catch his train out of town, and Dahlia notices that Murdoch and Sam have been observing her from a distance.

She remarks how strange it is to find her brother in the graveyard, but assures him that she will keep his whereabouts a secret. Dahlia vents about Holly's recent odd behavior, recounting that their sister first got mad at her for serving tea from their mother's collection, and then gave her a large letter to be kept sealed unless Jim tried to back out of the marriage. Dahlia claims to have burned this letter without opening it.

As Dahlia departs the cemetery, she points out an 'important' grave inscribed only with the name *Scholl*, and advises Murdoch and Sam to pay their respects. Presumably, this relates to the coded correspondence that Dahlia has been attempting throughout the route, and may indicate that evidence of the crimes referenced in her previous clues can be found within Echo School.

In the front yard of the Byrnes' home the following night, Jim does indeed try to call of the wedding and Holly reveals to him, Murdoch, and Sam that the envelope she gave to Dahlia, and two others, contained illicit pictures of her fiancé and brother together, which she intends to use as blackmail to keep the marriage on track. Dahlia and her grandmother are awoken by the commotion, prompting her to throw a small rock at Holly's arm from an upstairs window. She lightly scolds the group for making noise while the family is sleeping, but airily denies throwing the stone when Holly asks, even as she encourages the group to 'turn it over' before shutting the window and presumably returning to bed. The other side of this rock is shown to be etched with a secret message in Morse code, which Murdoch may notice.

On the day of Holly and Jim's wedding, Murdoch tells Sam that Dahlia is nowhere to be found. She is absent at the start of the ceremony as the assembled party collectively realizes that the Hendricks' Mansion has caught fire.

## Relationships

### Murdoch

Dahlia and Murdoch seem to be close, apparently having in-depth conversations on complex subjects and theories, including the nature of some of the strange phenomena in Echo. Dahlia appears to respect Murdoch's work in running the family store despite the degrading treatment he receives from their parents. Dahlia and Murdoch communicate through coded messages at times, typically disguised as shopping lists or poems.

### Holly

Holly and Dahlia get along well and are often shown chatting amicably about their family or their shared work at the school; some of this may result from the veneer of sociability that all the Byrnes children uphold, however, and so Dahlia's true feelings about her sister are unclear. Dahlia is at least willing to voice her disapproval that Holly constantly complies with Gretchen's demands, and urges her to stand up to their mother decisively.

It is unclear whether Dahlia understands the full scope of Holly's coercion of Murdoch, but it is implied that she knows more than she lets on. According to Grandma Rowan, Holly does not know how to "handle" the women of their family, likely referring to Dahlia in particular.

### Gretchen and Alfred

Dahlia manages to avoid the worst of her parents' ire largely by staying completely silent unless spoken to while in their presence. She seems to resent the control Gretchen has over her life and notices that, in spite of what Alfred claims, Murdoch is a competent store manager. Dahlia appears to outwardly comply with her parents' expectations of her, though perhaps with some hidden resentment and quiet independence.

### Cliff

Dahlia calls Cliff "marvelous company," and the two seem to have developed a kinship over their shared love of scientific and other intellectual matters. Specifically, Dahlia mentions that she appreciates Cliff's "excellent eye for details," which may be a disguised reference to her hope that he possesses the acumen to decipher her coded messages. Dahlia is notably displeased when Cliff has to decline an invitation to her astronomy club.

## Trivia

* At various points in Murdoch's route, Dahlia inconspicuously gives Sam and Murdoch puzzles, which the player can then solve independent of the story's progress for messages that offer vague details about some of the strange and sinister happenings in Echo.
* Dahlia is a lesbian, although this has not been made explicit in the story.
* By 2015, the year Echo takes place, Dahlia's observatory is completely absent from the roof of Echo school. The reasons for its disappearance are currently unknown.

## Gallery

DefaultEyes closedFrownDahlia in her wedding attireThe poem Dahlia gives Sam.The astronomy activity Dahlia gives Sam.The rock Dahlia tosses at Holly.
## References

1. ↑ GeorgeSquares' CuriousCat
2. ↑ GeorgeSquares' CuriousCat