Pheme

"Do as I tell you and keep away from the gossip of people. For Pheme (Rumour) is an evil thing, by nature, she's a light weight to lift up, oh very easy, but heavy to carry, and hard to put down again. Pheme never disappears entirely once many people have talked her big. In fact, she really is some sort of goddess." *- Hesiod, 'Works and Days' (trans. Evelyn-White)*

"[Rumor], the swiftest traveler of all the ills on earth, thriving on movement, gathering strength as it goes; at the start a small and cowardly thing, it soon puffs itself up, and walking upon the ground, buries its head in the cloud base. The legend is that enraged with the gods, [Gaia] produced this creature her last child...a swift-footed creature, a winged angel of ruin, a terrible grotesque monster, each feather upon whose body--incredible though it sounds--has a sleepless eye beneath it, and for every eye she has also a tongue, a voice, and a pricked ear.

At night she flits midway between earth and sky, through the gloom screeching, and she is perched like a look-out either upon a roof-top or some high turret; so she terrorizes whole cities, loud-speaker of truth, hoarder of mischievous falsehood equally." *- Virgil, Aeneid 4. 174 ff (trans. Day-Lewis)*

"At the world's centre lies a place between the lands and seas and regions of the sky, the limits of the threefold universe, whence all things everywhere, however far, are scanned and watched, and every voice and word reaches its listening ears. Here [Pheme] dwells; her chosen home set on the highest peak constructed with a thousand apertures and countless entrances and never a door. It's open night and day and built throughout of echoing bronze; it all reverberates, repeating voices, doubling what it hears. Inside, no peace, no silence anywhere, and yet no noise, but muted murmurings like waves one hears of some far-distant sea, or like a last late rumbling thunder-roll, when [Zeus] has made the rain-clouds crash. Crowds throng its halls, a lightweight populace that comes and goes, and rumours everywhere, thousands, false mixed with true, roam to and fro, and words flit by phrases all confused. Some pour their tattle into idle ears, some pass on what they've gathered, and as each gossip adds something new the story grows. ... All that goes on in heaven or sea or land Fama [Rumour] observes and scours the whole wide world." *-Ovid, Metamorphoses 12*

## Pheme!

### Scars, Tattoos, Etc.

Wings - Large feathered wings of metallic-gold with gilded eye-swirls in the primaries.

## Titanomachy

**Messenger Form:** Draped in ephemeral white and liquid cloth-of-gold, streaming gilded rose petals and laurel leaves in her wake. Massive plush-feathered golden wings carrying her with the speed of the fastest winds, and the clear clarion-blast of a golden herald's trumpet.

**Monstrous (Harpy) Form:** A creature of hot gold and cold bone, with wings of screaming gold and staring eyes within them, a clamor of noise like a thousand brass cymbals screaming your misdeeds across the land, fanged with mischief and lips red as scandal.

## Phoebe-Simone de Benoit, Marquise de Parabère

### Scars, Tattoos, Etc.

Dusting of freckles along her back and shoulders

### Misc

Very fond of pink, white and gold, soft pastels and florals

## Sun Court

One of the *Dames de la Reine* - a companion of the Queen. Widow of the Marquis de Parabère, and none too sad about it - he passed just long ago enough for her to have recently emerged from mourning, and she's got her dressmaker VERY busy catching up.

Some inspiration to be had from Marie-Madeleine de La Vieuville, Marquise de Parabère

## Roaring 20s

**Alias**: Penny Cornet, gossip columnist: 'Two Cents on Page Six'

Occupationally, a telephone switchboard operator for Ma Bell. Also, clandestinely, a rather notorious gossip columnist. By night, a flamboyant creature of the Bright Young Things set in the nightclubs, small rooms and most daring parties of the City. Somehow she just seems to be *everywhere,* and indefatigable.

Having a bit of an extended something with Philip Ocean - island vacations and going out on the town, and he's building a whole little suite for her in his new mansion... Isn't it lovely to be ~~in love~~ in a relationship that's so compatible? Of course, they're not *exclusive,* darling...