Nina Flowers

## Main Profile

Magic didn’t flow through her family tree in a linear fashion. It skipped around as a frog hops from one lily pad to another, never quite landing where one might expect. Maybe that’s why when Ramona *and* Audrey both began displaying magical talent —the likes of which the Bloem’s hadn’t seen in their remembered history this side of the Atlantic— Nina felt a disconcerting hollowness creep into her heart, cold and heavy. Would she also be gifted? Or did her sisters take any hope of that with them when they took magic for themselves?

However, not one to roll over and call it quits without a fight, Nina kept the small spark of hope for herself and her own magical potential. If both of her sisters were able to blow recent memory of the water, why not Nina? She’d been born without breath, in a room where you could hear the collective heartbeat of the hospital staff and her family as their youngest baby girl lay quiet only to awaken in a magnificent rage in Audrey’s arms. Nina would not let minor setbacks suck as her sisters' overgrown and unkempt talents strangle her hope for herself.

Ramona was the oldest of the Bloem sisters and by far the most independent. She'd never ask for help with much, choosing to instead work out the solutions to her everyday problems and tribulations herself. While Nina would grow to look up to this and emulate it for herself, it was not without several drawbacks that Ramona herself never addressed with her youngest sister. Their age gap made their relationship difficult, though the two of them hardly fought. It mostly served as a hindrance to their ability to bond as once Ramona graduated she felt that there was no reason to stay in the Bloem household, and promptly made her way into the adult world with little to no regard to the family she was leaving behind.

Audrey was an excellent student, exemplified by her trips across the country to various safe houses even as a teenager to learn from as many people as she could. Whenever she learned something new she was sure to take down excellent notes, her frequently empty bedroom in their childhood home was littered with notebooks and binders full of scrap paper and napkins as Audrey tried to keep her knowledge organized for future reflection and consolidation. These served as Nina’s first deep dive into magic, as she was forbidden from using the internet to do her own magical research. The results of those who chose to Google their magic were often brutal and agonizing deaths, that of which Nina didn’t wish to inflict upon her parents. Nina kept at her juvenile studies, balancing her generally outcast and poorly public education with her much more exciting studies at home. She thrived on the little miracles, a flash or puff of smoke here and there. It kept the spark of hope alive.

Maybe then, it was shock or perhaps awe, the gravity of fruitful knowledge that kept her first few months of magical ability a secret. She’d been present when Audrey cast her first successful spell, it was a grand display of matter manipulation; her father had hooted and shouted throughout the house, carrying Audrey on his shoulders in triumph. Nina couldn’t underwhelm her parents as her first show of magical aptitude, she wasn’t sure if the creeping cold fog in her heart could weather that particular storm.

By the time she’d mastered half of Practical Exercises for Young Magicians she’d been found out by Audrey, who did not approve of the formal textbook Nina had worn ragged and dog eared to hell.

> ***” This isn’t magic Nina.”***
>
>

Nina felt the blood reach her cheeks and roar in her ears before she could rein it in. Tendrils of ice crept down her arms and into her fists; for all of an eternity crammed into a mere second all she could see was blurry through the tears in her eyes. Audrey hadn’t known it then, but this had crushed Nina. Audrey was quick to redirect her little sister’s magical endeavor, generously providing her with other materials for her to learn from. Despite this generosity, Nina always felt as if she couldn't quite master the material her sister had done and prepared for her so many years ago. Thinking of the future despite not even knowing if her baby sister would ever be able to access the circumstantial aether in their blood that granted them their otherwise seemingly otherworldly abilities.

Now, having passed the Entrance Exam, Nina is eager to be the first in her family's American history to attend a formal education in Magic. She wants nothing more than to be the best magically adept magician of the Bloem sisters.

## Magic and Abilities

Having only been exposed to magical instruction in her own home and from various Hedge influences, Nina doesn't have a very firm grasp on the *hows* and *whys* of magic and casting. She's mostly capable of doing small minor castings after considerable practice with varying degrees of success.

This contrasts the magical abilities of her older sisters, who are both incredibly capable Hedge witches who had little need for the formal instruction that a magical institution such as Brakebills would have provided them.

## Family Dynamic

##### **Ramona V. Bloem (Flowers)**

*The eldest of the Bloem sisters, and the first to set off on her own adventures.*

Ramona was always an interesting enigma even by the standards of the Bloem family. Ramona was a gifted student in the sense that she was smart; but similarly to Audrey, she did not function well in organized education. While she aced almost all material leading to tests, she never quite got the final scores to reflect her intelligence. After narrowly graduating high school and scoring obscenely high on her college entrance exams, she opted to instead peruse a magical education within various Hedge groups across the country. This led her around the United States as she pined for a place to belong and grow. Ultimately she ended up in Canada under the guise of running from a dodgy past, while not entirely untrue Ramona had stolen various texts related to traveling through Subspace, something she'd discovered a particular affinity for despite not being a Traveler by birth.

##### **Audrey MI. Bloem (Flowers)**

*Second born, despite being the technical middle Bloem child she acts more like the older sister Ramona refused the role of.*

#### **The Bloem Family Mythos**

The Bloems are an old family of German origin, having resided on various estates across the Lower Saxony, which includes most of the land between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers. The surname emerged in mediaeval times as one of the notable families of the Hanover region. From the 13th century the surname was identified with the great social and economic evolution which made this territory a landmark contributor to the development of the nation. From the 14th century the name was associated with a Patrician family that possessed estates in the Calenberg and Minden region.

The Bloem's (according to Nina's maternal grandmother and her grandmother repeated ad infinitum) those with the weakest connection to the magical — which they considered a founding and inalienable connection to the world they lived and ruled in — were expelled from their family estate, only allowed to leave with what they could manage to either carry on their direct person or whatever their meager magical ability would allow them to enchant. They were not permitted to use their family name to make their future lives better for themselves, having scorned the Bloem name by virtue of being born inadequately equipped to handle the magical expectations of their forefathers.

## Notes & Dev Resources

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*To be added*