Name: Dylan Cane
Nickname/s: Dy
Species: Witch
Primary Power: Empath
Coven: Hawthorn
Age: 20
Gender: Female
Hometown: Portland, OR, USA
Current Residence: Hawthorn House
Studying: Masters in Ancient History
Employment: Tutor in French, English, art, and history, although currently unemployed
Family: Mother, Sister;Abigail
Friends:
Relationship: None
Player: Andi
Contact Email: aiobhan@gmail.com
Model: Marisa Petroro
Background
The first-born children in Dylan's line receive hereditary empathic powers. Her family has developed a filter which they train themselves to adopt over the course of their lives, in order to keep their empathy from affecting them on a day-to-day basis. By the time they are adults, that filter is strong and sturdy, and they are able to remain fairly uninformed of others' emotions, only calling on it when they desire to. Her father was an empath before her – he passed away three years ago. Her mother lives with her younger sister Abigail in Portland, Oregon. Abigail is 11 years old - she was a surprise, and is almost ten years younger than Dylan. Her full name is Dylan Marie Cane - her grandmother’s maiden name was Dylan, which is why she has a boy’s name instead of a girlier one.
For all of her life she lived in Portland, Oregon, until her father's untimely passing sent her to the UK on his wishes. He knew she'd always wanted to live abroad, and the time he spent in England in his youth was so full of happiness for him that he wanted her to have the same experience. So, with her inheritance, she moved to Reading to attend the university there. Her mother, through her extensive network of connections to others like them, found out that this particular school has something of a penchant for the paranormal. While Dylan wouldn't consider herself all that different, she did want to develop her empathy more, and figured that Reading would be a good place to do so. Thankfully, her nearly 3 years of study in anthropology from Whitter transferred, so she was able to continue on the path to getting her masters in ancient history.
She petitoned to join a coven upon her arrival, and while she has been a part of the Hawthorne coven, she has been relatively inactive and solitary - until recently.
Physical Appearance
Dylan is not remarkable as far as looks go. She's of medium height, 5'5", and of a regular, slim build. Her shoulders are broad, her hips are narrow, and she could never be considered 'well endowed'. The only thing that is remotely interesting are her eyes - a pretty sea-green, large, ringed in thick lashes. They are her father's eyes, while the rest of her colouring came from her mother. Light brown hair that falls in choppy, messy waves to her shoulders, pale, olive-toned skin, and dark eyebrows all hail from the Basque ancestry on her mother's side.
She never wears anything flashy, preferring sweaters in the winter and simple t-shirts in the summer, with only a bangle here or a necklace there to add sparkle. Her colour pallet, too, is subdued - mostly dark colors, greens and browns and greys, sometimes with a bright splotch of colour in the form of a scarf or pair of shoes.
Personality
Being an older sister, Dylan falls easily into a leader-type role, although she prefers not to. She's introverted by nature, sometimes even shy, but always polite. She's a people-pleaser, trained that way by her empathy, and would go to great lengths to make the people close to her content. She has a skill for helping people through difficult times - she won most of her friends back home that way. And, although she considers herself a true romantic and a highly sexual person, she has yet had no interest in dating or relationships.
She's rarely angry or upset outwardly, but can sometimes fall into moments of self-destructive behaviour to cope with difficulties. When things are bad for her, Dylan retreats into herself, and sometimes refuses even to speak to anyone else unless she absolutely has to. Fortunately, her philosophy on life is very Taoist, and she tends to just go where the world takes her, tending to be low-stress and high energy.
Talents & Weaknesses
Dylan has a talent for people - she can guide them, manipulate them, aid them, or befriend them, depending on her desire. Her nature doesn't allow her to use her empathy negatively, and she mostly helps those around her, tapping into their feelings to better understand and help heal their pains. She's also very artistic, being a trained soprano for almost ten years. She can also write well, being a tutor in English, and is slowly developing her drawing ability.
Things Dylan can't do include math, most sports (although she found out her hand-eye coordination makes her very good at tennis and badminton), walking into rooms without being anxious, and dating. She has absolutely no ability to flirt or otherwise utilize her "feminine wiles," and rarely finds herself attracted to others. She's attempting to overcome her social anxiety, usually covering it up with an aloof attitude.
Her empathy has made Dylan's life both easier and harder, since she can pick up very complex emotional responses in people she's close to. On the upside, she learned to use it when people she loved were sad or upset, giving her a little more information about how they were feeling, making it easier for her to help them work through it. On the other hand, however, Dylan would often forget about her own emotional issues because she was so overloaded with the emotions of those she was trying to aid, which often led to her bottling everything up inside. It also made the two relationships she'd ever been in more difficult - in both cases, Dylan picked up on the feeling of boredom, or interest in someone else, and although she told herself it was just paranoia, they ended just as she'd anticipated. She can't seem to empathise as easily with people she doesn't have an emotional connection with, though, which makes her nervous around new people. Having relied so often on her empathy to give her a little help here and there, when someone unfamiliar to her comes along, Dylan can barely read their feelings at all, which makes her nervous and shy.
Her desire to join a coven was not influenced only by her empathy - since she was young she would pull cards from her mother's Tarot deck, and once she got a deck of her own, she felt connected to the imagery and the deep psychological resonance in them. Having little luck with any other scrying methods, Dylan cultivated her skills with Tarot and became quite drawn to precious and semi-precious stones, using them often in any ritual work.
While she's never been big on spells in particular, the ones she has done have been relatively sucessful. Generally, Dylan likes to take things as they come - at the most, she's given Fate little nudges here and there, sent some positive energy out. That's why she's so quiet when it comes to coven activities - she feels inexperienced, less able to match up with the others' skills.
