Name: Cornelia "Nelly" HackeGender: Female
Age: 20
Nationality: American (German Heritage)
Appearance: Personal Effects: Gris-gris, matchbox, bottle of rum, worn flat cap, heavy worn overcoat, bone-handled hunting knife, pocket change
Background:
What is your job Beggar
Backstory: Nelly was born in New Orleans to a pair of German immigrants - her father was a dockworker while her mother did some tailoring as a seamstress when more money was needed. They lived a humble life, with a small but modern house not far from the docks. They did not live in excess, but they never dipped into poverty. Nelly's mother taught her instead of sending her to school. Like many Catholic mothers, she primarily taught her from the Bible and did the same for Nelly's little sister, Anja, when she came around.
Stable as they were economically, life was far from perfect. Nelly and Anja's father had a penchant for drinking, and when he drank, he found a penchant for violence. From a young age, Nelly learned how to read her father. Not just his expression, but his schedule. Sundays irritated him, made him feel like a failure in the eyes of God, so she locked Anja and herself up every week after church. Bigger boats sailing in meant he'd be too tired to go to the bar after, which meant they'd be safe. She got good at it. Good enough to protect her family.
Until she was twelve years old. It was a Sunday. She and Anja were huddled together in their room, waiting with dread for their father to come home from the bar. When he did, there was yelling. It wasn't angry, though. It was...absolutely jubilant. She couldn't keep Anja from racing downstairs to see the man twirling with his confused wife in his arms. He was so exuberant, so full of life. It was happier than any of them had ever seen him. The happiness was infectious. Soon Anja was dancing with her father while her mother laughed in the corner.
That evening was more joyful than any that had ever taken place in that house. They had gumbo instead of fish, told each other stories into the night. Anja fell asleep in her mother's arms in front of the fire, who eventually took her to bed, leaving Nelly with her father. She wasn't sure what it was about him - the slight smirk that played at the corner of his lips, the unprecedented sharpness behind his eye.
Something about him struck Nelly with the sudden unwavering belief that this man was
not her father.
She didn't tell her mother. She didn't even tell Anja, not at first. Instead, she slipped into the bed her and Anja shared to try - and fail - to sleep. They woke up to the sweet smell of baking. Cake waited on the dining room table in place of grits, with both their parents sitting at the table, silently waiting for the pair. Nelly had her suspicions immediately, but it wasn't until she was sat across from her "mother" that she was sure. The woman had that same smirk, that same sharpness. Her mother was not her mother.
Nelly slipped away as quickly as she could while still avoiding suspicion. She packed her and her sisters' things, explaining to the younger girl that they were leaving. Anja was confused, upset. Explaining it only caused Anja to grow more upset - to the point of drawing the people pretending to be their parents into their room. Nelly kicked their bags under the bed, quickly spinning a lie about hitting her sister to explain the tears she was shedding.
Nelly didn't end up leaving that night as she'd planned. Anja refused, and she couldn't bring herself to leave without her sister. The next morning, she woke up to find Anja already awake, staring at her inches away. The sharpness had been unsettling in her parents' eyes. Seeing it in little Anja's sent a stabbing terror into her heart. On her lips played that malicious smirk. That day, they had cake. They had gumbo. And when night came and the things that weren't her family were sleeping - or at least mimicking sleep - Nelly slipped out of her bed and turned on their gas stove.
The house burned, and, as far as Nelly knows, whatever they were burned with it.
There was no funeral procession, no second line. Nelly didn't have any other family in New Orleans. No one to bury her dead, no one to take care of her. So, she took to the streets. There's a lot a kid can learn on the streets of New Orleans, especially one as observant as Nelly. The stray dogs taught her how to fight, like a cornered animal without restraint. The rats taught her how to worm her way into tight places she oughtn't be in to snatch up things she oughtn't have. And cats taught her how to weave through a crowd without anyone paying her any mind. Her ability to snatch wallets and watches as she did was something she taught herself.
It's that last skill that'd lead her to her Gigi. She was weaving her way through a crowd, slipping hands into pockets. One of her marks had an envelope - not too thick, but there was something with some weight inside. Jewelry maybe? She was about to open it when she saw something that made her pause. It was addressed to her: Nelly Hacke. It shocked her enough not to notice when a figure approached her, grabbing her by the wrist. Looking up, she found a heavyset old woman with a stern face.
Nelly never understood why Gigi took her on as her ward rather than turning her in. Maybe Nelly's quick hands impressed her. Maybe she pitied the kid. Hell, maybe it was simply Nelly's last name; Gigi always seemed amused to have a girl named Hacke helping her con people. Gigi was allegedly a psychic, a fortune teller gifted with foresight. She was a fraud, of course, something Nelly discovered early in her tenure as the woman's assistant. However she'd managed to get Nelly's name, it wasn't the spirits that gave it to her. Many of Nelly's duties had to do with spying on her Gigi's clients. Hiding atop confession booths with a glass cup, sneaking into bars to hear them drunkenly spill their secrets, slipping into their houses to find any clues as to what to bring up at their next session.
As fraudulent as her sixth sense might have been, Gigi was still a spiritual woman. She taught Nelly of Vodou and the Loa. She also helped teach Nelly how to spot and avoid what she called the Otherfolk - that which appeared human but were not. The things that took her family weren't the only kind. New Orleans, as a city of the night, had plenty creatures of the night pass through, things pulled from folklore and bedtime stories. Under Gigi's tutelage, Nelly developed what could only be described as esoteric street smarts. Nelly learned how to spot them, how to avoid them, how to take notice of strange happenings long before they became deadly. She was witness to a lot - after all, few pay attention to folks like her, begging on the street.
Nelly couldn't say she was surprised when they came for Gigi. She'd been slipping, becoming soft, guiding the Otherfolk's prey out of town with her fortunes instead of keeping to herself as she'd taught Nelly to. In the end, Gigi suffered the same fate as her family - wearing that same smirk, same sharpness. Nelly left the very night she realized Gigi had been taken. She'd planned on leaving town, maybe going North. As such, she took her Gigi's coat. Slipping her hands into her jacket pocket, she found one final trick from the old fraud. Inside was the very same envelope she'd snatched from Gigi all those years ago. Same writing, same weight to it. Opening it, she found two tickets: one from New Orleans to England, and another from England to Germany, the first leaving in a week, the second in a month. Inside was also a matchbox from some German cabaret.
Gigi didn't have a gas stove, but she did have a lot of high proof liquor. Enough to set her little shack ablaze. Nelly kept a low profile the following week until her ship was scheduled to depart. The journey to and through Germany was long; Nelly managed to scrape by begging. She didn't really have anywhere to go after the second ship dropped her on German shores - she tried tracking down extended family, but never really had much luck there. Her resources were few, after all, and there weren't many interested in helping a homeless woman find her family. She was panhandling in Munich when she got it: an envelope dropped into her hat. She didn't get a good look at who dropped it into her hat, but when she dug inside, she found an invitation. An invitation to a cabaret - one with the same name she saw every time she needed a light.
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