STATISTICS
Elaine Vipond nee Trent
FULL NAME
Laney except by some family who go with Ellie
AKA
28
AGE
April 30, 1970
BIRTHDAY
Heterosexual
SEXUALITY
Almost divorced/almost single but honestly not ready for much
SEXUALITY
Were-cougar and very new to it
SPECIES
Technically she still has a residence in WA
RESIDENCE
Vet tech, farmer, & crafter
OCCUPATION
PERSONALITY
Her base personality is quiet but cheerful, bubbly, and positive. She’s an excellent cheerleader for those around her and can fake being extroverted when needed, probably a product of having loud brothers. She’s also very kind and usually doesn’t have much of a temper. Honestly, she’s sometimes too empathetic and overly sensitive, especially to any perceived criticism. She’s especially fond of animals and generally prefers them to most people. She’s something of a caregiver and is usually that person who drops off food when you’re ill or comes and does your laundry or makes up a baby box for someone who is expecting. But she’s often in the back ground and prefers it there usually.
She’s a middle child, prone to being the peacekeeper, the caregiver, the mediator. Her biggest flaw is her lack of self confidence and worth, which she’s struggled with her entire life. It had been getting a bit better, but it’s still her number one issue.
These days though, she’s mostly just quiet, very introspective and with the saddest eyes at times. Very blank in a lot of ways. Bundled so tightly into herself that it’s hard to get through in any meaningful way. She can fake it for short periods, but inside right now she’sreally fucked up and she knows it, but doesn’t seem to know how to get herself out of it. She also tends to be incredibly moody and irritable, with her temper sparking off over stupid things when she normally doesn’t have much of a temper.
APPEARANCE
PB: Phoebe TonkinShe’ll tell you that she’s average. Average height (5’6”), average build. She’s got dark hair and an oddly interesting face. It can be startlingly expressive, and her eyes really snag some people.
HISTORY
Laney is the middle child of five and the only girl as well. Her family was not very well off but they weren’t dirt poor, per se, but there definitely wasn’t a lot of money to go around. Her father is a farmer, just like his father before, so on and so forth. Her mother is a nurse who worked a lot of night shifts when she was growing up. Both her parents loved her and her siblings, but they were often just busy trying to make ends meet. She was supposed to be the last baby, but then there were accidental twins after her, and honestly because she was quiet she often ended up in the background. Her brothers are good guys, truly, but they’re pretty loud and rowdy and take up space. She loves them to death but they are a lot, especially when they’re all together. This also meant, of course, that there was a lot of teasing growing up, which sometimes upset her, but it was ‘just a joke’ and she was oversensitive, so standing up for herself or being in conflict was not something she got good at. And she is, honestly, a bit too sensitive at times.
Growing up most of her best friends were animals. She did a lot of the chores on the farm and also wrangled her brothers as she got older, especially when her mom worked nights and her dad got up super early to start work on the farm. It didn’t bother her at all at the time, though she now knows it’s not precisely normal. However, on the whole she had a happy childhood, and there was no abuse or anything like that, just a big, busy, poor family.
When she was a kid, she really wanted to be a vet. But between her lack of confidence and being too busy at times to focus on grades, she figured she was too stupid for it. She did, however, go to school to be a vet tech and managed it all right. She’d do school and waitressing during the week and man her family’s stall at the farmer’s market to sell their produce and her and her mother’s crafts. One of her brothers whittles, so she would sell his pieces too. She still helped out at the farm and just generally was super busy and productive.
One day at the farmers market, she met Benji Vipond. At first they were just friends, but they became closer and ended up dating. Her family adored him, but not as much as she did. He made her happy, made her giddy, and their values and plans aligned. After she graduated, they got married and built a little cottage on her parents’ property, with Benji doing the farming with her dad and the occasional brother, and her taking a job as a vet tech in town as well as helping. She considers that time among the happiest of her life.
They put off having kids for a bit, wanting to get established and figure themselves together. But around their fifth anniversary they revisited the thought and began actively trying for a baby. She’s never been worried about fertility, she figured it would happen when it happened.
Well, it finally did. She found out she was pregnant just a few days before she was planning to go to a wildlife rehab seminar held over a long weekend. She came up with this whole plan to take pictures at scenic spots along the way with clues, that she could send to Benji on the way home to tease him before doing the big reveal.
Unfortunately, along the way there on a back road where she stopped one evening to get a picture, she was attacked by what turned out to be a rogue were-cougar. She was assaulted, first in human form, and then hunted by him in cougar form. She’s still not totally clear on how she got away or survived, but the next Monday when she was supposed to start driving home, she stumbled out of the woods surprisingly near her car. Her wounds had already started to heal at an accelerated rate. She got into her car and just sat there, staring into space. Nothing felt right. She was cramping terribly, everything hurt, and she was itchy in her skin.
She knew Benji wouldn’t be worried yet. The educational seminar had been hands on and had stated outright that they would be out of cell range for the entire time, due to the location of this particular rescue that had enough space to contain the people who signed up. She drove to a nearby tiny town, got a motel room, and texted Benji she’d be home a day later than planned because of car issues. It was, possibly, the first time she’d ever purposefully lied to him.
That night, wracked with cramps, she lost her pregnancy. To be completely honest, she just shut down that night. When she came home, she managed to fake being herself for a while, especially since all signs of violence had been erased from her skin by then. But she pulled away when someone went to touch her, even Benji, and she became more and more insular, retreating from everyone and everything, not knowing how to communicate about any of it. She had always been conflict adverse, but this took it to the next level. She had a terrible fear of losing her husband and her family, but it was something of a self-fulfilling fear as the more she withdrew, the more she hurt the people around her.
Then a month later, while out checking on some of the animals late one night, the moon came up and she turned. When she came home the next morning, she said she had just taken a long walk, something she was prone to do anyway, even if it wasn’t the most believable excuse for being out all night. The entire experienced freaked her the fuck out the rest of the way, especially since she’d been a vegetarian for years (there was a chicken friend in her childhood, and a family dinner, and yeah, she just… went vegetarian). She had a distinct memory of hunting and eating meat. It was another trauma on top of everything else.
She gives her husband a ton of credit – she knows he tried as best he could to get through to her. And she desperately wanted to talk to him. But every time she opened her mouth to try, she just shut down again, and it was a worsening cycle. When he sat her down that last time to try to get through to her, she was just so blank, and couldn’t even find the proper words for anything. She knows it was wrong. But she didn’t know how to get around it. Plus her family was mad at her for hurting Benji. They loved him, and still do. So she was getting it from both ends and she just went into basic survival mode, becoming moody, irritable, and temperamental.