Seraphina Josephyne Hathaway had always been different from other children. As an infant, one of the only means of keeping a fussy Sera from crying was to take her into the garden. A remarkably quick change of mood ensued once she would bury her fingers in the soil, physically touching each sprout in the patch before carefully adjusting the tiny leaves. The roots, the soil, and the plants seemed almost human to Sera, exhibiting a familiarity as though she was speaking to her own sister. However, despite the unconventional behavior, her parents defaulted to what they always had when their children behaved strangely: they merely found it endearing. As the fourth child born to Carol and Jacob Hathaway, they felt they had seen it all and the proper reaction to most infant behavior was never to worry, but instead to remember it for when they were older, a story to share with them once the child in question reached adulthood.
By the age of four, it was to no one's surprise that she had quite the green thumb, discovered through her mother's instruction to grow a pumpkin by herself, a task intended to discipline her unruly behavior. The end result was a full, robust pumpkin that put anything Carol had seen to shame; it was nearly perfect with zero imperfections on the surface and flourishing, bright green leaves that wove through the rest of the garden. Sera had a gift, that much was clear but no one could have predicted how out of the ordinary it would be.
Her gift started to manifest in a big way at the age of eight when her town collectively decided it was time to cut down one of the huskier trees in the central city; the sidewalk was starting to become uneven as the roots of the tree spread further, the branches blocking two street lights and interfering with the traffic light, a common source of blame in the numerous insurance claims that were a result of having it obscured from their vision. Sera was very against the decision, and on her walk back from the meeting, stopped to gaze at the tree that would soon be no more, rubbing her fingers over the textured bark as she felt tears well in her eyes. There was a maternal fear that was pulsing inside her, sending a burning hot terror coursing through her veins. There was something so unnatural about taking down a tree before it's time and it irked her in a way she couldn't describe. Her parents brought her to a therapist when she started having panic attacks the closer the day came to bringing down the tree, and no one could quite understand why Sera had framed this as something of a personal attack on her own well being.
Her parents tried to raise money to save the tree, passing around a petition through town but the vote to remove it had significantly more support. It was inevitable that this tree would fall. When the day finally came, Sera was inconsolable, even having to be held back by her parents and siblings as she cried out with such desperation. Each swing of the saw left an emotional wound deep inside her, and she became a shell of herself over the next few weeks as a result. The town started to eye Sera, ostracizing her from the rest of the quiet town. Her parents had already started considering other options to help her, but the decision to move came when almost all of Sera's friend's parents didn't allow them to spend time with her anymore.
Not long after Sera's ninth birthday, the family uprooted and moved to Boulder, Colorado. Jacob had snagged a decently compensated position in a larger corporation and could afford to live in a spacious house that could house his family, and in terms of Sera, they rationed she wouldn't be the weird child. They were right for the most part and the next few years were more or less smooth sailing. She participated in a community garden nearly constantly as she cared for a plethora of plants through high school and continued to do so into college as she began her a biology program at University of Colorado, Boulder in the field of ecology. Her love and connection to nature had always been for pure purposes, fulfilling her own happiness by being near them but it wasn't until a less savory individual by the name of Kane approached her at the age of 20 that she began tossing around the idea of using her gift for other reasons.
It began with something as innocuous as a salvia divinorum plant, a natural hallucinogenic that wasn't necessarily illegal. She grew some of the most intense product that Kane had ever seen, and in a matter of weeks, there was an entire client base aching to get her strains. Sera had done her business solely through Kane to preserve her privacy, splitting the profits down the middle as she prepared for graduate school. When she finished her bachelors, and realized that she hadn't raised nearly enough money to start her next program, Sera began growing marijuana. It was a similar effect but so much more massive, an insanely strong product that brought an insanely massive client base. Sera, whether she wanted to accept it or not, was the hottest drug producer in the entire Western United States.
While Kane had been a charming man in their negotiations, he began losing his character when her batches couldn't be completed on time. She was a perfectionist; she wouldn't rush her plants to grow, but would ensure that they were well cared for, insisting that only she could grow these plants because of the care and love she put into them. Kane was losing patience as he tried to duplicate her process, finding that it was nearly impossible to create anything as strong and pure as Sera. It was at this time that Kane decided to be honest about something with Sera: he was a high ranking member of a corrupt corporation, operating undercover in the area of drug trafficking.
Kane brought her into the headquarters, a grandiose yet sinister building where she came face to face with John Harris, the highest ranking member and corporate CEO. Sera had always lived a quiet life of doing as she pleased without the weight of demands of others, and this event would change that for good. She mentioned in a typical bout of small talk that she was a college educated woman, intending to take a graduate program in forestry on the Oregon coast in the next year. She would never make it to the program in Oregon, or even to the application as her entire adult plan was altered without getting a word in. No, Sera Hathaway would now be applying to pharmacy school, where she would soon use her access to medications and growing prowess to produce illegal substances. Sera had certainly gotten herself in very deep. What terrified her the most was that she couldn't even trust her anonymity anymore, not now that she had met John Harris face to face. She wasn't going to be able to escape this nightmare, and the most terrifying part was that it had barely even gotten started. By the end of her pharmacy program, she actively grew marijuana, an array of cacti which she harvested mescaline from, psilocybin mushrooms, and mimosa verrucosa while also gathering what she could from the hospital where she was completing her residency. Sera couldn't keep doing this.
She knew it wouldn't be easy to get away from one of the most powerfully corrupt organizations in the country or perhaps even the world, especially with how hot of a commodity she was for them, raking in millions each month, so she sought the help of one of her side clients. Despite having a rather high demand of her product from the corporation, Sera made sure to keep some aside for herself each round, selling what she could personally for some side cash that she could use when she naively assumed her days of when this would be over. She had shared a few nights of conversation with one of her regular clients rather than just exchange profit and product. It had grown into more of a friendship than a business relationship, and so she dared to reveal herself as a member -- or rather, pawn -- of the organization, and rather than be met with horror as she assumed, she was met with a helping hand. This client offered her a way out, as someone who it turned out, was deeply involved in the industry. Should she have trusted another anonymous seemingly harmless face? It hasn't worked out so splendidly in the past. At 25 years old, Sera Hathaway had to make some tough decisions.
Five years later, Sera Hathaway was undetectable. She was a ghost with a name that had all but disappeared, assumed dead after she mysteriously went missing four and a half years earlier. However, the woman formerly known as Sera Hathaway was far from dead, sporting a new name to match her new face, her new hair, her new self. Josephyne Birch, as she was now called, sported a bright blonde mane that fell to the middle of her back, starkly contrasted to the previously curly brunette bob that Sera Hathaway always wore; her eyes were a bright sky blue with the aid of contacts, her frame quite a bit more slender and her face nearly unrecognizable. Josie Birch's nose was longer, her eyebrows higher, her lips thinner, her cheeks fuller. No, Josie Birch could never be mistaken for Sera Hathaway. That would be ridiculous, Sera Hathaway has been dead for months.
ecological empathy
The user can sense the overall well-being and conditions of their immediate environment and natural setting stemming from a psychic sensitivity to nature, including all biomes (forests, deserts, tundras, wetlands, mountains, etc).
They are physically, emotionally, and/or mentally in synch with environment, which allows them to perceive and understand not only what happens in nature but if it is in harmony with natural order. A naturally tree falling or predator catching their prey in a near by forest would be felt by the user, leaving them feeling calmly relieved. Unnaturally, would leave the user sickened.
limitations
• May lose senses while in a provoked/endangered habitat.
• User's emotions may be directly linked to the environment, they may feel blissful and become physically enhanced if their immediate environment is operating naturally or may feel scared, anxious, feeble, or even frenzied if the bio-network is not behaving naturally due to foreign violation.
- Hiding from her former identity, Josie still sells her products to very select customers and often through her most trusted contacts, under the code name of the Apothecary. She isn't making nearly the profit that she did with the corporation, but she would give up every cent coming in to preserve her freedom.
- No one knows her as Sera.
- Her parents and entire family believe her to be dead. This is a huge source of agony in Sera's life, and often will try to check in on them to make sure they're alright, leaving anonymous gifts when she can. She knows she can't reveal herself for their own safety, but she misses them all dearly.
- She intends to stop selling her product eventually, but has a hard time relinquishing it completely as those profits go towards finishing the complete removal of Seraphina Hathaway from any and all records, and essentially, existence.
- The corporation refers to her under the codename of DHG, the dead Hathaway girl.
the apothecary