Profile of Móinéir

Built tall but on the leaner side, Móinéir is distinctly feminine. With her long legs and swaying hips, one would think she was dainty, missing the coils of steel beneath her thick coat. And the scars the long hairs hide from those that would ask questions about where they came from. Her bright purple eyes can go from seductively hooded to positively snakelike in a second, her smile turning into a snarl when she’s done playing her games. Her pretty head is adorned with a white diamond, her muzzle and paws equally covered in white. Her coat is that of her fathers, light russet in tone and dusted with black and grey along her back and the tops of her shoulders, leading up to the back of her head.

There are several sides to Móinéir, but seeing all she has to give takes patience and a little practice. The face she shows to her Marks or those she wishes to keep at arms length is alluring, charming and a little ditsy. She feigns ignorance, pretending to have nothing in her head but lustful desires and a thirst for a good time. Her smile is easy, her laugh free and forthcoming. That same laugh gains a harder edge, as does the rest of her, when it comes to those that think they know her. The ones who have been around her enough to know that the first face is a lie. Especially those that know what she can do.

And Mo is capable of many things, from robbing those too drunk to know their arse from their head to leading unsuspecting wolves into the jaws of their enemies. And worse, when the mood takes her or the money is good, but she’s careful. After what happened to her brother, she avoids anything that looks too good to be true. That includes people. She doesn’t trust them as far as she can throw them. Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t know what a good person truly looks like, but she certainly knows the other kind. She’s one of them after all.

Around the people she’s a little closer to, or when she’s ready to drop her overly friendly facade, this lady is cold as ice. Mo is not one to mince words nor soften blows, but she remembers the people who were good to her and is good to them in return, in her own way. She is confident in a deadly fashion, hard to intimidate, with a wicked sense of humour and a bite way worse than her bark. She suffers no fool and takes no prisoners, but she does make for a good drinking buddy, girl knows how to hold her liquor.

There is a gentler side to her, a caring side, beneath all frost and fire. Getting to it is the tricky bit. Only two people had easy access and both of them are dead so now her heart stays under lock and key, away from prying eyes and the damage loss can bring with it.

Mo’s parents were not in love, that she could be almost certain of, even if the attraction was there. The way her mother tells it, he visited her every night for two weeks, the male she called Savard, though Nessa only knew him as Childeric. Oh she had a few stories about him, for talking had happened in between the nights of pleasure, but that’s all it was, talk. Móinéir knows that talk is cheap, and actions aren’t always the truth of the matter. She has lived many lies in her short life. Had to, to survive, to keep her mother alive, for as long as she could.

Nessa hadn’t always been a brothel worker, but she’d been unskilled and made some questionable choices throughout her early life that landed her in trouble. By the time she was three, brothel work was the only way forward for her, to support the children she had birthed to the various men she had put her trust in. Three pups, three different fathers, none who wanted to stand by her because they would have to help raise someone else’s bastards. So she did it alone, doing what she had to so they could survive, not that they gave her much credit.

When Childeric came along, Nessa was heading for 5 years old and lonely, her children already pulling away to start leading their own lives. She’d heard plenty of rumours about him, about the things he’d done but when they’d occasionally talked, she liked what she saw and it wasn’t long until it was her bed he lay in. She didn’t see him for months until he came back and again she got to have her fun, only this time, she got a little bit extra. She never saw him again after those two weeks. The local talk was that he’d finally gotten himself locked up, but he left behind a part of himself, something she could cling to in the dark times that followed.

Móinéir did not come into the world alone, she had a brother, Shay. They were complete opposites in appearance but similar in every other aspect. He had their mothers splendid grey and silver coat, but the brown eyes of his father. Mo may have gotten her mothers purple eyes, but her coat was the light russet tones of her fathers, with a diamond of white upon her forehead. Their mother delighted in them both and they in her, but a brothel was no place for children, not that there were any other options. Their older siblings had half heartedly offered to care for them but Nessa didn’t want to let them go where they would not be loved.

They watched over each other, these uncommon twins, making sure to hide from the worst of the brothels dramas until they realised that hiding was not the best course of action. It was very easy to pick the pockets of drunkards when they were small, for they were easily overlooked. One could distract whilst the other did the deed and soon enough, it wasn’t just their home that they worked in and that’s when they caught the eyes of those that wanted to exploit the pair for their natural skills.

They were taught a great many things, and saw even more violence and bloodshed than that they’d grown up with. They led wolves to their deaths, not knowing at first that that was what they were being used for, until they watched one be tortured to his end. They told lies and spread rumours, tricked guards and eventually took part in the messier work. It wasn’t that they didn’t know better, that they hadn’t been taught right from wrong, but having money and protection were tempting treats and Shay began to have high ambitions, determined to take them out of the dark. The main reason though, was to pay for the medication that kept their dear mother alive and working, medication that ate up the better portions of the money they made.

By the time they were nearing their second birthday, their mothers health failed altogether and the Madam gave them an ultimatum. Either Móinéir took up the trade to pay for the roof over their heads or they would be made homeless. It wasn’t a hard decision for her to make but the agreement cost her in many ways. She would not see her mother die in the streets. So she worked, using her charm and pretty figure to lure the wealthiest of clients, knowing the best ways to butter them up, ignoring how it chipped away at her. Shay couldn’t handle it and his own work became darker and bloodier than ever before.

Between them, they had enough to make their mother comfortable as she waited for her death, but that wasn’t enough for Shay. He wanted Mo out of that life so when an opportunity arose to make what he called “setting them up for life” type of money, he jumped at the chance. Móinéir didn’t trust it and begged him not to go but it fell on deaf ears. His mind was made up.

It broke her heart in two but didn’t surprise her one bit when the crew he ran with told her he’d been killed on their last job. Said he’d been caught by the guard and fought to the death so the rest could flee. Sounded like something he’d do. So she resigned herself to her fate for another month and the moment Nessa left the earth, Móinéir walked out of the brothel she’d been raised in and never looked back. For someone like her, with her skill set, it wasn’t hard to find work and she pulled as many cons on her own as she did doing the odd jobs for the ones that had seen her into adulthood.

She may have been alone in the world but that was okay, she could live with that. Turned out, there’s a lot of things she could live with.