RonceMarines

Once upon a time, she was named Lysethe Caldwin. A little girl of ten years old with rosy cheeks, who spent her days in the wild garden of her grandmother, an old druid named Maëlle Caldwin. Lysethe loved roses: she picked bouquets, braided wreaths, and whispered secrets to the thorns that lined the marsh behind the village. One stormy night, Maëlle attempted an ancient druid ritual to protect the village from a disease that was killing the children. The spell failed. The energies of the earth turned against them, and Lysethe, already weakened by fever, died in her grandmother's arms, drowned by the dark waters of the marsh and entangled in the thorns and sea roses that grew there. But the magic did not stop there. Three days later, Lysethe rose up. Her body did not decay. The thorns had invaded her veins, purple and blue roses had grown in her hair and under her pale skin.Her eyes became two bottomless black wells. She limped, because a large bramble had pierced her left leg and fused with the bone. Little Lysethe no longer existed. In her place walked ThornMarines, the living-dead child of brambles and water roses. The village saw her as a monster. The villagers screamed, threw stones, closed their doors. In her confusion as a resurrected child, ThornMarines simply wanted to go home. She stretched out her arms towards her mother... and the brambles sprang up on their own. Her mother was seriously injured, her face and arms lacerated. Her father, who tried to protect her, was disfigured by the thorns that sprang from the little girl. Screams of terror echoed throughout the village. Maëlle Caldwin, the grandmother, was the only one who did not flee. She understood too late that her ritual had created this abomination. Desperate, lost, she didn't know what to do anymore.So, one night, she knelt before her granddaughter and whispered in a broken voice: "Lysethe... RonceMarines... I can't leave you like this. Take my life. Finish what I've started." RonceMarines cried tears of black petals. Then she accepted. She placed her small hands on her grandmother's heart. The thorns surged up, gentle and relentless. Maëlle Caldwin did not really die: she was transformed. Her body became a living part of the thorns themselves. A tall, spiny, and verdant stalk grew in place of the old druidess, beautiful and eternal. Since that day, RonceMarines has kept her grandmother's druidess staff. In her fall, the staff had broken into two. The child picked it up and made it her crutch. She leans on it while limping, her left leg dragging slightly. The wood is now alive: it is entwined with dark green thorns which are all that remains of Maëlle.At the top, a luminescent green flower never wilts—it is the last gift from her grandmother, an eternal tribute. RonceMarines now wanders, alone, between the forests and marshes. She speaks to the brambles as if they were friends, collects faded petals and bones, and searches for a place where "the dead child and the plants" could finally be accepted. Sometimes, when she is sad, she caresses the green flower of the staff and whispers: "Grandmother... you are still walking with me." Today she should be 18 years old.