Lilith was an average, beautiful young girl – taking up ballet at a young age, cheerleading later in high school, music, arts. She was attractive, intelligent, talented, loved… perhaps that’s what makes her story all the more saddening.
Lilith was born to one of the luckier families of America not plagued by the fifty percent marriage failure. She is the eldest of three girls born to Rhonda and Steven Pharona. The family was a happy arrangement, not without its common little squabbles over bathroom time, chores, and privacy, where they grew together in small Maine town off the beaten path. At the age of four Lilith, in what began as a simple dream of being a pretty ballerina, began an ever growing passion for all forms of art and life. The young beauty followed this passion throughout her adolescence, complimenting it with other sports and extracurricular activities. By high school she was a ‘flyer’ on her cheerleading squad, joining the team in the Nationals to place second. She learned to play the guitar and piano, and danced with a brilliance that assured her scholarship to the college of her choice. She joined the theater groups, chorus, and art classes. While not the most popular, she was a friendly acquaintance of nearly all in her small-town school, a favorite of her teachers, and a best friend to her young sisters.
Needless to say, she set the bar for her younger siblings and chose, under the guidance of her mother and father, a doctor and a charity-event organizer respectively, to abandon the frivolous activities of late night parties and debauchery in favor of that Valedictorian sash come time for her high school graduation. She had her high school sweetheart, Jonathan, the culmination of her dreams in a free ride to nearly any school of her choice, and a road of opportunities paved out for her. Jonathan and Lilith moved to New York, New York over the summer so that Lilith could begin attending Julliard in 2003. It was a casual summer – the young lovers acclimating to their lives as even younger adults. Lilith began school in the fall, quickly tending to her classes with the same love and favor she’d given her studies in the past. It did not take long for this to become a hot-button issue between the couple. Jonathan had thought life in New York with his Lilith would be different – he’d meant for her to relax and breeze through college like average students, to devote more of her time to him seeing as he had waited so long, two years of high school, looking forward to his ideal of their future together. He began to distance himself from his lover, seeking out the raves and parties of the big NYC. He quickly forgot the simple joys of their little Maine hometown and dove headlong in the unbridled freedom of the large, pulsing city.
Lilith dealt with it the only way she knew how. Three years she drove herself harder at her work, telling herself they would patch things up when the time came. She was twenty now, the night she waited up for him to come home as usual. This time he didn’t come home alone, though. His arm was hooked around the shoulders of some ditzy little tart. He was going to pack his bags and forget about Lilith, he told his high school sweetheart. That’s when it all came to a head. Years of reserve and controlled perfectionism exploded in a whirlwind of bitterness, pain, and anger. The fire started at her hands and bloomed up her arms before she knew what was happening. The futon beneath her caught afire. The bimbo screeched, Jonathan stared, and the apartment building was swamped before either could react properly. Lilith watched as the flames born from her very flesh captured her lover and his tart like a Hellish net before she realized the image before her was not some dream, but a nightmarish reality. She fled the apartment and the murders she’d committed within it. When the wreckage was cleared, her body unfound, her family hovered by the phone for nearly a month before giving to the police report’s verdict and assuming her death. She couldn’t face them… or what she had done.
Lilith fled to a town just outside New York, fated to watch from a short distance a few months later when the city was destroyed by the horrific explosion. The scene mocked her daily, the perfect sickly imagery of what had become of all her plans for her life – crumbling into nothingness. She spent nearly three years in the little town, honing her skills, working nightly shifts at a diner to pay her motel rent, and watching from a distance as New York and the rest of the world threw itself into the chaos. She practiced with her ability to assure she would never cause the same damage that haunted her every night she laid her head down to sleep. One day though, New York called her back – she couldn’t sit on the sidelines any longer, deny the life of art boiling under her skin, and let herself waste away in her own self pity. She would live like she’d never lived before, she decided. She packed her things and purchased a few ‘tools’ on her way back into New York. Now she can be found four days out of the week, working in Central Park doing outstanding displays of poi and fire-fan demonstrations of wonderful artistry. There’s something here in this epicenter of the Evolved crisis, something the Fates have written for her to play a role in, but she’s yet to understand just which side she’ll take – to support her fellow Evolved, or to let the hate for herself broil into a hate of her brethren.
