Elodie Mereliot/History

{|style="text-align: left; border: black solid 2px;background:#FFFFF7;-moz-border-radius: 10px;margin: 0.5em 0 0 0" !style="color:#FFEE2F;background:#0043FF;font-size: 120%; text-align: center;width: 1500pt;-moz-border-radius-topright: 10px;-moz-border-radius-topleft: 10px" | History

Élodie de Mereliot was born into a world of art and music. The third child of the Duchess of Eisande spent her childhood basking in the cultural mecca that was Marsilikos. Days were spent collecting shells on the beach, playing fanciful games with the other children, and chasing down whatever musician might happen to catch her eye. She loved to listen, fascinated by the way such beauty could be coaxed from so many different objects as instruments were. Even as a very young child, a raw talent for song - and maybe even something more - could be seen. When her younger brother was just a toddler, the little girl would sing snippets of songs she had heard to soothe his cries, and he would follow her around like a shadow.

Still, despite all the richness of her childhood, little Élodie felt as though something else was calling her. It was a chance remark by a youthful Eglantine man - one of her mother's dalliances at the time - that truly set her on the path she now follows today. She had been tucked away in a corner polishing her flute, a gift from the flutist that her mother claimed to be her father, when she overheard the young man speaking to Angevin of the things that he would do for her in Naamah's name. Hearing those words was as if something had clicked in Élodie, that something missing within her had been found. That her voice, her music, could be used in such worship, excited her and called to her.

A few months before her eighth birthday, she was taken to Elua and presented to the House of Eglantine, knowing that she was only free to change her mind until her tenth birthday. Perhaps her mother thought it a whim that would fade, or perhaps she saw that her daughter truly had been called. Whatever it was, Élodie did remain, and dedicated herself to Naamah's service. In the beginning, she often felt like an outsider, for many of her fellows had been born within the Night Court, but with time that faded away and she made a number of friends amongst the other adepts.

Perhaps it was not entirely time that was responsible; training in the house was exceedingly intense, and some areas were certainly more difficult for the girl to learn than others. She was a decent student of the physical arts of Naamah - good enough but nothing truly spectacular. Of all the classical studies taught in Eglantine, sculpting was actually her nemesis - ironic in that it was one of her mother's own talents! Still, she worked to master the canon of her house all the while as trained in her own specialty of song. She learned to use her voice to its fullest extent: to coerce, to coax, to tease, to arouse, and even to silence.

Her debut was a delightful affair - the auction was held during a festival of song and Élodie thrilled to be the center of it all. As knowledge of her voice and skills with the flute spread, she held a decently steady stream of assignations; enough to make her marque by midway through her nineteenth year. With it completed, she mostly remains yet in Eglantine to serve, though with more frequent trips to her family's ducal estates. Her twentieth birthday was especially marked by an extended visit to the home of her childhood, the family's estates in Marsilikos, and only just recently has she returned to the city of Elua.