ᴪ Livvy's father, John Wise, Junior, known as Jack, had many jobs: line cook, trucker (briefly) and lastly a teacher of shop, history and English, in a pinch, and coached baseball at the local community hall. Her mother, Mary Elizabeth Lewis, known as Marbeth, was a waitress until she started having kids. They met and dated in high school, cooled down a bit while figuring out what they wanted to do with their lives, then got married once Jack had finished his schooling for being a teacher and landed a full-time job. They settled down in Northern Georgia. Crime was low in Fannin County and the views of the mountains were unsurpassed. Jack and Marbeth bought a big old house once owned by her grandparents in a very small town of Sweet Gum, Georgia - yep, it's real, look it up - and started a family. Why they named their children the way they did spoke mostly to their traditional names and a desire for their kids to have more fun and unusual names. If any other factors were involved, they have yet to mention them. Their sixth child was a little girl they named Lavender Blue Wise, born on January 17, 1991, in that big ol' house in the middle of nowhere. Due to a very intense snowstorm, her parents were unable to get to the hospital for her birth. Livvy is the sixth of nine children and probably the only one that should really have been born in the hospital, yet was the only one not born there. She was a month pre-mature, her lungs not fully formed among other issues. Two days after birth, they were able to reach the hospital, but it was almost too late. She survived, though, the little fighter, and she continued to fight as a child dealing with chronic asthma, and any illness that was going 'round, she caught it, especially those aiming for the respiratory system. This didn't stop her from trying out for sports teams in school and usually everything was fine as long as she had her inhaler. There were a few incidents, however, which required a trip to the hospital, especially in middle school. She was benched from participating in school sports, though playing at home was still something she pursued. She did well academically. The Wise siblings had a line of competitiveness wider than a mile and it encouraged them to see who received the most As in any given term. Livvy was never winning the gold medal in this competition, but tended toward silver or bronze consistently. Now, Sweet Gum is more an idea than a town these days, but people still live, work and pray there. It is kinda like the fictional town of Mayberry, only smaller. Much smaller. And with no Andy Griffith as sheriff. Sweet Gum is surrounded by state parks and preserves, hiking and horse trails and there is very little to no industry. The air and water is very clean and pure. It is a beautiful place to raise a family. ᴪ Understanding Livvy properly means knowing her background and the environment of her formative years. Be it noted there is very little to do in many remote areas of the country, even in more modern times as we like to think of 'em, other than the usual for big families living with intermittent electricity, access to six TV stations - two of them News and one of them God Talk - and four radio stations, three of which are country music and the remaining one is all about the Lord and Hellfire and stuff like that. These activities were akin to things people did anywhere in America from the 1930s to the 1980s - and even with the Internet, likely, still done today, to a certain extent. Ah, life before computers and the World Wide Web. ᴪ These activities included, but were not limited to: Fishing - the best around; Hiking - mountains and trails galore; Riding - horses, bicycles; Swimming - above-ground pool or swimming hole, naked or not; Running - to see who is fastest or being chased for the heck of it, or while balancing things on your head etc.; Making Forts - Girls Only, Boys Only; Hide-and-Seek; Water Balloons & Nerf Guns; Baseball - or any sport that doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment; Truth or Dare; Spin-The-Bottle; Cops & Robbers - much like running and chasing and Hide-and-Seek, but with a lot of yelling and pretend shooting; Scavenger Hunts; Wrestling; Other physical feats and challenges, like walking on your hands to the bus stop, sticking your tongue on the metal gate, doing a backflip into the water off a rock at Sawyer's Point etc.; Fighting (not encouraged, but it sure did happen); Board Games - pick one, they played them all! You get the idea. Baseball was very popular with the Wise family, as they had enough kids for a full team, with back-up players. In her fourteenth summer, everything changed. ᴪ Remember the challenge mentioned earlier - no, back a bit further - to perform a backflip into the water off a rock at Sawyer's Point? Two of the older children, nicknames 'Cub' and 'Birdie', a brother and sister, respectively, were at the Point with some of their younger siblings and a group of other local kids. The backflip challenge was voted on as a thing you had to do, unless you really didn't want to do it. This was a community of kids, after all, not a dictators club. Livvy, or 'Cricket', could have declined, but really wanted to try to get the best jump of the day. Her first attempt was more like a back-flop than a back-flip, so they let her try again. The doctor at the ER would later say she was lucky. Her injury, acquired when she jumped too far to the left instead of straight and clipped her head on a ledge of rock closer to the water, could have been much worse. Her left temple was cleaved to the bone and there was a fracture in her skull, but there was no break and no exposure of the brain to the outside world, which was always a serious thing. Aside from the head injury, she dislocated her left shoulder, broke her left forearm and cracked three ribs. And aside from those injuries, if Birdie, Cub and one of their friends had not acted quickly, she would have drowned. ᴪ Bones can be set and they knit back together. Flesh heals, sometimes leaving scars, sometimes not. The brain is one of those organs that does not always recover from such trauma. Livvy was mostly unconscious for days after having metal and stitches and casts applied, and when she awoke, she seemed fine. Except for all the bruising and angry red flesh and the most thunderous headache she had ever experienced. She had to be sedated. Kids being kids, and the Wise family being one of those very resilient groups, Livvy recovered after a long period at home. She did some school work, when she could focus, but missed a full term of attending her first year of high school. She had spells where she became very withdrawn and needed time alone, completely alone except for the family pets, dogs and cats, who curled up with her. For during these roughly four months at home, she discovered she could remember every moment of every day since she had opened her eyes as a baby. The earliest memories were, of course, very muddled, but from about the age of two or three onward, her recollections were clear as if they had happened just hours before. The remembering did not stop. ᴪ Upon returning to school, she realized fairly quickly that she had to be very conscious of how she answered questions posed by teachers, how she wrote her exams and how she interacted with friends and family. Livvy had to work at not correcting people with her ability to recall what had actually been said. They would possibly grow to dislike being around her, maybe even hate her outright or be uncomfortable around her. She didn't feel right getting in-class questions and tests correct all the time. Was she cheating? ᴪ It was March of 2005, two months after she turned fifteen, when she decided she had endured enough. Thinking she was going crazy, she told her parents, then met with their family doctor and from there, it was experts in the field and a lot of testing. Intern sessions were also part of the process. After all, in 2005, there were only ninety other recorded and verified cases of someone with hyperthymesia. Livvy made ninety-one. The doctors concluded that she had always been recording her life, as it were, by default. The accident at Sawyer's Point made it possible for her to access the memories. Whether it was the impact, physical and emotional, or some unidentified trauma to the brain, is unknown. ᴪ Moving forward, for the sake of Livvy and her family and anyone in the school system, it was explained that her head injury resulted in some unusual connections firing in her brain that sometimes affected her memory. It was the truth. They did not elaborate on how it worked. Last thing they needed was teachers treating her differently or kids asking her if she remembered what they had for their school lunch two years prior on a Thursday. If Livvy witnessed something, read it or heard it, she could recall it, with varying degrees of detail. ᴪ During high school, Livvy worked a variety of summer jobs: as a lifeguard and swim instructor down at the lakes; as a camp counselor; as a waitress at various food establishments near the camp grounds. She graduated from high school and decided to study psychology, gaining admission to Georgia State College in Atlanta. Her focus was on community psychology versus pre-med. Her studies were not always easy. Remembering everything often led to information overload and headaches and sorting through it all to reach the knowledge she needed was exhausting. Livvy had been practicing meditation and breathing techniques since her diagnosis and they helped reduce the stress and pressure. It might take her a few days to complete an assignment, but the college knew the same story as her high school. When she graduated with her BSc in Psychology, this included courses in the Criminal Psychology and Criminology stream. From there, Livvy chose to apply to the police force, where she figured her desire to protect and assist in the safety and health of a community would go well together. ᴪ After a very long and occasionally very boring series of application forms, written tests, agility tests and so on, she was accepted and dove into the intense basic police officer training at GSPTC (Georgia Public Safety Training Center) Pickens Campus. This was located much closer to her family than her prior studies in Atlanta. Upon completing her training, she graduated from there, completed her POST certification and was eligible for employment as an entry-level law enforcement officer. Livvy received her first assignment in a small town in Georgia, learning and shadowing and being mentored or however you want to think of these awkward weeks and months where police officers learn how things are really done in the field. ᴪ This town, which was quite a bit larger than Sweet Gum but still considered small by most folks, had some idiosyncrasies. Livvy progressed after a few years from patrol officer to taking the various tests and interviews and assessments to become a detective. It was then, in particular, that some things just didn't add up and incidents that were more hearsay than actually reported came to her attention. Details are only available to those at a high level of authority. Let it be said that they had not been committing any major crimes in this town - except for the obvious criminals, of course - but some things had been permitted to let slide or continue without much police intervention. Detective Wise expressed concern regarding some of the things she had heard tell of and in a few cases, witnessed, to the extent where she was told to tow the line or move on or... there would be consequences. Livvy chose to move on. She applied to a town north of the Mason-Dixon line: Easthaven, Massachusetts. ᴪ Her family understand enough of the circumstances and have always supported their kids in whatever they decided to do with their lives. Since Livvy is young, single and independent of baggage and other possible deterrents for relocation, she is making a fresh start. FAMILY ᴪ Parents - Father: John 'Jack' Wise, Jr.; Mother: Mary Elizabeth 'Marbeth' Wise (nee Lewis). ᴪ Siblings - One of nine children - in order of age, from oldest to youngest, the siblings, their 'go to' names and their family/friend nicknames are... Raleigh (Rale) - Huck; Courtland (Court) - Cub; Bluebell (Blue or Belle) - Birdie; Sage (Really? No...) - Herb; Jackson (Jack) - Beanstalk; Lavender (Livvy) - Cricket, Gardenia (Denia or Gar) - Bee; Daisy (Huh?) - Doe & Grayson (Gray) - Sonny. We won't go into the middle names right now... ᴪ NOTE: She believes there are things in this world that are unknown or misunderstood. She is aware there are supernatural beings, mostly through the woodland creatures and folk that sometimes disguised themselves as animals. They played with the Wise kids and Lavender's parents knew about them, too. Some were to be avoided, but the ones she encountered as a child were blessedly not in that category. The 'forest folk' and a few Others still live in the area to this day. Livvy has encountered and communicated with them as recently as last summer. Though she has met more and different Others, some fair, some foul, she has not had a great deal of exposure to them and takes it all in stride.