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One could say young Nerea is quite the paradoxical mix of thoughts, conducts, and emotions. Very polite, calm and soft-spoken, but with the heart of a mother lioness protecting her cubs when her strongest and deepest beliefs are questioned. Reality is way more complex than one would like to believe, however, and Nerea finds herself in a neverending dilemma between the conservative, patriarchal system she has been raised into and known all her life, and the liberalism of human rights—a true revolution compared to her previously shielded view of the world—she has only recently discovered she, too, possesses access to. Fighting years of both classic and operant conditioning, as well as vicar learning, nevertheless was and continues to be an achievement hard to unlock.

Given that her parents tried to convince her throughout good part of her childhood that she was a psychic capable of seeing the future, an oracle, Nerea finds herself constantly doubting what she knows and what she thinks she knows. She can be indecisive, sometimes even border naïvety, but this does not mean she is stupid. She's adaptable. She's smarter than she gives herself credit for, truthfully, but how else could it be? In the highly conservative Barron family, no woman is to boast about excellence beyond that of her male counterparts in anything but the three fields relegated to her by birth right: children bearing, the fine arts, and—more recently—divination.

While the first two had never been of interest to the now young woman, Nerea certainly did excel at the latter. That was what her parents wanted her to believe, at least, for when would an oracle look more genuine than when she believed herself one? The wide-eyed, guilt-struck face of a teenager in the lavish costume of a true 9th-century-BC oracle from Delphos certainly wouldn't have convinced even the most credulous of people, even with the loquacity she was taught for this very purpose.

It's not shyness that gives place to Nerea's first impression as a meek, distant, unemotional woman, but rather being unaccustomed to speaking her mind in a table dominated by her father and elder brothers, where her say had little to no relevance. To say her mother's repetitive warnings not to speak, not to move, to not even breathe during dinner didn't scar her would be a lie. Even to this day, Nerea is unable to eat in public, or while being talked to. Inhibition works as a mechanism of self-defense, and is perhaps the very reason she finds it so easy to evade reality: after years of practice, she's now all too used to it. Whether it be in her mind or physically, she only had to escape to the sea, take a big breath, and dip in.

An air of ataraxia follows Nerea and her every movement. Perhaps it's partly due to her appearance, but one could argue that her very being is as calm and patient as the sea in a misty morning. Despite her devotion to the causes she believes in—mainly the protection of the sea, as we all know she is a very confused young lady in every other aspect of her life—, Nerea is patient and accepting, if you stay long enough to cut past her colder exterior and enigmatic words. She is devoted not only to the sea, but to those who gain her trust and, with it, her friendship, including her two lovely Pokémon.

postitive traits trustworthy + loyal + passionate + modest + patient + accepting + thoughtful + adaptable

negative traits insecure – ambiguous – distant – indecisive – escapist – naïve – inhibited – eccentric – awkward – enigmatic

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how it all began for her

Nerea Elisavet Barron-Abbiati was born one cool autumn morning twenty-three years ago, product of Victoria Barron's last attempts at salvaging her dry, loveless marriage. As the Barron patriarch's last official child, Nerea should have been showered in gifts and spoilt beyond repair by the grandson of a well-known and well-liked fisherman, who happened to also be the self-procclaimed chivalric sailor that would eventually rid Slateport's beaches of an invasion of giant squids, selling their vast and tender meat, and earning a fortune with it. The successive generations of Barrons would have the task of spending the man's riches extensively and without repair, but the Barron name was held high among the locals even long after his body and consciousness were gone.

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While the Barrons had fame and dwindling riches, the Abbiatis were a family previously known for their strict religious practices, which had—over the years—morphed into what could be described as mere superstition. After a disaster at sea in which an entire tripulation of Abbiatis lost their lives, the majority of them priests on a journey to seek Kyogre's advice pertaining the rise of the sea level and consequential underwater burial of a many a house, the family head from generations ago had imposed a new trend. The Abbiatis had gone from worshipping the legendary Kyogre to worshipping the grand and merciless Sea herself. A new cult of water adoration was started, and the rise of the Abbiatis as a family of oracles thus began.

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Theirs were fairly simple rituals, really. First, an altar for praying, purification of the soul and the more official rituals was assembled where, before, a small chapel stood. Meditation was proposed and urged, and silent sessions of introspection by the sea eventually developed into water divination, or rather what they believed to be hydromancy. When faith and fear are strong and tied together, it takes little to believe in things such as prophecies and clairvoyancy.

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Dionisio and Victoria Barron's marriage was arranged long before either of them were old enough to discern right and wrong, even within their families' primal traditions. As one may expect with unions of this nature, they did not love each other, and their relationship was one of deep displeasure for them, and discomfort for their children. Despite Mrs. Barron's intentions, the two would soon realise that they just were not meant to be, and each chose to dedicate the rest of their time time to their own businesses. While Dionisio hopped from one brothel to another, spending what little money he had obtained that week via fishing, Victoria set herself to educate her youngest and only daughter.

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Whether she realised that the tight grip she had on her was asphyxiating for the young Nerea or not remains a mystery to the redhead, but her mother's education ended up being more harmful than beneficial. It was just usual mysogynistic behaviour at first. Look down, don't speak, simply nod and obey—among other things—were a few of the many 'affable' reminders she got from her mother on a recurrent basis. Nerea was, in short, raised and shaped to serve her father, brothers, and future husband, when the time came for her to marry. Just like her mother had been. It was a particularly dark moment in the redhead's life, even if she didn't see it as such at the time.

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In hindsight, she had many other things to worry about during those years. Ever since she was born, she had never enjoyed most of the benefits of being a rich fisherman's great-granddaughter, apart from a grand, though decaying, mansion, and the servants and fame that came with it. Soon after she turned fourteen, however, things started to change for the worst in the Barron household. They no longer had the funds to sustain their relatively indulgent lifestyle, and so they had to both cut down expenses and look for alternative sources of income. It was time for Nerea to shine. It was time for Nerea's job as an oracle to begin.

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All of it had been a fraud concocted by her parents, at first. The Abbiati family was known for giving birth to generations of oracles, as well as priests, and the Barron family was known, thanks to the one fisherman that built his fortune alongside the fame of a honest, generous man. Put together, not many would doubt the credibility of this new, young oracle clad in official-looking garments and versed in the vaguest and most esoteric language any of them had known. Nerea's career as a fake oracle lasted no more than nine months, but those months did not lack any amount of existential crises and questions about who she was, what she was there for, and whether her predictions were actually true. Her parents' multiple attempts at convincing her of the latter did not help ease her confusion and, if anything, only increased it.

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But, soon, the initial wave of customers, lured by the shine and novelty of Nerea's fortune-telling, would find new distractions to occupy their time and money on. Slateport's citizens were no longer as supersticious as they used to be and, though the small fortune collected was enough for them to live with ease for some more time, they did not further pursue Nerea's prophetic ventures. She was again disregarded in lieue of her brothers, and, before she realised it, everything had gone back to normal. Years passed and the children grew; they started to leave, one by one, until at last only one remained. Only Nerea and Victoria remained in the long table that made up the Barrons' dining hall.

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And then it was Victoria's turn to leave.

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Nerea never understood why and, even if her father did, he never explained it to her. Left with no heir and no money, Dionisio Barron spent his last days in misery, with only the company and care of his youngest and least beloved child to attenuate his torment. His death was extremely shocking for Nerea, not only because she practically became an orphan, but because she foresaw it. She was out in the beach, playing with a small Magikarp she had met not long ago and whom she had named Baruch. In the movement of the waves, she vaguely discerned the shape of her father's face, wrinkled and contracted in pain as he coughed once, twice, and then stopped. It was as if he had gone to sleep.

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She knew he hadn't gone to sleep, just like she knew that she knew she wasn't looking at the body of her father—subconsciously, in a hazy state of hypnagogia. She hurried, nevertheless, inside, and fell to the ground as she watched the same scene repeat before her eyes, only clearer, more vivid, more real, this time.

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After this incident, all the worries and inquiries that had plagued her mind all those years ago, when she was fourteen and somewhat happy and not so lonely in her mind, returned. Nerea did not want to face this. She did not want to need to face this. She fleed. The family mansion was sold to a distant cousin, or maybe an aunt or uncle, she did not care to know, and a small cottage somewhere farther inside the sea was bought. Closer to the sea, calm and comforting and purging, and far from the memories of her messed-up upbringing. In this new home, her days alongside Baruch and Samson would be, for the first time, peaceful.

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Nerea decided to join Team Aqua under the false premise that the greater good was what they pursued, lured in by the charming words of a certain brunette and the pledge of protecting the entity she had always found comfort in: the sea. She left Aqua when her newfound friend Olivia Valentine Mahgaden left it. From here, unbeknownst to her, a series of events that would lead her to a completely different region, far from everything she knew and was accustomed to, began to unfold. In Lyeant, she discovered what a real civil war looked and smelled like, discovered the lengths to which people would go for their beliefs, discovered what it was like to be part of something greater than herself.

the source of her ailment

Though her prophecies while she was being manipulated by her mother to act as an oracle were unequivocally fake, Nerea is actually able to see seconds into the future by watching the colour, ebb and flow of water in a deep state of concentration. She cannot control the duration of her visions, nor can she determine exactly where they will occur, but she can choose when to have them. Her method of divination is similar to that used by real-world scryers, and at first instance her visions were no more than simple images come from her subconscious and imagination, just like scrying is thought to be. However, ever since she watched her father pass away literally seconds before his actual death, she has started to question whether her visions weren't all forged as she thought them to be until then. The redhead's visions, even now, are quite confusing for her, since she can never know which will come true and which won't, or when each of them will, if ever, happen.

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Nerea's psychic powers are meant to develop as she interacts with others and grows as a character. I plan for her to be able to see up to a few days into the future, though her visions will stay as diffuse and unpredictable as far as time span and likelihood of each vision go, as they are now. Of course, this also means that her prophecies can also not come true at all, and that she could bluff and lie about them, if she chose to.

[attr="class","tbeapponebot2"]PLAYED BY MUFFLIATO

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