Full Name: Zelda Caswell

Date of Birth and/or Age: September 30, 1837 - 30

Sexual Preference: Heterosexual

Ethnic Background: Irish/English

Occupation: Helps her brother Osby and looks after her mother and her son and runs the household.

Family: Her mother is still alive, Osby is her brother and Clayton is her son

Current Residence: In town

Appearance: Zelda's a woman of childbearing age, with a little bit more meat on her bones ever since she was pregnant. She's got brown mousey hair that curls up at the ends and is usually quite long but is almost always pulled back into a bun on the top of her head. She's got startling blue eyes that she gets from her grandfather, unlike the rest of the family who has brown eyes. She almost always looks like she's blushing, even when she isn't. She usually wears plain dresses and aprons, and never anything fancy. She has a little bit of scarring from a couple of incidents with her husband, but nothing really noticeable.

Personality: Zelda is a bit on the naïve side of things, mostly because her parents raised her to believe the best in people. Her father always taught her to be a pacifist and not to solve anything by raising her fists and that things could always be solved using words instead. Of course she had a healthy respect for things that caused violence, if only because during her childhood she witnessed her father having to go reattach limbs, and people dying from all sorts of things. Even when faced with some of the meaner people in her town, she always believed that there was something good deep down inside that other people didn't see.

It also meant that she generally believes what people tell her about themselves, and she's not very good at lying herself or being able to detect a lie. If someone would tell her the grass was blue, she might actually believe them for a moment before realizing their mistake. And if she does actually know something that isn't true, she tries to point it out in the nicest way possible. Of course Osby looks out for her well being as much as he can, and she listens to him when he says not to trust a certain person. That doesn't mean she necessarily agrees with him all the time.

She adores her family very much and loves her son more then anything or anyone else in the world. She wants him to have the things that she never had, and keeps wondering if one day when he grows up if he won't take over the business if for some reason Osby doesn't have a family of his own. At first she chastized him for not settling down yet, but quickly stopped when she realized what a remarkable doctor he is. She runs the house as much as she can, at least with the cooking and the cleaning and is actually a pretty remarkable mother to her son. Though she worries that raising him alone won't be the best thing for him. Of course that also makes her worry that she won't find a suitable new father for him, or if she even wants one. She doesn't think anyone would want a woman who already has a child.

To everyone she's as nice as she can possibly be, even to the people that she doesn't know so well, and she goes out of her way to lend a hand if someone asks her for it. She's a bit conservative and doesn't think people should be going to the saloon's, but she doesn't exactly go to church either. Mostly she says that she's too busy to make it there. She's not very shy at all, and will strike up a conversation with just about everyone.

Special Skills/Weapons Used: She's good at taking care of her son, and she's good at milking cows and doing farming type things. She's also pretty good at sewing.

Weaknesses: Zelda doesn't know how to really defend herself at all. She's also a bit naïve and thinks most people are very good and is probably pretty gullible and wouldn't know if someone was taking advantage of her if they flat out told her.

PART THREE

Zelda was born as the youngest and the only girl in the Caswell home. Her brother Osby helped raise her, along with her mother. Her father was a doctor, and though she thought that was neat, that he helped people, she generally helped her mother out with the household chores and everything they needed to eat. As she grew up, she took over a lot of the cooking in the house, giving her mother a break from having to do all of it. Also from an early age, her brother liked to take care of their family, for which Zelda was always grateful to have him around.

She didn't go to school like Osby did, and knew eventually he'd grow up and take over their father's line of work. Of course Zelda was all set to be married out to a nice boy once she got older, though Osby had been away to school for a whole year by the time she actually got around to being married. The boy she was married to was nice, but didn't particularly love her. He was a good match for both families, and would provide very well for her. She also had a pretty good dowry, and so the two were married just a little after she turned 16. Leaving her parents behind was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, but she hoped that Osby would be back soon enough, though it took longer then she had ever thought possible.

During her married life, she'd gotten pregnant a couple of times, but each time she did, the baby would miscarry. He wasn't the nicest husband to her, but they managed to make it work. Mostly though he would get angry when she would say she was pregnant. She just didn't understand why he didn't want to have a boy to take over for him when he got older. Instead, he'd try and get the babies miscarried, and usually succeeded, though perhaps because she was so naive, she doesn't really contribute his actions to her losing the baby.

Eventually she gave up thinking that she was ever going to have kids. Her husband was away at his job most of the time and left her home alone for days at a time. She found out she was pregnant for the last time when she was 23, and never got a chance to tell her husband that she was pregnant before he was off again. This time there was nothing really to prevent her from having her child, and so Clayton was born early in 1830. About a month later her husband came back and realized that he had a son, which sent him into a panic. She thinks he just didn't want to be tied down, though she didn't understand that since he'd already gotten married to her.

When Clay was 8 months old about, her husband left her a note saying that he was heading away and wouldn't ever come back for his wife and child. He liked traveling and not being tied down and had made a mistake being married to her. Worse yet was that he had sold their house without telling her and for a while Zelda didn't know where to go. Picking up whatever little she had left, she went back to her parents house, telling them what had happened and was taken in by them. Her father was slowly losing his memory and everything else, and her mother wasn't doing much better. For a while she took over as best as she could, feeding them and taking care of them. That's finally when Osby came home. He seemed to be like her saving grace. And amazingly enough, it was kind of like when they were children. She took care of the house, help her mother when her father finally died and continues to raise her son.

OOC Contact Info

http://naiveity.insanejournal.com/591.html