Marie Trausch

Marie Trausch grew up in Niederanven in Luxembourg, a small town located north-east of Luxembourg City. Her family consisted of her mother, french-born Adalicia, and her father, Oskar of German descent. For the first several years of her life, Marie lived a quiet, peaceful existence, her family comfortably middle-class. She was not a particularly social child; when she wasn't burrowing her nose in books, her interest in physics piqued at an early age, she'd prefer the simple evenings at home with her parents, playing board games, watching TV or simply engaging in discussions on more or less everything and anything. As a consequence, her upbringing was perhaps a little bit secluded but she was happy and well-adjusted, perfectly capable of socialising and doing very well in school.

Then, when she was twelve, she realised that her parents didn't actually love each other, maybe they never had (at that time, she thought of most things in absolutes). In any case, her father found a new wife and moved to Switzerland, leaving her behind with Adalicia in a house they couldn't afford to keep. A year later, they re-located to a small apartment on the outskirts of City, her mother finding employ as a first-grade teacher at a nearby school. Marie's life slowly, but gradually, started to lose colour - it was an odd process, a mix of resentment, sadness and anger combining with puberty, and as the years went on, she became steadfastly more un-moved.

She maintained contact with Oskar who did his best from afar; unfortunately, it wasn't nearly enough to penetrate the grey haze of indifference eating away at Marie, and when her mother fell sick from a bad stroke just as she prepared to move to college, she simply took this to mean that she wasn't meant to be very happy at all. Somewhat happy, maybe, when the coffee was just right in the mornings or when the breeze left her neither too cold or too hot. But never too happy. Goodness no, the world might very well stop turning.

Though her mother survived the stroke, she ended up suffering from severe, post-stroke dementia with occasional psychotic episodes, leaving her institutionalised as Marie didn't have the means or knowledge to properly care for her. To begin with, Oskar financed her treatment and in the present day, he still insists on sending monthly payments. Marie, deciding that it wouldn't do to depend on his support forever, decided to finish her law degree, despite discovering early on that the field didn't really excite her as much as she'd hoped. At least, she thought, she'd have a chance at a decent income once her life was finally on track; which would have been a great plan if said tracks didn't stubbornly refuse to appear, even after she'd finished school.

Thus, Marie soldiered on, taking a not-too-special interest in family law, working hard as a trainee solicitor and eating solid meals every day in the company of Limpert the Cat and, basically, nobody else. She expected her prince on the white horse - pony - goat - hell, she'd take him on a cow if need be - to pop up any day now, though so far, her small apartment in the Pigsty District of Luxembourg City remained quiet, neat and barely lived-in. In the weekends, she stayed up to watch the stars with her telescope, talking to Limpert and trying not to care when eventually, inevitably, he'd leave her in the dark, by herself, to hunt for mice outside in the twilight.

Sometimes, in her dreams, she'd live a different life, a life in colour, lipstick-red and polychrome flashes, and when she woke up, she'd do her very best to shrug off the implications and settle back into her gray-scale existence, one basic routine at a time.