Welcome to Gaia! ::

A confident redhead with a friendly drawl and an excess of energy, her vibrant independence making her name nigh on prophetic. Currently on the Great American Road Trip(tm) she's been running free and a little bit wild for nearly a year now, as both her Instagram and Tindr will attest. She's recently blown into town with a battered old pick up and trim little camper, trying to connect with the past of the mother she never knew.



Through high school America always had a small series of goals and finish lines and limitations that helped keep her going in specific directions. Outside of that, she had an old, beat up camper to work on. Repairing, refurbishing, decorating, and part time jobs for future gas money focused a lot of her free time and energy all with the goal of a big, year-long road trip across the States. Behind that big goal, those plans, was the much larger and quietly insistent question of and then what?

With no mother, a distant father, and a pack of uncles that love her but don't want to take the place their brother should have in her life, America's never had a strong sense of home, of this is my place. She's anchored most solidly in herself, which isn't a bad thing but right now there's nothing else to really ground and direct her.

It's getting close to a year of traveling now, and she loves it. There's a lot of hurts and burdens and hindrances all behind her, eighteen and graduated and on her own, going wherever she wants, being the one to always leave and never the one left behind. But what comes after still hasn't been resolved and it's getting to be tempting to just keep traveling. A good work ethic, friendly and competent personality, and an eye for part time jobs could keep her in gas money for a long, long time. And so far there's been no reason, no person, place, or calling that makes her think maybe it'd be nicer to stop. Maybe I want this more, want this most of all.

One of the final destinations she'd originally planned was a trip through Ashdown and Waite State Forest, in an attempt to find sort of connection to the mother who'd died before she'd even opened her eyes. Leanne Jones née Baird had been a prolific photographer growing up in Ashdown, though very rarely did actual people ever feature in the album America had found years ago. There were plenty of places though, ranging from beautiful forest landscapes to reflections in windows and the carved cornerstones of various buildings. The idea was to match the photos with the places, to step where her mother had and maybe, even if only a little, share a piece of a moment or perspective with her.

A week later and it's just all nothing but frustration and what seemed like a good idea, a meaningful idea, feels like a whimsical waste of time. Leaving town on that last night, though, her truck slams into something on the road, something big and sturdy enough that her insurance thinks she must've run into a tree and no blood or body nearby to prove her claims otherwise.

For now her immediate piece of trouble is finding enough work around town to get the truck repaired, and truth be told, it's a bit of a relief to stop and have a solid goal and further delay the bigger problem of what comes after.




America's always been able to find a good place to hide, the sort of secret places just big enough to accommodate her needs, be it actually hiding from something or someone, or just a secret place to get away for a little while.

• Currently 18, her birthday is July 4th and don't you forget it (don't worry, she won't let you)
  
• her independant ultra self-sufficient attitude along with her confidence has the side effect of making her more than a bit self-centered
  
• she stays up late and is one of those dreaded morning people, taking naps in the middle of the day suddenly and easily as a child
  
• she has a lot of small skills, gathered from various uncles and her own competence with hands on work (books are a different pickle) but doesn't have any deep mastery or understanding of them. Her greatest skill in the end is probably the ability to find solutions and get a job done.
  
• America treasures a good secret, but she's also a fairly honest person. Lies are people with more shame than she usually has (though lies by omission are a different thing entirely).
  

America is my most active and "loud" character, so she's sitting on top of a big heap of writing and roleplay. Her Trouble here was originally created (though never resolved) in a roadtrip au gdoc (it's over 17k and mostly about a meeting that hasn't occurred here, so while partially relevant it's incredibly skippable due to tl;dr). Much smaller, more reasonable and still fairly relevant writey bits of her would be this solo on the comforts of storms and secret places and escaping all of the everything else in her life. This drabble on secret places and a treasured book. A solo in which she has a dinner with Death, who wears her mother's face, built from America's idea of her.

In most of her rps, where her parents came up, it was more centered around her father. This would be the first setting she's decided to focus on her mother, whose everything is kind of a big box with a question mark on it both icly and oocly.