Georgie is, first of all, kind. She has compassion and empathy for all and sundry, and works very hard to never make assumptions about people. Or animals. Or plants! While she's never been big on the concept of arguing for the sake of arguing, every interaction she has with someone is filled with points and counterpoints, as she tries to decide if it's worth giving someone the benefit of the doubt. They might not know what she's talking about, they might have grown up with a different point of view or belief system, or they might just be trolling her, and every avenue is worth considering.

It can make prefecting a difficult job, though. It was already a difficult job considering her general distaste for the idea of an artificial hierarchy. Punishing someone for something she only witnessed might only exacerbate a situation, she tells herself. Why make someone believe they've been written off and can't come to their trusted friend? Her tack has always been to reach out, take a hand, offer a cup of tea or a silent companion, and ask someone if something's going on. Are they acting up because something happened at home? Or a test went badly? Or do they just have some bad energy they need to get out before they can sit in a class for an hour?

It's easy to look at Georgie, steadfastly refusing to believe the worst in someone, and think she's naive. And, sure, maybe she's not worldly, maybe she's a little sheltered, but she doesn't see the value of cynicism. Someone isn't immediately smarter or more valid because they've closed themselves off. How is that not in and of itself naive? It's her stubborn streak that keeps Georgie clinging to this optimism. No matter how much the world might punish her for her willingness to be open, she will not be beaten by it. Bring it, bitches, Georgie's tougher than she looks, and she's not willing to compromise her core values for the sake of protecting herself.

Her kindness does not manifest itself in people pleasing, though. She's a straightforward sort of person, but not out of malice. If someone asks her if their butt looks big in these jeans, she'll point out that they do seem kind of tight, are you sure they're not too small? She sees nothing to be gained from little white lies, but she also doesn't like being set up to parrot back a pre-approved response. It's definitely a little petty. Not that she realizes that. Georgie isn't likely to judge someone who does feel the need to bend the truth from time to time, though. She doesn't know everything about them, who is she to judge someone for doing what they think is best? If her feelings are hurt, she'll be honest and upfront about it, but she also knows she benefits from having had an emotionally supportive upbringing. It's her privilege and she is always trying to check her privileges.

Georgiana generally has a cool head. If a situation goes awry, she can usually be counted on to stand back, breathe deep, and plot the correct course of action without dwelling on what could go wrong. For someone so obsessed with dreaming, Georgie considers herself to be a fairly grounded person. She meditates regularly, which she credits with keeping herself focused on what does and doesn't matter, helps her maintain perspective on the world and her place in it. You wouldn't expect her to have so much excess energy, but it leaks out throughout the day—a day that starts disgustingly early so she can get her yoga done, by the way. Georgie can often be seen fidgeting, bouncing her leg, chewing on her lip, playing with her hair. Her mind will wander, her hands will search for something to do, and if she hasn't busied herself with something like a knitting or crochet project, suddenly she's given the fringe on her coat an incredibly complicated braid or picked a massive new hole in her jeans.

Georgiana has never been a terribly responsible person. It's not that she actively neglects things, and she doesn't mind getting down to work, but having to make decisions has never been her forte. Sure, she probably can make the decision, but who is she to presume she has the only right ideas? She's happy to make suggestions for group activities, or what seems like a workable solution, but the universe will probably figure things out on its own. Haven't you guys heard of, like, fate?

Allegra Mills - mother - No one ever had hopes that Allegra would be anything other than a liability to the Mills family name. They're actually pretty pleased with how low-key she is about it.
Independence "Indie" Rain-Mills - younger half-brother - 10 years old, spends most of his time being a child.
Desert Rain - mother's boyfriend, de facto stepfather - Despite her mother’s regular insistence that she does not believe in monogamy, she seems pretty stuck on this guy. Also, that's probably not his real name.

Allegra Mills was always something of a concern for her parents. It wasn’t just an issue of image; though reputation was always kind of on their minds, who in the upper middle class, mid-sized business-owning New England suburbia wasn’t always looking at their neighbors’ lawns and wondering if there was something more they could be doing? Allegra was just a flighty, rebellious kid, more interested in going to protests and smoking weed than learning the family business.

Between a headstrong and ambitious older sister who always needed a ride to some new extracurricular, and a sickly, regularly hospitalized younger brother, it was hard to find the time to keep Allegra on the straight and narrow. And when she dropped out of school in her junior year and jumped in the back of a truck headed west, Mr. and Mrs. Mills wished they could say they were surprised. Worried? Yeah, but that wasn't new.

Allegra sent infrequent letters, popped up back home from time to time without calling ahead, and as long as she wasn’t asking for money, her bags were carried back to her old room and she could stay. But she never stayed for long. Not even when she arrived on the old doorstep with a three-month-old baby and a six-month-old pygmy goat, and her parents begged her to consider what kind of life she was giving (what they assumed was) their grandchild.

But, Allegra said, she had settled down these days. She had climbed in a van at Burning Man, climbed out of it somewhere in Northern Montana, and… oh, hey, she was home. Newhome was nice, it was quiet. “You’d like it,” she told them, “we farm, we look after each other, we live simple lives.”

It sounded like a cult to the Mills, but no one was asking for money, and it was the first time Allegra had actually managed to stay in one place for a year since leaving home. Even if they didn’t understand this stripped down, reduced magic lifestyle, at least Allegra and baby Georgiana seemed healthy and happy. The open air lifestyle suited Allegra, she felt both grounded and free, and it was easier than keeping track of her.

There were only a few simple rules in Newhome, and most of them boiled down to “just don’t be a dick, man.” One of them was that everyone had to pull their own weight, though on their own schedule and with their own definition of what “their weight” meant. From a young age, even Georgiana was expected to put in a little work here and there. She would trail after her mother as she fed the chickens, she made new clothes and fixed old ones, carried the smallest boxes when they went to the owl hub to send off their seeds. When she got older and started attending their little school in a repurposed barn, she would help manage and tutor the younger students.

As simple and serene as life was at Newhome, kernels of fear still managed to creep in. It was strange; Newhome was the only home Georgie had ever known, and she had never known anything but safety there, and yet every night her dreams were filled with anxiety and stress. For months she would dread going to sleep, knowing what awaited her in her subconscious. Her mother was a deep sleeper, and Desert, her mom’s boyfriend, was deaf; no one could hear her cry out, and every time she awoke, sweating and scared, Georgie would creep out of bed, and find a book or a knitting project to waste the rest of the night away.

One night, when Indie was only a few months old, Georgie wasn’t the only one awake. She crawled into a rocking chair and pulled a half-finished blanket over her lap, and saw that Desert was pacing back and forth, soothing her little brother. When he asked her what was wrong, she told him about her dreams and fears of sleeping, how it was the only time she ever felt unhappy. And Des taught her something new; that with enough work, she could take control of her dreams, and drive the terrors out.

This was life-changing for Georgie. Every night, Desert helped her prepare for her next journey into the subconscious, her mother made her a dream journal, and every morning she would wake up and record even the most minute details, in the hopes of finding what objects could help her identify a dream before it became a nightmare. And so Georgie fell down the rabbit hole of dreams and subconscious, devouring all the information she could about dream interpreting and predictive dreams.

Georgie's life flowed on steadily. Her biggest fear was taken care of, and she settled into a space in Newhome. As an invincible preteen surrounded by positivity and simplicity, she didn't see any reason it had to change.

But her grandfather, still CEO of Mills Medicinal well into his 80s, passed away suddenly and without much excitement. His eldest daughter, Margot, a shrewd and competent businesswoman, took over the company. And where Mr. and Mrs. Mills had only ever been concerned with Allegra’s happiness and health, Margot looked at her sister, living her weird, granola-and-no-bra lifestyle in Montana, and just wanted to sweep her under a rug. Her father had left each of the kids a third of their company, but Margot figured Allegra wouldn’t even want to be involved in the company, and tried to buy her out.

Allegra, unfortunately, proved to be harder to negotiate with than anticipated. She didn't need the money, but she sure as hell didn't expect their little brother to stop Margot from selling the company's soul. No matter how much money she offered or threats she leveled, Allegra would not budge. In the end, Margot had to concede. Allegra could keep her shares, and she wouldn’t even have to leave her stupid farm, but Allegra had to get her GED, and her kids had to get a proper education. For image. An education she even somehow ended up paying for, as long as they both agreed on the school.

Gooseberry was an acceptable compromise, even though it did mean Georgiana would have to leave Newhome. There were just no decent schools in the middle of nowhere Montana, and at least Gooseberry was clearly all about this open-minded hippie bullshit. Georgie, who had never been away from her mother, never spent more than a few nights away from Newhome, was scared. Allegra assured her that she was scared too, and it’s hard to say who had a harder time saying goodbye when the bus came to take her away for her freshman year.

The addition of standardized education threw Georgiana for a loop. Back in Newhome, a former public school teacher taught them about practical potions and edible plants out of a barn. It had been hands on, with a reduced emphasis on spellcasting. And now, oh boy, a lot of these kids were waving their wands, some of the classes were huge, and everyone followed a similar curriculum. Coupled with the constricting uniform and the presence of some actually pretty strict authority figures, Georgie quickly grew homesick.

But Georgie was not going to back down in the face of fear. She had learned to face her fears in her own head, she could face them on the physical plane. Georgie took a deep breath, a step back, and learned to appreciate the things about Gooseberry that comforted her and reminded her of home. The stars weren’t that different, the air smelled almost the same, and she could go out to the middle of the flower field near her cabin and pretend she was in Montana.

Now making her a prefect her junior year, that was an adjustment she hadn’t prepared for. Coppertale had a reputation for being hard to control, with authoritative prefects, and Georgiana was not that type. She had initially thought it was a mistake. After their previous prefect had left the school, she couldn’t possibly be the best choice, could she? It was her compassion and understanding that worked in her favor, though, and helped her find a niche as a prefect. While no one was about to see her yelling at students and telling them not to party, the Georgie that would manage and mentor younger kids in the barn resurfaced. She was especially comfortable handling younger students, and trusted that, even after the senior prefects left the school, she would always have a partner that was more experienced than her.

Whoops. Maybe not.

How could she complain, though, when she got to escape last year’s ordeal unscathed, with the concept of dreams untainted for her, while some felt like they couldn’t even return to the school? Having to be the more experienced senior prefect in Coppertale didn’t really seem like that bad of a trade, all things considered.