Noémi Jourdain

There’s no fairytale ending for you, Noémi. Happy endings aren’t for people like us.

Work

Noémi has recently begun work as an assistant under the Consul Alexandrova Lesya Vladislavovna, director of Public Engagement, Propaganda, and Interdominance Relations, for the Custody’s Executive Office of the Ascendancy.

Photography and Writings

“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end. Success, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and we were supposed to sing or dance while the music was being played.”

Alan Watts

She’s a keen photographer, though mostly keeps her work as a private hobby and a means to explore and understand the world around her. She does sometimes seek freelance work, and for this she has an online portfolio of accredited images. Her style is generally dark, bittersweet, and highly aesthetic. The transient nature of happiness. Embracing sadness and grief. Beauty in death through celebration of life.

“Photography is the medium in which we unconsciously encounter the dead. Yet, herein lies photography’s hidden truth. Photographs are not signs of presence but evidence of absence.”

Jay Prosser, Light in the Dark Room: Photography and Loss

The old-fashioned notebook she keeps on her person contains lines of poetry, and sometimes things she overhears that might inspire later. She writes in a mixture of French and English.

Private Projects

• Untitled: A collection of photos and poetry from the years her mother was ill, right through to her death. This has never been published or shared.
• Inégalité: a project she started when first arriving in Moscow. It consists of candid photos of Moscow’s Undercity, including character portraits and poetry: brief snapshots into the lives of those who live and bleed and suffer, and who smile and love and dream, all below Moscow’s bright city lights. It features prostitutes and dancers, drug dealers, political refugees, and ex-convicts, and shows them also in a human light: as parents and spouses and children. The work was published online, but anonymously.

Mon petite cœur. My precious girl. Do not grow up beautiful; instead, grow up clever.

Hidden Past

Noémi was born into severe poverty, and as such she grew up accepting of the transactional values of life; that even necessities might have staggering costs. After the death of her mother when she was just seventeen, she travelled to Moscow to begin a new life. She was unsuccessful in securing a scholarship for study and thus found herself destitute and alone in the city.

Though she was desperate to avoid the life she had watched her mother forced into to keep them fed and sheltered when Noémi was a little girl, she found herself with little other recourse.

It was beauty that kept her fed; beauty that kept her warm; beauty that kept her alive.

She worked a variety of exotic clubs in the Red Light District from a very tender age. Possessed of a natural grace and allure, she discovered a skill for the seduction. As with most things in her life, whether she cared for the work or not, she worked hard at it, and even today retains something of a svelte dancer’s body.

Alongside her natural reservedness and demurity, Noémi proved very popular, especially with Moscow’s rich and elite. As well as dancing, she undertook escort work, and as her reputation grew it began to pay exceptionally well — enough that she was finally able to split her attention to the education she had originally come to Moscow for.

Whether Noémi ever slept with the men who paid for her company is unclear.

By her mid-twenties she was able to leave the life behind. Though she is not ashamed of the things she did to survive, neither does she talk about it much. She retains some Undercity contacts and friendships, but it is a sphere of her life kept very separate from the professional career she is undertaking now. At least five years have passed since she last danced.

So we must hold tightly to the good things while we have them.

Reborn Soul

She lived as the naiad Menthe in the 6th Age.

Her love for Hades was unrivalled, and she needed no coercion to remain at his side after his marriage to Persephone. No matter what the legends say, she believes herself to be his true soulmate.

The connection perseveres through the Ages.

Channeling

Although a soul reborn from a previous Age, Noémi remains unaware that she is a channeler, having been born without the Spark but with the capacity to learn.

RP History