Rachel Harlow AKA Skinstalker

As a little girl, Rachel never did see eye to eye with most people. She watched animals eat one another and somehow find a balance. She saw her cat stand its' ground against other cats, getting into scraps to defend her territory. People weren't much different, she thought. Hiding and watching other kids, she observed similar behavior, only people liked to pretend otherwise. Why did they do that? Wouldn't life be better if people were just honest about who and what they are? As a child, these thoughts began to form in her head, but to most others, little Rachel was a weirdo, a freak who thought she was above them.

In some respect, she did think she was above them. They lived to be desired by others, she lived the way she wanted. Or at least, the way her parents let her get away with without punishment. They had other children to care about, so grounding her in her room wasn't as much of a deterrent when she learned to climb. She liked to watch others, and found excitement in sneaking around, hearing everyone's secrets. She had childish aspirations of being like her own cat, a carefree and imperious creature who could oversee a room from her perch, watching and judging while being self-sufficient.

In truth, she was likely a privileged child who was safe enough in her suburban neighborhood to not have to conform. But even so, she would wander at night, hiding and stalking like a little feral child, climbing trees and snooping on people for the thrill of it. She saw many things while sneaking out, and was lucky to not be killed or hurt while doing so. She began finding more time to sneak out, spend more of her evenings and recess times further away, slowly building little hideaways in the trees and woods. She was always good at dealing with animals, but became more attuned to their nature the more time she spent around them.

Joining the Girl-Scouts at one point, she was ostracized even there by her peers when she took the challenge of learning survival techniques and achieving self-sufficiency in the forest seriously rather than sitting around being catty. True, she did break a girl's nose for throwing a rock at her cat one time, but still. Rachel was barely able to be friends with her peers, preferring the company of animals, which she turned into a sort of career, working as teen in a pet shop and wanting to study veterinary sciences and biology in school, which she was more or less forced to go to. At least she picked up ASL while she was a Girl Scout, and got to talk to a few apes the scientists kept captive in college. She was saddened by their captivity, and vowed to never accept life in a cage like they had.

Eventually becoming a young adult, her family thought that sending her to a girl's academy in Ohio would help finally settle her down and make her normal. All it did was get her on a bus to the National Park one day and go 'missing'. She had been originally wanting to find some quiet amongst nature, but the same night she was finding a place to sleep, she came across one who would be her Sire. She'd been stalked for a while, and having a nerve-wracking conversation with the woman that looked so wild and majestic, Rachel could barely hold back the excitement when she took an interest in her.

Embraced on a relative whim, her Sire, Cassandra, thought she'd found a diamond in the rough. A human who naturally understood the basis of what her Path entailed, more or less. She would train this Cub and bring her up into a proper Harmonist, then send her out into a pack of her own. Over the next 36 years, she did as much, and brought Rachel up into a proper huntress, a predator who could stand proud and be the eyes and ears of her pack as they claw back their influence. Soon, she got her marching orders and left the nest. To Baltimore, and to Sleepy Hollow, where her new family awaited her.