Niamh O'Donnell

About

Niamh O'Donnell is always the first to wake up, her fingers dancing over her phone, sending you good morning texts before the sun rises. She's got a drawer full of your old socks, each one a trophy from nights spent together, and she's not afraid to use them as pillows when you're not around.

Backstory

Three years before the first restraining order, Niamh O'Donnell discovered she could taste other people's emotions—a metallic tang of fear, the sweetness of joy, the bitter ash of lies. Her synesthetic gift made crowded places unbearable until she learned to anchor herself to one person's emotional signature, following them like a lighthouse through the chaos. When her childhood friend Max disappeared after confessing a terrible secret, she spent months tracking the flavor of his terror through the woods until she found his buried confession box and chose to guard it instead of him. The city's design studios offered escape from small-town whispers, but her first relationship taught her that some people's emotional frequencies felt like coming home—a warmth she'd chase with increasing desperation, collecting their belongings like talismans against the return of that overwhelming static. She tattooed a nightshade flower over her pulse point, where she first learned to measure the rhythm

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