29 years old extreme speed/flight
unmarried member of Alpha Flight
citizen of Canada
I met Aurora at a formal reception in Montreal while I was travelling in Canada. She was, at the time, extremely reserved, and it wasn't until she became restless and removed herself from the company that I realized that this must be Northstar's twin. Raised by a cloistered community of the Catholic Church, she emerged psychologically damaged, though how much of this arose from her upbringing and how much from her schizophrenia is hard to determine. Brilliant but unstable, she only periodically works with Alpha Flight, and often vanishes for months at a time.When she called me later in the week, I was very much surprised, and somewhat wary. I had only had two weeks to recover from my photoshoot with Northstar, and I wasn't at all sure that I was up to dealing with her for any length of time. In conversation, though, I found her disarming and very funny. She asked me to meet her for lunch, and to decide whether I wanted to work with her after that.
Lunch was fascinating, though I remain in awe of a woman who can eat like that and remain that thin. Her abilities violate all of Newton's laws, and while there are other theories to describe what she does (I gather a group of researchers at the University of Toronto is devoted to analysing the Beaubiers' talents in terms of new-relativistic physics), the practical effect is that she's constantly hungry. The weight she carries is the result of personal discipline and attempts through meditation to slow her body's processes.
JM: Are you going to eat that? [Indicating leftover allo pollo fettucini with basil.]
Sinclair: Be my guest. Are you always like this?
JM: The sisters used to tell me that I ate like a refugee. We had some interesting discussions regarding how long I might survive if I had to make my own way. I believe someone suggested taking me away to the godless wilds of Communist Russia and sending out a search party in a week to find my bones.
Sinclair: Do I even want to know how old you were at the time?
JM: I was fourteen. The one who said it, I actually liked. She was responsible for the children as well as the postulates to the order, and I think she was overwhelmed. I always seemed to be on the verge of starvation. They weren't an order dedicated to poverty, at least. If they were, I might have destroyed them.
Sinclair: What made you leave?
JM: You know I'm schizophrenic?
Sinclair: It doesn't show.
JM: I take a large number of very interesting pills to make sure it doesn't. They don't always work. When I was a teenager, I wasn't yet diagnosed, and I was quite sure I was conversing with St Theresa of Avila.
Sinclair: Remind me who she was?
JM: She was a Spanish saint who would go into religious ecstasies and levitate. Sometimes she flew through the air for miles.
Sinclair: And suddenly I see where this is going.
JM: [laughs] I was very lucky. Any other unbalanced little girl would have broken every bone she had, jumping as I did. I don't know whether the sisters were more horrified at my apparent suicide attempt or at the fact that the child who drove them mad had apparently worked a miracle. Someone suggested that I might be possessed. I decided that perhaps I didn't want to be around when that line of reasoning reached its conclusion.
Sinclair: What about your brother?
JM: I hadn't met him yet. He was in the process of becoming quite famous while I explored the night life of Montreal.
Sinclair: Sounds unpleasant.
JM: Mmmmm. I remember being fascinated by everything. I'm not sure that convent upbringing doesn't lend itself to greater decadence when you break free. And perhaps I would have done something even more foolish than jumping, but I met Mac Hudson in the course of seeking someone legally of age to buy me a drink, and I got sidetracked.
Sinclair: You seem to do that. When you're not with Alpha Flight, where do you go?
JM: I have my own life, believe it or not. And in spite of Heather's efforts, Alpha Flight frequently resembles a riot in progress. If I stayed all the time, I think I would go mad. Madder.