Editing List of Aware (section)

=== Delirious ===
When ones infirmity impacts their sanity they can gain varying degrees of insight into the world as it really is.<ref>“The very young, the very old, and the infirm, can sometimes see what others are blind to. This can be very unlucky or very lucky, depending. The kind of luck that changes the direction of lives, or the unluck that ends them.”  - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/05/05 Excerpt] from [[Blood Run Cold 0.0]]</ref><ref>'''Nicolette Belanger'''<br>The most recent apprentice under Belanger, Nicolette took the family name as part of the deal. She survived the kind of Awareness that drives most into cruelest madness and emerged with Sight. A keen Augur and practitioner of Incarnate practices, dealing in omens and curses, she attends Advanced classes. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/09/10 4.7 Bonus Material: Student Guide]</ref><ref>Alexander would later compare the incident to trepanation.  An old custom of drilling holes into the skull, with skin replaced over the hole after, done as a spiritual thing.  It was still conducted as a medical practice in some areas, to alleviate building pressure within the skull.  She had a hole in her skull too, though not at the forehead, and it had and did let spirits and other immaterial things in.<br><br>At times those Others had fought, because her head made a nice hallow that was safe from the constant pressure of the Ruins and the chase of its collectors, gatherers, harvesters and devourers, because her emotions were like candy to some things.  As a consequence, there was a lot of competition for that safety and ‘candy’.  Some had stoked the fires of her rage and others had dragged her thoughts down into whirlpool spirals of stark terror.  Yet others had eaten every last bit of her joy and tore away her grasp on reality until she’d gone from wanting to die to wholeheartedly believing she’d already died and was somehow in hell.<br><br>[...]<br><br>Nicolette was another kind of talent, of a very different sort to Tanner.  She’d had her eyes, ear, and sanity wrested from her by spirits that flowed into and through her head like water flowed into a drain.  Then, by steps and small measures, she’d found her way back to ''functioning''.  Rituals, routines, grasping onto anything and everything and anyone that was nearby when she found some measure of herself again.  Through dumb luck, tenacity, desperation, and attentiveness, she had gotten to the point where she could get through the days, identify people who she could trust, and lean on them.  For two years, she had dipped into homelessness and hospitals.  She had made trinkets and charms and conspiracy theories about aliens and some of it had kept the worst spirits out.  She’d even turned some of the whisperings to her advantage, which let her find food and shelter. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/07/11 Excerpt]from [[Stolen Away 2.z]]</ref><ref>“Do you think he’s the only one I could forswear, right here and right now?” Alexander asked.<br><br>Everyone present looked to him.<br><br>“I know you,” Alexander said.  “What have you said while out of your mind and drunk, Chase[...] Nicolette?”<br><br>“My delirium?” she asked.<br><br>“You had your spells.”<br><br>“And I’m certain,” she said.  “I’ve watched my back.”<br><br>Alexander smiled. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/07/11 Excerpt]from [[Cutting Class 6.z]]</ref> However this state doesn't automatically make them aware, they need to actually encounter the supernatural.<ref name="lesAw">“I’ll build on what I was just saying, I think we run into lesser Aware more than we think we do.  If you’re an Other lurking enough around non-practitioners, you’ll find one in ten or one in twenty might trip you up, depending on where you go and how much you should be there.  Want to go after a villain of a man or a kid who throws rocks off a bridge?  Way’s mostly clear. Mostly, because some are Aware.”<br>[...]<br>“Kids and the sick?”<br><br>“No, no.  Those are still innocent.  Their eyes are open but there’s no guarantee they’ve seen anything or been given any nudges or powers.  No, some of those people who trip you up?  There’s something that makes them different.  Usually it’s a little something.  A kid you can’t ever seem to sneak by because he’ll pop up awake.  A lady with fifty cats and a good idea what they’re communicating.  And it’s almost always minor.  The Aware are weak.  They’re easy pickings for any pickers, directionless, and so busy trying to keep afloat they can’t do much of anything, except ruin some days or ruin some lives along the way, usually.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/12/26 Excerpt] from [[Gone Ahead 7.7]]</ref>