Rayla Tatiana Grace is the 26-year-old Greek demigod daughter of Hermes and Ada Grace. She is the niece of Beryl Grace and the cousin of Thalia and Jason Grace.
History[]
Birth[]
Ada Tatiana Grace met Hermes, the Greek god of travellers, thieves, and messages on a high school field trip to a museum when she was 17. Hermes has been disguised as a security member, and he had caught Ada trying to steal a semi-precious necklace from a back exhibit with limited cameras. He let it slide and created a false copy of the necklace, replacing it so Ada could keep the real one.
They fell in love within two years of knowing each other, having met up on several occasions after Ada's field trip. On May 16, when Ada was almost 20, she gave birth to Rayla Tatiana Grace in the back seat of a New York taxi. She debated naming her Adalyn Tatiana, after herself, but decided against it and went for a semi-rhyming alternative instead, keeping the middle name.
Childhood[]
Rayla grew up to be independent and learned quickly never to look up to anyone. Her mother Ada had been unstable since her birth and had put little to no effort in raising her, taking on a drinking problem as well as a heroin addiction. Ada was rarely if ever at home, but the times she was, she would often scream at Rayla and occasionally hit her.
When Rayla was three, her aunt, Beryl Grace, gave birth to her cousin, Thalia Beryl Grace. Rayla would often spend time with Beryl and Thalia when she could, as they were a lot safer to be around than her mother, but it was usually difficult for Rayla to leave the house, as Ada would lock her inside whenever she left. Eventually, Rayla managed to get a window open and lodged a rock in the window sill to keep it ajar. She used this as a secret escape hatch and would leave as often as she could to visit her aunt and cousin. Rayla became close with Thalia over the years and would refer to her as her little sister.
When Rayla was ten, Beryl gave birth to a baby boy, Jason Alexander Grace. After Jason was born, Ada would rarely leave the house, and Rayla would get very limited chances to visit her aunt and cousins. She wasn't allowed to go to school, so she managed to teach herself how to read, write, do simple math, and dance using some old books she found hidden in the basement. A year later, Beryl developed a heavy drinking problem and Thalia and Jason's home life became dangerous. Rayla would leave the house to help Thalia take care of Jason as much as she possibly could. On Halloween that year, Rayla had begged her mother to go Trick-or-Treating with Thalia and Jason, and reluctantly, Ada allowed it. Beryl had been passed out drunk on the couch of Thalia and Jason's home, so it wasn't hard to get them out of the house. They hid out in the woods, and Thalia helped Rayla fix up an abandoned treehouse they had found. They designated this spot as their safe haven and would meet up there often to keep themselves away from harm.
A little while after Rayla turned twelve, her mother trapped her in a corner in an angry, drunken fit with a rusty knife and attempted to chop off Rayla's hair to sell. She had failed in taking the hair but had succeeded in creating a deep cut on the side of Rayla's neck, right behind her left earlobe. Rayla ran away to the treehouse and stayed there for six days, finding Thalia and Jason there on the sixth day. Thalia informed Rayla that Jason, who was two years old at the time, had attempted to eat a stapler and had punctured his upper lip, but luckily the staple only left a small scar. The three of them returned to their houses not long after.
A while later, Rayla found Thalia one day in the treehouse in a crying fit. She had said that Jason was stolen by wolves. The two searched for Jason almost every day for a year to no avail until Rayla had to be imprisoned back in her own house. Driven almost insane from guilt, fear, and anxiety, Rayla smashed the window she had previously been using to sneak out and ran away.