Rosalind Miller

Rosalind Miller was born on August 15th, 1995 in Baronville, Virginia. Baronville was not a large town. In fact, everybody knew everybody, and everybody certainly noticed when Catherine Miller was suddenly pregnant without another man in sight.

The ladies of the Baronville Bridge Club spent many sessions gossiping about who on earth could be the father of Catherine Miller’s baby. Marge brought up the possibility of it being a man she met when she spent a week in Washington DC back in December, presumably for one of her columns in the Baronville Gazette. Faced with no further options, aside from the very greasy son of Bette (although she had assured everyone her son had not talked to a woman under the age of 40 in three years), the bridge club was forced to take Marge’s theory as truth.

What the ladies at the Baronville Bridge Club had failed to guess correctly, however, was that the man Catherine Miller had hooked up with wasn’t necessarily human. No, the man going by the alias Jonas was, in fact, the Roman god Mars. Catherine had met him in a dive bar somewhere along the Potomac. “Jonas” had told her that he worked in the Pentagon. He was some big shot there, climbing the ranks after serving his time in Iraq. He already looked the part. Catherine was fully intrigued. Although their night spent together was short, it affected the rest of Catherine’s life.

Nine months later, Rosalind was born. She was perfectly healthy in every way. Soon the entire town forgot about her mystery father, and was instead enamored by the arrival of a baby. It had been many years since a baby arrived in Baronville, and the town hoped that the arrival of Rosalind meant more were on the way.

Unfortunately, the town was let down. It was another five years before another baby was born in Baronville. By that time, the only friends Rosalind had in her neighborhood were her mother and her imaginary friends. Thankfully Catherine was able to send Rosalind to the next town over (which was almost three times larger than Baronville) for her preschool. She had plenty of friends there, although the town of Douglas was very very Christian. Many parents looked down on Rosalind for being born out of wedlock. Luckily for Rosalind, she was Jewish so she never had to attend church with them.

Six months later, everything changed. Catherine was driving to Douglas to pick Rosalind up from school, when a car driving the opposite direction swerved into her path, colliding with Catherine. Catherine sustained multiple broken bones from this accident, and her doctor prescribed her Hydrocodone, an opioid pain killer. What the doctor didn’t know was that Catherine would soon become addicted to this. She started taking the dose more often than she ever needed to, and soon ran out. She was able to convince her doctor that she was still experiencing pain, and he continued her prescription. However it wasn’t long before that prescription ran out too, and her doctor refused to continue the dosage.

Catherine was now seeking for prescriptions in other places. She offered to housesit for some of the older couples in town when they were off on vacation, and steal what she could from their medicine cabinets. She started to buy pills from a man in Douglas, and often found herself unable to pay for necessities. One month, their electricity was shut off for three weeks because Catherine couldn’t pay the bills.

As time went on, things started to get even worse. At one point, Catherine was so desperate for medicine that she broke her own hand by slamming it in a drawer repeatedly, and drove herself to the ER in douglas so they could prescribe her more Hydrocodone. After that prescription ran out, and she was unable to get it renewed, she fell upon heroin. By this time Rosalind was seven years old.

It wasn’t long before the others in Baronville began to notice something was wrong. Days would go by before anyone would emerge from the house, usually Rosalind to pull the trash out to the curb, or to walk to the grocery store by herself with a twenty dollar bill in hand. The ladies of the Baronville Bridge Club took it upon themselves to make things right for little Rosalind, and when she was eight years old, child services showed up at her front door to find Catherine passed out on the couch and Rosalind hiding in her room, trying to escape the smell of burning heroin.

They took Rosalind to Douglas, where there was a foster home waiting for her. It was cleaner than her old house, but it was also much more crowded. She lived with five other siblings, ranging from six to fourteen. She was on the younger side of the group, and found herself being pushed around by the older kids. She endured this for a while, for fear of getting in trouble. However, after being pushed around for so long, she decided to fight back. She stood her ground when the older kids demanded things, and refused to do what they wanted, even when they threatened her. Soon after she found herself getting more respect from her foster siblings.

By the time Rosalind was ten she decided that she no longer wanted to be called Rosalind. After speaking with her foster parents about it, they settled on the name Rose instead. Rose did well in school, despite being behind after missing so much when she was in her mother’s care. However, her past still followed her. People in Douglas heard of what happened to her mother, and it was hard to escape, even when she was at school. Parents looked at her strangely when they noticed her. Kids echoed their parent’s words about her mother. When she was twelve, she was approached by some older kids, wanting to know more about what happened. When they wouldn’t leave her alone, she lashed out, breaking one of the boys’ nose. Fearful of what would happen to her, she ran off, despite the calls she heard behind her.

The woods of Douglas were thick and often filled with old beer cans and random litter. As Rose ran, she started to realize she had no clue how to get back. For hours she walked in the woods, trying to find her way back to civilization. It was when the sun started to set, that she realized she wasn’t alone.

It took only a split second before she was pinned to the ground by a snarling wolf. She could hear the other wolves around her, probably about six in total. Far too many for her to fight off, yet, there wasn’t any harm in trying. Just like earlier in the day, Rose decked the beast in the nose, rolling out from under it. She fought off the rest of them with a large stick, and she thought it was over, before one of them spoke.

It was Lupa and her wolves. Lupa explained to her that she wasn’t entirely human, and that she was in trouble. For the next two weeks, Rose trained with Lupa and showed her strength. By the end of it, Lupa directed her to Camp Jupiter, on the other side of the country.
She made the trek by herself. It took about a week, and there were plenty of close calls. When she showed up at Caldecott tunnel she was bruised and bloody, but she was alive. She had always been a survivor.

Rose was welcomed into the fifth cohort, since she had no reference letters to speak of. It was funny, for being the “worst” cohort in the legion, the fifth was probably one of the nicest. It was full of people like her, people whose lives weren’t fair to them. They understood each other. Rose decided to change her name again, this time to Roz. It’s been that way ever since.

Two weeks into Camp, Roz was claimed by Mars. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone, after all, she had a way with weapons. Still, everyone found it strange when she kept a crossbow as her primary choice.

When Roz was fifteen, she was offered the role of opito. This came as a surprise to Roz, who had only ever wanted to be a part of the team. After some persuading from her centurion at the time, she accepted the position.

Roz met one of her closest friends during one of the weekly war games. Kala Yadav was the opito of the first cohort at the time, and after Kala made a risky move, Roz took her down. This cemented Kala’s respect for Roz, and she offered to show Roz the ropes of being opito, to which Roz accepted.

Not long after, Kala made the rank of Centurion. She still helped out Roz, and eventually they became equals. It wasn’t long before Roz was offered the centurion position herself. There was one catch, Roz had to go on a combat mission to solidify her standing. Each cohort volunteered a person (or two in the case of the second cohort) that was in the line of being promoted. Kala was from first. Lee Elswood and Alyssa Greene from second. Margot Zhang from third. Teddy Bush from fourth.

What seemed like a simple mission soon turned sour. They were barely able to make it out alive, although they managed to lose Alyssa in the process. Afterwards Margot and Teddy refused the promotion, instead choosing to leave the legion altogether. Roz stayed in contact with them, eventually forming a relationship with Teddy.

Lee Elswood stayed on as centurion for a couple years before his time in the legion was up. His girlfriend Kala had disappeared a year beforehand, after serving three years as praetor. It was a year after Lee left, and a year ago from the current time, that Roz made praetor.
Roz eventually followed Kala’s footsteps, taking a kid from the fifth under her wing and teaching him to be a leader. They even served as centurion for a short while before Roz was promoted again.

Today Roz is still acting Praetor. She’s known for being somewhat strict, although sometimes people swear they saw her crack a joke. She’s still continuing the fifth’s legacy, making sure that everyone who comes to Camp Jupiter finds their own family.