Bryony Mitchell

Bryony Victoria Mitchell is a private space pilot who was chartered by the Earth Spaceflight and Aeronautics Administration to fly their new technologically advanced research vessel Reverie. She considers herself an above average pilot, which she is. She began flying airplanes at age 9, and successfully completed Orlando Flight School at age 16. At the beginning of the book she is 26, turning 27 one day after she leaves Earth. Bryony is a guarded and somewhat stoic person, only having deep conversations with her friends, or with those she believes would actually listen to her. She never tries to come across as excessively rude however, offering everyone at least some degree of respect. Bryony is also an amateur astronomer, falling in love with the sky when she was gifted her first telescope on her 20th birthday.

Childhood
Bryony was born on October 2nd, 2282 in the fictional village of Hockholm, situated in the southern plains of the Alberta Province in Canada. She had a brother named Curtis who was two years older than her. They grew up on their parent's farmhouse where they took care of livestock. Her family did not get along and oftentimes forced Bryony to leave the house nightly to escape her father. It was on one of these nights where she first flew an airplane.

The only person Bryony didn't get along with was her father Timothy, who regularly beat her for any harm or misdeed she may or may not have done around the house. If there was one word she would use to describe him, it would be "despicable". He also did not support Bryony's interest in becoming a pilot, only because he didn't want her to, pushing her brother to do it instead. Curtis taught her how to fly an airplane because her father refused to do so. Bryony's mother Maeve was supportive of both of them as they grew up, often engaging in useless arguments with Timothy over their children's doings, and why she would allow them to do things. She had a very close friend from school, Eliza Arlington, who she confided in throughout her rough life at home. They regularly went out stargazing, mostly because Eliza was really into it at the time.

The Night
The "Night" is what Bryony commonly refers to as the night she ran away from home. She was 12 and remembers an extremely heated argument between Curtis and her father. She was again hiding in the barn when she heard a gunshot and screaming come from inside her house. Fearing that her father had finally lost it and shot someone, she frantically ran back inside. Unfortunately, her guess was correct, as lying on the kitchen floor was Curtis, who had just been shot in the forehead. Upon seeing this sight, Bryony froze in shock as her mother and father physically fought in the next room, more shots ringing out. By the time she could move, her father marched back into the kitchen and immediately noticed Bryony, charging at her and knocking her over. Bryony doesn't know what he was saying, but he pulled the revolver on her and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked but the cylinder was empty. She stared at him in utter disbelief, unable to say anything. Instead, she barged out of the back door and ran away into the night.

Teenage Years
Bryony somehow ended up in Seattle, which she then saw an advertisement on a billboard that beckoned her to Orlando, Florida where she continued going to school. She was 13 when she stole her first aerojet from a runway she found on her travels. Despite all the new and fancy technology she had never seen before, she got the hang of it fairly quickly. Stealing the aerojet may have been the best thing she could have done, as it belonged to Channing Hopper, the current administrator of the ESAA at the time. He tracked down the location of the jet, and, instead of scolding her, actually encouraged her to join flight school at the nearby Orlando International Airport. Through various connections, she ended up finding out that her first cousin lived in Tampa. So she took the bus from Tampa to Orlando every single day, starting at 14, to take professional flight lessons.

Passing with flying colors, she passed the school on her 16th birthday, and flew many types of aircraft for the next four years.

Adulthood
When she was 20, her cousin gifted her a 6-inch dobsonian reflecting telescope, seeing that Bryony always talked about celestial events, stars and asteroid mining. Recalling the times spent stargazing with Eliza prompted her to pursue the hobby of amateur astronomy. This inspired her to look into the United States Spaceflight Academy in Florida, which, with the help of a generous recommendation from Hopper, she was quickly accepted.

Spaceflight Academy
Bryony immediately went up to Lincoln Spaceport where she then lived for four years and began flying spacecraft, which is where she met Quinn Sultan, a spacecraft engineer. Her skills got better and better, and she was constantly scoring the highest in maneuverability tests and knowledge tests in general. She quickly climbed the ladder and gained recognition well outside of the Spaceport, getting labelled the "next greatest aviatrix". It was in her final year where she was then allowed to fly ships that were equipped with warping drives to travel millions of kilometers in just under an hour. These ships could not travel faster than light. In fact, she found the larger cruise vessels the easiest to handle, and flew those the most often. When Bryony graduated the academy at age 24, she was offered a position as a space pilot to fly the very cruise ships she loved to pilot back in the academy. She then earned the rank of "commander" and worked for Beyond Sol Space Tours for one year.

Friends
When she was growing up, Bryony only had one friend, her best friend, Eliza Arlington. They went to school together and hung out on their own time, which was easy to do as they were neighbors.

Surprisingly, Bryony never made any real friends until she met Quinn. Before then she saw everyone as "characters hiding behind some facade", indicating that they never would reveal what kind of person they are. And unfortunately for Bryony, she got unlucky every single time, as every person she tried to befriend before turned her down or just was not interested. Because of this, she closed her doors to opening any other relationships, because you can never truly trust somebody.

That all changed when she moved to Lincoln Spaceport, where she lived across from Quinn. He was actually very interested in Bryony's life and always wanted to know more about her, and she wanted to know the same about him. A few months after meeting, Quinn decided to ask her out on a date, to which she declined, but wanted to maintain their friendship. They finished schooling in their own fields at around the same time, with Quinn returning to Earth, Bryony felt a little alone again, but decided to embrace the feeling, saying "deep space is a lonely place".

The next great friend she met that we are introduced to in the book is Claribel Mayrose, who was a passenger on her first space voyage for Beyond Sol Space Tours, travelling to Jupiter and Saturn. They began talking about pulsars and different types of supernovae, and naturally clicked. It wasn't until a while later that she learned Claribel was actually ten years older than her and has quite the slow and deadpan attitude, but Bryony did not mind.

Reverie-1 Mission
It was after Bryony had come back for her longest voyage yet (visiting all of the major celestial bodies of the Solar System) that a letter showed up under her door one night asking her to come to the Ready Room of her cruise ship which was docked at Lincoln Spaceport. She found Quinn waiting there, staring out of a window. He goes to tell her about a mission that has been being put together for years, which involves the testing of the first spacecraft in history that has the ability to travel faster than light, using a "primitive but extraordinary" warp drive that has apparently been in R&D for over half of the past century, and that he has been helping work on it. He also tells her that he was chosen to go on the maiden voyage as lead engineer, and that he got to pick the pilot to fly the spaceship. Naturally, the first person he thought of was Bryony. She excitedly accepts his invitation, and the next day they are taken back down to Earth, a trip they will be doing a lot.

Training
Bryony, although being familiar with every part of the cockpit, still had to be trained on the workings of the spaceship she will be flying, named Reverie. The inner workings and mechanisms that power the ship are very different than the regular spaceships she has flown. For the next seven months, Bryony undergoes training for the mission, a mission which will involve visiting the closest star system to the Sun, a triple star system named Alpha Centauri. She sat through many, many simulations of the flight path and successfully completed the mission in virtual reality many times over.

It was announced that along with Bryony and Quinn, an astrophysicist would tag along for the ride, and just out of pure happenstance did Claribel make the spot. All three of them became very close as they trained together for the last few months of training. Training ended in September when the ESAA announced Reverie was finally completed and passed all the tests they threw at it. Well, besides the jump-to-another-star-system part. The Crew of Reverie, they were henceforth called, were allowed to return to Earth for the month of September before their trip to Alpha Centauri. She used this time to find where her mother lives to visit her. On returning to Hockholm, she found her mother still living there. They spent the week catching up and talking about life. Bryony asks her mother where her father was, to which she said she didn't know, as he was arrested the night Bryony ran away. Bryony says that she hopes he is dead, so that he could have found peace.