Amaryllis Rigel Helvig

History (15) · last changed 08 August 2026, 20:05

Amaryllis Rigel Helvig Born Year 315 Other names Amy Spouse Chryssander Randolf Lyall-Helvig Species Homo Sapiens (Pyro-Kinetic Variant) First appearance The Glass House, chapter 2

Amaryllis Rigel Helvig (born 315) is a figure of the C9 universe, one of the young people who formed the House of Confidence on Aerogaea 347n, and its scavenger and field engineer. She is a pyro-kinetic variant, and she makes heat rather than carrying a source of it.

She was fifteen in year 330, when the Klak Grove was destroyed, and she is the youngest of the founding group. She is the younger sister of Eevi Charlotte Helvig-Norgaard. She married Chryssander Randolf Lyall-Helvig in year 335, and their daughters are Sienna Astrid Helvig and Celestine Elsa Helvig. She kept the Helvig name; her daughters carry it from birth.

Early life

Amaryllis was born in year 315 in the industrial zones, and grew up fast because the environment required it. She is small, wiry and hypermobile, built for parkour rather than for lifting, and she is usually covered in soot or grease and wearing gear cut for someone larger. The goggles and respirator are never far: on her forehead, around her neck, in her hand.

For most of the early years she is the little sister of the House, and the pairing that defines her is with Eevi. Amaryllis pushes at the edge of things and Eevi pulls her back.

The Klak Grove

She keeps other people's hours in her head. She knew where Akio was at three in the morning by the absence of his footsteps on the stairs, which is how she tracks him when he does not track himself. She is often awake at three^[1].

In the raid the shot was aimed at her. Chryssander put his shoulder into her and she went down controlled, because she had been moved before and knew how to land, and the bullet went through the space she had been standing in^[2]. What followed was her heat going through the grove like a second sunrise^[2].

She had put Chryssander to bed the night before, in a room with a wall of books and a window that undims when the dandelion-yellow one is pulled, having brought him there so he would sleep properly for once after falling asleep mid-sentence^[3]. She turns a light wheel slowly so the room fills from the edges inward and does not hit a sleeping person all at once^[3].

She works things out early and does not announce it. When Sienna is inside the facility and the House is piecing together what has happened, Amaryllis has already understood it^[4].

Physiology

Amaryllis generates heat rather than directing an existing flame. Her ignition point is higher than baseline, so radiant heat that would take another person does not take her, and her joints are built for the kind of movement she does at speed.

She also has the reach the record calls the snatch, a short-range retrieval that pulls an object to her hand. Her perception slows during it to allow the coordination it needs. Early it worked only on small things, keys and grenades.

Character

She reads the world through use. Where somebody else sees a destroyed tank she sees forty kilograms of high-grade titanium and a working fuel pump, and she is not distracted, she is cataloguing. Her particular talent is repurposing: an enemy drone has a lens, so melt the casing, reseat the lens, and Sienna has a telescope. What comes out of it is usually beautiful, and always out of proportion to the wreckage it came from.

In the plateau years the chaos in her turned into a forge, and later into teaching. In age her red hair goes to champagne white, she moves less, and the snatch is faster than it ever was.

Family

Amaryllis is married to Chryssander Randolf Lyall-Helvig. Their daughters are Sienna Astrid Helvig and Celestine Elsa Helvig. Her sister is Eevi Charlotte Helvig-Norgaard.