writer's notes ❥

Mundane: #OCEANE | ⚓
Age: 25 | Pronouns: she/her
Replies may be sporadic due to a busy schedule.
DMs are open for plots and pre-established connections.
For detailed discussions, please contact the writer's account below.

contacts ❥

• Main — @corallithe
• Side — @tidalltales
• Writer's — @riptideletter

aurie to the world ❥

Aurelie Eglantine Ramirez-Belafiore, known to most as Aurie and to her family as Ilya, was born on May 13, 1997, in Sicily, Italy. She grew up between two worlds—vineyards and sea. Her father is an Italian winemaker from Palermo who runs their family estate, Fiore di Vino, while her mother is a Filipino chef from Batangas known for restaurants that blend Mediterranean and Filipino cuisine.Quiet and observant by nature, Aurie spent her childhood moving between the vineyards and the Sicilian coast. She collected shells, watched the tides, and listened closely to her mother’s stories about the waters of Batangas.At seven, she discovered another passion: racing. Karting quickly became an obsession, and local papers began calling her la sirena che corre—the racing mermaid.In her early teens, a racing accident brought her to Batangas, where she stayed with her mother's family and continued school. There she learned to dive and grew deeply connected to the sea. It was also where she met Kiran Leandre, the boy who would later become her husband.Aurie later studied Marine Biology at Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan, where she built a quiet life of research, lab work, and field studies. She eventually joined the Blue Marine Foundation, working on shark tagging, habitat monitoring, and conservation programs. She and Kiran married in early 2020, planning a life shaped by the ocean.Weeks later, a diving incident took his life.For nearly two years, Aurie stepped away from the sea and returned to Sicily, helping at her family estate and in her mother's kitchens. Eventually, a former colleague invited her to assist in a coastal shark survey. That dive—her first in years—brought her back.Today, Aurie works full-time with the Blue Marine Foundation, overseeing conservation projects across the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and the Coral Triangle. Her work focuses on elasmobranchology, marine mammals, and community-based conservation.She spends much of her life moving between field stations, research vessels, and coastlines around the world. When she isn't on expedition, she returns to Fiore di Vino in Sicily, helping with the vineyards and occasionally assisting in her mother's test kitchens.The ocean is where Aurie feels most at home—always moving, always listening, always following the next tide that needs protecting.

tales from the tidepools ❥

✒ Where It All Began With a Horse Who Thinks He's Royalty... Aurie has a black Friesian named Augustus, gifted by her grandparents when she was twelve. She's had him for more than half her life—moody, theatrical, and convinced he’s an oversized cat whenever she's around.✒ And Then There's the Boulder Who Thinks He Fits on Her Lap... Her Rottweiler, Blue, came from her older brother—gentle, clingy, and absolutely sure he's a lapdog despite weighing like an emotional support refrigerator.✒ Talks to Animals During Fieldwork... Especially sharks. "You're very large today," "Please don't swim too fast, I'm tired." They don't listen, of course, but it comforts her anyway.✒ If You Ever Find Her in the Kitchen, Just Know Something Good Is Happening... She cooks brilliantly—clean cuts, perfect heat, obsessive tasting. Her specialties: citrusy seafood, creamy soups, and rustic pasta from her Italy years. The whole foundation waits for her post-expedition meals like it's Christmas.✒ Languages She Never Planned to Learn, But Picked Up Anyway... Bits from fishermen, researchers, and grandmas guarding tiny seaside stores. Her accent shifts depending on the coastline, sometimes without her noticing.✒ She Could Map the Seafloor From Memory, But Put Her in a Mall... Underwater, she remembers everything—bommies, crevices, cleaning stations. On land? Ten minutes inside a mall and she's lost, bewildered, and blaming the architecture.✒ How She Reads the Ocean Like It's Speaking Directly to Her... Color, temperature, movement—they all tell her something. One glance and she can guess if the reef is thriving, if currents changed, or if spawning season is close.✒ The Thing About Not Liking Cats (But Being Followed by All of Them)... Harbor cats, dive-shop strays, marina kittens—they all flock to her. Her husband once said she "smells like fish." She still refuses to dignify that.✒ Why She's Always the Last One Out of the Water... Because she checks on everyone else first. Safety mother. Chronic last ascender. Habit, instinct, love—take your pick.✒ The Scarf She Treats Like a Second Skin... A forest-green scarf, her late husband's gift. Looped on her bag when she travels, kept safe during dives, held close on lonely nights.✒ Her Backpack: A Survival Kit Disguised as a Bag... Electrolyte packets, mini sunscreen, antihistamines, tape, spare mask strap, mints. Always mints. Her interns swear she can fix anything except her bedtime.✒ How She Shows Affection Without Saying Much... She shares food, stays beside you while you work, fixes your gear, braids your hair. When she actually says she's proud of you? That's basically her version of fireworks.✒ And Then There's Her Most Chaotic Trait of All... She'll insist she's "not buying anything today," then walks out with: a new book or two, three enamel pins, a new dive knife, and a tote bag she swears she "needs for specimens." Everyone stopped believing her years ago.

ah, what else... ❥

✒ QUIRKS.
- Tastes a drop of seawater on her glove to guess salinity ("just field instincts")
- Laughs with her whole body—shoulders, eyes, even her fins if she's wearing them
- Talks with her hands, especially when explaining currents or shark behavior
- Collects sand samples from every field site, labels them obsessively... still loses half of them in transit
- Gets predictable sun-freckles that return in the same constellation every summer✒ LIKES.
- Books (reads anything and everything under the sun)
- Cakes and pastries—baked by her best friend, preferably
- The ocean at 5:00 AM—quiet, glassy, and gentle
- Sharks and rays (all of them, but especially threshers and oceanic mantas)
- Sun-bleached notebooks
- Iced coffees with way too much milk
- Long boat rides
- The colors green and blue
- The smell of wetsuits drying in the sun
- Her mother's Batangueño-Sicilian fusion dishes
- Airport sunsets between field assignments
- Discovering a new reef structure or current pathway
- Stories from locals—especially old divers and fisherfolk
- Being called by her childhood nickname, "Ilya," by family only✒ DISLIKES.
- Staying in one place for too long
- Administrative work ("the real deep sea monster")
- People who touch marine wildlife for photos
- Overfished markets and destructive fishing gear
- Hot coffee or tea
- The color orange
- Being told to "settle down"
- Loud, chaotic environments on research vessels
- When diving tourists ignore briefing rules
- Overly chlorinated pools
- Anyone misidentifying a shark species within earshot