Appearance:

Ash is a very short woman, with long dark red hair, which she usually wears pulled back.  She’s kind of mousy, and at first glance doesn’t appear to be anyone worth remembering.  She usually dresses in a sensible manner, the only thing notable being the fact that she always wears a pair of thin gloves.  Once you look at her, though, you realize that she’s pretty in an ordinary sort of way, and her eyes are a little disconcerting.

Background:

She was orphaned at an early age, and was raised by a kindly former ranger and his wife.  Nothing about her life was remarkable until the time when she was fourteen.  One day, she was helping her adopted mother as she usually did, when she picked up a plate to put it away.  She immediately dropped it.  When she had touched the plate, she had suddenly seen someone else’s memory.  The ranger’s wife, after a fight with her husband.  It was distressing to say the least, and Ash was very frightened.  When she calmed down a little, she experimented to see what was going on, and what that would mean.  She found that if she touched something with her bare hands, she relived any vivid memories associated with the item, from the perspective of of whoever’s memory it was.
Ash is a psychometrist.  If someone handles or in any way touches an item while feeling any sort of strong emotion, it leaves a psychic imprint, which Ash is able to pick up if she touches it with her bare hands.  It only works on inanimate objects; she has not tried plants, but it would be doubtful that they would work.
Through some cautious experimentation, Ash has found that the psychic imprints left on objects will fade over time and be replaced.  At first, before she figured out what was going on, the constant flow of other people’s memories threatened to drive her insane, but that was soon corrected by wearing gloves all the time.  However, after a few bad experiences, Ash will not tell anyone what she can do if she can possibly help it.  She is also understandably a little leary of strangers. 

Roleplaying Notes:

Ash refuses to touch anything that has not belonged to her for at least a year, and wears her gloves all the time to avoid accidental contact.  Someone who knew what she was capable of might be able to blackmail her, trick her, or talk her into using her gift, but it will be difficult.  When it comes to other people’s memories, she really doesn’t want to know.  She’s actually almost phobic about it, afraid of what she might learn.  She really sees it as more of a curse.

If she does touch something, she sees only the latest, strongest memory associated with it, as if she were the person in question.  The memory lasts only as long as she maintains contact, and begins to fade soon after she stops touching it.

If she sees something disturbing, she will react accordingly once she breaks contact.  She may cry, get angry, go into hysterics, or whatever, depending on what she saw.  This may be alarming to any compainions she may have at the time.

While she’s touching something and reliving the memory associated with it, it is obvious to observers that something is going on, that she’s percieving something that’s not there.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on the current context.

Additional Ideas (1)