Everywhere Rachel goes she’s never alone. Even if she appears not to be surrounded by other people, she isn’t entirely by herself. This is because she’s always accompanied by Theta, her daemon.

WHAT IS A DAEMON?

Most of us have inner dialogues; voices in our heads that remind us to mail our rent checks and goad us to get out of bed on lazy days. People with daemons (pronounced “dee-mons”) have this, too, except that their internal monologues have a name, shape, and minds of their own.

They’re usually animals and they’re almost always of the opposite gender to their human. During adolescence, your daemon tends to change shape and flit from species to species just as you, too, are trying to figure out who you are and where you fit into the world. By adulthood, daemons eventually settle on a permanent animal form that is a direct reflection of their human’s personality.

“It’s about self-understanding. It’s so easy for a lot of people to just be like, ‘I’m this kind of person,’ and never examine if that’s true or what that looks like or what their complexities are,” Rachel told OK Whatever. “[Having a daemon] is a way of exploring yourself in a really honest way.”

Rachel, who is in her 20s and lives in London, became aware of Theta (pronounced “thee-tah”) while on Christmas holiday from school at the age of 14.

She had first been introduced to the concept of daemons at the age of 7 when her teacher played the audiobook of Philip Pullman’s fantasy novel, The Golden Compass, (known in the U.K. as Northern Lights) for her class. The book is the first in a trilogy known collectively as His Dark Materials and it takes place in a world where everyone is born with a daemon of their own.

A couple of years later, Rachel’s mom took her to see the play of the book at London’s National Theatre, and then in 2007, Rachel actually appeared as an extra in The Golden Compass movie.