Name: Ivar Grimhjarta Occupation: Performer in the Grimhjarta Circus. Fire and Blade Performer. Tightrope Walker. Side gig: Crystal Ball Fortune Teller Age:Ā 25 Sexuality:Bi Species: Witch (Gernett Coven. Norweigen Branch) Hometown: Balestrand, Norway Relationship Status: Complicated Personality Traits: charming, superstitious, protective, adrenaline junkie, haunted, burdened by guilt
Biography (tw: death)
Ivar Grimhjarta was born to die. A fragile thing, swaddled in cloth and shaky arms, he was marked for perishing before he ever took his first breath. A yellow cast clung to his sunken cheeks. His ribs sharp beneath thin skin. A sickly child, born in winter, when another mouth to feed was too much, was a child no one expected to mourn. Winter stole food from poor hands, and tore the last bread from their tables ā yet two desperate parents carried their second-born, through the blackest snow to beg Hel for mercy on his life.
They found her shrine where the fjord split the cliffs, an old altar of stone half-swallowed by ice. There, with frozen fingers, they laid down their offering ā blood, tears, and the last trinkets of their familyās worth. They whispered for her to take their lives in place of their childās. But Hel had other plans for the Grimhjartas.
She rose from the shadows with a voice like a rattle in the hollow of bones. Her pale hand lifted, not toward the frail babe, but to the firstborn, hiding behind her motherās furs. Maja was three years old, all ashy blonde hair and wide, frightened blue eyes.
"I am not without mercy," Hel said. "But mercy comes with weight. This boy shall walk, but never alone. His life will not be his own. If he is to rise, it will be on his sisterās strength. She will carry his death as her burden, and her lives will be split between them."
The baby cried in his mother's arms. Hel only smiled. "One soul tethered to another. One cannot be without the other. Remember this bargain, for the tooth will break long before the bond."
Then she was gone.
Ivar grew beneath a canvas roof, where the circus was his cradle. He toddled among performers, and learned his first words to the rhythm of drums and firecrackers. By seven, he could balance on beams higher than his head. By ten, he swallowed flame without fear. The Grimhjartas settled tent a new place, every three years, where new blood was spilled, and new sacrifices were made. The Grimhjarta Fair was famous for it's dangerous performances, with thrill rides and a haunted house, a mirror maze that allowed you to see the worst of oneself. Some followed the circus, so they might chase answers from the fortune teller. Everyone paid good money to be in the audience.
When he was fortheen, he received his talisman in ceremony ā a wolfās tooth, polished and bound with leather cord, hung at his waist. The elders painted his cheeks, sang to Hel in voices that shook the tents, and told him, "Don't be reckless with this. Guard it." He understood none of it then, only that his sister shared her lives with him, so instead of fourtheen, now she had eight, and he had only six.
His first death came at twenty three. A fall from the flaming trapeze. A performance before a crowd that screamed as his sisterās body broke at the same time. She had been the fearless one, and he remembered only her falling, firelight catching her hair ā and then the silence that followed. They woke together clawing from the dirt, coughing earth from their lungs, their talismans cracked. A jagged chip split Ivarās fang down the middle, the first warning that the bond had a limit, and each death would carry something of them away.
It wasnāt only life that splintered. Memory went with it, too. Pieces of childhood slipping like sand through a fist. The tooth broke, and so did time.
Still, he kept walking the beams. He kept breathing fire. He kept living as though death were a trick he could perfect, a performance like all the rest. New place, every three years. New people in a life too complicated to explain, so he slapped a smile; too big for his face, and played by the rules of his people. Traditions kept for hundreds, and hundreds of years. The caravan never stopped moving. The music never stopped playing. Port Leiry was their next stop.
Headcanons
Ivarās Talisman: A flawless, ivory fang. After his first death, a fine crack appears at the tip. After his second, a chip breaks off one edge, leaving it uneven. Each time he comes back, more of it splinters, shatters, and wears away. By the time heās down to his final life, itās just a worn stub of enamel and marrow hanging on the cord, unrecognizable to anyone but him.
Wanted Connections
THE TARGET GIRL // Edda, who laughs when the knives hit a little too close to her head. His cousinās girl. But her eyes linger a little too long on Ivarās fire. She grew up in the same caravan, as he did. With her the tension is always thick and ready to spark a fire.
THE COLLECTOR // A hunter obsessed with the Grimhjartas and their talismans. Maybe they want to steal the wolf fang splintered in the middle from the chain around his waist, or smash it and see what happens when the bond breaks. To them Ivar is not a man, but a prize.
