FAMILIA ANTE OMNIA

Maja Grimhjarta Aerielist/Acrobat & Trapeze Artist

[majagrim]

𝚜𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚌𝚞𝚝𝚜 ; 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝・ 𝚠𝚌𝚜・ 𝚏𝚊𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚢・𝚖𝚞𝚜𝚎

[aelitatoussaint]

She can't help but laugh at the cocky candor this girl possesses - honestly, it's kind of doing it for her. It's enough to make her laugh, just the same as what Maja says next is enough to make her flush - something that makes her grateful for the cold that's already pinked up her cheeks and nose.

She looks up, and once again can't help the smile the- what, praise? -brings her.

"Gothy, morbid, you remember suicide girls?" Nobody ever remembers suicide girls. "Like, I bet you own a human skull or a pet raven. Or both."

She stands, slings her skates over her shoulders. "I'm Aelita."

[majagrim]

Maja does not know suicide girls.

But she does have a human skull, a few, actually. No raven; they're messy, and she has never been one to like taxidermy. Dead things either stay dead, or they come back and live again. There's nothing worse than a stagnant, still thing, caught between half lives.

A smile is her answer, because she wonders what the ice skater thinks is truth, and what is not of her speculation. Maja has only delivered compliments to the pretty woman, and albeit, briefly mentioned a potential demise. But she stands, alive, and red in the cheeks. Half a rune in the snow, left unfinished, because Maja has had a change of heart.

The name hangs, and Maja imagines what it would be like to have it live on her tongue, for a night or two.

Whilst Aelita stands, eyes track the path she cuts. Instead of cutting the thread of what they're sowing, curiosity blossoms back in Grimhjarta's stomach. In the snow, are they the same breed of creature?

"Names are for those who meet more than once." Her head tips, in challenge. "Will we?"

[majagrim]

@ivargrimhjarta

[dread-frequencies]

Holly's head shakes; she can't tell if the strange girl's been scared off or if she's incredulous or if she's just having her on, but her body language pre-empts her words, and Holly can tell she wants to get out of this van. She can't blame her - and there's a piece of Holly Price that wonders if simply showing somebody this will mark them the same way she seems to be marked.

Maja keeps talking in her frustrating riddles though, and Holly follows to the edge of the van's hatch, half hanging out.

"I'm Holly," she calls after - maybe uselessly - but a name is something to hold onto, something to make this mean anything. "What's your name?"

[majagrim]

Maja does not give her name, even in the girls' pursuit of her. She should have drawn a ward on the outside of the van, and kept the girl caged there. But Grimhjarta had not been thinking that Holly would have the ear of a God, and the eyes of something that wants to watch her wander through the world, lost. Not at all, when she had experienced sights beyond the average mortal.

If Maja brought the devourer of worlds to their doorstep, would Hel intervene?

As a passing promise, Maja decides that another Grimhjarta — with knowledge older than hers, and lived longer lives may know something she does not. "You wish to see more, then you find us at the fairground." She should speak to Brynjar, and see if he has the patience for stories about towns being torn asunder. "You cannot walk on the other side, as you are." Holly would die, Maja is certain of it. And there is no coming back for her when she would be shredded by the layers of realms that lie dormant over the top of one another. Her faceless phantoms, born of devastation, are not her protectors. And Maja cannot be, either.

Retreating on deft feet, Maja quickly carries herself down the street, and back to the Grimhjarta grounds.

[judegrigsby]

He doesn't really react to being poked, but Jude does give her something of a nod, even if her verbiage is a little confusing. "Uh, yeah. Not my body. Same.. like, me? I guess? Memories and mind and everything all me. Not the same body." Hopefully that makes sense. He looks back to the mirror in front of him and frowns, rubbing his freshly shaved face as if it might warp back to the guy he used to recognize in the mirror.

The revelation that it was an accident he's here is almost a gut punch, but he tries not to react too terribly to that news. Magic is weird, he guesses. It's not like - anyone would go out of their way? Vengeance, maybe.

Turning back to her, his eyes widen a bit. "That's - weirdly nice. If he's not dead yet, sure. I had - I'm sure they're still here - crazy friends. Angry friends." Autumn's face when it happened flashes through his mind and he tries not to visibly wince in front of this witch, who is already moving on to magic.

At first, his answer is just a shake of his head. "Normal guy. Didn't know magic existed." Glancing down to the paper, his lips twist into a frown. "I can learn?"

[majagrim]

"Very strange." But she supposes that if the wolfen body is destroyed. There is little option in what could be revived from the soil at such sudden notice. Unexpected, in the exchange of sacrifice. "But this body is not broken. Good." Assuming it all works, then it is at least worth something. A complete revival, the same as any Grimhjarta would.

Maja did not know how far this extension of her magic went, or whether he would crumble to ash, if left unattended for too long. The rules of the talisman were not outlined clearly when she loses one of the bones, to revive a boy she has never met.

"Then we find them. Kill the hunter, if he lives. And I let you sacrifice them." A gift, to let him draw the blood, and see what power is in his marrow, if any. "You will grow strong from it." If done right; amplify power in ways the once-varulv has never known.

"Yes. Silly boy." She taps his head with the pen. A quiet murmur of a Norwegian curse rolls off her lips, but it is a harmless one. It does not strike at his ancestors, or have his limbs shrivel and wilt until they fall off. It is merely words, dismissed as quickly as Maja can think. "We see what you can do with this new life, ja?" She pushes the pen and paper in his direction. "Gods may favour you. It is a blessing, if they do."

[judegrigsby]

He finishes the last bit of the shaving, and starts about washing the foam off - rubbing moisturizer into the skin to stave off the worst of the crackling that comes with the frigid cold. Jude has no idea what shores this lady is talking about, but he's quickly learned that she just talks weird anyways. Accent, too.

But he doesn't wanna judge too harshly, so he just shrugs in return. "Oh, uh - Jude Grigsby. I'm Jude - don't know what this guy's name is, though." At this, he gives a gesture down to the rest of his body as he finishes up his grooming.

Straightening up, he stares at her - frowning a little that he seems to tower a little more over people than he used to. To compensate, he hunches down some, not wanting her to feel weird about him being taller. "I was dead, yeah. You brought me back? On purpose? Er. I guess, uh, probably not."

Another pause here, and he rubs the back of his neck, wondering how much he should share. But if she's the one who did it, then.. he guesses it doesn't matter, because at least she's not a hunter. "I used to be a, uh, a werewolf. And some hunter guy did me in."

[majagrim]

"Jude Grigsby." That is an ancient name, she thinks. Old, like Grieg. Interesting. Perhaps this is why he has somehow attached himself to the magic. There is no way to know, and the more he speaks, the less she is able to discern about origin. "There is two — inside here?" She pokes at his temple, because he gestures to himself, like his mind and his body are not the same. Ah. A soul, perhaps not the mind. "None of these parts," she pokes and pokes, stomach, and arm and — "They are not yours?"

If she is sacrificing, and moving souls from their resting sites into bodies that have reforged in the earth. There is something she has broken in the cycle of runes, and the power of talismans. Something gravely wrong. At the thought, her eyes dip to the bones tied together on her person, assuming she has not entirely stripped the rights to the power by bending the laws. They have not crumbled, and she knows the power in her blood. She would liked to have known she had this capability, or that the vampyr's blood she borrowed, along with the ribs she had carved meticulous runes into for an hour, had been capable of this, too.

Maybe she'd have done it sooner, for someone useful. Does he have any real power?

"No." She folded her arms, staring at him. "You were accident. I sacrificed life." A trade-off that is more frustrating by the fact that she had been certain the ritual had been perfect. If it had been the soil they were on, that shattered the intention, that could not have been pre-meditated. Every ounce of dirt has the dead rotting within it; it'd make ever casting a spell like that, void in its entirety.

She had lost a phalange of the talisman, regardless. Trading what she had, to give to her brother no longer evens the score. It simply lessens hers.

"Varulv?" That is a strange, and unfortunate factor in the bones that make up her talisman. She's got all the linkages to whatever, and whoever this man is. And now, he's got the residue of Grimhjarta all over him, that the troupe would know he is something other the moment he wanders back out through their circus. Maybe he wants a job, here. Make use of him. "You were made dead by hunter. That is sad." More importantly, "Are they here, this town? We kill them." Maybe this is kindness for him, and maybe it is self-preservation all the same.

Maja fishes through a cupboard in the caravan, for paper, and a pen. "Before you were Varulv — wolf, did you have power?" Magic, she means. "Do you have magic of Gods, mine, from where I have brought you back from the soil?" a beat, as she slaps the pen and paper to a small fold out table, "I will teach you."

[dread-frequencies]

"I have no idea what it is," she says, her tone a plea without a question behind it. Tell me, she thinks, you seem crazy enough to have an answer. Talk of Gods and stuff, that's out of her ballpark. She signed up for ghosts and goblins. She hadn't expected to find man-shaped monsters like Tom has. She was fine with that. But this? This is something she never wanted, and certainly doesn't want now.

"I don't know if they'll hurt me - I just know I don't want to let them, and sometimes..."

Holly's voice trails off into nothing, because she won't say that. That kernel she'll keep in her pocket. "I just know I don't want to find out, and I am here for a reason and I can't leave right now, and I think they know that.." Even if she wanted to, she couldn't - the world beyond the city limits turns into a desolate tundra of snow and scrub full of things that seem even worse than what's chasing her.

[majagrim]

It could be better for her, if she does not pry too deep at Gods who do not wish to make themselves known. Not to her, at least. A witness to something not meant for her eyes. Windows to her soul opened wide to power her body cannot handle.

Maja does not know exactly what this girl has done, or what she has wrought to tangle her soul in the power of Gods beyond her scope. She also does not think she cares to know, and risk the wrath of the one she worships. Would taking an audience with a thing beyond her realm, in the next life, ever dare share that with her, if she asked? A fool's errand, to even try.

"Echoes." She says it again. They do no harm. They're loud and repetitive. A voice in a tunnel that coils around and around. Like the mirror maze. But an echo is harmless. Just noise on repeat. "You keep them as that, yes? As long as you can."

Sometimes, is not her problem. A small pocket ripped out of existence — like the one this girl has shown her on a screen, is a power, and a magic that Maja cannot contend with, no matter her mastery.

Maja takes a step towards the door, as if the girl has sullied her own soul with her knowledge, and her Gods curse; like she has touched something filthy and now carries the stain on her palms, like a symbol of betrayal. "This. Or you dare to ask them to lead you to what they serve." Everything serves something. Mortals, men. Gods have their ambitions and their beliefs all the same. Physical, or not. Their purpose, as she seems to say, might become hers. If she delves into the veil that keeps her where she is, maybe she'll see what drives them. Curiosity is enough to keep Maja interested (and she has been, thus far — eager to know her secrets), but it's not enough for her to risk stripping the layers of the realms to see which one her ghosts lay between.

"I go now."

[aelitatoussaint]

Aelita's features pull into a tight, surprised smile, and she offers a shrug of her shoulders. Why? She could reflect the notion back. Why not?

Her skates leave the ice, onto the security of terra firma, and she plugs along the snowy shore. "If the ice cracked, and I fell in, and you stood there and watched, and somebody else happened by, and pulled me out? Is that meddling in the great plan or is that just... the way? Maybe the caring is the way for some people."

Her features light up at the compliment, and a smile splits her features, tongue pinched for a moment between her teeth. "You always this philosophical?"

Aelita bends down to clear a bench of snow, to switch out of her skates. "Really lends to the whole... vibe you've got going."

[majagrim]

"The way." It is not for Maja to interfere, she supposes. Not without a reason to snip the timeline and reattach it elsewhere. It's the same principle as when her lives are cut and restitched, she comes back either side of the pauses where she simply does not exist. Blank spaces in her lives; if one travelled through time, to one of those moments, there would be no Maja. But the ice skater doesn't appear to have a way to use those sharp blades at her feet to weave and stitch herself choices, or happenstances. Musing, she smiles — clarifying: "And I would have sat and watched. Not stood."

Maja would not have said philosophical, but maybe it is, to the skater.

"I care for your beauty," That's worth something. She licks her lips, cold and frostbitten. Shrugging, casual and free-spirited. "And maybe I believe in your skill to never let the ice crack at all."

Her eyes follow the skater, as she unlaces shoes, and trades out her bladed ones.

A foot gently carves a trough out of the snow, just to see how clear a rune might be made, since they talked vanishing acts. But she pauses, to ask about what exactly the queen of the ice sees, compared to Grimhjarta: "And what is that, vibe?"

[viktorialomidze]

She is asked to translate, so she turns the book - gently - back towards herself. Viktoria's fingertips trace the words as she reads and hums. Slowly, she translates the words out loud so as to not make a mistake and allow the witch to understand.

"The first bones. The first blood. And a vessel between kingdoms. First, sculpt the vessel in the absence of light, and cast a line into darkness."

Viktoria understands the first instruction, but not the second. She has no time to question before Maja is feeling around her waist for her ribs. With little to no reaction, she waits for the next task she needs to complete. Taking in a breath, she lifts an eyebrow in response.

"Dear, I'll come when you call, ribs in hand."

[majagrim]

Good. A grave disappointment if this ancient did not know the language. She memorises the words herself, clear off a slow moving tongue. Maja may need time to translate those from metaphor to purpose, and to arrange the sacrifices required to meet needs. Lomidze as a vessel; the pieces of her, so close to the heart would be the anchor to right the ritual.

She would ask for Máni's blessing, and for Sköll and Hati not to interfere. And she would cast on the next growing moon; it is always the most favoured time.

"The next growing moon." Waxing. Whatever ancients refer to it all. "I will come." And they will cast their ritual. Maja does not forget that she too, has paid a price of the Lomidze's compliance. If she takes too much, and does not give. Grimhjarta will devour more than the ancient's last slivers of stolen, half-given life.

Maja relaxes, and steps back, patient if the dead creature desires to indulge her earlier portion of their exchange. She nods, because they have made their plan and it will be enacted; there is nothing more to be done, here. Just for the creature to claim what is promised, in return. "Do what you need."

[judegrigsby]

closed starter for: @majagrim

Jude looked in the mirror again, rubbing longer finger than he's used to over growing stubble on his jawline. The razor provided to him is someone out of a movie - straight razor with just a blade. He's careful as he uses it, making short work of the itch that plagues him.

It's weird. There's a lot of geography to his features that he's not used to. Smaller eyes, bigger ears, fuller jaw and chin. Maybe one day he'll get used to it, but maybe not.

He hears someone enter into the shared space and looks up - he recognizes her from this new life, not the old one. "Shit's still a little weird, you know. It's.. I don't really know where to even start."

[majagrim]

She had found him wandering, too far from resting sites, and too close to civilisation. Maja would have left the boy be, aimless and bug-eyed with days old dirt still beneath his fingernails. But he had prickled at her senses, and her talisman had grown hot beneath her touch. He cannot see it, not like she can. But he's bleeding her power. The power over life and death sung like he is a Grimhjarta, belonging to the troupe of the never resting. A revival so unplanned, that it had never been written on the script; an adlib that stayed in the final cut.

Impossible. She did not know others blessed by Hel.

He is something uncharted. Port Leiry has become an enigma of raw power, and new ages of magic that Maja has never known. Even in all the countries she has slipped through. None of them brought back a life untethered to her, yet so bound to one of her lives, it broke the laws of Hel entirely.

She'd known something had gone wrong that night. Blamed a dead thing, of course. Blamed a brother for his disinterest, and dismissal to take a thing seriously. Blamed the name on the grimoire, too.

Maja sees this boy with soil in his lungs, and a face that does not belong to her troupe.

She had stolen him, like she would thrift a grave and stuffed him in a caravan's bathroom. It's her sanctuary, and he is another life within it, poking at his face in the mirror like a newborn child. Revived from a life that no longer hangs on her talisman, just ashes of bonedust. She cannot ignore the signature of Grimhjarta power, the same way she could not ignore Norwegian if she passed it in the streets of Port Leiry.

"Weird." Yes. Very. "You saw the shores, and clawed through the soil." Did you speak to her? The ruler of Helheim? Did she grant him a talisman like her own, and see something worthy of him, in their band of death and decay? He was not supposed to come back from wherever he had been, she had meant the life to be traded to her brother's talisman; not spent on a stranger now imbued with Grimhjarta magic. "What is your name?" A descendent perhaps? Granted new life, for the first time since the shattering of a talisman. "I brought you back." As if that delivers her rights and power on its own. "You were dead, yes?"

[elio-silvestrini]

The taut pull of tension underneath his shoulders still aches up his neck and behind his eyes, but he does not feel the need to act on it any longer. Now, he simply finds the cool air to give sort of a balm against it all, and as he looks down at the woman - he realizes that he's completely forgotten what he needed in the first place.

Something about.. an office?

It's gone from his mind, and he wants to lay blame on the fact that he can smell her rotted magic from miles away - but he know it's only because he had let his emotions get the better of him. Blinking away his confusion, he looks down at his feet - almost sheepish. "I.." A deeper frown. "I think I was - lost. I was lost. Looking for direction."

[majagrim]

Looking for direction. Weren't most? She cannot recall what his question had been between driving her teeth through his arm, and the aftermath of the wolf on her tongue. He's certainly lost, Maja could have figured that, without asking.

"For where?"

In recovered civility, Grimhjarta does a duty to point out what she knows. A finger lashes out by his shoulder, indicating to his rear. "Here. Entrance. Same as exit." Then a thumb to jut behind her. "Totes, smykker, meat in buns. That way." Either side of the crossroads of the markets they're in the midst of, "Food, also." And finally, she nods towards the left, "Business. Suits. Yes?"

All she knows, in her sly hands slipping between coats, open bags and overalls. She has already staked claim to the wolfen wallet, tucked in her jacket. It's time she leaves him to nurse his mind.

She slips back into the crowd with a smile, "Bye now, wolf."

[dread-frequencies]

Holly stares at Maja - and she knows - knows that she shouldn't do this. But she wants to, because nothing hits like a harder drug to her than to be believed. Not just acknowledge, not just a skeptical concession that it's not impossible. But believed.

"I can show you."

* * *

It's cold as hell outside, and she misses the damp humidity of the laundromat almost instantly, but sitting in the back of her van with all its equipment and wires, she's spent five minutes with shivering fingers digging through memory cards full of digitized tape.

It's like she has a religious epiphany when the screen lights up with the right file, and she practically shoves it into Maja's hand. She hasn't show anyone this - she has no idea why she's so giddy to show this woman now.

The tape starts, and its a different Holly than the one sitting in the back of this van with Maja - more full bodies, more rested. There isn't this morose aura about her - it's a Holly who is still just living the next day of her eventful life. She delivers what seems to be the opening of a public access television show. She talks in enticing, sensational tones about convergences and rumors and celestial phenomenon, and then, as if out of nowhere, there's a shudder in the image, and a wave jostles everything in the picture, and Holly stands, staring at the horizon where a town goes from a twinkling oasis in the flat heartlands of the flyover country to a dark monument of nothing, and Holly, speech stopped, stairs into the sky, as if she's seen something immense and captivating. The camera seems to jump then, and Holly flashes from that standing position to one sprawled out in the grass. She slowly stands, moving for the camera, and the video ends.

"I... if I'd just had the camera pitched up, even a few degrees..." she breas the quiet. "I... I don't even know how to describe it but... five hours, like that-" she snaps her fingers. I drove the whole night, trying to get away while it just... watched me from the sky, and then when the sun came up... it was gone. But it hasn't... left me alone ever since. Not for long, anyways."

[majagrim]

Showing is more delicious than telling.

Even if it is within the walls of an electrical tomb, with wiring dangling from above and sockets plugged into generators. It's a just a dimmer, crass depiction of their caravans at the circus. But this is not her home soil. It is tin she does not know, with a woman plagued with shadows of different origin. She's been thrusted a tape that she watches, with transfixed eyes.

She does not want to be sold on a woman and a microphone —

But then.

A civilisation torn out of its root.

What trickery is this? This cannot be magic like they know. This is the power of the Gods. Must be. Like what Hel possesses. Odin has struck down a town and punished them for something. If not him, then another. All of them. Maja stabs at the screen, reversing the line back and forth, as if she might see a signature of something other that tells her what she desires to know.

"You saw it." And now so has Maja. A witness to something not intended for eyes to know. A clever curse of sight, and sound. Of nothing, and no one. Maja turns to look at her own phantom, trapped in the gap of a closed van door, and then she searches for the ones this woman has; whatever entities hold onto her, and her ability of knowing. "This is the work of Gods." Not magic like Maja's, or the Circus. Real, divine. Celestials that can vaporise worlds. What has this woman done, to deserve this retribution? "But they do not hurt you, no? They watch." Like she watched. Maja drops the tape back to the woman's messy desk, before she is hexed by whatever origin power has tangled itself in it. "An echo of what you have seen, yes?"

If they stay their distance, then she is merely a syn seer, of sorts. She wonders if her uncle dared want to touch this magic, or know. Grimhjarta thinks that she is has adopted the residue of a power she stood too close to. Maybe it would fade, with time.

Maybe it would devour her, eventually, the same way it ate that city up.

Maja wonders too, if she brings down some layers of one of the veils, how long it would take her to find the woman's shadows, and to see if they like to be found.

[aelitatoussaint]

Hard not to feel a little smug about somebody brazenly claiming to enjoy watching, but Aelita's skates scuff to a stop, spitting a cone of glittering frost away from her - she's careful, of course, not to do it towards this stranger - and turns to regard Maja's flippancy. "I think it matters when anyone disappears." It's perhaps more passionate than she intends it to be.

"I have a healthy amount of respect," she says. Not quite true; most would characterize her respect as disregard, but she's never been one to take prescription from others. "Sorry, not to imply you don't."

This woman lights a certain kind of candle in her mind - she can't tell if it's intrigue or warning. She pushes herself forward, listessly drifting closer to the shore, until she stands there, opposite from Maja, arms folded over her chest.

"I'm not afraid of the ice or the cold or the dark though, no - I'm used to all of that. You should hear me whine in the Summertime," she muses with a wink.

[majagrim]

Maja cannot help the spark of surprise on her face at the skater's sudden shift. Intensity behind the statement; she cares about the people. That's the real tragedy. Such a pretty thing, queening over the ice sympathised with the way of the world. It does not change, because she closed her eyes and hoped those gone would come back.

Maja would like to understand that.

“Why?” If the woman dropped through the same mirrored crystal under her feet, Maja would likely watch it happen. She would not report it, or offer a hand in the water without reason — and whoever she is, would bloat and be discovered as an ugly corpse when the frost melted.

There’s always passing comment about staying safe, but she’s heard plenty in the course of wishing for a vanishing act. In every town, city or village. Whether in the circus, or in the street. The world did not care for lost causes. She recalls that one flatcapped man outside a florist, once said he’d like the President to vanish. Would that actually matter? Even a big name, with big people. In a big house.

They all bled the same.

She’d been right to assume that Grimhjarta’s respect does not offer free branches to all. No apology needed. “I think if you fell, and this ice cracked.” She could test the theory, if she wanted — with a snow-drawn rune. “It is simply the way. You were then meant to go under.” Maybe for something higher; a purpose greater than herself. More tragedies — even if this was hypothetical.

A smile, as white as the snow. “A waste though. Such beauty.”

[viktorialomidze]

Her blood as the conduit sounds just about correct. Maja speaks of the grey realm, her own cultures and beliefs and religion weaving through her words. Witches, she thinks, and their faith, are amusing at best. She silently thanks the powers that be (whomever they are) that this woman isn't doused in the belief that Christ is all. Otherwise she'd turn her away at the door.

Her eyebrows raise the idea of the witch taking her ribs - and giving them back. Would they grow back? Potentially. In all her years as this undead thing, she had sustained many wounds and many broken bones. Regrowing or having them taken is a new experience. It excites her, she thinks. And if she gets to keep them afterwards, then they will reattach.

An offshoot of Garnett from over the sea? Interesting. That means life energy. Healing, death, the like. Makes sense, with the way she speaks of her own magic, with the markings she barely understands in the books. She's seen a fair few here and there, and seemingly every larger coven has its signature. Grimhjarta. She will research that name later.

"Then learn I will, once you take my blood and my ribs." She offers a smile, wide and sharp. "Have at it, witch friend."

[majagrim]

Maja studies the pages, as if the ink may bleed and shift under her touch. She thinks there is Latin scrawled in small script down the side of a page, and detailed in length at the base. She thought it irrelevant notations; a spellcaster with bad memory, but in the curious doubt she wonders if it were translations for exactly what might be required to promise success of the ritual.

She had the conduit. The blood, the ribs; the tie between life and death. Ancient, and old. The first of its kind, or near enough.

A willing cold one and the chance to equal the playing ground for herself and her brother. "Vampyr." She mutters, beckoning the woman closer. Maja is under no impression that her languages would best an ancient, so in case she dares let Janet trick her into an incomplete ritual, she asks the Lomidze. "Translate. Be precise."

prima ossa, primus sanguis et vas inter regna, Vas primum absente luce sculpe, et lineam in tenebras iacta.

She would not get this wrong, if it is to cost her an almost life, by the end of this. Maja turns around and presses on either side of the dead creature's ribs, feeling for the lowest of them; easiest to remove, she believes. It would take a while to slice away, and even longer to hack them from the cage. Lomidze may need to break them, herself.

Maja grins, because she is not sure friend is a word they would use. The creature is the other side of death; the duller sort, but helpful in the case of sacrifice.

"Yes. I take two." Decided. She thinks it is better, to draw the runes around and soak them in the blood; she would develop the version of the spell, with her talisman in mind. She needed to call Ivar, to get him to detach his, for them to stand a real chance of transference between lives.

Maja's not sure how long she would be able to keep the channel of hers open, before it would snap itself back, and cancel out all her intended preparations, otherwise.

Grimhjarta stops dragging fingers over the other's body, following her internal plotting. "When will you be ready?"

[elio-silvestrini]

People stare as they wander by them, but keep their distance. What goes on in this odd town of Port Leiry that this does not bother them. Elio clutches his arm, digging fingers into it as the wound finishes stitching itself together.

Her words, at first, are in a language that does not sound familiar to him - but the English comes next and there is somewhat a sense of relief when he hears it - even if he is completely on edge now after the bite. But he tries to steel himself against the roiling waves of anger and fear that still prickle at the back of his mind.

He reminds himself there is no need - she was simply protecting herself. He had been the one to make the mistake. The idea of a mistake sets alarms in his mind alight, too, and he grimaces against the mixture of anxiety that's begins to seed itself in between the wolfish anger.

A few breaths to calm, and then, "I.. apologize. Again. Wish no harm on you."

[majagrim]

They are stagnant in the sea of movement. He speaks more with his body language, than he does with words. Maja can respect that. It has an artistry to it. Tension that roils, and fingers that clasp tight and desperate.

She had rather they hadn't grabbed hold of her so suddenly, but she believes he's got the message, now. The same warning in every language.

So, she nods acceptingly at him. Good. He can wish for the God's mercy, if he chose to, she would not stop him. Bloodied teeth had already spoken up.

At the beginning of it all, he'd said something of note and she'd disliked his manner. Changed the path of their meeting. There's still time to check over pockets that are yet to be emptied; something heavy in a black jacket beside her. His. Passerbys. Sleight of hand that fills her own coat. His arm is almost healed, but she thinks it is a shame her teeth do not decorate his skin in pale pink.

"What did you want?"

[rosexhalstead]

Originally, Annabelle had been looking for Ivar. When she saw that he was preoccupied with several women, she pushed away a bit of jealousy that she felt and found her way towards the larger tent. If he was too busy to teach her something new, then she planned to at least try something on her own. Something a little less dangerous than walking the tightrope. Although, she desperately wanted to feel the adrenaline again.

She hadn't even managed to figure out what she wanted to try, as the moment she snuck into the big top, she was immediately transfixed by another performance. It wasn't as risky as the tightrope, but it was mesmerizing. Without even thinking, Annabelle took several steps towards the chalky floor, as if she, too, was going to perform.

It wasn't until the woman addressed her that Belle was able to snap back to reality. "Oh, I know. I'm not here for the show." She hooked a thumb back where she came from. "Ivar-- I was here to meet him. Or, well, he didn't know that. I kind of just showed up. Thought he could show me some more things..." She ran her tongue over her lips as she glanced towards the metal ring. "I was here the other day. I tried the tightrope." She pointed upwards. "I'm Annabelle. Belle for short. Ivar tends to call me Rosie, though."

[majagrim]

The moment the name Ivar slipped from her mouth, Maja understands what it is. A wandering hopeful who he had entertained for a night. Now she believes herself a member of the troupe; walking freely through Grimhjarta's land as if she could feel the pulse of its energy, right beneath her feet.

The big top always looks larger, when emptied of life. The two of them, separated by the guardrail of the arena did very little in shrinking its power.

"Show you more things?" She lifts a brow, her mouth drawn up into amusement. Maja could show the girl a world of things, if she stripped off her clothes and laid down in the chalk beneath her. A lazy, dismissive hand, regardless: "You go find him playing dice with others." A helpful Grimhjarta, being courteous to circusgoers. Directions. Eyes rake her up and down, "But, I could show you more."

But then it is clear, they're talking differently.

The tightrope. "You perform?" You? Her bror has begun entertaining fodder. She only has to assume it is to carve her up for sacrifice later; it's so much cleaner when they willingly walk into it. Maja still cannot wipe the edge of glass in the walls of the mirror maze from one of the last ones. She had to move it into the darkness of the haunted house, so it suited the rest of the blood.

"These names have no sense." Maja murmurs, "Anna—belle, Rosie."

An American thing, then.

What she does notice, is that if she came by and lived to come back in search of Ivar. She fared okay, in the act. "You can still walk, so you did not break your legs." She'd liked to know exactly what the game is, with the pretty but too eager, woman. "Take shoes off." She'll snap an ankle if she catches them on the equipment. Maja considers the trapeze, and wonders if she could stomach it. "Tie shirt, or take off. It's too loose."

[photoaria]

She catches onto the teasing lilt that Maja offers her, but doesn't shy away from the touch, even if it does make her feel gooseflesh on her arms. Aria smiles at her, simply. "If I were to take photos of you, it would be something that makes you feel at home in your skin. Perhaps your own accoutrements." Once Maja finishes trailing her finger down, she lifts her own hand - showing off the coffin, "As for derobing myself, I'm afraid that's only a sight my fiancee gets to see."

The woman speaks and it sounds like riddles, like a madness worming its way through her psyche, and for the first time during the conversation, she's not sure she can follow the logic she speaks. Aria internalizes it, though, for her to think on later - Free of locks, and long-lived minds. There is no reason for her to breathe to keep the imitation up, but she still lets her chest rise and fall with the mimic of movement as she looks down on Maja.

"I like to think so." That's an easier question, but one a little more loaded than maybe she thinks it is. Good company, but a good person? Hard to determine. Is she only good company to a select few? Perhaps. Another mimic of a sigh, and her hands go to the pockets in her slacks, tilting her head to study the witch.

"But maybe I'm self-centered and egotistical, like all artists."

[majagrim]

Hm. What is home to someone who has not stayed anywhere for longer than a few years? She supposes she would consider where she had been conceived, and brought into the world, home. The first language, and her first steps taken on that soil. A homeland, then. Where her mind wanders back to, in times of quiet. It's a perspective she had not lingered on, for long.

"Yes." A smirk, "Will you put me on your wall?" If clothes are required, she wears what is comfortable, and practical for performing. Harems, and tight wrapped short sleeves. In the city's shifting weather, more woollen sweaters. She is only teasing the woman, but it is one of the better artists in the room, because provocation has her attention without much effort. A nature she cannot — and doesn't care to, kill.

A coffin on a phalange shouldn't be so amusing, for its irony to Maja. But she hides it behind the smile as she pokes a finger vertical on Aria's palm, to encourage the hand closer. "They can come, too." Grimhjarta says, undeterred by traditional intent. Maja asks about the ring, nonetheless. "A casket, no? You both lay in these and wait to die." Sacrifice. Prey; wasteful. Interesting for an immortal to like its symbolism. She does not pretend to understand. "Funny. I like."

Fingers slip away, and allow Aria her hand back.

There is an artistry to Aria, and Maja is not sure if it is the boudoir or her character, yet. She is intrigued, because she has a God at her back. Something to be cautious of, if there is any power attached to her soul. The dead are usually cut off from the realms, but Maja has learned to consider that magic can be bent out of sorts, by determined hands.

"I think so." Shameless flirt, no matter which of their egos might glow brighter. "You should come to show. Bring your other." Invitation to the Circus, because it would be fun for them all. They see death in different ways, and it would be amusing to see glimpses of what one thinks of another getting to close to its knife. A joke, for the gravity-defying aspects, "I think I can make your heart beat, again."