Natalya Lamb

A safe night, I'm living in the forest of my dream
I know the night is not as it would seem
I must believe in something, so I'll make myself believe it
That this night will never go

Natalya is a thin woman with an hourglass silhouette and a slim build. She dresses to accent her figure all the more sharply when within the circus. She's trim, agile, and flexible to the point where one might question if she has any bones at all. She takes "double-jointed" to a new extreme and is remarkably coordinated.

Natalya isn't very tall. She's five and a half feet in heels and carries herself in an aloof manner, body language drawing inward rather than projecting outward. It's a radiating calmness, serenity even, with her large, curious eyes, that make people want to fall into her like a bed of pillows after a long day's work. She's a watcher, Natalya is, studying those she meets as if picking out the individual blocks that comprise their makeup. Her dark hair and pale skin accent myriad tattoos covering her skin, from her neck to her arms to her thighs.

She dresses to impress, alternating between form-fitting outfits to silk scarves only covering her most private areas, to a parody of the formal, complete with top hat and coat. A macabre ringmaster in a circus of Others. She plays host several nights a week when the circus is in town. Sometimes she'll be found in a tent, telling fortunes as a dark mystic. She'll be the fire-dancer on top of a stage in a corner. She's the temptress breathing softly against your neck and asking you to tell her what you really want, most in the world. Asking what you'd give to have it. How long you're willing to give it for.

Few people forget meeting Natalya. She moves to her own vibration and can sense the same in others. She's drawn, always with those wide and curious eyes, to people who strike her fancy. There's little rhyme or reason to who that'll be either, as if she's steered by chance alone. When they leave the circus that morning, she'll dance through their dreams as well.

Natalya offers no details about her personal life and no one at the circus can shed any light on them either. She's been with the circus as long as, or longer, than anyone else. How long has that been exactly? One hot dog vendor might tell you it's their first summer working the circus. An older funnel cake vendor might tell you they started back in the 80's. Natalya has always been there. Always as she is.

"Natalya" is a persona. The persona is more fun than the real self and she finds safety, relaxation, and enjoyment in what she does. If she has a real self beneath, that is, then it's kept well-sheltered and shielded by the mask that's shown to the population at large. Living a nomadic lifestyle makes it all the easier to do. She's moved on before anyone's had a chance to dig too deeply into her or forge any real connection to her.

Some stories still circulate. Natalya only performs at night and is rarely seen during the daytime. She's never seemed to age. Surely part of the act... surely. She has a new tattoo from time to time or a long-standing tattoo will have vanished. She doesn't comment on it. No one asks. The skull-masked silent workers make warding signs with their hands and move along when pressed.

Others at the circus regard her as a big sister. Someone they've gone to, spilled their troubles out to, and cried on her lap while she stroked their hair and told them it'd be alright. Others claim she's a genuine mystic, not a sideshow charlatan, who can sense the connections a person shares with the world and other people around them. She plucks the strings, they say, and makes the world vibrate in response. Others are more fearful, claiming she's the locus in the center of a dark ring of fate. That she meddles with forces not understood and unleashes them on the unwary, in dictation of her mercurial temperament.

All of this hypes the woman up more, the good rumors and the bad. Which ones are true? Some of them? All of them? None of them? You may just have to catch a show or get a private reading to know for sure...

She's a deal-maker. Natalya is fond of those. People have come to her for all kinds of help in the past. All of them have received it, in some form or another, whether expected or unexpected. Sometimes her help is a double-edged sword. There's always a price and the price doesn't always make sense to the rational mind.

One man who wanted to quit smoking asked her to take away the addiction cravings. In return, she asked him to toss a fly a day into a spider's web for a lunar month. He did so and found he couldn't even remember what it felt like to want a cigarette. Until three weeks in, he forgot to throw a fly to a spider, and the cravings came back full force. Now he's on double as many packs a day and the doctors are worried about shadows they saw on his lungs at his last exam.

Another man wished for the woman of his dreams to love him forever and take care of him. She did. She became obsessed with him. Her former husband disappeared and she moved in with him. She takes care of him. Feeds him, dresses him, and makes sure no harm ever comes to him. He's lived in his house for years now, trapped by the overbearing love of a woman who loves him too much to ever let him go. The last time he tried to leave, the love of his life shattered his legs so he'd never be hurt by "the outside world". Weeping, the man admits it was terrible selfishness that led to his wish... and he refuses to share what he paid for it. He only wishes he could take his wish back and... quiet, his wife might have heard you talking to him ...

A third wanted to win enough on a scratch off ticket to pay for his vehicle that month. Natalya said he would, provided he sleep with a stuffed snake under his pillow for a week. The man did so, at the end of the week the ticket was just enough money, and he was saved from having it repossessed. He'll say nothing but good things about the woman aside from allowing that she was odd and his dreams that week were even odder still. How he'd felt like he wasn't alone, which was both unnerving and reassuring at the same time. How she'd been in his dreams more than once too, from what he could remember. He thinks she took something from them while he was asleep but he doesn't remember what and it doesn't sound so very important really.

What is Natalya then? The Crone? Baba Yaga? Beelzebub at the end of a long night's revelry at a carnival? An aspect of the Morrigan? Of the Asherah? One of the Fair Folk come to make trade with hapless mortals?

No one knows. If anyone's ever found out the truth, they didn't repeat it or leave it anywhere to be found. At least, not that anyone's found yet. Maybe they didn't live to tell the tale. Maybe all of this is too much mystique to make of some Goth-looking young woman at a quirky nighttime amusement center. Or maybe you'll be the lucky one to find out yourself.