New Beginnings

Born a farmer's daughter, Ursula dreamed of something bigger, wilder. Into her teens she worked the wheat fields until on a hot summers night a circus passed by her small village. There she saw things she had never even thought to dream – fire-breathers, monkey tamers, people flying high above, lightning that crashed to the ground at a moments notice.

She spent the night entranced by the mysticism of life outside her small existence.

The next morning, she awoke before the sun cracked the horizon and ventured forth to see the festival tents coming down. There she spied a covered cart sitting unattended, she knew this was her way out of the mundane, this is how she could seek adventure! Swiftly she moved, wrapped in her cloak, to the circus cart. As she climbed into the rear, she heard a gruff voice behind her shout:

“What is it you think you are doing here child?”

A large beard man tossed a bale of hay onto Ursula and she stumbled backwards.

“If you’re looking for travel you could stay back here, or you could help with some labor and ride up front. Your choice.”

Ursula didn’t have the words in her throat to speak but the older man turned away and left. Looking down at the hay bale she was left to ponder the almighty decision she and spontaneously arrived at last night while wrapped in magic’s whimsy.

What was she to do?

Just a farm hand with no hope of freedom here, but on this cart, there may be opportunity, sights she had never seen, people she had never met, and most of all magic.

She lifted her chin and starred out where the old man had been and made up her mind, she walked out of the circus cart and into the light of dawn breaking the horizon.

Death Follows

Years passed living with the travelling troupe, but as she grew the primary magicks of the natural elements didn't not come to her willingly. Fire did not obey, water evaporated, the earth would not move, and the wind would not blow...but unbeknownst to Ursula it seemed the lore of death and the underworld followed where ever she went. Try as she might to conjure or cast fire, she was much more likely to leave a trail of dead fauna behind her as she walked the fair grounds.

Her new and growing powers began to separate her from her carnival peers, as they began to see her as a threat and omen. Some would even mock her and toss the occasional vegetable or stone.

"CURSED" "FORSAKEN"

They would shout as they passed her by while she forked hay into the animal pens. The old man that had taken her in and tried to teach her the ways of magic knew their time together was coming to a close.

“They fear you Ursula, what you could be. I’m worried about you, what you could become, I don’t want to see you go down the wrong path”

She lay awake that night thinking about those words, the other workers stares and taunts that she had withstood for years. Death magic and the dark arts were frowned upon in a place of joy and pleasure. Anger swelled inside her, pumped it's way through her veins and into her heart.

"Why me?"

A crow called in the distance, the sound reverberating into her ear sending a chill through her spine that froze the rage deep within.

Death was surely with her.

Alone

Ursula's body trembled from the cold and hunger as she took refuge in a small barn set back on a dirt road.

It had been weeks since she was chased from the Carnival, under the accusations that she had murdered her caretaker in his sleep.

She knew she had done no such thing, as she was sleeping when it all was said to have happened. But try as she might there was no one to be convinced of her innocuous, with the only person left that believed in her now gone.

A crow perched in a near-by tree called, and Ursula felt that same chill that she had felt the night everything changed.

What was she to do? Driven from any sort of home with no mastery of magic, just some twisted idea of it that left the blades of grass beneath her feet withering and brown.

Outside she heard a wagon being towed by a few horses. Ursula peered out through the cool night air, and spied a woman that sat atop the cart urging the horses onward, in the rear she spied goods. Probably a merchant. Could they have food?

Ursula felt the hunger wrack her body again, her stomach buckled, she keeled over.

A bird dropped from the rafters.

A scythe caught the corner of her eye, like the one’s she used as a child to clear the fields of long grass.

Her mind went blank.

The barn door opened.

She stepped out, and headed towards the wagon, scythe in hand.

Entered by: 0x01C3…01fa and preserved on chain (see transaction)