abraxaslogs | {Every time I take your lead, feels like a curse

OOC

Note

HMU on Inej's HMD / @ loyalwolf[#3540] on plurk[/discord] for something specific!

I. generalized prompts

OTA

• During the days she can be found at Portam Hall for her dayjob as a courier and assistant. She can probably direct you to the right floor or office if you're lost.
• Since getting the new job, she's running less of Mag's morning errands. Most evenings, she can still be found perched behind the bar in the tavern downstairs at the inn.
• Easily spotted at most any time with either one or both of Jesper Fahey or Kaz Brekker
• One might also find her at night perched on rooftops, usually the inn or perhaps wandering elsewhere- she moves like smoke through your fingers, but she's also not impossible to catch up to, if someone's particularly inclined.

Descended from The People of the Air

OTA

Inej is climbing up and up and up to the top platform inside the circus tent in her domain. She's dressed in a bright outfit, easy to spot even by the most rogue wanderer. The only difference in her outfit this time against other times she's found herself inside the tent is the pair of leather gloves on her hands- sleek and tight against her hands almost like a second skin, but open-fingered to give her better maneuverability.

The routine she falls into is old and familiar, fits like a worn glove. Imagine, had she had these Fabrikator slippers when she was performing! It made it even easier to trust the sureness of her steps along the taught wire strung up high above the ground. But perhaps it's for the best she learned without them, it makes them a greater tool now than if she'd relied on them in such a way in the beginning.

She takes some time to get completely steady, always easing into the routines before she starts making it look more like she's dancing in midair. There's noticeably no net at all to catch her if she falls- a very specific choice she always makes when she practices her old routines. Each step the same as ones she had performed hundreds of times in front of crowds of hundreds, maybe more? She'd never really been fussed with the number of people in the crowd when she performed with her family.

She pauses for a moment, steadies her feet against the wire and slowly tips herself over onto her hands- she wobbles, but steadies after a moment and moves forward, walking across the rope until she tips over in a careful cartwheel onto the platform again, arms stretched high above her head, wrists flicking in a flourish at her imaginary- or not so imaginary?- audience.

Not so imaginary an audience, this time. Michael has slipped in mid-performance, silent and unnoticed as angels tend to. He's as much prone to people-watching when given the opportunity as anyone. Observing had always been his role towards humanity in Heaven, and it still comes naturally to him now.

He claps at her flourish, short and polite.

"Hobby or livelihood?" He's not quite yelling, but he does have to raise his voice to be heard from the stands below.

A circus tent and a colourful outfit might not have been quite what he'd have expected of someone as devout as Inej, but truth be told he never knows what to expect of a believer. It's not exactly a category limited to a single interest or occupation. Back home, there were as many performers and artists in Heaven as there were nuns and priests (more, in fact). Inej's beliefs bear only a cosmetic resemblance to the religions that venerate Michael's Father, anyway.

Inej thinks it's very rude of the Angels to be as sneaky as she is. But she likes Michael well enough that she isn't entirely bothered by his sudden presence.

"Both?" she calls back to him with a wide shrug, her hands out in front of her. She makes quicker work of scaling down the side of the platform than she had taking each rung of the ladder up earlier. This, too, is almost a dance of sorts, learned when slinking in shadows and skating on rooftops in Ketterdam.

She hops off when she's near enough it wouldn't hurt to jump and lands with the grace of a cat before heading over to where he's perched himself in the stands. "Entertainment troupes are one of the only ways my people can support ourselves back home, so...a lot of us are travelling performers."

Rude is just part of the package when dealing with archangels. Michael in particular has met vanishingly few individuals who had the authority or power to correct him. He doesn't consider this particular infiltration rude, anyway. If she wanted privacy, surely she would have kept this part of her domain behind a locked door.

He nods at her answer, approving. The angel perspective on work doesn't exactly line up with the human one, but as acquainted as he is with the burden of responsibility, Michael can appreciate the appeal of work that's fulfilling.

"You're fortunate to enjoy it, then. Duties are not always pleasant," he says, quieter now that she's nearby. "Is this how you make a living here, in Abraxas?"

She doesn’t mind the company. There’s always something a little starstruck and reverent about her with Michael, though. If the Divine deign to make time for you, you do not refuse.

“I did audition and get a smaller part in the circus in the Free Cities, but with Thorne’s attack on Libertas, it’s been on hold.” She shrugs. “But I also have a courier job at city hall.” That’s the one she actually counts as her job.

Truth be told, there's very little divine to Michael's purpose these days. No Heaven to run, no demons to drive back into Hell, no God to issue to commands—and no guarantee he'd bend the knee even if there were. He'll take whatever veneration she cares to show him anyway, same as he takes the Solvunn natives' awe in stride.

"Ah. That is unfortunate." He has few connections in the Free Cities, so the attack on Libertas had meant little to him outside the opportunity to prepare supplies within Solvunn. It's more regrettable now, knowing it has robbed someone he knows of something they enjoy.

He waves a hand at the nearby seats, inviting Inej to join him. If she's not going to head back up onto her platform to continue the routine, she may as well sit.

"Life here has demanded adjustments from all of us. What's the day to day of a courier like?"

She smiles and climbs into the stands to sit with him, one row below, back turned to the stage. "Libertas is an arts city, once it's possible, I'm sure it'll pick back up," her faith extends to all things, a hope and optimism that there was a time she wouldn't have thought she might have found her way back to. She wouldn't have, if she had never escaped Heleen's grasp, she's certain of it.

"True," she nods her agreement, then shrugs. "Pretty boring, honestly. I just deliver mail, really. But it's something to do, and it pays decently enough." She has no idea what they're saving for, at this point. The sake of having it, mostly, she supposes. No talk of renting any space or buying someplace has come up so far, they're sitting pretty at Mag's for the time being.

She leans back carefully, keeping her balance steady, "What about you? What do you do to pass the time?"

Michael gives a small nod of acknowledgement. He lacks Inej's optimism, but he lives on a longer timescale than most. From observation, given time and materials, humans will always choose to build.

"A shame that I'll never be able to visit Libertas, even after it's rebuilt. The human passion to create art is compelling." Music in particular intrigues Michael, but humans have an urge to create works of all sorts—a desire that most angels lack. They're second only to God himself in that capacity.

He considers her question, expression pensive. His daily routine is rarely more exciting than mail delivery, but there is a novelty to the experience all the same.

"That depends on what the natives need most on any particular day. Solvunn is very community-minded. I assist some of the locals who were supportive when I first arrived: farm work for the most part, tending fields and animals," he says. "I never much interacted with humans prior to arriving here. It's very different from what I'm accustomed to."

"Angels don't make art?" she asks curiously, tipping her head to the side. She still learning about them. Her own Saints were from all walks of life, she can't fathom there being no artist among them.

She nods a little. She wasn't there long, but it seems some things remain true no matter what. "It's good to experience things you're not familiar with. It helps you understand the world a little more, I think."

What she's liable to learn about angels from Michael is the ideal standard more than the current reality. The other two here, Castiel and Lucifer, haven't been good examples of what a proper angel is in a few years (a few millennia, in the latter case).

"Not under normal circumstances, no." Michael can't rightly say he's never made art, anymore. Thanks to Jo, he'd found himself coaxed into putting pencil to paper on their recent diplomatic cruise. "We're soldiers. We don't have leisure time, and we don't spend time on Earth unless there is a duty to carry out.

"That is how it used to be, at least. There's no Heaven for us to occupy, here. Perhaps with enough experience, I'll understand why I was summoned here in the first place."

To aid Solvunn, as per the ones that dragged him out of the water, but why the summoning ritual caught onto him in particular is a mystery.

Soldiers. It makes her think of the Second Army and she isn't sure how to feel about that if she's completely honest. "Was there a war in Heaven?" her questions are always genuine, only wanting to understand more of the life Michael had once lived in a place she can't quite fathom, but is curious about all the same.

"I'm not sure any of us are meant to understand that," she admits with a thoughtful frown. "But if you figure it out, will you tell me, too?"

"We may not share a common purpose here, but I will," he says, and gives a short nod.

It's good to have friends from other parts of Abraxas, as he's coming to learn. The mysteries of the Singularity and the summoning ritual are perhaps not ones that can be understood from the perspective of any one single faction.

Michael's expression tightens at her question. His siblings' inclination for infighting is not a topic he cares to discuss in detail.

"Being a soldier is about discipline and order more than it is making war. We weren't conceived to fight one another, if that's the idea you're getting." Which isn't to say that there'd never been conflict in Heaven, just that the parts most aptly described as a civil war didn't happen under his watch. "Most of my time in Heaven was devoted to protecting my Father's creation."

"Thank you," she smiles, a soft, reverent thing. A promise from the Divine is the most precious thing she could ever receive.

Inej doesn't miss the pinched expression, and she matches it with a frown of her own at his first statement. "In my experience, soldiers are always made for war," Ravka had been war-torn for longer than she'd been alive, and it wasn't any better in this world, if you asked her.

"How do you protect everything without interfering?" That sounds like a nearly insurmountable task to lay at anyone's feet.

Oblivious to the significance his agreement carries for Inej, Michael barrels on. He lifts his eyebrows a hair at her remark.

"And how many of the soldiers you have known have been angels?"

A soldier is a soldier, but an angel is not a human being. For all that he couldn't trust his younger brothers and sisters to keep their blades out of each other when he wasn't around, his and Raphael's command of the Heavenly Host had been near absolute. There had been no wars without his say-so.

"With minimal interference," he amends, then motions between the two of them. "These days, with direct and frequent interference. Though we may not be speaking of the same protections. It was never my job to defend humans from one another."

"None, I suppose." At the very least, none she'd known of. But she seems to accept that for what it is. She isn't meant to understand the workings and designs of The Divine, and that's okay.

"Did you prefer it the other way? When you had the distance." she's just curious. Michael is such a...stern sort of- well, man? person? are they even the right words? She's not sure. But he's got a very no-nonsense sort of vibe, which she supposes might clash with plenty of other people, Angels and humans alike.

She considers it for a moment and hums softly. "I think I understand...?" but the way she says it lends to the idea that she could still be wrong, and is fine with it if that's the case. "Your job could never be so simple as that. I know as a whole, we tend to think of ourselves as the most important, but everything means... everything. Humans are only a spec inside the wider universe."

She tips her head to the side as she considers him for a long moment. "I can hardly fathom the burden of the pressure laid on your shoulders." There's only so much the human mind can even really conceptualize, and she knows it doesn't end there. There are so many things they still don't know the answers to. But someone like Michael would hold all of that in their hands and have to choose when it was best to wield it or share it. Fate of some era or other of the world in his hands.

It's the circus tent that had caught her eye as she wandered through some of the more unknown reaches of the Horizon this afternoon. There's a bite of nostalgia as she takes in the striped canvas, a momentary pang of missing her partner and the sarcastic quips he'd no doubt be making right now, were he at her side. But she heads for the tent, ducks through the opening and pauses as she lets her eyes adjust to the dim interior.

It's the sound of movement that draws her gaze upwards, following the progress of a slim slip of a girl as she balances herself on her precarious perch. Even from here, Natasha can see she's an expert at her craft, the way she holds herself, the way she moves.

By the time the girl finishes her display and cartwheels onto the far platform, she can only chuckle, a warm smile curving across her lips as she watches. Knowing it was safe to speak now that she wouldn't risk disturbing her concentration, she steps out into the ring beneath the tightwire, head still canted upwards.

"Do you always practice without a net?"

Inej spins on her toes and looks down where the woman stands far below. "Yes," she says it with too much confidence for it to be false bluster. It's just a simple truth.

She sits on the platform, legs crossed in a lotus position, "But you aren't the first person to have opinions about it," she's thinking of Kaz and the numerous arguments they've had about it through the years.

"I didn't claim to have opinions."

Natasha counters with a crooked smile, and while that's true, it had answered a different question. She leans against one of the poles across the ring from where the young woman perches, her arms crossed over her chest.

"To be honest, I'd probably do the same. Does it help to keep you focused?" It's a guess - she could be way off base, but...

"You don't have to claim to have them for opinions to exist," she flips it back at her whip-sharp, but a wide grin on her face all the while. People are wandering into her tent more lately and she really, really kind of adores it.

She thinks about it for a moment, mulling over the best way to explain it before she settles on, "It puts doubt on the wire with me, steals the certainty from my steps."

"That's true." Natasha's grin just widens at the quick quip, amused. "Okay, in that case, I wasn't going to make my opinions your problem. Better?"

Not that she disapproved, and that was pretty evident in her amused tone.

The explanation has her humming thoughtfully, however, as she eyes the wire. "Most people would prefer to be certain, when dancing along a razor's edge. Doubt would make them hesitate." She's not one of them, but most people never accused her of being entirely sane, either.

"I trust myself more than any net," and it was the best way to perform on a wire. There's no room for shyness and second-guessing when you're so far up above the ground. "the few times I've had one, are the times things went wrong." So maybe it's a little pinch of superstition, too.

"Almost falling was part of my old routine," she admits easily enough. "my family performed for a living," and it was the most magical thing in the world to her. It's why part of her domain is made up of this. The caravan with its eternally burning campfire and her crow companion aren't far, either.

She looks intrigued at that explanation. "Something to enhance the excitement, then." She can understand that, even if this whole setting is far from the way Natasha learned similar skills.

She also doesn't miss the use of past tense there.

"Do you miss it? Performing?"

"Something like that," she nods with a grin. It's rare she finds someone who understands it in the same way she does.

She nods again, "I do. Less the pomp of it all, and just..." she glances around the tent that looks like so many others she's been underneath in the distant past. It was a whole different lifetime ago. Maybe two of them now, really. "It was family. It was home."

And then somehow, Kaz had found her parents. A fact that digs under her skin every time she thinks of it again. Found. Only to be ripped away to this world instead. Would she ever get to keep them again? Was this her punishment from The Saints?

"I get that." She does. There's a hint of nostalgia in her own voice. Longing. An empty place where those things once fit. She lets her gaze sweep around the tent's interior, almost as if she could see what the other woman would picture that as. "Sometimes they can change shape, though. Take on a new one, in unexpected ways. Family. Home."

Hers had. And she's grateful for them.

But that's also a sad topic all on it's own these days and Natasha didn't come here with that in mind. Instead, she gives the tightrope a speculative look again. "Think you could teach someone how to do that?"

Her smile holds true and bright. "I've known it to be true, as well," new bonds with people, new ties to places, all parts of a life that she had built back in Ketterdam, something she's done further still during her time in Cadens as well. It's even common among her people at their core- roaming the country as the Suli do, it's hard to not make new attachments.

Inej lights up at the question, it's the sort of thing she's never thought about but now that she's faced with the possibility of it, it's kind of exciting. "I've never taught before, but- I could try?"

Natasha can't help but grin at the eagerness that flares across the girl's face.

"Well, I've never tried to balance on something as thin as a tightrope before, so we'll both be trying new things." She doesn't doubt her ability to manage it, but she'd prefer to learn it from an expert rather than trial and error. That can wait for practicing it.

"I guess that's true." she muses. She hesitates only another second before she gets up from her perch on the platform and makes a hasty descent down to ground level. There's a sinuous quality to way she moves while she climbs, not unlike curls of smoke or a nosy cat. Once she's low enough she can trust it, she jumps from ladder onto the ground below. It isn't really a performance, but it isn't exactly not one, either.

She marches over to where the other woman waits and holds out a hand in introduction. "I am Inej."

It is, however, a familiar sort of grace and balance that Natasha is familiar with, one she watches with a thoughtful glance, observing things that stand out to her and impressing her even more about this new acquaintance.

She smiles as she shifts forward half a step and reaches out to take that hand, her grip warm and firm. "Natasha. A pleasure, Inej. Would you like to start now? Or would you prefer to set up another time to meet here?"

"Likewise," she smiles and takes her hand back after a moment. "How about we go over some things today and we can meet for proper lessons another day?"

She wanders toward the stands to sit in one of the rows. "Have you ever done gymnastics or anything? I'm guessing you have some kind of similar training if you're interested in something like this." People don't really just try to walk on a rope suspended in the air just because.

Actually, that sounds like exactly something her partner would have done, but he had a fondness for the circus anyway. In his own way. She's pretty sure he might know how to do this already anyway.

She follows Inej and sinks down beside her, stretching her legs out comfortably as she leans back on her hand and smiles.

"I've got some training in gymnastics, yes. Dance. Martial arts. I trained in a lot of things back home." She's very well-rounded. Which might also give away a hint as to why she'd look to expand that knowledge further. That's also potentially a gross oversimplification of her training, but it covers the necessities, she thinks.

"Quite the mixed-skills," she says, an amused lilt to her voice. She can't imagine what sort of training requires all of those skills, but it does at least give Natasha a step up from starting with none at all.

She's never taught before, but she's intrigued by the idea of it now that it's been presented with her. "We can start low with a slack line, I think. Something simple just to get the feel of it. All those skills, you'll be on a high rope in no time." She grins widely.

Natasha just grins at the observation. "My skills are intended to help me blend in no matter where I might be or where I need to go." Which explains the wide variety, for the most part.

But the comment about the training and where to start has her looking back to the rope before casting a smile at Inej once more.

"I look forward to it."

This is gonna be fun.

OOC

Note

HMU on Kol's HMD / @ loyalwolf[#3540] on plurk[/discord] for something specific!

I. generalized prompts

OTA

• Wandering around the castle
• In the castle's library, researching the types of magic found here - more specifically, now he's researching charms and enchantments for protection (against the sun).
• HMU if you wanna roll with a roommate situation for kicks (I haven't actually ever figured out who he's rooming with, so it's kind of a free-for-all)

{Every time I take your lead, feels like a curse

Inej Ghafa | Cadens | The Hierophant

{The Horizon

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Kol Mikaelson | Thorne | The Hanged Man