It was a pleasant July afternoon and Brooke wished the weather matched her mood for once. She enjoyed the breeze that flowed through her hair, and the sun was out, but she had to fill the sketchbook with drawings by August. She had decided to head to a nearby park to find something to sketch, but she couldn't find inspiration. Brooke glanced through her previous drawings of birds, her hands, and a few anime characters. With a sigh, Brooke flipped to a new page in the sketchbook. She looked around the park that surrounded her and chose a nice cream rose on a nearby rose bush. As she began to sketch, she felt the breeze grow into a strong wind. Brooke's finger suddenly slipped, her pencil began rolling on the pavement. Brooke moved to grab it, but the wind quickly blew it out of her reach. Brooke began to follow the rolling pencil through the park, and started to sprint to keep up. Every time the pencil seemed to be close enough to stamp down with her foot, it blew away faster. Suddenly, the wind stopped and Brooke saw someone's polished black shoe flip the pencil up into the air. Brooke looked up and saw a man holding the pencil in his hand. He had messy black hair, brown eyes, and wore a black tailcoat with a white shirt underneath. "I assume this is yours?" he asked. Brooke speechlessly nodded, and he handed her the pencil. Brooke looked around and saw in the middle of the field steel fences and a massive steel gate with the words The Circus of Dust. Brooke saw many tents behind this. "Ah," the man said. "If you would like to visit, we open tomorrow at 4pm, close at midnight." Brooke nodded, and the man, satisfied, walked through the gates. Brooke began to head back to her house and looked at her sketchbook. Next to the rose sketch, there was a small brown card that read:

Thomas Rivers

Circus Master of the Circus of Dust 

Brooke carefully put the card in her pocket. "I'll come tomorrow, why not?" she thought.

Can I reserve a spot? I’ll try and post the charrie sheet as soon as I can.

Oh no! I forgot about this. I'll post a charrie sheet tomorrow.

I love the first part, Storm! Can't wait till the next one!

Name:
Atalanta Lewis

Age:
27 (I guess she’s been at the circus a while since her background story takes
place)

Personality: 
Headstrong, a bit prideful, likes to do things herself, not accept help, a hard
worker, cares what others think of her, very fair (she always pays her debts,
and she’s always just), can be counted on to help you—IF she agrees with your
intentions, has strong feelings about the difference between good and bad, a
wonderful friend, good at telling when people are lying

Skills
(non-magical): Besides training rats: reading people (but she isn’t very
tactful), learning anything she sets her mind to, making boxes and cages out of
wood

Magic
(if you have any): N/A

What
performance you do (do you run a maze, magic tricks, etc.):  She’s the
circus’s bearded lady, but she also has rats which she’s trained to run all
over her body and jump and do flips, and to drop from extreme heights. I think
she comes out in the big tent and calls the rats, who emerge from the shadows
and jump up on to her head and all over her until she’s almost covered, at
which point she twirls around and they all fly off her as if by magic, but she
also has a small tent of her own where people can watch the rats do more tricks
up close.

Background
(the more detailed the better!): When she first began showing signs of having a
beard, her parents were disgusted and began tiptoeing around her, shying away
when she tried to hug them, staring at her when they thought she wasn’t
looking, and generally treating her like a monster. When she angrily called
them out, they denied it, saying the viewed her just the same way they always
did. But she continued to notice that they never kissed her goodbye anymore,
that they never told her she looked beautiful, that they didn’t call her their
daughter in public. Her friends, too, began to distance themselves from her, and
“freak” was a word she heard often. Her mother begged her to shave her beard,
but she refused, thinking to herself that perhaps if she was bold enough in
embracing her beard, people would see that she was not one to mess with, that
she still loved herself, and they would be so impressed by her imperviousness
to slander that they would be her friends again.

Of
course, that wasn’t what happened. Things continued as they were until they
took a turn for the worse.

Her
figure was not especially feminine, and neither were the clothes she wore, and
as she grew older and her beard grew thicker, people began to think she was a
man. One day, a woman approached her in the main square with an “excuse me,
sir,” and Atalanta exploded. “I am not a ‘sir,’ I am a woman, and you must
treat me as such!” Now she was shouting to the whole square. “I will not change
the way I dress, and I will not change my beard! It is you, you who must
change! Oh, scared, are you? And of what? I am a WOMAN, not a monster!” And she
would have carried on like this, had a well-dressed man not approached her and
said, “Calm down, miss. Let me buy you a drink.” As Atalanta began to protest,
the man said, “I have been watching you a few days now, and I think you may
have exactly what my company is looking for.” Atalanta had been needing a job,
and no one had given her one because of her beard, so she reluctantly agreed to
let the man buy her a drink.

“What
is your company, anyway?” she asked him. “Oh,” he said, “We’re a—mystical
acting troupe. You may know us as the Circus of Dust.”

Atalanta
caught her breath. She had been to see the Circus of Dust once when she was a
little girl, and it had seemed almost magical. But in a millisecond her
wondering feeling was replaced by one of grim understanding.

“If
you’re going to ask me to be an—an exhibit,
don’t bother. People gawk at me enough as is.” Atalanta turned on her heel and
walked out of the bar.

A
month of unemployment later, the circus man still haunted her. Perhaps she
could work there, if only there was something she could do. She began to train the rats in the alleyway behind her family’s
home, using bits of bread she stole from the kitchen. When she felt satisfied
enough with her skill level, she visited the Circus of Dust, which was luckily
still there. Or maybe it wasn’t luck. Maybe they were waiting for her. She
asked the first person she saw for the man in charge, and was led immediately to
the same man she had seen weeks earlier. “I’ll work for you,” she said, “But my
body won’t be the show. I won’t be used that way. People will come to see me
for this.”

Carefully,
she removed the rats’ wooden cage from the bag she carried, and began to
perform the show she had rehearsed for almost a month. She was hired that very
day.

```````````````

Sorry,
it’s not my best writing. I’m a bit out of practice and I wanted to finish and
post it as soon as possible.

Other: 
I’m not so sure of her appearance. I think she has curly brown hair and,
obviously, a beard, and she wears oversize coats, but other than that, I don’t
know.

TIP TOP TIP TOOPPP