Name :: Leta
Age :: 9
Gender :: female
Alignment :: Neutral, confused, and lost.
Homeworld :: Dumbo's Circus
Class :: Thief, acrobat, performer
Abilities ::
Acrobatics: Leta works in the circus as a dancer and acrobat. As such, she has the abilities of glide, high jump, and haste. In addition, she was taught Aero up to it's second level, but she only knows how to use it to help toss other performers, herself, or aid in juggling. Her version does not inflict damage.
Circus Tricks: Leta has never been in combat, but she knows a very basic form of fire as a circus trick. She can also juggle and throw things with very good accuracy.
Theft: Circuses are not the safest place for your money. Leta was trained from an early age in the art of pickpocketing. When times got tough, Leta was sent to rob houses for food and goods to trade. She is very sneaky and flexible and she has only been caught once.
Music: Leta learned to sing and play the flute and penny whistle from her aunt and has been doing both since she was a toddler. She is exceptionally skilled for her age and is best at more haunting melodies.

Weapon/s :: None, at least none she carries. She can throw knives and dance with whips, but she's never done either in battle.
Appearance :: (( Leta and Kizzy )) (( Preforming ))
Leta is small. Very small. Even or her age. When she dances, sometimes the troop leader stuffs some extra fabric here and there, but when she isn't padded up, Leta has a thin, wiry body with hardly and sign of a curve. She has her ears pierced in seven different places each and a small gauge at the lobe. They've been that way since she can remember for costume reasons. Every outfit has matching accessories.

The black stripe on her lower lip, which you can see without her dance makeup, is actually a crude tattoo, a cut infused with ink, that her grandma gave her when she was 5. It was supposed to protect Leta from harm. Her mother was quite angry about it. Without the rest of her makeup, you can see the mark between her eyes. Her mother always told her it was a birth mark, but it isn't. Nor is the pretty spiral pattern on her left shoulder, though that's a bit more obvious. Both are scars from burns, or what scars from burns look like when treated a little too late with a potion or cure spell. The circus is not a forgiving place and the marks are not accidents. Neither are her occasional black eyes.

Personality :: Leta is a scarred girl. Her life has been too much for one child her age to handle. So she created a second. Leta spends her life behind a mask, a second Leta that keeps up a lie. This Leta is fanciful. She's a daydreamer with a dramatic flair who asks too many questions that start with "what if..." She appreciates funny faces and giggles too much. But none of that is who she really is. It is a mask, one that is already cracking and threatening to retreat under a third mask. It is an act, one she has perfected over the years. She can deceive anyone with it, and it is eating her away from the inside. But she can't let the mask fall now. She wouldn't know what to do with herself. She couldn't live without that mask protecting her and hiding her from the outside. It is her protective skin and without it she'd burst into flames. Even so, it hurts. It hurts to lie to the worlds, to never let out how she really feels to anyone. It gets so bad that sometimes she gets sick.

The real Leta is a fragile and her mind is stormy. She is always thinking, always observing, always learning. The real Leta is trapped inside her mind. There are always thoughts, sometimes disturbing, strange thoughts and sometimes she gets so stuck on them she can't think about anything else. When she is alone, she pulls back into her head. The outside world fades away. If someone comes in, the switch, the raising of the mask is automatic, but when she isn't pretending, Leta is cold and distant. Sometimes she is scared, scared about something that could happen or scared of her own thoughts. Sometimes she gets angry, so angry at herself, at others, at the world. Sometimes she doesn't even know why she is angry. She wants to cry, to hit, to scream, but she only does so inside her own head. To an outsider she'd look almost catatonic, or perhaps like she is sleeping, but locked inside her thoughts, she rides a dark violent sea.

The only time she lets herself go, even in the slightest, is when she preforms. When she twirls and jumps, plays or sings, she feels everything. The others at the circus says she has hidden passion, but really, preforming is the only thing that makes her feel at all better. She puts her energy, her hate, her confusion into her moves or her voice and, by giving the thoughts motion, she feels some relief. While she is preforming, she thinks of nothing but the music and the movements. When she is preforming, she's untouchable; no one can hurt her with the spot light on her and the calliope music playing. Then, when it ends, the mask goes back up and no one is the wiser.

History :: Leta's history is not much to tell. She was born to a single mother who resented her and raised mostly by a grandmother who believed in strange traditions and wanted to groom her granddaughter to be the best performer in the troop. Her grandmother was absent minded, forgetful, and extremely gullible, so when her mother, a fire dancer, burnt the young girl on purpose, her grandmother never got mad, believing it to be an accident. When her dance instructor bound her stomach to give some appearance of the curves of puberty in an 7 year old and Leta passed out, her grandmother thought she just missed a meal. A month before her eighth birthday, her grandmother passed away after a short sickness. She ran away once when the next year, but was caught and forced to sleep in an extra animal cage. She eventually turned the cage into her room, a small escape from the madness of the circus around her. That year, she befriended a baby monkey, Kizzy, who has stayed with her ever since.

As far as the other people in the circus were concerned, she was friendly with the other girl and children of performers. None of them had it easy, but few had it as hard of Leta. Her best friend was a boy named Jacques whose legs were bent too far back when his parents tried to train him to be a contortionist and he ended up in a wheelchair for life. The two of them played imaginary games together and a game he called "Leta can you get..." which basically involved her stealing random items from around the circus.

Recently, a huge storm broke out and soon, the whole circus was swarmed with living shadows. At first, the audience ooo-ed and aahh-ed, but they were soon swallowed up by the living darkness. Leta was on the tightrope, and that was the only thing that saved her. She stayed there as the world was consumed around her, frozen and terrified. When finally the shadows brought the supports down, the world was already collapsing.

The young girl woke up alone in the strange world of Traverse Town, having been nudged awake by her faithful monkey Kizzy who had been playing on the tent supports when the shadows came. Terrified and confused, she did the only thing she could think to do: hide.

Theme song :: When I Grow Up -- Fever Ray

Miscellaneous :: In case you didn't catch it from the profile above, Leta is extremely fragile and unstable. Depending on her in a fight might be a bad idea. Also, Kizzy, her monkey, is an excellent judge of character.Especially for a monkey.