alina stepanova - khonsu

Name: Alina Ruslana Stepanova ( Алина Русланa Степановa )
Age: Twenty. Alina was born on November 16th, which makes her a scorpio.
Gender: female
Sexuality: bisexual
Eyes: Blue
Hair: straight light brown
Height: 5’3”
Body Type: Lean
Skin Color: Fair, neutral undertones

Mortal Parents: Ruslan and Irina Stepanov. Both are magicians, leading the 18th nome out of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Ruslan specializes in divine words, while Irina specializes in elemental magic. They are both politically minded, and their union is more of a business partnership than a romantic marriage. Both are strict, and see Alina as an extension of themselves instead of her own person.
Pharaoh ancestor: Unsure. From the research that Alina has done, she assumes that it’s someone in the Ptolemaic Kingdom, but she’s not sure who.
Country of Origin: St. Petersburg, Russia

Pets: None
Talents: Alina is talented in hiding things from her parents. To escape their ever watchful eye, she got exceedingly good at lying. She thinks herself as having a future career in home improvement, with her skills in pulling up floor boards and creating secret compartments under bedside tables. She’s skilled in creating shabti, particularly that of animals, to act as companions in her loneliest moments.
Weapon: Alina is not particularly skilled in combat, but she has a staff that she can hit someone over the head with, if the need arises.

Personality: Alina’s personality develops as she gets closer with someone. To a stranger she’s overly formal, stiff, even. She’s just the Stepanovs daughter, quiet and obedient. It’s not hard to break down Alina’s barriers, especially if someone proves themselves to be trustworthy. In her most desperate moments, her sense of reason disappears and she looks for any sort of support, even if it’s someone who she knows she can’t trust. For a lot of her life, she’s been in survival mode, and so she often finds herself swinging between two extremes, both fearful and embracing of a different life. It can be hard for her to make decisions, and often her first instinct is to freeze like a deer in the headlights. When she’s happy it’s plain to see, and those who have managed to break past her barriers will find a dry sense of humor and a thirst for fun. Those that she truly adores will find themselves being gifted with miniature shabti animals.
Flaws: Alina’s biggest flaw is inconsistency. She constantly rethinks, and reconsiders, trying to find the best answer even if one doesn’t exist. Her empathy wants to forgive and reason with the way that people have treated her, often letting herself stay in undesirable situations much longer. She often feels like half a person, blurry and underdeveloped, as she tries to discover her true personality. She often finds her natural state to be inaction, freezing and squeezing her eyes shut and wishing for the problem to go away on its own. She is constantly working on not bending over backwards for other people.

Divine Path: Khonsu
Powers: Alina’s powers wax and wane with the moon, growing strongest on full moons and non existent on new moons. In fact, her own strength seems to tie with this cycle, leaving her energized on full moons and exhausted on new moons. There is a constant cycle of give and take.
Divining: Alina can look into the near future, about a day or so at most, though she thinks given practice she can look forward up to a month. The future that she sees isn’t set in stone, and can be changed and avoided. This can only be done at night, on days with a 3/4 moon or stronger. She can do it once per topic. In character, she can only do it about once a week. To be able to look forward requires a ritual, where something emotionally important is sacrificed. This can be something physical like a memento, or mental like a memory.
Demon Days Immune: Given that Khonsu is the one that gave the five days to Nut, while everyone else is struggling with bad luck during the last five days of the year, Alina gets to relax. She can even make portals during that time, though she does have to be a bit more careful than normal.
Light Bending: Alina can bend light, but only after sunset. She can create balls of energy and light, and throw them around, or make them light up a room. They can get pretty big, about the size of a basketball. They can hurt and burn if touched, and it feels like something between a heat or electrical burn. I’m sure looking at it for long periods of time can cause visual damage. She can do this about 3 times per topic, with a 1 post cooldown.

Life Before Brooklyn House: Alina used to see herself as a puppet on a string. Her parents stood above her with the paddles in their hands, making her lift her arm up, down. Their hands jerk, making her kick her leg out, right when they wanted it.

Her whole existence had been planned by them, bringing her right into the world when they needed more political support, a better image. As intense as politics are in the real world, they were tenfold amongst magicians, especially those in the 18th nome.

Her parents both came from two long lines of St. Petersburg magicians. Two families with wealth and power, and it all leads to her. All their hopes and dreams for the future on her shoulders.

Thus began her life. She was given a script to follow, written by her parents, her grandparents, her great great grandparents, and every other magician that came before them.

Action.

Her childhood was interspersed with music, culture, and intense loneliness. Friends were nothing more than a business alliance, a way for the grown ups to meet up and talk politics while Alina and her equally controlled playmate set up pristine dolls in large doll houses, too afraid to muss their hair or change their clothes. Messiness was not tolerated. Laughter was instantly shushed. When she spilled paint on the antique persian rug in her room at five years old, paint was immediately removed from the household.

School was better, if not just for the ability to be outside of the apartment for part of the day. There was still intense pressure to do well, to succeed and go beyond the limits. If she were not performing algebra at 10, by all means she was a failure. If she was not winning every trophy, giving every speech, then she was dead to them. She had to follow the script, after all, and the script said that she should be exceptional.

Still, she could have friends at school that were not governed by her parents. Friends who didn’t even know about magic or the way that it all connected to her. She had hurdles, of course. She wasn’t allowed to have friends over, where they could see the shabti running around the kitchen making breakfast, or the ancient scrolls and priceless artifacts that covered nearly every surface. She wasn’t allowed to go to their houses either, with technology and ideas that her parents believed would corrupt her.

She was split between two lives, two identities, constantly at war with each other. Her parents almost seemed unaware of the outside world unless it was to tell her of their dangers. She was constantly surrounded by it, having to explain why she didn’t have internet, or a phone, or even a TV. It left her feeling like an outsider amongst the peers she saw every day.

As she got older and older, Alina’s restlessness for a life outside of her family’s apartment got stronger and stronger. She’d sit at the window seat in her room, staring down at the street below, watching normal people walk home with their shopping, or walking their dog, imagining they were her friends and giving them names. Maria, Ekaterina, Grigory, Yulia, Mark, Alexei, she’d watch them every day, creating a deeper narrative around them, knowing that she’d never get to know them in the real world.

Weekends were spent with a magic tutor, where she learned the ins and outs of all branches of magic, at least the ones that her parents approved of. She knew that eventually she’d have to choose a specialty, and it was constantly brought up around her. To choose a branch of magic was a big deal, it decided who you were, what profession you could go into, who you would associate with. Her mother was pushing her to go into healing, citing that it’d fit her gentle nature. Her father wanted her to break out of her shell and become an elementalist. Everyone around her had an opinion, except her. Nothing ever stood out to her. Magic felt like a chore. The only thing she truly loved was being able to create friends out of clay, but her parents reiterated how statuary magic was akin to being an artist, best saved for those who had nothing else going for them. Artists, to them, were supposed to be tortured, living lifes of destitution, and that was far from what a Stepanova should be.

When Alina graduated, all contact with the outside world ceased. What followed was a collapse of the universe. Her life was contained in the walls of the apartment, save for political lunches or banquets. She watched the seasons change through the window, the faces on the streets below became her only sign of a better existence. She would thrust open her window in torrential downpours just to feel the rain on her skin. She would stick her hand out in the middle of winter and watch the snow gather in her palm. Anything to remind herself that there was something beyond her apartment.

Her parents continued to hound her on her magic lessons, bearing down on her every time the tutor left to look for signs of the greatness they expected. Her magic in this time wavered and puttered out, leaving her crumpled on the floor in tears as her parents berated her for not trying hard enough. They smashed one of her shabti with each bad lesson, leaving her feeling even more alone. Getting out of bed each day became harder. She started to watch the world go by from under her covers, the faces on the street now becoming a sour reminder of a life she couldn’t have.

At nineteen she felt more akin to six. Her life was ruled by her parents, her voice was never heard. It all became abundantly clear that she was a disappointment to them. She started to notice them whispering to each other, stopping abruptly when she came into the room. It was only apparent what they were doing when they held a lavish dinner with a family of great importance in the nome. At first she didn’t think much of it, until they introduced their son, Nikita. Then, he was giving her a ring, and she suddenly realized that they had found political use for her after all.

It was this proposal, one that was accepted in earnest for her, that brought her back into the world. She knew now that she couldn’t stay any longer, and that there existed a world where she could be whoever she wanted. She just needed to go and find it.

She set a date for leaving. December 27th, the first day of the Demon Days. She knew she wasn’t powerful enough to make a portal anyways, and her parents were always strict about not using magic during the last five days of the year. If she couldn’t use magic to get herself out, she would make sure they couldn’t use it to find her. She stole their credit card and booked herself a one way flight to New York. She packed up one backpack, afraid of bringing any thing else. She pulled out the last of her shabti friends, a tiger that she had hid under the floorboards so they could never find her, and climbed out of the same window that used to be her only connection to the rest of the world.

She had saved up enough cash (she taken small bills from her father’s wallet in the middle of the night for over a month) to get her to the airport. She found herself in the last row of the flight, where she could feel every movement of the plane reverberate through her spine. She had never been on a plane before, and never expected it to be so loud. She stared out the window, watching as the country she knew, the life she knew, disappeared behind the clouds.

The flight was smooth sailing at first. She felt herself relax. The world looked so different in person, and as she stared out the window she watched as the land below turned into sea, before disappearing as they flew into the night.

It was there that the trouble started. Turbulence, they called it, but it felt like she was being jostled in an earthquake. Her hand gripped the seat rests until her knuckles turned white. She listened to the pilot’s voice go from calm to almost fearful. The plane pitched, a plastic mask hit her on the head, and she realized they were going down.

She looked out the window, into the inky darkness, the only thing visible was the full moon. After all she had done to get away, this was going to be how it ended, a drop into the icy sea below.

Until, a voice came into her head. It was not her own, but deeper, raspier.

”I can save you, all you have to do is follow me.”

She wasn’t sure how she knew it, maybe it was his doing, but she knew she was speaking to Khonsu. She had always been told to fear the gods, to let them be, and hope they left you alone. Except she knew in this moment, she couldn’t say no. Not when her life would not be the only one lost.

”Да, как скажешь,” she pleaded. Yes, anything you say.

Just like that, the plane righted itself. The lights came on, the rumbling stopped, the world settled. Her hands still gripped the arm rests, her nails digging into the rubber padding. Something else had changed. For the first time in a long time, she felt magic underneath her fingertips. Powerful magic.

Her eyes shifted back out the window, looking at the moon in the distant sky, suddenly it felt like an old friend.

When they finally touched down in New York, it started to dawn on her that she had the new life she wanted. Now was she not only free of her parents, but she had a god in her corner.

It took her hours to reach Brooklyn House, and the inhabitants weren’t originally sure what to do with a young russian woman who spoke of Khonsu in rudimentary english, but they welcomed her in and gave her a room of her own.

At her first magic lesson, she nearly blasted a hole in the wall. Never before had she channeled magic like that before. She found herself in awe of what she could do, and for the first time in her life, she wanted to be a magician.

Any notes about your characters: fc is alva bratt. Color is #778da9