thricefold | ( ＧＥＮＥＲＡＬ. ) ✨ ＣＨＡＲＡＣＴＥＲＰＲＯＦＩＬＥ.

☰

ABOUT
PERSONALITY
APPERANCE
HISTORY
ABLITIES
NOTES

❝ find your heart's desire . ❞
The Leyline Warden of the Midnight Carnival. The owner of Apotropaism. The one believed to be High Empress for the Prophecy of the Burning Hearts and Stony Stars.

ABOUT ZITA E. HARRINGTON

Name. Zita Eriene Harrington
Age. 167-years-old.
Height. 6'1"
Build. Slender, frail.
Hair. lack, long.
Eyes. Warm honey brown.

Sexuality. Asexual, panromantic.
Marital status. Widowed.
Occupation. Owner of Apotropaism, a talismans, potions, and fortunes booth. leyline warden of the Midnight's Carnival camping grounds.
Current location. New Orleans.

Species. Witch.
Magic-type. White magic.
Specialities. Healing and warding.
Coven. Independent.
Loyalties. The Midnight Carnival.

PERSONALITY

her likes
cigarettes. coffee. crystals. faithfulness. fairy lights. family. flowers. herbs. homecooked meals. midnight carnival. music. pastels. pastries. poetry. romantic gestures. scarves. scented candles. seasons of autumn and winter. slow dancing. stars. summer rain. tea. time alone. tokens of affection. wine.

her dislikes
alcohol of poor quality. being interrupted. being threatened. broken promises. bullies. children being hurt. dust and messes. insults, towards her and others. late appointments. liars. not having a cigarette to play with. people who won't take 'no' for an answer. poor weather. rude manners. running late.

Zita has been often been likened to winter, her favourite season out of all the seasons. Not only for how cool and serene she appears to be, but also for the fact there's a sort of distance to her. A cautious reservation that won't melt away, no matter who she's interacting with.

But one shouldn't mistake that as her being cold or callous, however. Zita is one of the sweetest individuals from the Midnight Carnival, famous amongst the carnival crew for her gentleness and her hospitality to others. She's always the first one to volunteer to look after others if someone needs to be watched over, and she's quick to take in or care for someone new. Zita is eager to prove them a sense of safety and security. She does her best to make others feel welcome to the Midnight Carnival, letting them know they're welcomed to her trailer at any time, should they need it.

After living most of her life without either of those for herself, being made to travel with only the clothes on her back and with chasers at her heels, Zita wants to make sure no one else is forced to feel those fears and uncertainties she felt ever again. Not on her watch. The Midnight Carnival is her family and her home now, something she's been missing since she was forced to flee her village over a century ago, and she'll protect it to the best of her abilities.

Because Zita is loyal. She is an ally for life if you manage to get her backing and trust, willing to support you through anything and everything if she really does believe in you. (On the flipside, breaking her trust or giving her reason to distrust you means she will find it difficult to want to work with you again.)

There's a sadness to her. One that she carries with her with dignity but it's a sense of sadness all the same, a sort of world-weariness to the way she speaks and acts at the time. She's seen a lot of things and done a lot of things over the decades and it is exhausting. Yet while clearly melancholic at times, she tries to keep her spirits up for others' sake. She knows others depend on her to do her job so she tries to keep going, keep living. Zita prides herself on her work ethic and her reputation of being someone who is reliable and trustworthy. Not only to prove her worth but to make others happy as well.

One of Zita's greatest assets is the fact that, at the end of the day, Zita wants to live. When she needs to make a difficult call, from fleeing her country to using the magic of the leylines to help save her friend and the carnival, Zita will do it and not look back. She may flinch and still flinch in the long years to come, but she will not regret her actions because it keeps her alive, keeps her going.

MBTI ( ISFJ-A; THE DEFENDER )
Though sensitive, they have excellent analytical abilities; though reserved, they have well-developed people skills and robust social relationships. They are true altruists, meeting kindness with kindness-in-excess and engaging the work and people they believe in with enthusiasm and generosity.

ENNEAGRAM ( THE GIVER )
They believe they are worthy insofar as they are helpful. Love is their highest ideal and selflessness is their duty. Giving to others is their reason for being. Involved, socially aware, they are the type who remember everyone's birthday and who go the extra mile to help someone in need.

FOUR TEMPERAMENTS ( THE PHLEGMATIC )
They are empathetic and aware of the feelings of those that they are interacting with, as they do not wish to hurt these feelings. They have no desire to be a 'winner'; they only wish for peace. They are quick to apologise for any mistakes that they may have made, not wishing to be a bother.

APPEARANCE

OVERALL DESCRIPTION

Standing at an impressive 6'1, Zita stands out for not only for her height but for having an unearthly quality to her. There's a sense of timelessness to her appearance. Like she's trapped in her looks, immobile and forever still. While her skin still retains a glow and her features are sharp, there is something strange about her features.

This is only enhanced by how pale she is.

Zita has an unearthly quality to her, a sense of timeless beauty. She's tall at 6'1 and is graceful in movement and manner, with a sense of airiness to her gestures and walking. She has milky white skin that is brought out thanks to the darkness of her hair and the warm honey brown of her eyes. This, combined with her slender build, evokes a sense of fragility to her.

BULLETPOINTS

FACECLAIM.
➡ Li Bingbing.

QUICK FACTS.
➡ 6 feet, 1 inch. Slender figure. Long black hair that's often let down or pulled up, often with accessories and clips. Warm honey brown eyes that are surprisingly expressive when she allows them to be. Often seen wearing black and white clothes, sometimes with a winter theme to it.

➡ Prefers feminine and airy clothing like blouses and skirts, shawls and scarves. Often prefers the colours black and white, though she will use cool colours like blues and purples. Now and then, if she's feeling dramatic, sh'll wear a splash of red in her makeup.

HISTORY

( CURRENTLY... )
Zita E. Harrington is an immortal witch who specialises in white magic, the fields of healing and warding. She is part of the Midnight Carnival and operates as both the current owner of the talismans, potions, and fortune-telling booth of Apotropaism and the secret Leyline Warden for the carnival’s leylines and wards. She is also the well-known guardian for several members of the Midnight Carnival, with Justine Lavenza being the latest individual under her care.

Born in the 17th century, Zita was accidentally bestowed immortality after a coven’s attempts to sacrifice to dark magic failed. She later joined the Midnight Carnival to be under their protection and is known for her loyalties towards both the carnival and those who are members of it. She is currently believed to be part of the doomsday prophecy, Prophecy of the Burning Hearts and Stony Stars, in the position of the High Empress. She is a candidate for a position in the Council of Elders, filling the position of the long-empty role of the Grand High Witch, the Mother.

EARLY LIFE IN THE VILLAGE.
🕯️ Born around the 17th century, the most that Zita can say for certain about her circumstance is the following: That she was born during the winter season, perhaps at night, and she was from a little mountain village located in China. In this time and era, she was born to a simpler life — One where the air was cleaner and the water was clearer. One where everyone had their place and their role, and were expected to carry them out with no questions asked in order to keep the harmony of the village in place. One where, if everything had gone normally for Zita, she would have lived an ordinary life.

But her lineage wouldn’t have that.

On her sixteenth winter, Zita’s ties with Raw Magic finally made themselves known when she was tending to a younger sibling of hers who was sick. By accident and touch, she accidentally healed them of their illness. At the time, the sibling’s recovery was hailed as luck and fortune from the gods, but Zita— Zita felt the magic course through her body and being channelled into the hand that was pressed against her sibling’s slick forehead. It wasn’t the gods or fortunes who helped her sibling; Zita had been the one to save them and she wasn’t sure what to do, scared of how the village would react to her.

🕯️ Remembering the old Wu - a shaman who specialised in divination and fortune-telling - who lived in their village, Zita went to the shaman’s hut a few nights later. She explained what had happened and was nervous all the while. She asked the Wu for guidance, wondering what was happening to her. The Wu assured her that there was nothing wrong with Zita at all. On the contrary — It looked like Zita was special in a way that needed to be cared for.

So the Wu took the girl under her wing in secret. She taught all she knew to Zita about the supernatural and the types of magic a witch could use, the laws that they had to follow in order to keep the community safe from harm. The Wu also encouraged Zita to enter the fields of healing and warding, noticing the girl's impressive gifts in those areas and helped her flourish to the best of her abilities.

By the time Zita had turned eighteen, however, it was clear that the Wu could no longer teach Zita anything. Wanting to help the girl still, Wu contacted a coven from a neighbouring village and encouraged them to take Zita in, explaining the girl’s immense talents and skills. They agreed and Zita went to the new village all by herself, under the cover of working for a family in hopes of being matched for an auspicious marriage. Though the coven took her in and seem to treat her well, they had a hidden agenda for taking her in.

FLIGHT AND TRAVELS
🕯️ Their leader, for the longest while, was trying to make a bid in immortality and finally found a ritual that required a sacrifice of a white magic practitioner and so Zita was selected for that. For almost two decades they pretended to be her friends, her sisters. They trained her and cared for her and taught her her fields, all the while planning to use her as a pawn for their own gain. Their betrayal, when it came, hurt Zita and it's the more prominent feeling she felt when she realised she was drugged one evening and found herself being tied up by her sisters. The coven took her out to where they had prepared the ceremony and began the ritual. They almost succeeded in it, too, but- Something went wrong in the process.

To this day, Zita isn't sure what had happened. By all accounts, she should have died that night, sacrificed to whatever they were claiming their loyalties to, but she wasn’t. Through the haze of the drugs and smoke and glossed over memories, Zita can only remember her heart hurting as she fled from the area, trying to put as much distance as she can between her and the witches.

Terrified that the coven would go after her family if she went back to them and now suspicious of the Wu (though she had no involvement, something Zita never found out), Zita struck out on her own and became a wanderer. It wasn't long before she realised that she wasn't ageing anymore, forever trapped in her current age and appearance. It forced Zita to be on the constant move from then on, no longer able to stay in a village or town for more than a few years before departing to avoid suspicions being raised against her.

🕯️ During her travels, she continued to learn magic by herself through trial-and-error and through other supernatural should she come across them and feel like she can trust them. Sometimes it worked out for her and sometimes it didn't. It's the former that caused her to realise her immortality and the extent of it, thanks to a potions explosion when she had been alone in a secluded hut in the forests, forced to wait out the slow and painful progress of healing all alone. It's the latter that had her coming across a pack of vampires who wanted to take her in as their guaranteed meal. It forced her to now flee overseas, traveling first through the rest of Asia and then Europe and to the U.S. in an attempt to keep others from realising her potential and using it against her.

During her journey, Zita would find herself meeting many colourful characters over her time being alive, her relations with them varying from cool indifference to genuine affection. There were other immortal witches like her, Sir Monday, and Curtis Harrington (though their immortality was by choice and something they continually had to maintain through 'deals' and rituals, respectively). Strange individuals like Blake Nite, a nomadic shapeshifter who is now a close friend of Zita's, and Aldren Modric, a vampire Hunter for the U.S.' Council of Elders who have been keeping an eye on her since she came to the U.S.

One of the most impactful interactions she had was when she fell in love with a young man named Matthew Brown upon her arrival to the U.S. The two secretly got married and had even had a little girl, with Zita confiding to Matthew about her true nature and, to her delight and her relief, accepting her as is. Unfortunately, Matthew fell ill from an outbreak occurring in their neighbourhood at the time. Desperate to save him and keep him by her side forever, Zita fed him a rejuvenation tonic that she had made from her blood, believing the immortal properties could be passed down to him. Instead, it caused him an agonising and violent death in front of her and her sister-in-law/his sister, along with drawing the attention of Aldren Modric. She was forced to relocate as a result and left behind her baby daughter and her grieving sister-in-law, who was swearing vengeance and fury if they ever crossed paths again.

THE INVITATION, THE MIDNIGHT CARNIVAL.
🕯️ It is Curtis Harrington who she meets again in the early 1890s, crossing paths with him once more in America. Curtis and her have been close friends since coming across each other during their travels, with Curtis willingly offering Zita the protection of his storied family name so she can travel more easily, and Zita tending to Curtis' wounds if he ends up hurting himself. This time, he has a companion with him, a vampire named Henry Holton, and all three get along with each other well enough. The first meeting between Henry and Zita is enough of a success for Curtis to offer a proposal for Zita:

Both he and Henry were approached by the management of a special circus, as they've been looking for a new General Manager and Groundskeeper for a while now. Henry has been tapped to be the General Manager and Curtis to be the Groundskeeper. The two are willing to take the job, but Curtis is more than happy to recommend Zita for a position too. Provided she is interested in the idea, of course.

Seeing the wisdom for joining a group that allowed her to continue moving from place to place, Zita agreed and the management of the circus was eager to have Zita join them when they learned about her warding. Thus she joined the Midnight Carnival, a travelling circus that is primarily made up of supernatural individuals ranging from vampires to shapeshifters, from the gifted to the magical practitioners. The circus relies heavily on the Law of observing Guest Rites when they arrive at a new location for their business, expecting the hosts to do them no harm while they, the guests, abided by the rules of the town and show respect. Even then the carnival knew better than to push their luck, only staying in a location for two weeks before heading back out to the road again.

🕯️ Zita's position in the Midnight Carnival is supposedly a simple one. She claims to be a vendor for the charms and potions and fortunes booth known as Apotropaism, but, in reality, she's also the Midnight Carnival's leyline warden. Her specialty in warding, along with her impressive powers and finesse in it, has her becoming the guardian of the circus' wards, keeping it (and its residents) safe from outside danger by laying down leylines and keeping the magic within them maintained at all times, despite how exhausting it is for her to do so.

This has been Zita's life for the last ten years or so. Zita’s place in the Midnight Carnival is secure — She’s considered one of the oldest members of the carnival and is seen as the den mother of the carnival family. Zita has a reputation for being one who is always willing to look after little ones or youngsters, the one who is quick to take anyone under her wing so she can help educate them and protect them, determined to provide them a sense of safety and security that she had been denied for so long.

LATEST ADVENTURES.
🕯️ Her latest adventure involves her helping care for an illegally-created Promethean — A cadaver brought back to life through the use of magic. Promethean are physically strong but have limited senses — can not see colour, has a dampened sense of touch and taste — and are amnesiac, unable to recall their past lives. Zita’s wards stumbled across a mob of witches about to tear the newly awakened and scared Promethean apart due to the stigma Prometheans had in the magical community.

They intervened and groups clashed, the conflict only ending when one of her wards, Penelope Caster, used her magic to summon a pillar of fire to scare off the mob. Unable to control the intensity or the direction of the pillar, however, it ended up severely injuring some of the mob. Her wards’ intervention — and especially Penelope’s reckless use of her magic — cause the Council to take notice of the Midnight Carnival, as they break one of the Guest Rites: Thou shall not interfere in the lives of the welcomers. Because of this, and other political/relationship drama happening in the background, a Hunter for the Council is sent to investigate whether this production should be allowed to kept running.

Arguing passionately for the girl’s case, Zita was able to convince both Curtis and Henry and the Hunter to allow her to take the girl, now named Justine Lavenza. Zita also finds herself needing to act as a mediator for all sides whenever tensions flare between her wards and the Hunter.

🕯️ While caring for Justine and teaching her about the world of the supernatural and the Midnight Carnival, Zita finds herself being recongised as part of the Prophecy of the Burning Hearts and Stony Stars — A supposed doomsday fortune that foretold the end of the supernatural community. Her position in it was believed to be the High Empress, the lady in higher power rooted in sound and sweeping judgments.

Others had interpreted it as Zita representing the Witches in the Council of the U.S., specifically filling in the long-empty seat of the Grand High Witch, the Mother. There were those who were not happy with the idea of Zita taking this position. Assassination attempts have been made on her life since this was discovered, with Zita needing to be alert for such actions whenever she and the Midnight Carnival travel from town to town, place to place, simply trying to get by as the world changes around them.

ABILITIES

WITCH HERITAGE.
In order to be a witch, an individual must an intrinsic tie with Raw Magic and this can be done in several ways. They can be brokered a deal and tied themselves to a spirit of raw power to gain their power. It can be because their ancestors had contact with Raw Magic itself at some point and managed to survive the first brush of it. In Zita's case, her connection with magic is due to having a distant fae lineage since fae are the most adept and connected to Raw Magic.

Because of this, Zita has the typical properties and powers of a witch from her world: She can, of course, use magic to cast spells and create items that have magical properties to them. She can sense supernatural begins and items of magical origin and, in turn, be sensed by other beings of supernatural or magical origin.

But being a witch also has its fair share of weaknesses. Witches are still human. They will continue to age and continue to be vulnerable to sickness and diseases. Witches are granted not bouts of enhanced strengths or senses, unlike vampires or shapeshifters, and only those adept in fields that will grant them such things can harness such abilities. Not only that but learning the First Breath of a witch - the secret glyphs a person, be they mortal or supernatural, possess when born to this world - means a rival can target them with curses and spells at any time, anywhere, and the potency of the magic will be three times as powerful.

Most importantly of all: One of the most dangerous weaknesses a witch face is the fact they are highly susceptible to fire damage, a consequence for their ties to Raw Magic. Injuries borne from fire - especially ones that are considered 'natural fires' that are not made from manufactured oils or such - are difficult for a witch to heal or recover from, even if their magic is used.

WHITE MAGIC.
Raw Magic is a flexible and malleable force, allowing one to be creative with their magic upon accessing Raw Magic and knowing their limits with it. A witch's speciality in a certain type of magic is known as a 'field' and Zita's field happens to be within the realm of white magic.

She specialises in healing and warding. Upon someone having direct physical contact with her magic, Zita's magic can heal them of their current injuries. Bruises are tended to and cuts are seen to, though Zita will warn the individual to brace themselves. Her magic cannot keep it from the healing from hurting since, in a way, she's merely speeding the healing process along.

Since the person only needs to have contact with her magic and not her herself, Zita imbues charms and potions and runes with her magical healing properties to be used at a later date. Zita's healing magic is powerful enough to mend broken bones and break minor fevers and colds, but curing longstanding illnesses and helping someone regrow a missing limb is out of the question for her.

Another thing she can do is cast warding spells, specifically leylines. These are magical ties that can be connected a certain to location or item, acting as a magical barrier. Should there be danger and the witch knows ahead of time, they can activate the leylines from wherever they are and cause an impregnable shield to come up around the location or the location of the time. Nothing and no one can come in or out of the leylines unless the witch wills it to.

Zita's leylines are especially powerful due to her fae lineage, allowing her leylines to withstand magical attacks for several days, compared to an average witch's few hours. The leylines, however, are simply exhausting for her to both create and maintain. The witch who casts the leylines must continually tend to these ties, lest they wither away from neglect. Combined with her other duties and abilities, Zita rarely casts leylines and will only do so if she feels like a place truly deserves it or of it's desperate enough.

IMMORATLITY CURSE
Due to a botched attempt by a coven’s attempt to sacrifice her as part of their dark magic ritual, Zita now has a form of inflicted immortality. She no longer physically ages and has since been appeared ‘trapped’ in her looks of a woman in her late twenties to early thirties.

Not only that but she can no longer die. Instead, every time she's supposed to be dead, she finds herself being revived and brought back to full health as if nothing ever happened to her. The time it takes for her to bounce back physically usually amounts to two to five days, depending on the severity of the injuries that caused this 'death' of hers. But there is a catch: She's awake the entire time her body heals itself, suspended in a sort of locked state where she cannot communicate with others. The process is also a slow and painful one as her body slowly pulls itself back together, with her being aware of it every second of it. Attempts to give her pain relievers or anesthetics haven’t proven to be useful, as her magic simply burns through these whether made from chemicals or herbs.

After she's revived from and back in her normal state, Zita is unable to use her magic and often needs to sleep for twenty-four hours straight This is a result of exhaustion from her magic kicking in overtime to heal her and the fact she needs a few days to recuperate from the daunting experience.

BLACK MAGIC SIPHON
Upon surviving an attempt to reverse the magic that keeps her selectively immortal (see her ability Immortality for more details on this), Zita has not only tapped into the dark magic but also has, against all odds, tamed it during its unravelling, bringing the wild and dangerous magic of absorption under her learned and controlled fields of magic. This means Zita is able to do the following:

When Zita is surrounded by natural darkness — as in she’s out in the wilderness, surrounded only by the night skies without any source of light — she's able to absorb its energies and amplify the strength of her general magic abilities. Potions and spells made when she's tapping into her powers are more potent. Her warding, if attacked, will not only deflect but reflect the attack on the individual attempting to do damage to the protected place.

There are downsides to using this, of course. Zita can only do this once a month and only for during the length of the night, just before sunrise. Doing it anymore or trying to do it any longer will put her at risk of having the magic eating her from the inside out since, again, absorption is a wild and dangerous field still. Items and potions that have been imbued while Zita is using absorption will hurt a lot upon using/consuming it for the first few seconds and it will hurt like hell - Enough for someone to might not want to finish the potion or use the item, even if the item has been powerfully charmed.

Another thing to note is that when she's siphoning the darkness, she is unable to use the field of rejuvenation and, thus, heal others. Absorption and rejuvenation are opposite polarities in the fields of magic and, thus, will cancel each other out if one attempts to use one while still dabbling in the other.

NOTES

MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION

REAL NAME.
Zita's real name is lost to time. Not only because of the fact Zita has outlived all those who knew her in the past, but because Zita took precautions to protect herself. After making a deal with a potioneer she met in Egypt, managed to obtain a tipple of the rare Lethe Waters to drink it. The amount of it was enough to help remove most of her knowledge regarding her previous life, including her own First Breath. The most she recalls of it is that it was winter-related.

LANGUAGE STATUS.
Zita can speak a series of languages, having has over a hundred and fifty to learn them during her travels and her exposure to other countries and individuals. She can write and speak in Chinese, Latin, Japanese, Faen, English, French, Korean, and Spanish. She can fluently speak and understand Russian, Tagalog, Finnish, Greek, Italian, and Turkish.

EDUCATION.
Zita is mostly self-educated with some formal tutoring from fellow practitioners in terms of magic. She’s picked up her knowledge through dogged determination over the years, out of both a love of learning and out of a desperate need to understand her condition. She has some self-confidence issues when it comes to her educational background compared to other more learned, properly educated people in the circus.

OCCUPATION.
Zita is seemingly the owner of Apotropaism, a little booth that specialises talismans, potions, and fortunes. In reality, she has another occupation and an important one at that: She’s the Leyline Warden, specialising in the creation and maintenance of protective wards and barriers that encircle the circus, protecting the grounds and members from curses, hexes, and grudges, and other types of ill-omened magic.

RANDOM TRIVIA

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Used to be a smoker but quit it over thirty years ago. Still has urges and it can be noticed when she bites or lower lip..

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Currently not seeing anyone and not interested. Her last serious relationship was with a Matthew Gordon who passed away fifty years ago.

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Considered the sister of Curtis Harrington and she even legally took his last name. Curtis is protective of her, violently so if she’s threatened.

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Nervous tics include: Pursing her lips together, averting her eyes if speaking with someone, and folding her hands together.

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Prefers keeping her hair up if possible, due to her hair being touched or pulled a trigger. (Reminds her of her former coven’s ambush.)

CONSTANT INVENTORY