A/N: For the AU Prompt Packet Challenge (circus!au)

"Where are you going, love? Don't you want your fortune read?"

Rolanda comes to a stop, grinning to herself. "Why would I want to ask what the stars hold for me when I can almost touch them myself?" she chuckles, but she still sits across from Sybill, as they both knew she would. "Oh, great fortune teller, what do you see?"

It's a bit of joke, really. Sybill is little more than a fun side show at the circus. She draws a modest crowd-mostly giggling, young women eager to find out what their love lives hold.

Still, it's almost become a tradition. She's let Sybill read her fortune in hundreds of cities by now, though Rolanda knows that there's no truth to anything she claims to predict.

"What is it tonight? Cards? Palms?"

Sybill pulls a teacup from beneath her booth.

"If you wanted to ask me out for tea, you could have told me," Rolanda teases, leaning forward. "Two cubes of sugar, please."

"It's not for drinking," Sybill says quietly, pouring the liquid from the cup and peering inside.

Rolanda tries to look, too. All she sees are globs of leaves smeared across the porcelain. "What are you doing?"

The cup drops from Sybill's hand. She reaches across, grabbing Rolanda by the wrist. "You cannot perform tonight," she says urgently.

Rolanda laughs. "A circus with no trapeze artist? What sort of rubbish is that?"

But the way Sybill looks at her makes her shiver.

"Beware. Beware the fall, my dear. The fall will take everything from you," Sybill hisses, squeezing tight.

Rolanda pulls away, rubbing her throbbing wrist. "Stick to telling girls a rich man is in their futures. It's more believable," she says quietly, rising to her feet and storming toward the main tent.

"You're late," Minerva says, looking up from her clipboard with a stern frown before gesturing to Albus who stood in the center ring.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the old ringmaster calls, "prepare to be amazed! Tonight, you will witness the majestic Rolanda, half woman, half bird - or so you'll think! She soars through the skies as gracefully as a ballerina on a stage."

Rolanda hurriedly begins to climb the beam, pulling herself onto her platform. "Beware the fall," she mutters in annoyance before beaming at the crowd, slipping her silver gloves on with dramatic flare.

"Remember, folks, don't try this at home," Albus warns. "Rolanda is trained in the art of flight. She has spent years learning the secrets."

"Fifteen bloody years. Fall, indeed," she grumbles, grabbing her bar in a half turn position.

Rolanda drops, her body turning gracefully as the trapeze swings her along. The crowd oohs and ahhs, as they always do.

A simple twist of her body, and she releases the bar, grabbing the next one and hooking her knees over it, leaning back and waving at the crowd. Another shift, and she pulls herself into a full loop.

The crowd loves it. They always do.

Rolanda reaches out to switch bars again, something as easy as breathing. Somewhere in the crowd, someone screams.

She doesn't see the rope snap, doesn't realize that anything is wrong at all until she feels the sudden jerk, the violent shift. She scurries, trying to regain her balance, but it's too late.

Rolanda falls, reaching desperately for the rope. In the seconds before the crash, she appreciates the irony that the thing that had given her life meaning is the same thing to give it its end.