The years flow by like water, and one day men come home again.

[tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.com]

The Carnival
June 3

Three years. Nearly, anyway. I've been angry the whole time.

I wanted to know why we left. I wanted to know why he didn't come and find me. I wanted things to be alright with Syl again. I wanted - want - to find a way to punish Management for what they did. I wanted things to be right. I wanted to go home.

The Carnival used to be home. It's not any more. I realised that soon after we left town. Leaving hurt, like something tearing in me. And even if I wasn't missing - people - things weren't how they used to be. I can't do the sort of show I used to, and if I could I don't like people looking at me, now. Working as a roustie's been different from being a turn.

I couldn't leave, so I wrote. Letters to Valmont and Alice, long and rambling, talking about what I saw and some of what I felt. And I sent - things, to Iblis. I started writing to him, one night in some nameless place when I missed him so much it hurt, and when I touched the paper after I could feel that pain throbbing out of it. I burned it and buried the ashes, but a while later I put that same longing into a carefully-pressed flower, a reminder of another time, and sent that.

I never got a reply, but I sent other things, from time to time. My anger like a spring-coil in a page torn from a book. Fear, as a kind of dry joke, in a handful of dust. I never sent any letters, just - moments. Pieces of myself. I don't know if he got them.

And now I'm back here and he's still caught in me like a fish-hook. And I want to see Valmont and Alice, and Glass as well (I stole a book for her once and sent it, delicate drawings of herbs). Other people, maybe. His child. I'm twenty now, in this body at least, and I look more like a man.

And I think I know why we've come back. I have my own plans now.

[OPEN]

Comments

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

I feel it at once, the tight tug of him, the vibration through the wire. Beneath that, the low hum of the carnival, different magics rippling through the town. Management have come back, and they and I will have words anon, for I never gave them permission to leave.

For now, however, I put on the body I burned for him once, in all its pale and untouched beauty, and I walk to where he is, my face lit up with the light of righteous fury.

He looks ever-more human now, smell of mortal work on him, body ageing in a way it did not, before. I hate it. From here I can hear his heart beat, and I think of taking his veins apart piece-by-piece so his blood will circulate no longer.

"You," I say, as I approach, and slap him in the face.

[al-shairan.livejournal.com]

I smile when he talks of eating Brant's heart.

"I forced you," I say, "and then you ate it. We had met only once before, and you were still too stupid with humanity to recognise me immediately the second time. But matters changed for you after that." It is a fond memory.

"Did it hurt when you burned it?"

"Yes," I say. "Of course it did not have to." I do not have to feel pain in this body, or anything at all. "But it would not have been a sacrifice without it." I kiss his fingertips. "Ask for what you want now, and perhaps I may give you it."