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

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.

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