Tunnel of Love

Their boat lightly knocked into the one way course, Saskia sometimes getting a thrill from it as she still expected something to jump out at them in this lowly lit boat ride.

"Where's your light, Saskia?" Kenan asked.

She gave him an odd look.
"I never had light to wield, only the shadows and darkness."

Kenan grinned, and in his wash of light he controlled, it looked almost as luminous as the sun. "We all have light in us. It never goes away."

At this she frowned.

"Here, take it for yourself." He grabbed her hand, and dropped the warm ball of sunshine into her open palm. Saskia laughed, for the ball of light evoked mirth and weightlessness in her. It held it's brilliance before their boat went through the archways of roses and vines... but as their boat passed just halfway through did the light begin to lose it's luminosity.

Saskia frowned, lifting her gaze to see Kenan also looked ashen at the absence of his magic.


"Maybe this ride doesn't allow weaving? I cannot reach my shadows."

"You... cannot hold light, Saskia. Don't you see? You're eating it. You and your shadows." Kenan's voice was low, strange and not at all the voice she began to like hearing. "You cannot reach your shadows? Look around, leech, and see it all around you." Kenan began to move, his panic jostling their small boat. "Fuck, where are we going? Why can't I see anything?"

Saskia's voice lost all it's brightness and joy. Her brows furrowed.
"It's not that dark right now. There are floating candles up ahead." Even as she lifted a hand to point to them, the candles began to blow out on a phantom wind, one... by... one...

She stared, perplexed at what was unfolding before her eyes. Was there something in the air? In the water?

"Help!" Kenan's panic began to rise, and Saskia had to hold onto her side of the boat in hopes of staying in it. He rose, legs shaking and hands batting away the roses that still had their thorns. Kenan hissed. "You're going to eat this world. You have to stop!" He pleaded to Saskia.
 
A curious coo of surprise. Cooberry tittered nervously, his little feet tiptoeing to the end of the branch to peer down at where the voice came from. That was when he noticed all the eyes, blinking or unblinking, regarding him with all the indifference expected of a tree with roots longer than its trunk.

"Thank you." He hadn't realized he should have asked permission, and perhaps he felt a little bad about it. He was only proving that pigeons had bad manners, which wasn't true at all! His parents had taught him to be very polite. His mother was known for her hospitality and grace, in addition to her beauty. No one prettier than his mother dearest.

Cooberry was quick to bring his round body back to where he had originally landed. And then, even closer to the trunk. There was one eye that was quite close. He inspected it with a turn of his head, musing coos almost sounding like a catchy tune. He heard someone clapping, looking at the crowd, he hadn't noticed before. His manners truly were atrocious!

"Do they always look at you like that?" He asked.

@Juniper
 

THE CURIOSITIES


Into the tent Fray ducked, there in the tent Fray walked past every bit and bob that was on display. A Dragon's tooth, the size of a dagger, even cracked in half and hissing as it was. A little cage that housed a little fairy, glumly sitting atop their swing, smoking the tiniest cigarette.

Never mind the skulls the size of wagon wheels, or the horse skeleton with an extra set of heels.

Come a wall of masks, up against a tent wall. Gleaming and glistening. Eyes painted, smiles purpled and noses sunken into pits A giggle from one. A weep from another. And there at the center, one that smiled and frowned all the same. Gleeful and mad in same measure. With eyes of distant star fire that did seem to follow wherever the intrepid Fray went.


THE ANIMAL CAGES​


Wisdom from beaks, yet they could not peak, that end which would come, slithering and dithering across mist laden ground. Viperous snatch of jaws gobbled up the twin headed raven. Dagerous fangs working like fingers across feathery chest and molting throat.

A lion with a scorpion's tail pounced and clawed and gnashed across a three headed goat.

Horn stuck through jaw. Lion thing's tail whipped and stung through thick hide. And all who walked by stared with eyes wide. Clapped and cheered, at all that they saw.

Beasties tangled, onlookers mangled, oh what a show, oh what a show, as all the blood spilled fast. Spread slow.


⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊ The fortune teller's pavilion⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊​


View attachment 866"You want some wine?" came a voice through a bubble of burp. "You want some wine," the gruff rasp of too much smoke over too many years grumbled across the way. "I got your wine," cleared his throat.

"Waa, waa, I don't like my fate," the rotund man wearing his silly green hat said. In fact, pouring himself some wine into a blood red cup. "There's your free wine," he mocked, no hint of joy in his tired eyes as he shook his head.

"Serve an eternity in this gods forsaken shit show, and what do you get?" swirled the dark vintage, all king in court as he stood behind the tiniest little table, there beside the fortune teller's tent. "No respect, that's what, not a lick, not a drop," he drank deep. Drained the cup. Clacked it back down and poured himself another.

"Don't worry, Magisterio, I still believe in your spark, even if little miss Sunshine here can't read the sign," he pointed sloppily at the sign.

NO REFUNDS.


THE FREAK SHOW​


The idiot manchild hopped back, all gasp and awe. "Its speaks!" he said. Looked to his mother. "It speaks!"

The corpse that was his mother, not left alone at all, stayed silent with their rictus.

The manservant, all stitched together cadavers himself, groaned. Something like amusement. If only to amuse their idiot master.

"I've never met a tree that can talk before," the man child said, seeing the little bird fly in a buzz of wings and perch on a branch. "Ho! a Talking bird!" he clapped with his little delicate hands. Soft and pale as white flower petals. Fingers flexed with nervous excitement. "And so many eyes, so many eyes," he said to himself. "Shtump!" he near screamed, voice a high shrill. "My kit, if you would!"

Shtump, the massive manservant, groaned. Stiff as a board, he somehow managed to bend down under the corpses' chair. Fetched a black leather bag. Lumbered over to hand it to their idiot master.

"Now, I've never seen something with quite so many eyes, and never something like a talking tree, so you'll have to excuse me," he said as he took up the bag. Cranked it open. Started digging. "I simply, MUST have a sample," pulled out something like a silver spoon from hell. All wicked and threatening to scoop.


THE FUNHOUSE​


Shatter went the mirror. Turned to dust across time. Speckled and sprayed with red motes of red blood. Turned the walls red. The stars rouge and the infinite hall seemed to trickle and fill and run with each drop that poured down and off warm flesh and steady bones.

The cackle came louder. "Where's the exit she asks, where's the exit, her task. Careful now, little blood mage, what you give, is what you'll get,"

At her feet. A pool of blood slowly turned to rising tide, across the mirrored maze, all fractured and scattered there in the dark.


THE TUNNEL OF LOVE​

And eat the world they did. With gleeful skree's and gnashing teeth. The worms leapt. The worms crept. Fell from the cieling, crawled along the walls.

Kenan's face was smacked by a worm. The worm screeching and hissing and chittering its strange silver teeth as it wrapped itself around his neck, and tried to wriggle down his throat.

Boats ahead, boats behind, rocked and thrashed as their riders tried to survive the unholy wormslaught
.
 
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⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊ The fortune teller's pavilion⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊​


Anira blinked at the man, then at the sign he so triumphantly pointed to. A warped plank of wood with NO REFUNDS scrawled in a bright lime green paint that looked suspiciously fresh. Excuse me? she said, making sure her voice was sharp enough to slice through his hangover haze. “That sign was not there when I went in. I would have noticed, darling. It clashes terribly with the drapes and the overall aesthetic of ‘mystic despair.’”

She strode toward the wine fairy with her chin high, hands on hips and skirts sweeping up a little cloud of carnival dust. “Honestly, what kind of establishment adds the fine print after the performance?” the bard muttered. She gave the bottle of wine a long, assessing look. Somewhere behind him, a paper lantern flickered out, and a cracked fiddle wailed from the big main tent.

"You lure in a poor soul with promises of destiny, charge her half a purse of silver, and hand her a prophecy about a sword!" The bard plucked the bottle straight from the table and lifted it in a mock toast. "Here’s to the Karn Evhal! Where the visions are bleak, and the hospitality is a ghost story.” She took an audacious sip, just enough to make her point. Anira winced and instantly froze. The wine was wrong. It tasted like fruit left too long under a dying sun, sweet at first but followed by something faintly bitter, like blood thinning in water. Metallic, almost warm, like it had been bottled with something still alive inside it. For the briefest moment, the liquid pulsed against her teeth, too thick, too dark. The ophidian wine slithered down her throat, and landing curled behind her belly button.

The blondie lowered the bottle slowly, eyes narrowing. “Come here seeking visions of grandeur, and what do you get?" She mimicked the wine steward's bitter tone. "A prophecy for a sellsword, and vinegar!” Anira turned on her heel and sauntered off toward the grand pavilion at the heart of the fair. The lights over there were brighter, the music louder, and somewhere beneath all that noise, she swore she could hear the fortune teller’s laughter.
 
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The Curiosities

The air within the tent lay heavy with the dusty stuffiness of lots of things crammed into a small space. At least, Fray thought, said things were (mostly) stationary, innumerable as they were.

She looked around in genuine wonder. It seemed like every possible surface within the tent, save the floor, was covered in oddities. There was even something that looked suspiciously a lot like a whole dragon’s tooth, cracked as it was. The Deva resisted a natural urge to touch it. Tempting, but foolhardy even for her, given that everything she gazed upon had a distinctly unnatural feel.

Strange skeletons protruded now and then as she strode, slowly and quietly, through the tent. Some seemed anatomically nonsensical, while others loomed impossibly huge. Fray stopped walking upon encountering an entire wall filled with masks, and she only did so because it unsettled in a way that exceeded all else up until that point.

Her mouth pressed into an unhappy line as she analyzed the garish pieces. They gave her the absolute creeps, each one more disturbing than the last. Fray could understand masks being beautiful, or utilitarian, or entertaining. But these...these masks seemed a little too sentient for her liking. Like they were fixing their soulless eyes on her, no matter which direction she stepped. She could tolerate them for no longer than a handful of seconds before she decided it would be best to move on.

That was when a faint tendril of odor curled up to her nose. Sniffing, Fray looked around in confusion. It was a smoky scent, though she could not imagine anyone being daft enough to light a fire in a tent filled with nothing but tinder.

Like a blood hound, she followed the smell, until she found herself standing before a small cage.

It was rather gilded and lovely for a miniature prison. All gold painted–for surely it could not be real gold, though who could really say in such a fantastical place–with delicate filigree and a few, glittering gemstones as accents. And within it was the most tired, forlorn looking fairy Fray had ever laid eyes on.

The tiny faeling was, of all things, smoking an even tinier cigarette. It didn’t seem to care much that Fray was glowering over them with an uncharacteristic glint of pity in her feline eyes. It merely carried on taking weary puffs as it rocked ever so slightly back and forth on its dainty swing.

They remained this way, the giant staring and the fairy smoking, until at last Fray cleared her throat of tiny wisps of smoke and said, “You, uh, don’t look like you’re having much fun in there…”

Something half formed and ill advised began to congeal in her mind.

“Fancy some fresh air?”
 
The Animal Cages


"Where are all the animals?" Etoile wondered, staring at a few empty cages with doors wide open. One door was stuck, swinging back and forth like a horrendously designed wind chime caught in a humid breeze. She looked up at the sky as if one of them were hiding there, but there was nothing but dirty, dull streamers that obstructed the sight of the stars.

Something slithered from behind her, and when Etoile turned to look at what made the noise. It was too late.

It wrapped around her tight, like shibari around her ribcage, restricting her shoulders and arms until they were angled and rigid. It was uncomfortable, but restraint had never been born comfortable. The snake was a vice, locking Etoile's thin thighs tight together until her knees buckled.

"Oh, my." Etoile wheezed. Another tight squeeze like a hug she didn't want. She didn't struggle against it; instead, she looked up at the sky, suddenly dreamy with fluttering, half-lidded eyes. "This feels good for my back," Etoile told the snake with a breathy smile.
 

THE FREAK SHOW​


More eyes opened, the bird deserving regard. But it wasn't a thing easily answered. People rarely got caught looking at Juniper.

„I...they're normally too afraid.“ Because fear was correct.

What a curious conversation – two creatures doing their best impressions of a person. Perhaps the cooing critter had once had a different body. Or maybe it was pidgeonbodied its entire life. She couldn't decide which would be better. It was all shoes of wrong feet, gloves for the handless.

The conversation was cut short by the blubbering mass, lower to the ground.

Looking at her brazenly. Plotting to take her eye and ruin her further. She didn't even have time to get mad. Merely watched him like slowforming mold.

The hubris.

No matter how much you gave, it was never enough – always another grubby hand, reaching for more than it was owed.

She thought about it then. The breaking of bones and constrictor roots. The sound they made as they were enlisted...renamed. But those were quick deaths. Humans should know their place.

And life was the best teacher.

So let him take it, and let him writhe in agony as it changed him. Let him have a long and horrible life, so that one day they may understand each other better.
 
What you give is what you get.

Nere waded though the warm, foamy blood. Her arms worked in hurried half-arcs as she trudged from one labyrinthine length of mirror to the next. Every turn of a corner, every twist brought her face-to-face with the same red image. Her own body, wickedly distorted.

Exasperated, she stopped in the center of a half-circle of mirror. The blood had risen up to her chest.

"This isn't feeling like a funhouse anymore!" Nere called out to, what she was sure was some hidden onlookers. "I don't know how to swim!"

"Don't blame this on me, this is a disgusting way to go. Ugh, you're going to stain all of your clothes." No cackle to the voice this time, just a disappointed sigh that could have been the wind battering against the tent flaps somewhere far away. "Darling, I need you to try to bleed less."

"Wait, I'm the one bleeding?" The red wash was up to her neck now. Nere spat out a bit of the foul stuff. "It's mine?"

What you give is what you get.

The words echoed once more through her, resolute this time. Nere closed her eyes, gasped in a deep breath, and plunged into the bath of blood.



Buttons, coins and jewerly went flying in a clattering scatter as a heavy slab of iron thunked into the ground at the funhouse entrance. The barker let out a squeak of surprise, her latest call to action cut short. Her tail curled round a leg as she startled away from the weapon.

Before her, Nere Ashorn stood holding a roughly hewn blade, its point dug into the mud. Nere's hair was stringy with blood. The rest of her steamed off something acrid.

"Here, you can take this," she said, pushing the sword's handle-less tang towards the circus deva. "I bet it's worth more than all the bits and bubbles you'd've found on my corpse."

"Wh-what--" stammered out the barker. But Nere was too high on blood to let her continue.

"You know, the whole iron-from-blood thing is usually just a magiphor, but with endless time and blood ever-flowing, I had all the materials I needed to make a real blood sword." She stood up straighter, puffing out her chest. The sword was nearly as tall as her. "Cool, huh?"

"... the fuck," finished the barker.
 
They were a manifestation of his deepest dreams. Ones that turned out to be nightmares for the many. Then again, was that not often the case for dreams that became a reality? The truth of the world meant that someone had to suffer so that another could reap the rewards of their bounty. The old Brahmus found himself enjoying a sweet treat as his heart beat within his chest. A beat of anticipation. A beat of longing. Perhaps a black desire to see his little secret expand into something he could share with all. And as he ate and savored sweetness, so did his children.

One of his babies crawled into a man's mouth and worked its way down his throat. Into his belly where the acid that lived there would do little to stop what came next. The barbs that injected more of it's like into his very blood so that they might feast. His blood that would feed it and cause it to grow fatter. Stronger. Aurelian could somehow feel it. He himself had become aroused by the thought of his influence spreading even in this place that was not real. A place that he was almost certain he could touch the seams of, but the threads eluded him.

The worm in his victim's belly grew a mouth and appendages. It fought to break through the flesh of his belly and cried out as a newborn might. So that it's mother that was the world and all of creation might feed it with the blood and flesh it so desired. So that it might feed it's many children that were pale and viscous and wanting in their nature.
 
Cooberry shrank his head in close to his belly, eyeing the strange two-legged creature that pointed at him and the tree. Of course, the words said sent shivers throughout Cooberry's small little body. Feathers all ruffled, beak opening and closing from nerves. He was grateful for this haven, a tree among manmade atrocities that took up too much space and never belonged where they were put down.

"They always want to take from us," Cooberry said, his high, shrilly voice not encapsulating the bitterness he felt deep in his soft breast. They wanted the Bark Matron's eyes, which now were starting to look quite lovely to Cooberry. "They think everything belongs to them. The soil, the grubs, the flowers, the fruit, the woods, the sky." He shook his head, cooing to soothe himself as he tried to ignore the squelch of the mangled two-leg took his stupid, dirty spoon and shoved it towards an eye.

The pigeon wished he were a crow with a big beak and big talons so he could bite off the two-leg's rotting nose full of big, gaping holes that housed larvae of horseflies. He wished his littlebird feet were thick and black and scary enough to pull out the horrible creature's eyes instead of him taking one from the Matron.

There was much pleasure shining in his bright orange eyes when Schtump started to twist and writhe in agony, his voice going in and out as he struggled to breathe.

"He deserves it," Cooberry said. "I'd never take anything from you without asking like they do." Even though he had landed on her without permission, he had already forgotten about that. Woes of a small bird brain, he was no parrot.
 
"You're going to eat this world. You have to stop!"

The last words that echoed about the area before the world around them moved.

Creatures launched from all places, toppling many others in their boats. Saskia threw herself down into their boat, feeling a sharp pain race up her arm and over her shoulders. In the corner of her eye, something caught Kenan and disappeared into the screaming mouth opened, and from where she laid writhing in pain watched as the man choked for air. He stumbled, the boat rocking him, but from his stomach...

It grew, swelled, and on someone like him it looked sickly. A tumor, one that burst forth in blood, flesh, and the insides Saskia never thought to see outside a battel field. She tore her gaze away, found herself lurching to the side and emptying the contents of her stomach.

Beneath, in the water, movement.

Her mouth snapped closed as Saskia fought against the gagging reaction.She turned to face the born abomination that cried out in shrill tones as it emerged from the ruined remains of Kenan. All she wanted to do was scream back at it in hopes to scare it.

Saskia wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood, desperate to get away from the noise. Her hands found the trellis of the arched tunnel, but her fingers found thorns. The roses, withering in the darkening dark, petals turning old and dry, but the thorns cut and sliced away at Saskia's hands.

She did not dare open her mouth. Did not dare to whimper as she jolted at the feel of yet again scraping her knuckles against thorns the largest she had ever seen.

If I had my shadows, perhaps I could hide. But what was the Shadow Knight without her shadows? Who was Saskia without her sword?

She had nothing to fight with.
 

THE CURIOSITIES

The chainsmoking fairy cocked a brow. Lip all slant as she looked up to the giant staring down at her so... intently.

"Yeah?" A scream came from outside the tent, as something with a thousand legs and a body long as a wagon reared up and trapped one of the carnival goers who just got unlucky. "I think I'm good,"

She took a drag of the cigarette, and let out a long tail of smoke. The door to the cage came open.
"You can come in here if you'd like," she took another drag, and kicked her little feet. The swing she sat upon swayed this way and that.


THE ANIMAL CAGES

Gulp went the snake. Down the gullet Etoile slid. Worked over by the grip of tiny teeth and the pull of biting fangs. Not poisonous. But made to grab and pass all that the long body coiled and squeezed.

Enter, the hero with the blood forged blade.


THE FREAK SHOW

Splork. Shplit. Shluck. Pop. Out went one of the eyes. Black blighted blood oozed about the silver spoon ,and there in the idiot man's hand, was one wide staring eye, plucked from the treewoman.

"Haha!" he said as he raised it up into the air. There where the ocular nerves of an eye would be, roots. Slapped out. Unfurled. Dug beneath skin. Spread, and spread.

Thoughts of the suffering. Of the deserved. Spread across the roots like water to parched soil. The lone eye prize staring wide and open as it watched. Schtump got caught by a root. All wriggled up his legs and bored into him until it sprout from his chest. Spurt out a haze of red mist.

Cooberry coobird's feet turned enormous. Like the angry hands of a strangler. The large eyes of the idiot man child staring up at the eye he still held so proudly in his upraised hand.

His mother, all dead corpse in a chair, just grinned as she watched with her eyeless gaze.


TUNNEL OF LOVE​


Crash through the walls, spilled out into the streets. The wormagedon spread. While the jaunty tune of the Big Tent wailed and droaned over the flood of horrors that rushed across the dirt paths of Karn Evahl.

THE BIG TENT

Brass pipes wailed and warbled as shroudlamps danced about in rings around the scarlet fevered tent, all striped with its jaundiced bands and flesh-colored tassels, reeds, and ringlets.

A manticore pounced on a laughing man. Too gleeful to possibly be dying. Claws ripping. Jaws tearing as scorpion's tail stung spine all too read and deep. But oh. How the man, so ordinary, so plain, round faced, and short haired, smiled. Even as his fingers tore up the dirt, and the manticore went on eating.

But there it was, and there it sang! The Big Tent. Almost seemed to bounce in tune to the boozy rhythm. Sounds so melodic they seemed to bend the air with warm wobbles like waves of a gentle sea. Lapping, and carrying and guiding any whose feet would find the current.

Into the bright gate of the Big Tent. Flaps splayed out like arms welcoming a hug. There at the center of the splayed arch, a towering red clown. Pale masked, and twice horned. Who bowed and waved, and wheeled long octopine arms in for all to come be.

"Wowed by the show! Mesmerized and sparklefied! Step right up folks, come on down, to the wildest show this side of town!"

Gawkers and walkers on did they march. Into the pale gold glow that beamed out of those big wide spans of oddly colored canvas. Like so much discolored skin, stretched near translucent against the lamps. Shadows inside, milled about.
 

THE FREAK SHOW​

The bird was right, in a way. But being taken from wasn't life's true tragedy. Being given more than you were meant to bear was worse. You could only shoulder so much before your wings no longer remembered how to carry you. The gloom of her thoughts wouldn't do them any good, so she kept it to herself. Venom wasn't known as such long as it remained bottled.

There were things bird and branch could agree on. Perhaps that was her failing – that she still tried to relate to humans. Time had come to relate to creature and critter, grub and shrub. But the conviction in the pigeon's cruel voice stirred a deeper concern. If even one so harmless harbored such rage...perhaps that was where truth hid. You needed to make yourself inert to keep the hate from wielding you. The neutered couldn't harm the world, only their innards.

„He does.“ And if some pleasure crept into her voice, let it.

The pain of the eye taken was...hmphhhh...but even that pain was nothing to the stretch and strain of joints as she bowed down to close the moron's hand around the eye. She'd heard of mystics claiming opening the third eye brought about great knowledge. But those thoughts were cast aside long ago, as only someone who opened hundreds could.

„You've taken it.“ Cruelty had been a mistake. Getting up would be even more difficult. „Now earn it.“

Looked to the wheeled corpse and wondered how one raised such an idiot.

Her side grew heavier as the bird...mutated.

Oh no!

Was she corrupting the skything too?
 
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˚୨୧⋆˚。⋆ The Big Tent ⋆ ˚。⋆୨୧˚​


Ahead, the manticore happily devoured a man who was laughing through the gore, hysterical giggles bubbling between bites. Anira slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh no. No, no, no, absolutely not,” she whispered and froze mid-step, with every intention of making a very dignified and very rapid exit.

Except the crowd behind her surged, an unstoppable tide of elbows, excitement, and poor life choices.

“Darling...darling, please..! Aoch, my hair!!! Mind the lute! HEY!”

A shoulder to her back.
A hip to her ribs.
Someone’s hat ended up on her.
Someone snatched the wine bottle right out of her hand.

She flailed, fruitlessly, like a glitter-covered duckling trying to swim upstream, but alas, she was no match for the carnival-going masses. The tide carried her forward. She gagged. It smeled like burnt cotton candy and taxidermy in the tent. The bard spun again, trying to push out, but the crowd behind her just shoved her deeper, deeper, DEEPER.

The towering red clown stood at the entrance. He bowed. Deeply. And his voice rang like rusted, untuned bells: "Wowed by the show! Mesmerized and sparklefied! Step right up folks, come on down, to the wildest show this side of town!"

Some people trained as knights. Some became bards. And then there were jesters… the ones who chose chaos as a profession.

Truly, why were jesters always so disturbingly uncanny? Was it the hat? The painted grin? The limbs that bent like they’d forgotten how bones worked? Or was it simply that only a very particular type of soul ever woke up one morning and thought, “Yes, juggling knives is my destiny”?

Anira smoothed her hair, adjusted the hat, squared her shoulders, plastered on her most dazzling “I-am-not-freaking-out-at-all” smile, and stepped right up to the towering red clown as if he were a duke at a banquet rather than a jester nightmare.

“Well helloooo there,” she cooed like a lark, voice as a velvet ribbon wrapped around denial. The jester stared down at her, blank and unreadable. “A man of such… height, such… handsome horns, and such delightfully elongated limbs surely knows his way around a tent.” The bard purred and she pressed on. “Here I am, hopelessly lost, tragically... and in dire need of an exit. A door, a flap, a hole in the reality, truly, I’m not picky.” She fluttered her lashes.

The jester bent at the waist in a bow so deep she thought his head would roll right off. His horns nearly scraped the ground. “Exit?” he echoed, as though tasting the unfamiliar word. “Lovely little lady,” he chimed, all dented. Words like an old wine press twisting. His many-jointed fingers unfolded, gesturing to the growing chaos beyond.

“But why would you exit… when you’ve only just begun to arrive?”
 
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