Test Drive #1 - London, England, Earth 1845

[thegreatestlittlemod]

The last few days of a stop are always either the slowest, or the busiest. The gray days of London in the autumn don't seem to be helping this to be the busiest, with rain driving customers away.

There are still some customers jogging between tents and ducking under game awnings, using coats and hats to try and keep the water off, but tips are few and far between, and a lot of audiences are empty, leaving performers sitting and waiting, or ducking into each other's shows to watch or just say hi, and those on the game alley shouting across the aisle at each other. Food vendors move up and down the aisle and tents with hot cocoa and kebobs to keep people warm.

A few people are out in the city proper running errands for themselves, each other, or the Ringmaster, often in pairs. Maybe the goal is to find six spools of ribbon in one exact color, or to capture a whole bowl full of raindrops from under a specific shop sign, or to replace some pants you tore in your last show. Whatever it is, you're down to the last day to find it.

Are you determined to put on a show despite having an audience of five? Are you chatting with your fellow carnies, bored with the slow day and wondering where you're going next? Are you seeking out something strange and confusing in jolly old London with a friend?

Or are you determined to enjoy the circus on its last day in your city, not expecting a surprise in store for you when it starts to pack up its doors tomorrow?

Comments

Mischief

[skitter]

Ryo took some getting used to, when he and Hajime joined the group. Taylor can't shut his senses out, and so she tries to make sure her wagon is on the far side of wherever they set up from theirs. He's not just a bug, he's a person, and she doesn't want to be seeing through his eyes or feeling the air in his trachael tubes or the way his little jaws move. And she doesn't want the awareness that her power is always, always ready to take control of his body like a puppet. Staying away, keeping him outside her range, would best for them both.

But Ryo is also a child, and a sweet one. And he's so often in the kitchen wagon with Hajime, smack dab in the center of camp. So Taylor's instinct has become to keep the lightest possible thread of her attention on him when he's nearby.

She feels the change before she hears the shouts. Suddenly, Ryo isn't the only insect in the wagon - there's something else right beside him, something much larger, inundating Taylor with new information, most of it close echos of what Ryo is hearing. And then it's gone. It didn't leave her range, it's just gone.

She throws herself out of her own wagon so fast she almost falls on the trampled grass, running for the kitchen wagon, and almost smacks into the gabbling boys. One grabs her, shouting about the giant bug that tried to bite his face off. She twists her arm free and they keep running, leaving her to whirl to face Hajime.

"I- felt... Ryo, you okay?"

[chalicejoker]

"Are you going to bite someone's face off?" Hajime asks Ryo in the manner of a doting parent asking a small child something very silly before getting distracted by Taylor's approach.

"Gave the best threat displays! Could bite face, but won't!" Ryo giggles again. "Am fine! Nothing to worry about!" He is obviously still super excited about what's just happened. Not that it's hard to get him excited, but he's definitely particularly jazzed today.

Hajime seems surprised to see Taylor there looking so alarmed. "It's all fine here, really. They'd just never seen a bug Ryo's size." Or his size. But crediting Ryo is, in Hajime's mind, the way to go here.