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“Rich-boy! Catch!”
Paddy looked up in time to see the rope arching towards him, and he had just enough time to deftly snatch it from the air. He was balanced precariously on top of a slim wooden pole and circular platform, helping set up the tightrope walk that Faith would be using later that night. He was twenty feet in the air without any sort of safety harness or net beneath him, legs hooked around the small wooden platform as the only thing to keep him in place.
Faith was perched on the pole across from him, tying up her own ropes. Paddy had gotten used to the way she worked shirtless and knew better than to comment, since she was aware of the fact that she had more muscles than he ever would and wasn’t shy about rubbing it in his face. In the carnival, you didn’t get that much privacy anyway, and Paddy could confidently say that he had seen every member naked more than once in every sort of situation.
Back home, any sort of indecency was frowned upon and considered shameful and highly embarrassing. Paddy hadn’t even seen his own siblings in their underclothes. Even leisurely trips to beaches or lakes or any waterfront, when swimming and water was involved, was careful and modest—”swimming” being wading in the shallows and dipping your feet into the tide pools and other dignified ways of cooling yourself off in the water.
In the carnival, nothing was left to the imagination, and Paddy had seen every type and combination from every species across the settled worlds. He couldn’t afford to have shame or be embarrassed and had quickly learned to live with it.
“Is it tight enough?” he called across the gap to her once he had secured his end of the rope.
Faith snorted loudly. “That’s what he said!” she yelled back.
Instead of answering his question, she slipped the hammer she had been using into a loop on her belt and jumped to her feet, stepping out onto the rope. If it wasn’t tight enough, the slack would dip beneath her feet without giving any support and send her plummeting to the packed dirt below. The carnival had healers, of course, but there was only so much magic could do. Paddy’s breath caught in his throat before he could stop himself.
But Faith just bounced skillfully, finding her balance before tipping forward into a handspring. She didn’t even have her balancing staff, and yet she completed a full arial, landed, and bowed to Paddy with a flick of her tail. She had a cheeky grin, like she knew it was tight enough all along.
“Ta-da!” she said, spreading her arms wide like she had completed an actual performance. “Why don’t you join me, rich-boy?”
Paddy didn’t have half her skill or balance, and he sat back on his platform, content to stay with his feet firmly on something that he could guarantee wouldn’t move. At least, wouldn’t move too much.
“Nice try,” he said. “Show-off!”
Paddy had a rough start at the whole carnival thing. He wouldn’t deny that. But after a couple shows and after he had been introduced to everyone and getting hazed and teased and ribbed endlessly, he was starting to feel more comfortable and at home.
He still had to ignore the bruises and yet-to-heal wounds across Faith’s shoulders and chest. There were still some things that you didn’t talk about, not even when they were obvious.
Faith didn’t seem to care. She flipped a couple more times, even hanging by her tail from the rope even though they hadn’t set up a safety net yet. That kind of devil-may-care attitude was common in the carnival. No one wanted to die, but no one cared if they did.
Monroe made sure of that.
Human Monroe.
Paddy learned that distinction quickly after a few confusing misunderstandings and conversations.
There were two Monroe’s in the carnival—the human who owned them all and was a spiteful piece of work, and then Monroe the dwarf who was the ringleader for the group and the nicest one you’d ever meet. Paddy thought it was confusing, but Faith told him that was how they made most of their money.
People would pay Monroe the dwarf, not knowing who their money was actually going to.
Paddy had long since learned not to say anything about the sketchy business practices.
Faith flipped herself upright and then quickly made her way across the stretch, joining Paddy on his platform even though it was a tight squeeze. They surveyed their work together. The platform would be decorated further, but other than the single rope, there wasn’t much else to do.
Faith draped herself across Paddy’s shoulder, clingy and jokingly affectionate with him just like how she was with the rest of the troupe.
“What would I do without you?” she said, planted a firm kiss on his cheek.
Paddy shrugged her off with a laugh. “Come on, Faith,” he said. His vision spun when he looked directly down, so he distracted himself by sorting his tool belt. “You know me better than that by now.”
Faith pouted over dramatically, but even she knew when to give up. Or at least stop her teasing.
“Well,” she said with a wink. “I think Wralin needed help.”
“Help with what?” Paddy said half-jokingly. The dragonborn was strong enough to do most things all by himself, typically.
Faith just flicked her tail and jumped back onto the rope, sauntering a couple of steps so that Paddy couldn’t get to her anymore. “You know what he wants help with,” she said teasingly, swaying her hips over-dramatically as she walked.
Paddy refused himself to get flustered around her, so he kicked the rope. Not hard enough to completely knock her off balance, but hard enough that she wobbled and got his point.
“Shut up,” he said, pushing himself to his feet and stepping down the first rungs of the ladder.
Faith just gave him a self-satisfying smirk and flipped upside down, hanging from the rope by her legs and making only slightly lewd gestures at him while he climbed down to the ground. Paddy ignored her, not giving her the satisfaction of knowing that the words got to him. She would only tease him more if she knew how to get a rise out of him.
Paddy was going to look for Wralin, not that he would let Faith know that. Monroe—human Monroe—typically saddled him with most of the work of setting up, and the dragonborn was usually busy the entire day before a show, hauling tent posts and boxes and equipment back and forth until it was time to perform. And no matter how many jokes Faith made, Wralin usually did need help with his work.
So Paddy headed out of the main tent to find him.
He found Wralin exactly where he thought he would, huffing as he hauled the huge, heavy beams that would make up the main supports of any further tents that would be set up. He was shirtless, same as Faith, with minimal clothing anywhere else. It was a pretty hot day for manual labor.
“Thirsty?” Paddy said, pulling his water skin off of his belt and offering it to him.
Wralin grunted and dumped the pile of logs he had been carrying with a thump.
He was sweaty and huffing, and since he was taller than Paddy by a good head or so, he plopped down on the ground so that they could talk face-to-face. He took the skin with a nod of thanks and tipped it back, taking three long pulls. He pulled it away with a gasp, like he had forgotten to breathe for a moment, and handed it back to Paddy. It was empty.
“Thank you,” he said.
Paddy nodded, settling on the ground next to him. “Need any help?”
Wralin gave him a once over and then huffed a laugh. “You could help?” he asked. He nudged Paddy playfully, almost shoving him completely over by accident. “With what arms?”
Paddy returned to shove as best he could, barely moving Wralin even though he put most of his strength behind the gesture. He felt tiny next to the dragonborn even though he wasn’t that much shorter. Wralin was the strongman for a reason.
“I heard the town has good drinking,” Wralin said. “For a human town. We should go out after the show tonight, you, Faith, and me.”
Paddy nodded. It was a common thing with every town they stopped at. By now, he had accumulated a small horde of trinkets that he wanted to send back to his siblings. Anything from small paintings of the places they had been to clay figurines to wooden wind chimes—he liked to find one small thing from every town they stopped at. His siblings could never write back, since he never stayed anywhere too long, but Paddy liked the idea of sending them small, unexpected gifts every now and then.
“Of course!” Paddy said. “Does Monroe want to do the full performance tonight?”
Wralin shrugged. “He can’t keep me in the freak tent,” he said with a growl.
Paddy winced.
He had spent his own time in the freak tent. None of the carnival members liked it. Anyone who wasn’t a human had spent at least one night on duty in the “freak tent.” It was Monroe’s disgusting attempt to make even more money. It was also astonishing how many humans were willing to pay to see another race. Paddy never thought he was that bizarre or rare, but sitting on a chair while humans ooh’ed and ah’ed over his pointed ears and amber eyes had made him rethink everything he knew.
It was the worst way to be the center of attention.
“I’m doing the main tent, and that’s it,” Wralin said, flexing for show and then dropping his hands to his lap. He looked tired, more than usual, and Paddy wanted to cheer him up in an instant.
“Come on,” he said, pushing himself to his feet.
He didn’t have the strength to pull Wralin forcibly to his feet, but he grabbed the dragonborn by two of his claws and dragged at him until he had no choice but to get up. Paddy only came up to his chest, barely, when they both stood as straight as they could, and Paddy figured that was the whole appeal of the performance.
He stepped back a couple feet before jumping straight into Wralin’s arms.
He didn’t have to worry about the dragonborn catching him.
Wralin caught him perfectly, angling him so that he didn’t have to worry about breaking his arms or legs or bruising him against his scales, before tossing him straight up into the air. If it were a performance, Paddy would dazzle the crowd with spells as he flipped through the air. He wasn’t an acrobat like Faith, but Wralin would toss him high enough to give the illusion that he was.
Paddy was smiling when he landed back in Wralin’s arms, and the dragonborn was smiling too.
“Do you want to practice one last time?” he asked, knowing that time with Faith always made the dragonborn feel better.
But Wralin shook his head. “I need to make sure everything is set up,” he said, setting Paddy back on the ground. “Maybe later.”
And the exhaustion was back as he turned back to pick the beams back up and continue hauling them where they needed to go. Paddy felt bad he couldn’t do anything else. But he had to get ready too, and he couldn’t exactly spare the spells since there was a full performance expected tonight.
“You promised a drink,” he said instead, trying to get one last smile out of the dragonborn.
Wralin barely grunted, so Paddy figured he should look to see if he could help anywhere else.
He made his way around the camp, but everything was mostly set up at that point. The animals had all been glamour-ed to look how they were supposed to, majestic and healthy, unlike how they really were. Most of the tents were up and secured. The food stalls had already completed their prep work and were ready for the first wave of customers. Popcorn was bagged up and seasoned and waiting to be handed out.
Really, all that was left was to get into costume.
It was Paddy’s favorite and least favorite time. He loved dressing up and putting on his persona that lived under the spotlight, and yet the clothes that Monroe—the human—wanted him to wear made him feel less confident about himself.
It was a caricature of what a wood elf would wear—what a human thought they would wear actually, since it wasn’t accurate in the slightest—which meant it was tight, brown, and badly sewn. More than once, Paddy had ripped a costume mid-performance and had had to deal with it without disrupting what was going around him. But the costume also meant freedom. He could become someone he wasn’t, and that someone was wild and didn’t care what anyone thought. That someone loved the attention, soaking up the laughter and cheers from the audience as he performed.
And really, that was why Paddy had joined the carnival in the first place.
He returned to his corner of the carts. Every spare sheet of fabric was dedicated to the high top, so that meant that they didn’t get any tents yet. Paddy had a mirror hanging from the side of one of the wagons and a small dish of water and that was it to get ready.
He pulled out his small container of makeup that he was allowed by the carnival, paid for out of his paycheck, and settled himself in front of the mirror.
He could only see a quarter of his face at a time, so that meant he had to go back and forth between everything to make sure it was even and consistent. He smeared dark charcoal around his eyes and over the tops of his cheeks. It doubled as protection from the spotlight and as a way to make him look more mysterious than ever, and then he made sure his lips were properly outlined. He tucked his hair back behind his ears to show off how pointed they were, adding a wax to keep it in place.
He secured his mask then. Monroe had liked the wild, “genuine, authentic elvish-ness” that it had. His words, not Paddy’s. So Paddy wore it for most performances.
From there, it was a matter of putting on the rest of the costumes, mostly clothes.
Privacy wasn’t anything that anyone had, not this close to the performance, so Paddy just stripped where he was and got dressed in the clothes that Monroe expected of him. He wrapped his hands with protective fabric too, dusting down his palms with chalk just like Faith showed him to protect from blisters and chafing.
The last few hours before sunset were a blur, and as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon, they lit their lanterns and opened the tents for business.
Crowds from the town flocked to the entertainment, eagerly handing over their hard earned money for a chance to see the spectacular. Paddy almost felt bad for them, wanting to tell them to save their money for something better. Growing up in a family that never hurt for wealth, he never realized how valuable a silver or two could be until these farmers were handing it over for the worst seats in the house.
Still, Paddy loved the thrill of the spotlight.
It was what he lived for. And when it was turned on him, everything else in the world melted away. The audience became silhouettes that cheered and clapped for him and him alone. They paid to see him perform, and he would perform.
Monroe didn’t let him have an act entirely to his own, not yet. So Paddy usually performed with Faith and Wralin. It was a fun mix of acrobatics and show of strength and magic.
Wralin could juggled both Paddy and Faith with ease, and they could both shoot magic and illusions from their fingers to give the performance that extra pizazz. The crowd went wild every time. And that was the moment that Paddy lived for.
And honestly, no matter how much Faith teased him, Paddy loved whenever Wralin caught him from a tumble and he had a moment to rest against his scaled chest, and that was also what Paddy lived for.
The act was pretty simple, only complicated by magic. He and Faith were both small enough that they could use Wralin like a jungle gym, and when he tossed them high into the air, the audience always gasped in wonder.
Faith could do more than him. If Wralin tossed her high enough, she could swing herself from the tightrope, turning loops and doing flips before diving back down into Wralin’s arms. The crowd loved her, and the fact that she was a tiefling only put them off a little.
Paddy, on the other hand, was humanoid enough that the crowds loved him. He could spin his magic, and the children would watch in wonder, and their parents wouldn’t pull them away in fear. He could send sparks and flairs into the crowd and they would scream and squeal in delight.
In one swing of the spotlights, he could sometimes catch the wide-eyed faces of young children, breathless and amazed by what they were seeing. And that reminded Paddy of himself when he had first seen the carnival perform.
Faith and Wralin and him finished their routine like they always did—Faith and Paddy both sitting on a bicep while Wralin flexed to the crowd.
They would always wait like that for a moment, panting from exertion and trying to catch their breath, but also giving the following act a chance to prepare. They let the crowd clap and cheer before Wralin turned and carried them out of the arena.
As soon as they were out of the spotlight, he set them down on the ground carefully.
“Good show!” Faith said, clapping them both on the shoulder. The heels that were part of her costume made it so she could reach them both at the same time.
“Like always,” Paddy said. He was breathing hard but couldn’t stop smiling.
Even Wralin had cracked a grin, and with a huff, he ruffled them both on the head, messing up their carefully styled hair-dos. His huge paws covered their entire heads, and he knocked them off balance without meaning too. Faith and Paddy laughed it off, each grabbing one of his arms and dragging him along.
“Come on!” Faith said. “You said we could drink! I want to go before the show is over. The bars will be empty.”
And that meant less stares, but that was unsaid.
“I don’t know why you want to go so bad,” Wralin said, letting himself be dragging along. “You make it sound like it’s worth it. Humans don’t know how to make a good drink.”
“That’s because you’re a dragonborn,” Paddy said. “And drinking what your idea.”
Since joining the carnival, he realized just how hardy dragonborn actually were. While in the past, he himself had gotten tipsy and merry on wines and ciders, every race was different with their alcohol. Faith had small bottles of hard grain alcohol, flavored with cinnamon and spices. She was proud of the way it made Paddy’s head spin, and Wralin said he loved the way it tickled his throat.
But dragonborn alcohol was a different matter altogether.
The stuff that Wralin drank would knock Paddy on his back after one or two glasses, and it burned the entire time. And it was the only stuff that could get Wralin good and proper drunk. He usually drank with them out of politeness, but anything that the humans served would do absolutely nothing to him.
“Come on,” Faith begged, hanging off of him without slowing him down at all. “Even with bad alcohol, it’s still fun!”
Wralin just blew a cloud of smoke from his nose. “Get out of your costumes,” he said with a fond smile. “And then we can go to town.”
Paddy and Faith cheered, hurrying off to do just that. They changed quickly, pulling on more comfortable clothing before helping Wralin wash off the oil that covered him from head to toe for the show. The glamour spells that had been put on them at the beginning of the performance would fade naturally, and neither Paddy nor Faith took the time to wash off their regular makeup. Once they were all half-decent again, they each grabbed their small purses of the coin they were paid every other moon and headed off to town together.
The bartender was absolutely floored when they walked through the doors of the bar, but she wasn’t about to turn down good coin, and really, it all spent the same anyway. She served them huge heavy glasses of wheat beer that was brewed locally and flavored with honey and spices—according to her—and Paddy and Faith settled down on either side of Wralin at the wooden bar.
Paddy had to lift his glass with both hands and the foam from the head stuck around his mouth, giving him a faux beard and mustache that made Faith giggle and cackle. She picked up her own tankard and copied him. The glass didn’t look nearly as large when Wralin picked it up, and he drained half of it in one go. The suds didn’t stick to his scales the same, but for a brief moment, he had a mustache to match them.
“Maybe this’ll put some hair on your chest,” Faith said, leaning across the bar to slug Paddy on the shoulder.
Paddy snorted and wiped his mouth on the back of his hands. The manners and etiquette that had been drilled into him from a young age so that he would be good and proper in court hadn’t survived the months he had spent on the road and with the carnival. If his parents saw him now, they would probably be appalled by his actions.
“Maybe you’ll grow hair on your chest,” he retorted.
Faith just laughed and took another swig of her drink. Even Wralin was smiling, trying to hide it behind his glass but not doing a very good job of it. The bartender kept side-eyeing them, not irritated at them—not yet—but obvious that she wasn’t used to serving anyone non-human.
It would be several more hours before the crowds from the carnival even thought to come home, and most of them would be too exhausted to go out for a drink afterwards. For now, they had the bar to themselves mostly. A couple of farmers and other travelers were scattered across the other tables, but no one was going to bother them.
And yes, they all knew that night wouldn’t last. Eventually, the glamor spells would fade and they would have to wash off their makeup. They would have to go back to the carnival and Monroe would demand that they perform again. People would pay to see them dance their dance, and any wounds and cuts and bruises and whip-welts would be covered by magic and makeup.
That was how it was and that was how it was going to be, but for tonight, they didn’t have to think about any of that.
They ordered another round instead and did their best to remember the good times.