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It was grimy in the tank.
Grimy was a word from one of the books that Allison used to read him late at night when the only light was from the lantern she would bring with her, not streaming in around the others. The ones, the strangers, who would come and stare and loudly bang on the walls around him. He didn’t like those others. The children who came with Allison, he liked those ones. The smallest one, his fingers sticky as he trailed after the taller two boys and learning to be strong from one and to be clever from the other. The other girl who hid behind her hair and created music from the instrument she carried nearly everywhere. The last boy, the angry one, the one who was shoved by Sir into a tank as well, but allowed out when the strangers left, shivering and gasping as Allison wrapped her arms around him.
Sometimes, he wished that he could be out there with them, running around in the air and reading those stories that Allison read him anytime he wanted. But under Sir’s glinting eye and sharp hands clenched around his walking stick, he didn’t dare emerge from the water. He stayed deep under in the grime and green, his limbs swirling around him. He wasn’t happy, per se. It was likely impossible to be happily trapped in the tank that he had been in as far back as he could remember. But he was content.
The storm destroyed that illusion. And that was really all it was, wasn’t it? An illusion. He heard many of the strangers call his home, the ‘circus’, and him, an ‘oddity’. Illusions were apparently common in these places. His limbs certainly weren’t illusions but the others, Allison and her collection of children, they must have been. And they disappeared that day, vanishing into the stormy night in a large city they had just arrived in. And the days started to blend together once more as they did before. And Ben stayed trapped in that grimy, suffocating, dark tank. Alone.