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The last time Fiona had come to the Cirque du Freak, two rather charming teenage boys had shown her around, introduced her to the performers. One was a half vampire. The other, she realized, must be in his 20’s by now. The Snake-boy, they’d called him back then.
They’d run her through the basics of each performer’s abilities — most of them she knew already, but she didn’t want to spoil the fun they got out of telling her.
“And there’s Truska, the bearded lady!”, the half-vampire, Darren, had said. “She doesn’t always have a beard. She can grow it at will, and suck it back into her face!”
“There are plenty of creatures in this world who can do that, darling,” Fiona had replied. I can pull off that one myself, she thought, but she didn’t tell them that.
“It isn’t just that,” Evra, the snake boy, had added. “Her hair is stronger than anything. It can’t be cut, even with a chainsaw! It’s invincible!”
“Really, now?” Fiona had thought. Well, that narrowed things down a bit — was this a demigod in disguise? That was the first thing that came to Fiona’s mind, but…
“Look, here she is!” The boys ran towards Truska, who had just come out of a tent, and Fiona looked up to see.
And she had realized immediately upon seeing her.
A Skelk…
“No one knows where she came from, or what her language is, but she taught me a little.” Evra tried to translate between Truska and Fiona, as they exchanged basic greetings. His attempt was cute.
Later, after the performance, Fiona found Truska walking away from the afterparty, and back to her own tent. “Truska!”
At the sound of her name, the Skelk had turned around. Fiona caught up with her, and asked, in gestures, if they could walk together. Truska nodded, with a smile, and they found a path into a lightly forested area. Fiona spoke of the performance, in English, knowing Truska barely understood, conveying more in the excitement of her tone than in her words. Truska nodded, relaxed.
“So…” Fiona started. “What is a Skelk doing traveling with the Cirque?”
She asked in the Skelk language.
She wasn’t sure how Truska would react, but she hadn’t expected this kind of dismay. “Don’t worry,” she followed up, making a wild guess at the cause. “I’m not with…” She’d forgotten their word for the village elders, and she didn’t want to fudge it and be disrespectful. She started over. “I don’t report back to anyone. I’m not of the sea.”
At that, Truska relaxed just a bit, and Fiona saw that she had guessed right. Truska was afraid of her own village. “Ah, I see. I’m… that is… well, I suppose I certainly don’t look like I’m in deep mourning, but that is why I left my pod, as is required. I didn’t… I didn’t choose to come here. That is, a friend… a Prince of Vampire Mountain—“
“Vancha March?” Fiona cut in.
“You know Vancha?” Truska asked.
“I think all of us on the odd side of life are Vancha’s friends,” Fiona said, smiling.
The knowledge of a mutual friend put Truska at ease. “Yes, Vancha introduced me to the Cirque, and to Hibernius.” She smiled, and Fiona was glad to see that.
And Truska was glad to have someone to talk to in her own language. They had roamed the hills around the camp, and at last, they had kissed under the moonlight, but no more.
Fiona had left the next morning — she had plans that couldn’t be altered, not even for such a lovely new friend.
————————————
Only five years had passed, but so much had changed… and most of those changes had to do with the Council at Vampire Mountain two years ago.
Fiona hadn’t encountered any mountain vampires since then, except in an official capacity as high priest, and even that was rarer now than it had been before. Now that they were at war, the vampires of the mountain treated both the Fleur de Lis and the Temple of Carcossa as beneath their notice. They wouldn’t countenance interference by any outside of the two scarred clans. It was a shame. She wished she could do something to save them… both of them.
And perhaps it was that guilt that kept her away from so many of her old friends. She wished she had done more in the past, to stop things from coming to this… but the past was the past. It couldn’t be changed. It was the future she had to focus on. And that was what she did, as both a Fleur member and as Hastur’s high priest. Her god had been in contact more than ever, and together, they were making a plan.
That newly found confidence, that feeling that came with having a plan in the works, might have been what made her decide, when she heard that the Cirque was nearby a place where she happened to be staying, to take this opportunity and meet them again.
The half-vampire boy had left, she’d known that already. She wondered if the rest of the Cirque knew what he’d gotten up to, the battles he’d been involved in, the unprecedented and exalted position that fate had dropped him into.
She doubted the news had reached them.
She arrived at the camp around noon, when most of the troupe were barely even awake. She spoke to Hibernius first, then to some of the other supernaturals in the troupe, sharing what information they could, what they dared.
But she couldn’t deny it, and didn’t try to… the lovely Skelk was the most on her mind.
“Truska is still with us,” Hibernius told her, before she even asked. “She will be glad to see you.”
Fiona smiled and thanked him, knowing him well enough not to ask how he knew.
When Truska saw Fiona, she grew flustered, looked away… but she Fiona could see that she smiled.
They talked for a while, and Fiona helped Truska with the costumes for the night’s performance. After the performance, neither of them attended the afterparty. Truska took off her stage jewelry and threw a simple, light robe over her slight costume. Fiona was dressed similarly, a light wrap dress that served her well in the hot weather, though nothing could make her go without jewelry.
They walked along the path to the village near where the Cirque was camped, talking about all sorts of things, about the world, and all the places they’d been to. Fiona told Truska about Hastur, and her duties as high priest. Truska told Fiona about the Cirque, and about performing, all of the strangest audience reactions she’d gotten — no matter where in the world they were, all of the humans were strange to her, and her take on their behavior was so charming to Fiona.
Though its shadow lingered over their conversation, neither spoke of the war, or of vampires, or Vancha, or his beautiful, kind, and peaceful friend who had met with such an unfortunate end. And Truska didn’t speak of the Skelks.
They came to a fork in the road. One way led towards the village, a small fishing town. The other led to the beach.
Fiona hadn’t forseen Truska’s reaction. She shook her head. “No… no, let’s go back to the camp.”
“Why?” Fiona asked. “I thought…”
But the fear in Truska’s face told her why. “The sea… you haven’t been back at all?”
Truska shook her head. “I’m not— I can’t…”
Looking into Truska’s eyes, Fiona saw for certain what she’d understood before. Truska didn’t fear her people because she was ashamed, but the opposite — it was precisely because she wasn’t ashamed. She had long since thrown off the mental shackles of their expectations… which meant that an encounter was bound to be unpleasant, but even so, she was better, healthier, this way.
Fiona held her hand. “We’re on the opposite side of the planet from your pod, they’d never know.”
“There are supernaturals here as well, they’re everywhere.” The Skelk replied. “You know that more than I do.”
“The people down here wouldn’t know who you are or where you’re from at all. And even if they did, they wouldn’t care.”
“That… that may be, but…” Truska still didn’t want to go.
Fiona smiled, and slid her dress off of her shoulders. She wore nothing underneath. Truska wasn’t bothered — nudity was no problem for Skelks or for the Cirque — and Fiona didn’t care if there were any humans around to see. She never did.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head back, focused on the moon, and chanted a short prayer in the ancient language of Carcossa, from a lost land on a distant star, a language from a civilization that had died out when this planet Earth had just barely formed.
When it was finished, she breathed out, looked back at Truska, and began to grow long, thick hairs on her arms, as red as that on her head. The red tendrils moved on their own, taking Truska’s hands, and tickling her wrists, until black hairs grew from them, and entwined with Fiona’s red ones.
Come, the red hairs told her.
The black hairs responded in agreement, and they ran off towards the sea together.
