Cirque Nocturne: In-Character

Happy World Elephant Day.

I like elephants a lot. The smallest living elephants are found in Borneo but small is relative since they're still 8 ft tall. But the smallest ever elephants (which might also mean they're the best elephants, but I don't want to pick favorites) were the prehistoric dwarf elephants that lived on islands around the world. Some of them were only 5 ft tall (which finally makes me taller than an elephant.)

There's this cool thing that happens on islands called 'insular dwarfism' which basically means that big mammals travel to islands and because of ecological pressure and stuff, they get smaller. I can't remember the exact details and I can't be bothered to google it, but it's probably about competition or predators or niches. Ecology loves niches.

It doesn't have to only be islands either. It just has to be somewhere cut off and islands are really good like that. Insular dwarfism is one of my favorite things because, like I suggested up there, I like when big animals are small.

Islands are kinda weird though, cause when big animals go to them they get small, but when small animals go to them they get big. ('Island gigantism', which I'm ashamed I had to google the name of because it is exactly what it says.) This is why Mauritius had the dodo which was basically a massive pigeon, and New Zealand had an eagle with a wingspan of 10ft, and islands in the Indian Ocean have coconut crabs that are almost 3.5 ft leg to leg.

No one is interested in any of this and I don't know why I'm still-

What's either your favorite animal or your favorite island? It's going to be bonus points for island animals obviously.

Happy Chocolate Day! And if you have something that is weighing down on you, today is the day to let it go and tell your friends because it's Tell The Truth Day. Don't let stuff fester cause you'll only feel worse about it. Even if it's something your friends might not like to hear it's probably better said anyway. What's that quote? 'Better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you're not?' Hey, it's Global Forgiveness Day too so are they even allowed to be mad?

But maybe hey please don't take my advice seriously because I'm not a therapist, I'm just a girl reading a website that's telling me it's both Macaroni Day and Strawberry Sundae Day and those are a lot less heavy than The Truth.

It's also real dumb for me to be all 'speak your truth, girlfriend!' cause I don't really have any deep dark secrets.

So maybe just pretend this whole post doesn't exist and celebrate Build a Scarecrow Day instead.

[Kit]
Happy Birthday :D

July is ice cream month according to those people who make up the days but I love ice cream so I'm going to go along with them.

Have you been to the Creole Creamery? I love it and their instagram is almost too much for me to take. (The blueberry pie and mexican hot chocolate are their best ones.) If the tea shop goes bust, then I'm going to go work there instead. Wish me luck!

Finally it's a day relevant to some of the circus - Happy Fairy Day!

Today is also Please Take My Children To Work Day, but I think a lot of the jobs here are not really ones you should take other people's kids to work with you for.

(And it's Swim A Lap Day and Pralines Day. I care about one of those more than the other...)


[Kit]
My dress is green.


[Prim (added after talking to Kit)]
We're going to the ball with Kit officially, like as a group of three. I asked him but I said it was your idea.

This upcoming ball sounds amazing. Who is going to it? I want to go kinda but I don't know what I'd wear or even how to dance and I think there's lots of dancing? And would it be embarrassing to go without a date?? I don't think I'm fancy enough for a New Orleans ball.

Today is both Ice Cream Soda Day and Vanilla Milkshake Day. So you have to get both. It's the rules, I don't make them.

I should have made a proper tea to suit but didn't think ahead. But I do have a delicious vanilla black tea blend and it's delightful. Yes, I'm selling myself, come buy tea from me. (Except I feel bad and kinda silly about charging circus people because the money goes back to the circus so... I don't know, no one ever gave me instructions on that when I started here so now it's a mystery.)

Happy Blueberry Cheesecake Day, Dracula Day and Paper Airplane Day! You're allowed to celebrate them all seperately but wouldn't it be the best if you made them all together? I looked it up and there's no Vampire Day so you might just have to share Dracula Day.

And do you know how many things this MONTH is?

Get Caught Reading Month, Hamburger Month, Barbecue Month, Asian Pacific Heritage Month, Cystic Fibrosis Awareness Month, Golf Month, Lupus Awareness Month, Military Appreciation Month, Deck Safety Month, Bike Month, Lyme Disease Awareness Month.

I'm not sure all of these things need a whole month.

Anyway I've been wasting the last hour on this site and it has all been worth it. Except I found out that my birthday is Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day so... I guess that's a thing.

I love the idea of birth flowers. In my family a specific flower was assigned to each child as they were born, but even the humans like the thought of it. They only pick a month and then go with that, but it's a nice thought anyway. Do you know your birth flower? Does it suit you? You should choose a new one if it doesn't, something that speaks to you. Flowers have so many meanings.

( list )

Does anyone have a guitar lying around that I can use for a bit? I didn't bring mine with me when I left home because it was too big and difficult, but I kinda miss playing it. And I guess if anyone is interested in just sitting around and doing music stuff sometime, that would be cool too.

(I would say the same for a piano but that's not really a thing that I can take back to my room, and I'm not good enough at piano that anyone wants to hear my trying to play things in a public area.)

Do you remember how I had that new finger? The greatest finger? You should remember, I put a video!

Wait, I'll show you

( non-gory drawing under the cut )

Like that? Remember? It could wiggle and wave but now it's gone, got broken right off and now I've got a dull number of fingers again. Yes, it's one less than most have and that's somewhat exciting but everyone's lost a finger before, it's not new. Having a special one in a special place was new.

I miss my special finger. We'd become very close. It was like a part of me.

[Filtered to Rex]
We need to sit down together and talk when you have time.

[Filtered to Nadine]
I've managed to get into contact with one of the witches from outside the cirque to talk about telepathy spells and charms. I'll let you know if anything comes of it.

I speak French well enough to hold a conversation (although I understand it/read it better than I speak it and my accent is terrible) so it's really interesting all the French influences around in New Orleans. I've been noticing a lot of differences between the French I learned and the French they speak here. There are some grammatical constructions that would be considered 'wrong' in standard French that are apparently normal for Louisiana French. Some of the sentence structure is all mixed up as well, like it's been more influenced by English, and they sometimes skip out the subjunctive all together. When they're speaking it, they roll their Rs more, which is maybe a Spanish influence?

I've been going to a lot of French poetry and book readings in the city on my nights off, is what I'm saying.

This probably isn't very interesting to anyone here, or it's probably just things you already knew about but I just thought it was kinda cool, languages evolving and stuff. I haven't heard much creole yet so I don't really know about that. It would be even more different, I might not be able to understand most of it, but I'd be interested in learning.

I don't know, it's kinda dumb. It's just some stuff I thought was interesting.

Ugh I'll probably delete this later, it's dumb

( ... )

( ... )

It works!

[Attached is a video of Lamb's hand in focus with her face out of focus behind it. There is a finger that now grows straight up from the back of her hand instead of from the clearly visible slowly healing stump where it should be. The finger is bending and wiggling of its own accord. Lamb is obviously delighted.]

I have more thread but I don't know what to sew. I might sew the bunny I found to the small me-doll. Neither are alive, but maybe with enough thread they could be.

Just ran across a group of teenagers playing a game of Dungeons and Dragons by LED candelight around the corner of one of the games tents. I'm sure the cirque must lend a sense of drama to it all, but it seems like it would be a lot cheaper to play it at home.

[Filtered to her sisters]

I

ok

I think maybe this place is starting to hit me, starting to think about it all, with the vampires and the witches and the ringmaster talking about bodies and they kill people and I was sort of not really but now I'm really

and I think I'm kinda forgettin how to breathe, how does breathing go again?

I don't think i feel so okay right now

Breathe deep and feel the cirque enter the lungs, cold like frost and hot like blood. Yes, a good feeling, a good thing to be back home.

But where is everyone I know? I feel like I hardly recognize a face. The Old Gang's taken off without me here? And where's that girl who could unhinge her jaw to swallow a whole baby? She promised me a private showing when I returned.

A home for so many old monsters yet such an unhealthy turnover rate. Do you scare them off into the woods, Ringmaster? Where have all our oldest friends gone away to?

My Anne-Rice-obsessed-younger-self cannot believe I am living in New Orleans. I even went and bought the whole book series - even the worst ones! - for the sake of nostalgia. But it's also weird, because when I was obsessed with vampires as a kid I didn't know that vampires were a real thing. Which is probably for the best? I don't know what twelve-year-old me would have done with that information. (She might have run off to join a supernatural circus to live with vampires. Can you even imagine!)

(It's okay, I'm not a weird vampire groupie, I have well and truly grown out of that phase.)

Anyway, there's a cool shop I went to yesterday and I wanted to buy everything to put in the tea room. And they had up flyers for vampire masked balls and witches balls and steampunk balls and, wow, this whole city is so goth. I wanted to be a goth so much when I was a kid. Maddy and MJ please never show people the photos of tiny goth me.

I have also been to the pharmacy museum which was so cool. So many old jars filled with questionable substances and weird surgical instruments and a cool soda fountain. I recommend it if you like history stuff.

♥ ♥ ♥