WHO: Arnaud de Chaumont & Freycenet WHAT: Checking in post-shift. Arnaud has ouches. Freya is tipsy. WHERE: Arnaud’s trailer WHEN: May 11th, just after dawn RATING: Probably language. Blood. Excessive Frenchness.
Freycenet did not drink. The notion of a drunkard unicorn was so unseemly it bordered on blasphemous. Yet here she was. She would have argued with anyone willing to try that she was not, in fact, drunk. She was just happy. The dark spirits at their last stop had made her forget what that felt like for a while. Besides, she’d only had three cans of apple cider! It’d been delicious. More importantly, it had taken her mind off of the events leading up the cirque’s departure from Louisiana. Though the bartender’s reason for calling it ‘hard,’ she was starting to understand now. The resulting headache was certainly hard to tolerate.
Her watch read 5:50AM. The sky over the Cirque was dove grey and peach with the breaching sun, the snow on the surrounding mountains painted a soft orange. Like sorbet. Oh wow, she could have gone for some sorbet right now. Maybe she should call that kind man who’d given her his number back in St. Francisville and invite him for sorbet. Wait, where was her phone? Oh, fudge.
Unfettered, Freya spun, feeling lighter than she had in recent memory. Her arms outstretched and skirt flared, head tilted back in the infant light, she swirled down the back alley to the employee trailers. She had a monthly date with a grumpy Hyena to keep. Careful!” someone shouted at her from the mouth of the alley. “I’m fine!” Freya called back, singsong. “You’re lovely! You care and that’s just ... lovely!” Her nonsense was met with chuckles. The waifish little blonde had stopped doing cartwheels (or attempting too, and failing) so they likely felt they’d done all they could for her.
Her key fumbled in the lock on Arnaud’s trailer door. It wouldn’t quite fit … wait. The door was neon green. Arnaud’s was not. She climbed up the stairs to the right door, thumping a knee on a guard rail. “Ow.” Another thump. “Oooowww.” Her keys lost in some pocket or another now, she knocked at his door, bent at the waist to clutch at a throbbing kneecap. “Arnaud, it’s me. Are you alright? Lemme in."