ᴛʜᴇᴏᴅᴏʀᴀ ᴛʜʀᴀᴄᴇ (teachmepassion) wrote in cirque_rp, @ 2017-12-12 16:22:00 |
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It had been four months since Emma had moved to Thailand.
("You'll love it," her friend had promised her. "My place is amazing and someone might as well be living in it while I'm not." Then she'd added, a little too sympathetically, "it's the perfect place to just forgot about him." Emma had clamped her mouth tightly shut and said nothing. A free apartment was, after all, a free apartment.)
While waiting for her visa to come through, Emma had started learning Thai on Duolingo and Mango, hoping to have some basics under her belt by the time she got there. It wasn't much, but it was enough and once there it became easier to learn.
Coming here had been Emma letting some sort of serendipity guide her, because she had no better plans. She wanted to strengthen and embrace her powers, but didn't know what action that required. And that alone frustrated the hell out of Emma. She liked to have a clear and direct plan of attack and for this sort of thing there was nothing.
So she spent a lot of time googling ridiculous sentences in the hopes of bringing up something that didn't sound like it was written by loonies or attention seekers. As yet, she'd had no luck. She instead spent her days relaxing in the knowledge that no patients were waiting for her, and catching up on her reading in beautiful public gardens.
She'd caught the train out to the White Temple, a spot she had been spending many afternoons with a book beside the pond, but this time upon arriving she found something new in it's place.
A circus.
A whole fucking circus that had appeared, as if by actual magic, overnight. Emma had been here yesterday, and it had been only the temple then with no sign of anything about to change.
She circled around until she found what was clearly the entrance despite it being closed, but the sign on it - half hidden behind a pair of teenage girls reading it themselves - said that come nightfall the gates would open.
The afternoon sun was golden and low and so, along with the others, Emma waited for night to come. More and more people showed up, drawn by the tall tents and the sounds coming from inside, and everyone was talking among themselves endlessly about what would be found inside.
Then, as twilight turned to dusk, the gates opened and all were ushered inside among the sea of black and white tents, into a area filled with clowns and dancers and a woman on stilts. Little stalls and games lined the sides, and paths ran in every direction for people to follow.
So Emma followed where they would lead.
She ducked in and out of tents, taking in parts of shows before needing to hurriedly move onto the next to see what it would bring. Because so far one thing had been sure in almost every single show: the people performing were not human. Emma could feel it in her the same way she felt her father in a room of other people, the same way she felt Vaughn when he'd returned changed. This circus, whatever it was, was not run by normal everyday people, but by people like her.
When she next looked at the time on her phone, she found she had passed five hours in the circus and still hadn't seen everything. But instead of moving onto the next exciting attraction - whatever it may be - Emma fought her way back through the crowds to the ticket boxes so that she could ask the questions she had: who ran this circus? who could she talk to about it? how (if it was possible) could she stay here for long enough to learn what she needed?
Emma didn't make it as far as the ticket box. She was stopped instead by a man who already knew what she wanted and gave off no threat towards her in his emotions. Serendipity was taking Emma directly by the hand and although she was suspicious, she was also intrigued. This was a place where people with powers gathered, and this was the place Emma needed to currently be.
So when the contract was passed to Emma she signed it, giving them one year of her life to decide if these people could help her. And if she reached the end of that and she was not satisfied, then she would leave and find another way. If this place existed, she reasoned, then other places like it must exist as well. What was one year in exchange for being stronger? For being better?
Then it was time for Emma to meet the Ringmaster, which sounded strangely daunting. She was told which way to go to find him and when she reached the tent there was no one there but one very tall and intimidating man.
He felt like- No, Emma could not at all place what he was feeling, only that it was like ocean waves breaking on top of her, weighing her down and stealing her breath. She gripped a tent pole nearby for a moment while she focused on her walls, on bringing them back up to stop this man from beating her down like he was. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, and when she opened them again his feeling were less - still there, but she could breathe again.
"The Ringmaster?" she asked him, although that much was clear. Of course the man in charge would feel like a hurricane inside her head.