Re: carnival: sparrow/matt
He looked back at her, and didn't know what she meant, only that she believed it. He nodded, once. He understood that she understood it - that was what mattered. "There are," he agreed. Maybe she'd never been far from this town in her forgotten memory, or maybe she came from somewhere a few thousand miles away. She knew what people were, though. They weren't always what you expected, or where. It didn't explain why the winter was dangerous, but he wouldn't forget that she'd said it. If anything happened to him this winter, he would think about her first, that she said it would be dangerous, that there was good and evil where you least expected to find it. Towns, for instance, with carnivals and Main Streets.
He thought maybe he had disappointed her. There was something in her look, when she sweetly told him it was time to go by saying he could come another time. That couldn't be right, though. "I will," he said. He stood up from the bed.
He would have liked to take his gloves off and drag her closer, take her by the ankle, pull her flat, surprise her, see if it made her laugh, see if she smiled another way than the way she was now. This wasn't that sort of time or place. He stood, and he never had taken his gloves off, or his shoes. He never got comfortable.
He wouldn't pay for the privilege of speaking to her again. Not because he hadn't liked her company, but because he had, and because he hardly had any money to spend. This evening had pretty well cleaned him out for the next week. She was different, and beautiful, but those things didn't belong to him. He'd talk to her if she wanted to talk, and that might never happen. But there were a lot of people he didn't remember that he would never see again, and he didn't think he'd paid to be in their company.
When he left, he checked left and right for anyone waiting or watching the exit. No one was there. He shut the door quietly and moved away from the dim carnival with his hands in his pockets. No more words tonight.