Cirque Noir

It is 3.16am in Hyderabad.

When the cirque moves it is usually a smooth transition: there one minute, gone the next. But just occasionally, just rarely, it is a messy thing, a series of lurches that everyone feels and that sends unsecured items toppling, like its own little earthquake. It was a lurch just like this, almost twenty years ago, that caused considerable damage to circus buildings and even injured a few of the workers.

The move from Hyderabad is not that intense, but it is uncomfortable and unsettling, especially for those who have been with the cirque five years or less and would have never experienced it before. For 25 long seconds the very ground beneath the cirque shakes and jerks, waking some from sleep and breaking some small unfortunate items. 25 seconds is a long time when the world is shaking, and long enough that people might start wondering if something has gone terribly wrong.

But the cirque doesn't get stuck and it doesn't damage itself, and when the shaking stops it has landed in its new temporary home. Still. Quiet. As though nothing happened at all.

A group of young people who have been winding down their night in the same place the cirque set itself down suddenly find themselves shifted a kilometre to the north. They feel a vaguely strange about it, but each individually chalks the feeling up to the long night they've had. The one of them who looks over at the cirque finds nothing unusual about its presence. Why wouldn't there be a circus there? ( It must have been set up during the day. )