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throughtheglassdarkly · 4 years ago

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Roadblocks, part 6

Welcome back. When last you were here, we made sure Yova and Marigold would be able to bump clams in peace. Onward.

Our next misadventure got underway less than a week later. Though it was one of those weeks that just draaaaaagged. It almost felt like a year passed.

I was the one who got the first inclination that something might be a little off. I’d had a busy, if not particularly eventful day, and finished off the evening giving my nightly report to Adrian via Paisley. I settled in for the evening and fell asleep, which is when things got weird. I’ve mentioned how we’re lucid dreamers and can more or less change our dreams however we want. What was weird was how understated my dream that night was. It was pitch-black, aside from a few grayish light sources, and all I could make out was a box in the vague distance.

I made my way to the box, hearing upbeat music get slowly louder as I did. The box itself was about five feet tall, painted red, with cracked, dimly-lit lights lining each edge, going up about halfway. The top half was clear, and inside was an animatronic. It looked just like one of those Zoltar fortuneteller machines, except that the animatronic inside looked exactly like Adrian. I summoned up a quarter – sometimes lucid dreaming comes in handy – and put it in the slot. As I did, a prerecorded voice that sounded almost like Adrian, if it hadn’t been so lifeless, said, “A familiar face awaits you.” And where the fortune would normally pop out on a little piece of paper, instead I saw a ticket with floral embellishments around the side and elegant letters read, “ADMIT ONE: SMILE LAND.”

I had never heard of Smile Land before, and seeing this pastiche of Adrian, trapped inside a cage and forced to give fortunes, made my stomach hurt. So I pushed it away. I drove away the darkness and conjured up memories of my favorite running path in the Adirondacks, a place with beautiful vistas overlooking the autumn foliage and under clear, cold skies. It was a place I wanted desperately to take Adrian to, and it felt more real and permanent than most of the other dreams I’d had. I woke up the next morning remembering everything in perfect clarity.

But while my dream was weird, it was far from the weirdest thing that had ever happened. And I wasn’t the only one who had things going on. As it turned out, it was Day who got the most specific instructions. Bella had brought coffee over and was sorting through his paperwork, only to spot some official correspondence from the Autumn Court. Opening it up, she found a stiff-sounding letter from Stella that said, in about 800 times the words, “This might be nothing, it might be something, you should look into it.”

Bella turned and, in her usual dulcet tones, bellowed, “DAAaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAAaaaaAAAAAAY! You got a letter!” Day grumbled from where he was halfway through nursing his hangover and Bella walked over, smacking the letter on his chest. Day read through it and found out there were a few odd disappearances in the area that Stella had become aware of. Given that Day made it his business to continue the investigative bent, she decided to reach out to him first. The missing folks didn’t seem to have a lot in common: one was a woman in her mid-60s, one was a college-aged dude, and the last was a random office-worker. They weren’t similar in any way, shape, or form, but they each had one thing in common: before they disappeared, each one mentioned that they had been hearing really strange music at random times and it was starting to get to them.

Day pulled up the databases and began checking where each of the three missing people lived. “Do you need me to call the others?” Bella asked him. “Nah, I’ll look into it,” he said. Bella made a big show of picking up his coffee mug and saying, “You’re the boss man around here, I’m just your lowly secretary making sure everything here stays neat and organized.” “Lowly secretary, my ass,” Day grumbled, heading out the door. He decided to start at the retirement community the older woman lived at.

From the outside, her home looked like every other one on the block, and he managed to pick the lock on the front door after a couple of minutes. Inside was a very neat apartment in cream and lace, decorated in stereotypical old lady Precious Moments style. Looking around, he didn’t notice much out of place. But then, after a minute, he started to hear a faint tune, almost like an ice cream truck jingle. It was there, and then gone.

On leaving, Day bumped into one of the missing woman’s neighbors and asked him if he’d noticed anything out of the ordinary. He mentioned that he did happen to spot something near where they both put out their garbage cans. He handed over a tattered, stained piece of paper, which read “SMILE LAND: ADMIT ONE.” Yeah. The neighbor said he’d asked around at the community hall and nobody had heard of Smile Land before. He hadn’t seen any advertisements for it and nobody had been talking about it. The last time he’d seen her was about a week ago, standing outside her front door looking dazed, like her head was in the clouds.

Day got back in his car and called Bella, asking her if she’d heard of any new carnivals or circuses in town, instructing her to look into Smile Land. “Aye-aye, captain,” Bella said, pulling up our old friend Professor Google. There weren’t any results, but the more Bella thought about it, she was almost sure she’d heard the name Smile Land before when helping Marigold sort through some documents. So she gave our resident librarian a ring.

And where was Marigold during all this, you ask? At the gym, cheering on Yova as she went through her boxing routine. Ever since they’d decided to make it official, they had been nauseatingly cute and by each other’s side almost all the time. Marigold wasn’t too busy to take Bella’s call, and when Bella asked her about the Smile Land ticket, Marigold perked right up.

“Oh, that’s a very interesting story!” she said. “No one that I know of has actually been there, so I can’t say for certain if the information is 100% accurate, but from what I hear, it’s a sort of – well, it’s like a Hollow, but bigger, within the Hedge.” “A Tardis?” Bella asked. “Well, no. Hollows are maybe a room or two, maybe the size of a small house. This is an entire area that has a hobgoblin, or someone, I’m not really sure, in charge. A few people have been there. It’s sort of set up like a fair,” Marigold said. “Oh, it’s like an amusement park!” Bella said, perking right up at the thought of fried food. “Yes, exactly. Why do you ask?” Marigold asked. Bella went over Day’s job and how he asked her to help him find it out. Marigold perked up again and told Bella that she needed to make another call and to wish Day good luck on his investigation. “Tell Yova not to do anything I wouldn’t do,” Bella said.

Yova came over for a breather around this time and Marigold looked up and said, “Bella says hi, and ‘Get it, girl,’” Marigold reported. Yova gave her a wink and said, “Well, I think I’ve gotten it,” and I’m sorry if you need to go throw up from the cuteness, I am merely the chronicler, what do you want from me.

And it was at this point that Marigold made a call to one of the other changelings in the Autumn Court, a Beast Leechfinger by the name of Dr. Alexander Dickinson. Now, how to give you the full Dr. Alexander experience? To describe him as unpleasant and lacking any interpersonal skills would be like saying the Hinderberg was just a little static cling. Maybe it’s best just to give you their conversation.

On answering, Dr. Alexander asked Marigold what she wanted. “I know that you’re interested in biology and that sort of science and, well, some of my friends are apparently looking into a carnival or fair,” Marigold said. “Can’t say I’ve heard of a carnival that has much medical interest going on,” Dr. Alexander said. “Well, they should have sideshows and curiosity cabinets and that sort of thing,” Marigold said. “And with enough makeup, any poodle can look like a pig. What’s your point?” Dr. Alexander asked. “Well, I was just trying to be nice. I thought it might be something to look into for your research,” Marigold said, hanging up and harrumphing.

Yova’s girlfriend-in-distress sense was tingling, so she took a break from beating the crap out of her trainer and went over. “Someone was rude to you,” she said, drawing herself up to her six and a half feet of height. “I try to be nice, and I try to be helpful, and –” Marigold began, before being interrupted by her phone ringing.

“What sort of friends?” Dr. Alexander asked, when she answered. “Well, it’s, um, some of the other Court changelings. They’re new here. Bella is with the Spring Court, and if she’s asking about it, I assume her motley is as well.” Dr. Alexander asked her where we were going to be meeting and she told him she’d pass along the word to all of us to meet at the Autumn Court lodge.

Which, spoiler alert, we did. None of the rest of us had much going on, and I had just baked a batch of delicious muffins, so we piled in, congregating around the large fireplace in the lodge foyer. And it was around then that Dr. Alexander Dickinson arrived. To give you an idea of what he looks like, picture average height and build, a very reptilian appearance, wearing lab coat and slacks. The worst part is that his hands each have lamprey mouths in them. You learn quickly not to shake hands with him.

I tried to be friendly and asked, “Hey, doc, want a muffin?” “No, thank you,” he said. “Do your hands want a muffin?” I asked. Yova stood and held out her hand, unwisely, saying, “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.” “Of course you haven’t had the pleasure. He’s not your type,” Day quipped.

Once the introductions were out of the way, Marigold explained that Dr. Alexander asked that she call us all there. Bella brought up Smile Land, which almost made me choke, and I spent the next few minutes coughing a bite of muffin out of my lungs. Marigold explained what Smile Land was: “At least from what I’ve managed to read about, it’s sort of like a fair, circus thing. House of horrors, sideshow, animals, things like that. I thought Dr. Alexander might be interested since he has an interest in fae biology. It might be a place he could do some research. I know that those places, they tend to have – or exploit, rather – things of strange physiological nature.”

I managed to clear the muffin from my airway and told them about my dream from the night before. “Well, that certainly seems like more than serendipity,” Yova said. Day brought up the letter he got about the disappearances the Autumn Court wanted him to look into. He explained how none of them had anything in common other than the weird music they were hearing. Pam brought up the possibility that since this was involving the Hedge, there might have been a chance that we were looking into changelings, not regular humans. As we discussed possibly going to take a look, a chill of dread went up each of our spines. There was only one person I knew of who could project that much horror and dismay in her mere presence.

So I turned and said, “Hey, Stella. Muffin?” “No, thank you,” she said. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Detective, I’m quite pleased you got on this so quickly. It was faster than I expected. And you even got Alexander out of his notes. How pleasing.” “Yeah, that was my plan all along,” Day said, shooting his gaze from side to side. “Oh, you don’t have to make excuses, it’s just a pleasant surprise. Good morning, Alexander,” she said. Alexander nodded. Those of us in the Autumn Court are the best at pleasantries. Stella looked at us and said, “I would just like to note that from what we could gather, I’m fairly sure those who disappeared are not changelings, just humans. IT was the manner of their disappearance that caused our concern.” And then she floated backward out of the foyer, floated backward up the stairs, floated backward into her office, and the door closed without anyone touching it.

There was little else to do at this point but go off to the carnival. Marigold elected to stay behind, explaining that she didn’t have any particular interest in going herself and she trusted Yova to come back with a full report. As we moved out of the lodge and into the Hedge, I closed my eyes, trying to remember the feeling of the ticket and what it looked like. The music that came from the automated Adrian and the sound of his voice. After a few moments, I had a strange sense of direction – not really a cardinal direction, more of a sense of “this is where we need to go.” I opened my eyes and looked over my shoulder, telling everyone, “Follow me.” And we set out into the Hedge.

For the first forty minutes or so, everything was fine. We were still in the area of the Hedge considered close to the human world. As we got further out and it was less charted and wilder, the briars started getting larger and blocking out more of the sun until we were in an area where we couldn’t really see anything through the briars and brambles and thorns. The vines got wider and harder to avoid. The path became less obvious, and while most of us were able to keep on it just fine, Yova and Dr. Alexander fell behind a bit and got distracted by some sounds, the cawing of what they described as large birds rustling in the thorns. As they were looking around, the brambles lifted up from the ground and tripped them up a bit, falling further behind. They were able to eventually catch up, but were definitely scraped up in the process.

It took about another hour for us to find ourselves in a place where the thorns started clearing out. We couldn’t see the sky through the canopy of vines, but the ground itself was much clearer, and there was a light up ahead on the path. And once again, I hear the creepy calliope music, slightly out of tune. There was a molded metal gate and a large wooden fence going out and extending as far as the eye could see. The gate had a filigree motif going up at least fifteen feet, much higher than it needed to be. The metal was molded to say “SMILE LAND” and had flags flying from it. A hobgoblin, much taller than we were used to seeing, was dressed in red and white vertical stripes, hunched over a little ticket booth.

As we gathered and took in the thoroughly depressing sight, Yova sighed, “Why does nobody ever tune their calliope?” “You know,” I said, “I’ve always said that is one of the most pressing issues we’re facing today. We need to get these kids off the mindset that they have to go to college and send them to calliope tuning school. Calliope tuners are going to solve the unemployment problem.” Yova gave me her patented listen-here-you-little-shit look that was only interrupted by the goblin addressing us.

He smiled wider than his face should have been able to accommodate, saying, “Customers, welcome! Step right up! Welcome to Smile Land, the happiest place in the Hedge!” “Hardly a high bar, is it?” Dr. Alexander asked. Oh, we pride ourselves on being the most fantastical location of entertainment for miles, kilometers, leagues, whatever form of measurement. You’ll find no more a magical or whimsical place than this,” the goblin replied. “I take it cash will work?” Dr. Alexander asked. “All we ask in return is your happiness,” the hobgoblin said, grinning even wider. “I have cash,” Dr. Alexander said.

As we walked through the gates, we saw a plethora of people. There were some goblins, some obviously fae-touched though it was impossible to tell the origin, and a good number who were obviously human. The humans all looked dazed and not quite lucid. In fact, most of the fairgoers didn’t really look lucid. It was like they were moving about in a daze. Bella scanned the crowd and said, “They look like they know where they are, but they don’t look like they’re awake. They almost look like they’re sleepwalking.”

Around us were the usual carnival staples. There was a large selection of carnival games with barkers of fae origin. Most of them looked like goblins, some were changelings, but they were all drawing customers in who seemed to be participating in the games in a half-hearted way. There was a large circus tent near the center o the area and advertisements for a freak show, which, given the level of strangeness we were used to by now, made all of us wary. There was a Museum of Wonders that looked oddly like a Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, and a section of festival foods, though it had a very acrid smell wafting away from it.

We decided since there was so much ground to cover, the best thing to do would be to split into three pairs, and if we found one of our targets, to bring him or her back to the central area. Day had three pictures that he showed to each of us: an older woman with short, curly hair; a college dude with a linebacker build; and a middle-aged guy with a tragic combover.

Day and Dr. Alexander headed for the freak show. There were advertisements for the standard array of freaks: the strong man, the bearded lady, the sword-swallower, though the pictures hinted that none of them were quite as tame as you would see in the human world. The barker encouraged the crowds to come in and Day and Dr. Alexander shuffled along with them into a long, tented hallway. At first, things didn’t look too egregious. There were a few strange-looking hedgebeasts tied up and looking absolutely miserable. A few contortionist hobgoblins contorting in ways that bodies shouldn’t. They spotted one changeling with a more human appearance than they others they had seen who had a rubbery sheen and appeared to be the sword-swallower act. The sword wasn’t piercing it, but was stretching its neck down to the floor. It wasn’t able to let any noise out around the steel.

Further in, Dr. Alexander spotted a humanoid thing that had been carefully vivisected with each layer of it stretched out like a page in a book. It moved from the skin down to the muscles and the skeleton and organs, which were still pulsating and moving. Its eyes were darting around, looking at the passersby. There was no expression because the face muscles were held in place by wires. I have no idea how this didn’t hit him hard as a Beast – I almost barfed when he told me about it. But he just started making hasty diagrams. Day didn’t pay a huge amount of attention, because across the way, he spotted the linebacker college student.

Bella and Pam, especially Bella, wanted to go into the Museum of Wonders. Bella pulled Pam by the hand toward it and inside. Unlike most of the rest of the tents, the museum was an actual building. Once they were inside, they were able to see some rides that weren’t visible form the entrance. Moving through the exhibits, they saw a bunch of magical items and knick-knacks, though nothing as impressive as they would have expected from the name.

Eventually, they arrived in the center room, which had a shut door and a sign above it reading “THE DREAMATORIUM.” Here, they saw little crystals lining the walls, almost like a honeycomb pattern. Each crystal was about the size of a fist, with a very flat surface and bevels on each end. Though they were about the same size, they were all different shapes and colors. Within each one, they could see first-person views of things. None of what they saw was magical, but they seemed to be important events: one had a beautiful ocean vista, another was staring down at a first-place medal in a hand, another had two hands out with a laughing, smiling baby bouncing up and down in the air.

Bella realized what was going on – she was seeing the happy memories of all the fairgoers. She looked back and Pam and said, “They said all the admission costs is your happiness. These are people’s happiness.” Pam made a very mom, “Mmmm,” before saying, “That doesn’t seem like a good thing for them to have here.” “I don’t think this is a good place to begin with,” Bella said. Around this time, they realized that everyone in the museum was a fae nature and they decided to skedaddle before they got into trouble.

Team Gay decided to head to the games and carnival barkers. As we walked along, we could see the standard games: toss the rings or darts at balloons, what have you. Then there were the ones that were a little more exotic looking. There was a dunking booth with a squirmy little hobgoblin above a tank of what could only be described as eau de goblin pee. We could smell something that vaguely resembled fair food. Or maybe “food” would be more accurate. It smelled fried, but the oil didn’t seem right. Not like it was rancid, just off somehow. There were goblins and changelings of all shapes and sizes shouting for people to come play the games, but everyone doing so just seemed like they were going through the motions.

“Ugh, this is gross. I didn’t even like the fair when I was human,” I said as we moved through. “I mean, I played a few fairs, but they weren’t like this,” Yova said. It took me a moment to realize what she was saying and then I looked up and asked, “Did you play the Ren Faire? Oh, my God, you totally played the Ren Faire.” “Well, of course I did,” she said indignantly. “It was a gig and Julliard isn��t cheap!”

We probably would have continued bickering if our eyes hadn’t alighted on the older woman from the pictures sitting at one of the water gun games. She and the other patrons weren’t making much progress, but they just kept playing it. And it was then that I looked up and saw what they were playing for. There was some costume jewelry in all shades of the rainbow that was the grand prize and IT WAS SO SHINY but Yova literally tackled me right as I was about to sit down in one of the open seats.

The goblin running the game tipped his hat and said, “Well, that’s a shame. It looks like your friend wants to play.” I gave Yova my friendliest smile, which has on occasion caused small children to burst into tears and made adults offer me Advil. Yova, however, just sighed and sat me down and I eagerly took the controls. And I kicked their sorry asses. The little water balloon rose up and up and I beat them all by a healthy margin. The barker congratulated me and handed me the teensiest, tiniest little cheap crappy ring. It wasn’t shiny at all. I looked up, confused, and the barker pointed to the chart that showed prize progression, explaining that with a couple more tries I could win my way up. I looked over at the other competitors, who didn’t seem like they wanted to move at all. Everyone was waiting on me to see whether the game was going to start up again.

But I am nothing if not determined to get shinies. And I can’t really explain what it was that made me go along with it. The barker just seemed so convincing in his praise and his confidence that I’d be able to get the grand prize without any trouble at all. I wanted to play again. So we went.

While I was playing, Yova managed to strike up a conversation with the woman we were seeking. “That was a good run, you’re doing quite well at this. You seem very skilled,” she said. The woman gave her a wide smile, but it didn’t go above her mouth. “I’m having so much fun,” she said to Yova, before turning back to the game.

And I kept playing. The second time, I tied with one of the other players. And we kept going. I tied some, I won some, I lost some. What I didn’t notice, and which Yova had to point out to me, was that rather than everyone getting a separate prize as they won, the barker was just moving the same small ring around between whoever won most recently. She eventually stepped up to the barker as I was getting the ring back. As he looked away from me, the urge to play – other than my motivation for the shiny – was gone.

The barker asked Yova, “Can I help you, miss?” “Yes, you can,” she said, snatching the ring from my hand. She crushed it in her hand and blasted her Glamour, overwhelming the barker with her flaring aura. “I think all of these people have played enough for the day. Maybe some of the other patrons would like to patronize your lovely establishment?” The goblin gulped, looking like the vibration on a string instrument. He shooed us away from the game, starting his step-right-up routine to a new group.

Yova swept me away and put a companionable arm around the woman’s shoulder, steering her off the main thoroughfare. “You took my prize,” I said. “You weren’t going to win the jewelry, Derek,” she said. “I won that. It was mine,” I said. “I’ll give you a quarter to use on a gumball machine when we get back,” she said. I gritted my teeth and started grimly singing, “Toss a coin to your witcher, o valley of plenty, o valley of plenty.”

While this was going on, Pam and Bella exited the Museum of Wonders, ending up closer to the rides section. Both of them were feeling off about what they saw in the Dreamatorium so they sought out anything that might be distracting. They were near the ride area, which seemed like the most standard part of the entire place. There was a Tilt-A-Whirl, a Scrambler, a House of Mirrors, all looking a lot ricketier than even the usual traveling fair. The closest ride was a massive Ferris wheel, creaking as the cars circled around. It jerked with every stop to let more riders on. And, just stepping on to take his turn at the Ferris wheel, was the middle-aged dude with the combover.

Bella and Pam quietly conferred on what to do. “Should I be loud or quiet?” Bella asked. “Let’s let fate decide,” Pam said, pulling a nickel out of her coin purse. She flipped it and it came up tails for loud. Bella started running toward him, yelling, “HEY SIR EXCUSE ME SIR!” She jumped at him, managing to get his attention, along with the attention of everybody else in the Western Hemisphere. She gave him a big grin and he looked at her, blinking with glazed-over eyes. Everyone was staring at her. “Are you having fun? Let’s go on the Ferris wheel together!” she yelled. The operator, a Wizened changeling woman around Pam’s age, if a bit taller, was looking at Bella almost in awe. “There’s so much life in you!” she said. She and the other fairgoers were all staring at Bella and she could hear chatter amongst them as she got on.

Pam, meanwhile, moved over to the changeling running the Ferris wheel and ensnared her in the honeypot of Minnesota Nice conventional talk, asking how long she’d been working there, if she could use a break, if they were treating her right. God bless Pam and her ability to talk about nothing forever. As the car that Bella and combover guy were on lifted up, the operator pulled Pam aside and said, “Listen, let me give you a piece of advice. All of us working here, we’re here ‘cause we wanna be. But if you’re not here ‘cause you wanna be, I’m gonna suggest you try to get out of here pretty quickly.” Pam thanked her and said she needed to round up her friends. “Oh, you’re gonna wanna grab them and haul ass real quick,” the woman said. “Especially your friend up there.”

Speaking of Pam’s friend up there, Bella was being stared at in awe by combover dude, who asked her how she feels so happy. “I always try to feel happy, even when I’m sad, and I’ve been sad a lot lately. I use it as a coping mechanism so I don’t recognize the emotional trauma I’ve been through recently,” Bella chirped. He asked her if it was possible for her to feel happy and she asked him what made him not feel happy. He thought back hard. “I don’t remember,” he said after a long moment. “Well, do you know who you are? What’s your name? Do you like anything special, chocolate or ice cream?” Bella asked. He closed his eyes and thought very hard. “My name is… Jason?” He sounded unsure and Bella continued to ask him about his life, if he could give her any details. He kept thinking as hard as he could and admitted he didn’t remember much about what he liked or didn’t like. He couldn’t remember anything about himself, other than his first name. After a while, Bella said that they needed to figure it out. “You’re going to help me find happy?” He asked. “We can try,” she said. “A lot of people will try to take your happy away from you. It almost happened to me. You don’t want it to happen to you.”

They reached the bottom of the Ferris wheel and the operator told them it was time for them to let some other people get a ride. Bella interlocked her fingers with Jason’s so as to not lose him, and walked him off the ride. She introduced him to Pam, who suggested that they start walking and see if they could find us. Pam, of course, had a bar in her purse, and she handed it over. Bella took it and gave it to Jason, telling him that Pam’s bars always made her happy. He bit into it an the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “This is a good start,” he said.

Pam and Bella met up with Team Gay at the meeting spot, where we were still sniping at each other and I had moved onto “Scarborough Fair.” Bella took the bar and handed it over to Priscilla, the older lady who we had found, but it didn’t seem to have the same effect on her. We were all realizing that the fair was stealing emotions, and the longer we were to stay, the more emotions it would steal from us. If we stayed long enough, we’d end up emotionless husks like the people wandering about.

Back in the freakshow, Dr. Alexander was still very busy taking notes on the vivisectioned creature. He looked up after a long while only to realize that he’d lost sight of Day. When he went looking for Day, he managed to find some taxidermied creatures that he started going over intently, noting the aspects of their biology which didn’t seem to make sense by any medical standard he knew. After about another fifteen minutes of this, he spotted a couple of carnival employees whispering among themselves and pointing at him. One of them, a Blunderboar – the same sort of gorilla creature who snagged Bella and Day back in Arcadia – started making his way toward Dr. Alexander. He didn’t approach at first, he just seemed to be trying to figure out what the good doctor was doing (something that has eluded the entire Autumn Court, to be fair).

After a few minutes, the Blunderboar stepped between Dr. Alexander and the exhibit, only for the doctor to take a step to the left and continue taking notes. “Sir, you need to move along,” the Blunderboar said. “Any reason why? I paid my admission,” Dr. Alexander said. “You’re holding up traffic,” the Blunderboar said. Dr. Alexander lifted his head at that and glanced around. Not only did people seem very easily to be abele to move around him, but there weren’t a huge number in this part of the tent anyway.

“It doesn’t appear that way. I could take a step forward, if you like,” Dr. Alexander said, stepping forward. The Blunderboar attempted to pick him up by the front of his collar, lifting him a few inches off the ground and moving him away from the exhibit. “We don’t want the likes of you around here,” the Blunderboar said. Dr. Alexander held up his lamprey hand and said, “Let go of my shirt. The only reason I am bothering with this farce you call an exhibit is because you’ve saved me a few hours of dissection time. You can leave me to my work and I’ll move along in my own due fashion or… no, that’s really the end of that line of options.”

The guard attempted to walk him toward the exit, but Dr. Alexander whipped himself around his back, grabbing his arm and pulling it behind his back. “As I told you before, I’m busy,” he said. The Blunderboar grunted to the other guard, “Pibbs! Go get backup!”

It was around this time that the rest of us saw the goblin in red and white rush past us toward the entrance, yelling about a rowdy guest in one of the exhibits. “Oh, my God, it’s Day,” I groaned. “Oh, God. Pam, Bella, you stay here with them. Derek, come with me,” Yova said. We darted off in the direction the goblin ran from, seeing a few more Blunderboars start descending on the tent. “Five bucks says Day got his head stuck in something. And I’m not specifying which head,” Yova said. I gave her a look of absolute contempt and said, “You are disgusting. You’re on.”

What we didn’t know until later was that while this was going on, another changeling, a quiet Darkling who was mostly hidden in an outfit of patched rags, had been working for hours to feed the workers at the carnival. We’ll call him Kevin, because that is his name. Kevin had been slinging slop for a long time and stepped out to grab a breath of fresh air, when he heard some chatter among two of the goblin employees who were sitting and having a snack. One asked the other if he’d heard what was going on down at the sideshow. “Apparently some of the customers are, like, standing up for themselves. Weird, right?” Kevin listened to them talk about how long it had been since that happened and placing bets about how long it took security to get things under control.

Curiosity got the best of Kevin, and he made his way over to see what the hullabaloo was about, going through the employee entrance. It was around that time that he spotted a group of several changelings, including me and Yova. We had maneuvered our way through the rather disgusting exhibits and were surprised to find that nothing was on fire, nor in pieces. We arrived to find Dr. Alexander, with a rather firm grip on the Blunderboar as he calmly took notes. Yova had a surprised Pikachu face as she surveyed the scene.

“You owe me five bucks,” I told her. “Yes. Yes, I do,” she agreed, moving forward to try and talk our way out of this miserable situation. “Doctor, as much as I hate to interrupt this tableau, you’ve acquired the attention of the bouncers and we need to leave,” she said. “Also, where’s Day?” I asked. “Yes, we were expecting to see Day here, with his head stuck in something,” Yova said. “Oh, he’s gone. Somewhere,” Dr. Alexander said, looking around the Blunderboar and continuing to try and take notes.

Yova looked over at me and said, “I’ll handle things here, you go and find Day.” “Why do I have to go and find Day?” I asked. “This place is screaming front for snatching people and sending them to Arcadia!” “Derek, please,” Yova said, teeth gritted. “Fine,” I said, “but if I get snatched and pulled back, I’m going to haunt your toilet.” “I’ll wear a mysterious veil to your funeral,” she said dryly.

It was around this time that Kevin hurried over and tried to separate Dr. Alexander from the Blunderboar he had in the hold. “Hey, come on, no violence!” he said, trying to push them apart. He isn’t very strong, so it… didn’t work. “I’m not being violent, I’m being busy. And you’re jostling my pen,” Dr. Alexander said. “Doctor, I understand you’re dedicated to your research, but now is not the time for this,” Yova said. “Then when is?” he asked her. She took a moment to take in a deep breath and press her index fingers against the bridge of her nose. “You know,” she said, “I understand the saying of a day without learning is a wasted day or some such shit, but I’d prefer to live to see another day, so let’s just go and stop distressing this poor man’s friend.”

We finally managed to get Dr. Alexander away from the Blunderboar and beat tracks as a few others were coming in. Kevin seemed to be moving along with us, so I turned to him and said, “Hey, you haven’t seen a big guy around here? Looks like he’s made of stone, loud, obnoxious voice, wearing a Hawaiian shirt?” He seemed very unsure of himself, but said that he hadn’t.

We emerged out of the sideshow tent, with two of our targets in hand, but missing Day. We knew we were not going to leave him in there, so we quickly made our way back to Bella and Pam to regroup and figure out our next move.

And that’s a good enough place to stop for now. Until next time, be safe, and may you never have a shiny snatched from you by a gargantuan Ren Faire reject.

#Changeling: The Lost #changeling #ctl #ic #recap #i really hope day didn't sell his toes for hamburgers

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