#event 006.

there is something secret and safe about this, folding themselves into the room like paper cranes; far away from an outside that is both unchanged from the arctic they have come to know and too different for their old kinds of survival. 

“curious. one would imagine that i of all people would have been able to foresee the death to come on this expedition.” there is no humour to his voice, merely a light emptiness. an echo of what ghost the clairvoyant used to be. “perhaps we did, you and i. perhaps we saw this right in front of us and thought it as something wondrous.” 

he curls into himself, draws his legs closer to his body. paper cranes made out of skeleton-bones. 

when he looks at the doctor again, there is a kind of heartbreak that he does not know how to name; his, or his friend’s reflected onto him. it is all the same nowadays. 

Careful, Lenny. Naughty little birds get sent to the Carnival. Do you want to be forgotten, same as the rest of them? Forgotten. The fear Lenore felt upon arriving at the Carnival—brought up by memories of Metzger’s threats, half-hissed as she hid behind her father’s legs—dissolves quickly when she sees them. 

Cryptids, wearing the weight of time like heavy cloaks. Trapped. Her heart drops, sorrow at the base of her throat, in her still bruised knuckles. 

There’s one person she knows would help, someone she trusts with it. Lenore finds Adelita by the entrance of the Starlight Carnival; the sign so worn away the name is barely legible. She comes to stand beside the woman, offers her a small smile before saying, “We have to help them.” 

Call it naive optimism, or call it the aching in her chest, the need for something good out of all of this sadness. 

Raafe isn’t screaming, isn’t clawing at the walls. (That’s what their parents did; they ended up as ash anyway, so why bother?) They’re too calm, blood running so fast it feels cold, even with the heat from flame and smoke closing in. 

Their head, on the other hand? Can register only flame. 

There comes a point where thoughts become too loud, to the point where the only thing the mind can do to protect itself is to diverge into white noise, into a ringing that overshadows all else. Raafe stays low, stays clear of the smoke, squinting against the heat as their eyes make out someone familiar—

“Oh, Christ.” It comes out as a hiss. It seems that Noah Fang Liu has gone borderline catatonic. On any other day, they’d encourage this kind of self-destruction. But, tonight?

They crouch in front of him and snap their fingers. Without waiting, they give a light smack to the side of his face. “Burnin’ alive isn’t exactly the way to go, darlin’. Or are you sleeping?” 

There is much to be said in Raafe’s too-wide-smile, in their gleaming teeth, in their eyes that betray nothing. Their chaos is a well-practiced trick—all to conceal a mind that that ticks like a clock. 

But the threat of this place alters that. Raafe supposes, after taking a quick glance at everyone, that the Starlight Carnival has altered the Cryptids a little bit. (Are they altered, or are they showing their true natures?)

Perhaps, the answer to that question would be worthwhile. 

Among the ruins of the Starlight Carnival, far from where even the Carnival’s known Cryptids venture it seems, is where Raafe finds their company for the time being: Mateo. Someone who’s true nature is far from known by Rafa, and by many others. They let out a sharp whislte when his frame comes into view. 

“Not exactly a five-star hotel, wouldn’t ya say?” Not animated, but deadpan. They stand as nothing but a silhouette behind the rusting bars of an old and empty lion’s cage.

Raafe’s family is dead; they have been for a full decade. What’s done is done, they say. Their ashes are somewhere in New Orleans. No gravemarkers. Ghouls don’t do funerals, they’ll say, we just die. We all just fucking die.

But they think about their family often. More than they’ll let on. (What would Qateel look like? Would he look like them? They were closest in age, Rafa remembers his hands, like theirs, they belonged to their mother. Raafe could hear him screaming when he died. It was hard to tell the difference between his voice and that of their siblings and parents.)

The sleeper cars erupt in flames and their mind is consumed by thoughts of them. Smoke in the air so thick that it becomes hard to breathe.

Lenore remembers the first time she had seen snow. How every time afterward felt like moments of quiet magic; head tilted back to catch delicate snowflakes on her tongue, laughter when they were caught in eyelashes. 

Now, she feels absolutely sick of it. 

She feels shell-shocked. The sight of flames is too much for her to process; she’s not the only one, it seems. Lenore finds Theodore sitting on the ground. He had been one of the people helping to repair the Carnival only a few hours ago; she’d asked if she could borrow a small hammer to help nail in a few loose floorboards. It’s still hanging on her belt. 

“I forgot to give you this,” She says, holding out the hammer for him to take. “Thanks for letting me borrow it.”