#takealookfall

Her coach is reluctant to deposit her in the wretched fairgrounds at this time of night, certainly, but Josiana’s will is not to be tested, and servants know as much. She doesn’t even notice the unsavory characters that haunt the neighborhood, let alone fear them. She orders the driver to content himself with waiting by  the horses as she hurries through the muddied street to the blessed site of today’s MIRACLE, a dingy caravan with the words “Ursus’ Potions, Lotions, & Puppetry” (of all places!) and raps determinedly on the door. 

She can still feel in flashes of heat the press of hands on her body, the slide of teeth over her lips, and it renders her insistence on admission all the more acute. ‘He must come back here,’ she assures herself to combat the memory of  L O S S . ‘He’ll come back, and I’ll be waiting for him here.’

"Okay, you know I love you,” Alyssa says, looking at Nina on her couch. “But I’m getting kinda’ worried here with the whole sleeping long hours on my couch with no explanation thing. Are you okay?”

"What’s he like?” Meg can’t help but be curious. Christine’s life seems so mysterious to her, something much more complicated and interesting than Meg’s own life, or the lives they’d had as children. Her dark eyes turn up to look at Christine as they sit together, stretching after rehearsal. “The angel of music. What’s he like?”

THE ROOM was bright, lights glittering everywhere and bouncing off of the walls. Milo was almost overwhelmed by it all. He wasn’t used to social events like this one, had never been to so much as a party before. There were so many people wandering about, laughing, smiling, socializing. Milo wasn’t sure that he belonged here. He was used to working in his own little office, serving as Mr. Burr’s secretary, filling out paperwork and doing as he was told, keeping his head down. He’d never expected to be invited to a place like this, he’d never thought he would be expected to socialize and make small-talk with important people. He was quite out of his comfort zone with all of this and he was certain that he didn’t look like he belonged there at all. He was wearing his nicest outfit, which wasn’t very nice at all, not when compared to the fancy suits of those around him. He felt so out of place and awkward, not knowing what to do with himself. 

“We’ve left town by now,” he murmurs to the form reclined against the rocking wall of the wagon. His eyes turn from the thickening trees, drawn to the familiar face dappled now and then by the sunlight through the leaves which pours in through the window he sits at. His fingers negotiate with the sway of the cart for a straight line of thread through the seam of a shirt. 

The observation isn’t to inform her — he knows she can hear well enough the twitter of the birds that has replaced the buzz of the market — but to express his own slight relief. Passing along the wooded road meant a reprieve, for at least a few days, from the spectacle of their show. It meant REST for his aching mind and body.