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You feel just a little more at home here in the quiet, the dim. The cool muted rainbow of pinstripes and zigzags that hangs heavy over your head day after day after day… in some small way it all feels more bearable at this late hour. You figure you must have always been the sort of person that tended towards isolation– towards hiding and burrowing yourself alone in the dark, at least until everything made sense to you again. Maybe that is why it has come so naturally to you, in the week and some-odd days (you fear you may have already given up counting) since you’ve been here. Yes. Surely, you were just that sort of person… assuming, of course, that you were ever any sort of person at all. Or any sort of anything other than whatever the gloink you are now. Either way, it's a routine you’ve settled down into alarmingly fast.
Every night, when the encore ends, and the curtain call finishes, when the floozy spotlights fade and the paper pennants start drooping; when every star in the artificial sky begins to lose its luster, you come to this place and sit. It’s the only time you ever feel calm; safe enough to think. Your mind sobers and lucids, shaking off the primal fight-or-flight that you succumb to during your adventures, and you no longer feel like surrendering to the wild woven instinct of whatever sentient stuffed animal it is that you happened to be modelled after.
Brandished like a miniature sword between your felted fingers sits a silver crochet hook; you fidget with it absently as you thumb through the bag you’ve made to house your little projects. None of your current works-in-progress seem to call out to you tonight. The odd whim occurs to you to try making something for somebody else– though you haven’t spoken much to any of the others yet, and the last thing you want to do is to turn everything weird when you present them with a gift they never asked for. It’s hard to gauge how they feel about you. They all seem so different, so bizarre… but that ragdoll lady did seem nice, at least on the surface, so maybe…
Your heart clenches and swims into your throat as footsteps echo through the hall, freeing you at once from your foolish flight of fantasy, getting closer, closer…
“Agh!”
She shrieks, and then do you– and you squint as you try to comprehend the stumbling silhouette that seems to shake from the doorway of the main lobby. Shyly, she steps into your twilight, a crop of pink dusting cotton cheeks as she meets your eyes, the sparkle of starlight over a satin blue nightgown blinding your vision for a split-second as she moves. Speak of an angel and she doth appear; it is Ragatha who stands before you, now, Ragatha who has been lurking simultaneously here in this night all along. You worry for a second that she can read your thoughts, sense how nervous you are. You don’t want her to feel nervous. For some reason it matters a lot that she likes you.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, averting her button gaze. Her mittenlike hands twirl a few fingerfuls of red yarn with nimble movements– sudden, silent grace. “I-I thought I was alone. I didn’t think anybody else came over here this late, you know?”
You feel the corners of your black threaded lips quirk upward into a smile. “I guess I wouldn’t.”
She blinks as though waking from a dream. “Right,” she offers hesitantly, rubbing her arm. “Because you’re new here, and all…”
“Yeah…”
Your voice trails, and for several lingering moments you are both rendered speechless– before, together and all at once, you start up again in perfect unplanned unison:
“I can leave if you want–”
“N-No! It’s fine! It’s yours,” she relinquishes, and you cannot help but notice the sag of her shoulders, the weariness taking root and blooming there like a flower in her throat when she sighs. You could call yourself delusional– at this point, that never seems so far removed from the table at all– but you swear that beneath everything she looks tired. From what, you can hardly begin to imagine– though the knowledge from your growing catalog of this place and all the people in it lets you know it may have very much to do with a certain someone whose name begins with J-A, and that ends with X.
You shrug–at least, as best as you can do with such chunky and overstuffed limbs.
“I’d like it if you joined me,” you offer. “I’m just… working on some crafts.”
Ragatha’s eye flies to your tote bag. “Huh. You crochet? That’s funny… Well, I guess it would make sense, given your…” She gestures vaguely at your form. Plush, ply. Full-to-bursting with polyfil; worn and riddled with a hundred thousand little holes.
You nod. “Yeah… I’m not sure why, but it just feels so familiar to me. Muscle memory, or something, probably… It might be the one and only thing I do remember from my time before the Circus. I think maybe it calms my mind.”
She makes a noise of half-amusement, split midway between a laugh and a sigh. “Heh. The rest of your memories will come back to you in time– everything except for your name, that is. They always seem to. More often than not when you least expect them. And, actually…”
She settles down daintily onto the sofa beside you, reaching behind her back to remove a sack of her own from her shoulders: a small backpack strewn with colorful patches from top to bottom, chuckling softly as she lifts out a project of her own. A kaleidoscopic silken blanket, colored indigo– the underside and each one of its edges coated carefully with constellations of starry black fleece.
“I quilt. Been working on this one for… hm… It must be at least three or four weeks now. Time sort of works weird here.”
“I’m starting to get that impression.”
She offers you a crooked grin. “You learn fast, huh?”
For some reason the thought makes your fingers tremble. “I don’t know… I guess I’m still trying my hardest to keep up and adjust… to everything. Everyone.”
“I can understand that,” Ragatha answers as she works, threading the oversized sewing needle she holds with flawless precision, soon slowly stitching a new polka-dotted patch onto the blanket that has been sprawled out like a cat across her lap. “And… for what it’s worth… I think you’ve been doing great so far.”
You make a face– one that you feel fortunate she does not see. “I’ve barely said a word to anyone.”
You think back to every adventure you’ve participated during your short while in the Circus– every time she out of everyone has met you with a friendly face and an extended arm. Eyes you’ve never truly met before tonight and a hand you’ve never taken the chance to hold. “I’ve been blowing everyone off– blowing you off. And you don’t deserve that. I’ve been a total jerk.”
She shakes her head– though her eyes never stray a moment from her quilting. “No, you haven’t. You’re still processing. Something important I’ve learned in the past few months,” she begins. “Is that sometimes it takes a while for a person to truly open up; let someone in. But when it does happen, sometimes you’ll feel like you’ve been friends all your life. Funny how that works.”
“It’s really hard for me to make friends,” you admit, your foot tapping antsily all the while as you speak. “I… I think I’m so scared I’ll screw up and make the wrong impression, that…” Your breath catches in your chest as you realise– for the first time in full clarity– just how lonesome you’ve been here. “That I don’t dare to try at all.”
The pale white cloth between her brow knits upward into something soft; compassionate. Understanding.
Ragatha sets her needle down a minute, and, before you can even register the action, her hand laces into yours and you twitch.
“Well,” she is smiling again– sad and sweet. “Maybe tonight we can start over. Introduce ourselves again. I’m Ragatha, who are you?”
You feel a little silly as you say the name that was given to you by Caine, announcing it plainly to no one else but to the moon and the tent; to Ragatha. To yourself. It’s such a strange thing to be called– it doesn’t quite fit, doesn’t quite feel like yours. You wonder for a moment if it ever will. Hope that it doesn’t. Fear that it might. And then there’s that little aching noise from Ragatha again, a sigh that sounds like something hurts.
“Hey… how are you?” You ask, firm, if hesitant. “How are you, really?”
She flinches, spine pedalling backwards out of the couch. Out from where it had been reclining, at rest– just as if pulled upright like a marionette. Then, quick as a whip, she tugs her fingers from yours and busies herself again with her needle, making wide, heavy motions through the fabric. Over, under, her hands scurry like frenzied squirrels. It’s as though she hadn’t been expecting the question, as if it had emerged unplanned. Unprepared. You wonder desperately if you’ve done something wrong; worry that she’ll hate you forever, until at last she answers:
“I’m fine! As good as to be expected, I guess… Surviving. O-or, trying to.” She continues to sew furiously, moving in reverse to fix each one of her imperfect stitches as though it were a compulsion. You’re silent as she continues. “I… I’m just not really sure how much more I can take, with everything they’ve– everything he has been doing. The Circus; it feels like everything’s falling apart all around me. And I can’t even do anything at all to stop it! Anything I try to fix, he… breaks it all over again. F– Fboink. I swear my body still burns sometimes from when he threw me in that deep fryer… that must have been months ago, now. Way before you got here, a-and…” She pauses a moment for breath.
“... I have no idea why I’m telling you any of this. It’s not like it’s going to change anything… N-no offense… But I’m losing hope in the belief that you– or anyone– can make things better again, not this time. Not when we’re this shattered.” You watch as tears begin to prick at her eyes like tacks. Ragatha rubs her face with one satin sleeve, and then she beams– big and false and broken. “But… how are you holding up? First week, hah… Gotta be rough.”
You blink, confusion clouding your mind as you try to process everything she has just said to you.
“You… got thrown into a fryer?”
Her shoulders tremble, treading a thin and blurry tightrope between laughter and sobs. “Y-yeah…” She inhales spikily, raggedly. “It was… kinda funny, actually; picked me up and tossed me in with just zero hesitation! Like it meant nothing to him, and I…I…”
At that moment, sharp and swift, the dam breaks and rivers of tears run southward down her face, yet even now she smiles; even now she giggles. A small and desperate sound. She moves immediately to shield you from the oncoming torrent, covering her face with the safety of her sleeves.
And, like that, you’re speechless again, completely unsure what to do, what to say to make her better. To fix her as you see her constantly fixing everyone else. You want to console, to soothe, but, instead, what comes out is only:
“It, um… It doesn’t seem very funny to me.”
For a second, she looks at you with a gaze as big as the moon, then she turns back again to her quilting without a word more. Her hands shake with such intensity now that they can barely sew at all, yet she continues with busying strokes. You can tell that the silence that ensues disquiets her; she squirms under its weight as though it is uncomfortable, unfamiliar. Unhappy. Her lips part as though she wants to speak, but all that escapes is a sniffle. Your eyes leap from her to the ground; then from her to the ground to your untouched spools of yarn resting, warm, in your lap. And an idea, new and sudden, emerges in you.
“Um… Hey, Ragatha?” You ask after a moment.
She sniffs again. “Yes?”
“What’s your… favorite animal?”
Her plush body droops with a sigh. She tilts her head like she hasn’t quite heard you. “Sorry, what?” She mumbles tiredly.
“Your, uh… Your favorite animal. What is it?”
“Um…” Ragatha seems to waver, the look in her eyes suddenly light and distant, as though she’s just wandered straight out of the Circus and returned into a dream, a memory. “Horses,” she answers resoundingly, almost instantly. “It’s horses.”
It’s a response you hadn’t been expecting. “Oh? Why’s that?” You answer, leafing through your sieves of string for an appropriate color.
“Used to live on a farm when I was younger. And alive,” she explains, a grin returning gently and immediately to her face, her eyes– you notice this. It is perhaps the first full, genuine smile she’s given you all night. “We had quite a few horses, but… There was this one, a red roan appaloosa called Annie. I loved them all, of course, but… she was mine, just my own. I’d be out there any chance I got, riding…”
Gradually, her body has loosened; her once-aggressive stitches have softened significantly as she’s been speaking. Every tear has vanished almost just as quickly as it had arrived.
“That sounds beautiful,” you answer as you reach discreetly for a long snippet of copper yarn. (You do hope that is what’s meant by “red,” anyway. This short time you’ve spent among digital renditions and mockup creatures has fuzzed your recollection of the forms and shadows of any real thing.)
“It was,” she beams, good eye still glued to her work. “When you’re in that saddle, it’s like you’ve been transported to another world…”
Saddle, you note mentally. Got it.
“And it’s… well, it’s almost as though your body meshes entirely with the horse’s, ‘til you’re not quite sure any longer where they begin, where you end. All of your surroundings just blur into a smudge of blue and green, so you forget who you are, or where you are… Or even why you are.” She offers you a hearty chuckle. “Ha ha… Now I’m sounding an awful lot like Kinger. That’s crazy, right?” Ragatha blushes. “Oh… Maybe I shouldn’t say that. He’s actually quite nice, once you really get to know him…”
She turns to you as though for approval. For relief. For the hope, maybe, that she’s done nothing wrong.
“Crazy,” you agree, a quiet smile playing over your lips. And just like that, with little trepidation and zero warning, she begins again, launching immediately into a story, then ten, then twenty, each one about the horses she knew during her life before the Curtain Call. Horses hovering like hummingbirds over hurdles; horses hurrying through obstacle courses with wingless flight. Horses being snuck from their stables in the dead of the night; horses tossing dirt and dust from their white seasalt manes from where they stood like marble statues. Horses snorting solid puffs of smoke into the December air while they ate, spewing snoutfuls of oats anywhere and everywhere. Horses swaying under her gentle, dedicated touch, growing many hands taller and stronger beneath her own. Wild horses running riderless; leaping the length of the countryside above the windowsill of a moving traincar…
And in every tale an Annie. Annie with those dark and soulful chocolate-chip-cookie eyes. (You rummage through your bag for whatever may pass for a matching set of safety pins.) Who always walked against the wind and whose back felt like coming home. Annie with pink-ribbon reins and a mane full of wildflowers; who smelled of wheat and sweat and rain. Who filled Ragatha’s senses with color and who ran like wildfire through a waterless desert. Annie, Ragatha’s horse.
A sight which had died from her eyes many years ago, still so clearly alive and bursting with story from somewhere hidden deep in the recesses of her mind. You cannot help but feel a bit envious of all that she remembers, of all that she has left behind.
Of all that has left her behind.
As she talks on, head held high and loud in the billows of clouds from a farm a hundred thousand watts from here, you whittle away at your project, looping strings of yarn over and under and over to make perfect rows of small, delicate circles. And, it’s peaceful, in a sense. It’s nice.
“... Oh, she could be tough at times to wrangle,” Ragatha continues with a huff of a laugh. “Stubborn, too. But I felt, I knew, deep down, that she would never hurt anyone… She was… Well, she was…” Her shoulders hitch again. “... My best friend.”
And, once more, just like that, you’re met with tight lips and a heavy tongue. What do you say– what could you ever say to quell the ache from a loss so great, so complete? Maybe it would be easier if you could even begin to recall what it felt like to love someone. You have nothing to answer for, no home or past or people to speak of, nothing to live or die for. Except her. Except now. Nothing at all but her and here and now.
You can barely remember a thing about what it was like to be alive. Ragatha, it seems, recalls far too much of everything all at once. You’re not sure which is a worse fate. From somewhere clear and low– some thundering, thumping bit of your stomach, you know: you'll share in this destiny someday soon. You’ll join her on this rocky, perilous road to acceptance or die trying.
She makes a flustered kind of noise, and it’s only then that you notice you’ve been staring.
“Sorry,” she titters again. “I must be boring you, saying such ridiculous things, carrying on about some horse like it was a… a person… or something. You probably think I talk too much… Am I talking too much? I feel like I’m talking too much! Everyone is always telling me I’m doing too much…” She sniffles, and you sense the tears again returning, gathering like dew under soft lashes, threatening to spill over. “And yet it never seems like enough. Heck, I even talk to myself up here late at night, when no one’s around to hear me at all.”
You think back to everything you’ve seen here so far; your head is filled with the image of Ragatha. Ragatha flitting like a butterfly, moving with timid fingers and gossamer steps from person to person. Asking dull and ordinary little questions; cozy, routine. Checking in. Carefully undoing and redoing all the delicate stitching that upheld the Circus tents, repairing everything that she could from behind the limelight. Filling every open space that lay waiting before her with something– something new, something kind. Something nice. A small and inconspicuous piece of spirit– of the love that is very nearly destroying her.
“You know,” you answer, quick, without truly thinking the thought to completion. “Maybe… Maybe Caine could make an adventure like that… with farms, and horses, and–”
“It’s a nice idea,” she answers. “But I know that it would never be the same, and… and maybe I don’t want it to be. Maybe I want to pretend that things are just the same as I left them, keep the scene in my mind and remember it the way that it was out there, instead of what it could be like here. There’s a difference between living and imitating life… and that’s all I’ll ever feel like here. An imitation of who I was: some digital plaything, thrown from place to place. Created in the image of someone real; someone alive…”
“Don’t say that,” you urge. “You’re still plenty real.”
“Doesn’t always seem that way. It hasn’t for a while, only in dreams… But, of course, with him around, I haven't had much moment for any of that nonsense…” Her red mouth twitches as she speaks of him again, but with nothing like anger. Nothing, even, like frustration. Her chest heaves with another sigh, large and lengthy. “When I think of him, you know… I wish I could help him, even though he’s caused me nothing but pain practically since the moment he got here; I still wish there was something I could…” Her voice trails, and for a second she seems entirely lost to a thought. “Sorry. Again… It hurts a little to talk about things like this. Suppose I’m not so used to it. Everything hits differently at this time of night. Isn’t that odd?”
You quirk a half-smile. “Not really. The night is a mysterious creature. It has a way of doing things to you that you can’t really explain. Sometimes it lets you become someone entirely new. It’s like what Kinger was saying once, that one something-something about the darkness bringing him back to light… Either way, you shouldn’t worry so much. It isn’t like you have to fix everything tonight.”
Silence settles like a bird over your shoulder; for you, it is like a familiar friend. Ragatha shifts beneath it, tossing and turning under its blanket like a restless insomniac, a sleepless dreamer. She frets and frazzles, gripped by the sharpened talons of her previous concerns:
“If I could just–”
You sense her unease, and it is clear to you that her soul has exited this conversation long ago– it’s her mind: that unseen, perfectionistic engineer of everything that is now running the show. As though on total autopilot, she’s returned again to this small circle of thought, this spiral that swims the length of the storm of sea that is her head: it must be repaired, must be undone, must be… Kindly, you need to release her. Even if only for a minute longer. With a voice sweet and low, you offer up an interruption:
“– Let it go, Ragatha.”
She cocks her head, brow folding with confusion. She’s said so much already, but like you, she’s a hider, you catch it now. Action is her burrow, movement her den.
“Oh, but, I–”
“Shh. Hey, I have an idea.”
“What… what’s that?”
“Let’s just… not talk for a while, how about that? Let’s just sit with things. As they are.”
You have little idea what you’re saying, what you’re doing… You can only hope that it works.
You hear her breath quickening in her throat, that false smile running immediately from her face.
“Have I said something wrong?”
“No! No, not at all. I just think it might do us some good.”
Her bewilderment does not wane. She hesitates. “Oh…! Um, okay…”
You return immediately to your crafting, expertly switching out strands of auburn yarn for brown as you set fast to work on making four tiny hooves and a small saddle for your creation. Ragatha’s good eye strays immediately back to your fingers– in its reflection you catch the metal gleam of your crochet hook.
“Hey… You’re good. That… that really does look like her…” You shoot her a look, fond but stern. “Oh! Sorry… Shutting up now.”
She sighs heavily, leans back into the fabric of the sofa that cradles you both. She weaves the needle in and out of her quilt, restlessly, at first, then slower, slower… Her legs twitch where she sits as though she wants to run off. But she does not, she does not leave. Gradually, she shifts into the corner of the seat, scrunching up into a ball and pulling her knees fluidly to her chest. She’s silent a while as she sews, an awkward but unmistakable peace snuggling into her. At your request, she speaks of nothing, but the language of her body communicates another story– one of quiet acceptance, of a slow descent back into the simplicity of the hobby that she’d loved in life and had remained tethered to here. Her art overtakes her, and you find yourself glancing at her sideways, admiring the placid unsmiling expression her features have adopted, the way her hair lolls and loosens; how it unperks in the absence of pressure. Her eyelid squints with focus, her body stilling as everything again comes undone:
From somewhere high above the rafters of the tents, a music begins: a soft and tender piano tune. You recognize it soon, though, not before Ragatha does: a gentle rendition of the Circus’ main theme. She hums along unbothered, unknown to anything, and you grin. From where this song has come, be it from the moon or the stars or from a creeping ringmaster neither here nor there– in truth it does not matter. What is far more important is that you are both by to enjoy it. Together, now, without care or thought or worry; beneath the lull in Circus sound you hush and hold your space. For a past full and far behind, a future that you can never see or know. You are at the mercy of this place, at the whim of the world, and for tonight, for now, you let it be so, and allow things to exist as they are without fight. Without fear. You both settle in and create a home of doubt, make a hazy half-return to the familiar fabric of the way in which you would have lived; listen close to the rise and fall of mid-rendered night, hold on tight to each bated breath, every shared sigh… She breathes like real, sighs like real, for now that is sufficient. It’s enough.
The hours move like minutes, you permit them to pass through you in reverent rest. After a while, Ragatha finishes with her quilt, holding it up to catch how it looks in the light, flipping it over in her hands to admire the way its black cloth underbelly sparkles under the moonshine. She folds it neatly and sets it to the side. Then, she drapes sideways back over the top of the couch like a curtain, arms crossed to pillow her head; she watches you work with a careful and drowsy eye, smiling when she catches you staring back. You are compelled to speak: the noise you make is barely audible, but in the stillness that surrounds you she can hear you perfectly:
“Feeling better?”
She nods, her posture relaxed, grateful. There’s a hint of something calm but odd to her expression, as though she can scarcely believe the response herself:
“Much… Thank you.”
You grin but say nothing more as the song begins to swell, to crescendo, falling like wind and rain upon your waiting ears, each note pitter-pattering through the halls and over the ceiling. A ménagerie, a thousand little animal footsteps, reminding you at every moment that you are lonely no longer tonight; you may not exactly be home, but you know now that you are not alone. You never were.
The yarn curls over your fingers, entwining every thought that enters you with recurrent, repetitive action, each stitch a hypnotic movement that Ragatha studies inquisitively, looking over at you as though you yourself were art. Those doll-like lashes flutter, faint as moth wings, that gaze lowering and dimming with each new return to the chorus, to the heart of the music; her breaths deepen, evening out with every new row that you add. Your gift to her is nearly completed. You steal away a precious look at her every now and then, and notice, soon, that her eye has closed completely, and that all the shine has gone from its blue-button twin. With her body loose and limp; soft and soundless, and her features plain, she looks so alike the very thing she was designed to resemble. You are not sure that you have ever seen her so still, so full of peace until this night. You take a moment to admire her in this new shape, beneath this new light. Inanimate. Intimate. Beautiful as anything.
With nimble cattish stealth, you reach over her, take the quilt she’s made and spread it gently across both of her shoulders. She leans into your touch a moment, purple eyelid twitching as she tucks into the cloth with a small, appreciative noise. Her head nods forward, disappearing entirely beneath the shelter of her arms and the sheath of the blanket, and with this action she crosses realms, dipping fully into a dream silent and sudden. The sound of light snoring fills the room with a novel sort of melody. Here, at last, bathed in naked neon light, known only to you, she has found her rest and resolution.
She’s stirless as you put the final touches on your project, weaving each cocoa-brown strand of the horse’s mane and tail into perfect place and tightening the seams to keep everything together. You rearrange all of your materials back into your bag, and set it down onto the floor with a resonant thud. You’ve decided, already, that you are to stay here for the remainder of tonight. To protect, to keep watch. To refrain from hiding; from shrinking back into the shadow from which you had come. You are not alone. All is safe, now. You are seen.
Cupped, small and soft, in your outstretched hands rests your finished product. A little red horse, floppy and unassuming, with plastic vision, a crooked grin. Others might look at it and laugh. To you, though, it means everything. The beginning of a budding friendship. Your answer to a quiet plea for comfort, security. Peace. Could it be possible you’ve found someone here to confide in? Someone to whom you might entrust your sweetest and darkest secrets? Maybe. This night, surely, is dark and sweet: rich as chocolate– and, of course, in a place such as this, anything may happen…
Slipping the toy into Ragatha’s lap elicits only the slightest, barest reaction from her. Her sleep does not break; she does not wake, but a pale moony hand wraps around its plush body, stroking it unconsciously. In between her breathy snores she murmurs a pleasant nothing that you can not make much sense of– but it sounds tender. It sounds happy. Content, you lean back against the colorful leather of the Circus couch; you put every last thought to bed as you shut your eyes, open your ears. Allow yourself to be lulled and carried by this enchanting melody, this quiet company…
Tomorrow, things are likely to return to noise. Panic. Chaos. To the typical, traditional torture and torment of this charming digital hellscape. Tomorrow, people may pick and poke and pry, cope with their losses in any way they know how to… Tomorrow is another story, a new adventure entire.
But tonight, she is here. She has here: you are here and now and alive. Tonight the twilight welcomes you with open arms; tonight she holds you close. Safe, hopeful.
Home.