• When I woke up, I quickly remembered where I was. Nothing at all had really changed. My back hurt a bit, probably because I'd slept on it all night. "That habbit is seiriously getting annoying", I mumbled to myself. Looking around to make sure everything was in it's proper place, I got up from my uncomfortable bed and began my morning routine. Heating up some watter in the pot for my morning tea was the first thing to get done. Once the water was boiled, I decided I might as well go and wake everyone up. First, going into Phenix's room, which I might mention looked like an explosion of clothing and random little things, as usual. When I looked over to him, his covers were on the ground, as well as everything else, and his right arm and leg were hanging off the side of the bed. Weaving through the items scattered on the floor wasn't easy but getting him out of bed would be even more difficult. Once reaching the bed, I tried poking his arm, sadly no luck. Trying again, thinking to myself... Maybe if I try whispering into his ear... "Phenix... Pssst... Phenix...." Thinking I was unlucky, and trying to come up with another idea on how to wake him up, he quickly woke up and slammed me in the stomach with the back of his fist. Falling to the ground in pain, also, making me drop my not even yet sipped tea all over the floor, he yelled "Why'd you do that?!" I quickly jumped to my feet, trying to avoid the tea spattered and cup I had dropped on the floor and yelled back, "You're the one who just punched me in the stomach!"... After pausing a second and looking at me, holding my arm against my now aching stomach and the tea on the floor that he made me spill, he replied, "Well it still is kinda your fault, you know better than to whisper in my ear when I'm sleeping." Sighing, I left the room, reminding him that the tea on the floor would be his responsability. After that huge problem, I moved onto the next room, Lucie's and Lucille's room, the twins of our group. Walking into their room was always easy, they loved keeping things clean. "Good-morning girls~" I said camly into the small room. Suddenly, two small brunette heads popped up from underneath the covers, looking up at who had woken them up, they resonded with a nice "Good-morning" in complete sync with eachother, and giggled. Now, the last room to check. "Usually, he would have woken himself up by now", I lightly mumbled to myself. "I seem to be talking to myself a lot now..." A little zoned out, I didn't even notice when he walked out of his room. Wearing his white tee shirt and pajama pants with bats, Shadow leaned down a little to poked my cheek. "Ready to get this morning started?", coming back from being zoned out, I replied with a smile and a happy sounding "Goodmorning to you too." Walking into what was our small kitchen and looking at everyone at the breakfast table, ready for me to make something to eat for them. Even though Phenix was 15 and Shadow was 16, they still expected me to do the cooking, without their help. I never expected the twins to help, I'd hate for them to be around the stove since they were only 12. Searching through what we had left in our fridge, I found 8 eggs and two full packs of bacon, thankfullly, today was grocery day. Sighing, I cooked the remains of our food, and served the eggs to each person, exept myself. I was 17 and as the oldest I felt as if I should have served out the eggs to the others and not myself, I'd be fine with just bacon. Once everyone was finished their breakfast, I reminded them to all go get into their costumes, today was a performance day. The circus we worked for only had our performances every tuesday and friday, the best days to get buisness, seeing as we were the main show. I got into my dress, it was black with white feather print on the tooled skirt I decided I might as well pull out my wings so I wouldn't forget, waiting out in the hallway of our rooms, the girls came out in their little pink dresses with black dots on the top and a frilly skirt, matching the black horns ontop of their heads and their little brunette curls made them look even cuter. Shadow came out of his room next, showing off his slick looking bat wings and black button down shirt and black pants. After waiting a while, Phenix came out in his burgandy shirt and black pants, "No wonder it took him so long, his room's a mess...", I mumbled and everyone chuckeled. "So, we ready to go then? The ringmaster must be waiting." With a nod from everyone, we left and headed for the large tent across from our small building that we'd decide we'd call our home. When we got in through the back door, the ringmaster was furious. He screamed at us, "You're late! Again!!" I tried to calm him down so he wouldn't hurt anyone and said, "Yes sir, I'm sorry, it's my fault." With all of his anger, he punched me in the ribs, thankfully further away from where he did last time we were late. Tensing up, I could tell that the others were worried but I told them not to worry, mostly meaning that I was fine and that they'd be in trouble too if they actually said anything against what he'd just done. We hurried into the center of the tent, the big lights welcoming us as we entered. With a new group of tourists as our audience, coming to see the famous group known as "Les Chatastrophes",they all stared in amazement and sadness. We did our new routine that we'd been assigned to practice for the week. Me and Shadow got into our positions, holding eachother romantically, the idea was a sinner and an angel performing forbidden love, as we did this, the twins grabbed eachothers hands facing eachother and did their "Cute faces" and as planned, Phenix blew fire up into the air as the crowed cheered. We continued on with our routines until the sky became black. Once everyone left, I could tell everyone was exausted from today's performance, doing a new routine for the first time was always tiring. When we returned to our cozy home, I started to sing everyone's favorite song, they said it always calmed them down and helped them get to sleep, after the song was done, they all smiled and went into their rooms... Once everyone else was asleep, Shadow surprised me and came to sit with me on our small three person couch. "Shouldn't you be asleep?" I asked. "Tomorrow's a day off... And besides, I have something to talk to you about..." Without an answer, he quickly began talking, "The way the ringmaster hit you really made me angry... I honestly wanted to go up and hit him back, square in the face..." A little shocked by him saying this, he never really told me anything like that before... Noeone had ever really said something like that to me before... It seemed to have kinda made me feel special, someone was worried, the feeling I'd wanted my entire life... Trying to get off of that subject, "Well... I... Uhh... Was gonna go for a walk... If you wanna come..." I said quietly, not to wake everyone else. He smiled and said that he would love to come, he'd never seen the street at night before, since I was strict and never let any of our little group outside at night. With the streets lit up with lights, water reflecting off the puddles from our earlier rain shower, it looked so beautiful... It made me think of what the streets could have looked like at my old house... I couldn't even remember what my house looked like, what my parents looked like or what their names were, all I knew was I had 2 slightly younger sisters, no names, no faces, nothing, so this made it even harder to imagine when it was dark outside... Glancing over, I realized Shadow was even more impressed by the whole scene, he didn't even remember anything of his past life, his family, friends, his home, everything was a blur so seeing the night once again probably made him really sad... We wandered for about an hour until I found myself completely drained of energy luckily, we were close to the house, so I didn't end up falling onto the ground from exaustion like I'd thought I would. Me and Shadow said our goodnights and headed off to bed, as usual. Taking off my jeans, I didn't really care where they went, tonight I would hopefully just get some sleep... The next morning when I woke up grabbed the money we earned for the week that was put towards groceries, and went out to go get our groceries so everyone would have our traditional saturday breakfast. Grocery shopping was always tough because not many people felt like they should be serving a circus freak, exept for a few people like Marie, she owned the bread store down the street from us, she always had fresh loafs for me to pick up. When I walked into her store, she always welcomed me with the same "Good-morning" and a smile. it was always nice to know that there was someone who didn't care about what we looked like or who we worked for. After getting all our groceries, I heard 2 adults talking about how they recegnized me from the show the night before and how they felt bad. People like that always made me so angry. So much that I lashed out and said "None of us need your stupid pity!"... Running away after feeling so embarassed, I ran home and tried to look as if nothing had happened. Shadow was already up, and was sitting at the table reading the morning paper like he did on every day off that we had. He looked at me and asked, "Uh... You ok..?" I tried not to snap at him so I quietly said, "Ya... It's nothing..." Walking over to the stove, I started making everyone's breakfast... Everything was quiet, until we heard a slam at the door. When Shadow went to open the door, I turned, only to see the ringmaster. When I asked what was going on, he walked in and said in a very deep, stern voice, "You're all fired." Shadow and I both gasped and questioned, only to have him say nothing... "You freaks don't belong here, or in the real world. So as my responsability to this world, you will be disposed of." He said after a slight pause. Acting quickly, I punched him square in the face. I then yelled at Shadow to go and get everyone up and get out of this place. When he asked what I was going to do, I quickly told him to go ahead and that I'd catch up. While he was grabbing Phenix, I tried to stall the ringmaster. After hitting him a few more times in the same spot on his face, I decided to grab some rope and tape and quickly tie him up. I was quite satisfied with what I'd done and tried to get out through the back door. A little walk behind our house and there was a cliff, Thankfully, we had a pathway down the the bottom. The staff of the circus now coming, I had no choice but to jump off the cliff. Sadly, this was the first time jumping off a cliff, and also the first time using my wings... Taking this huge chance that could possibly kill me, I closed my eyes and hoped that everything would work out. When I realized time had passed and I wasn't dead, I looked up, only to see my white wings... Flapping... I... I was... Flying..? "YES!" I screamed out into the sky and flew away... After spotting the others, I attempted a landing... Surprisingly, the only thing that happened was that I almost tripped, but I did make it. Shadow's eyes were so wide as he said "You can fly?? I've wanted to try that forever!". "Well, let's get out of here first, then you can learn how to fly." Everyone nodded and we began our walking out into the dense forest that would become our new home for a while... And so we ended one life and began another...