• An Evening at the Circus of the Marionette - Prologue

    The brittle leaves whispered as they sat gingerly in the withering trees, cajoled into their hushed chatter by the fingertips of the passing wind. She sat under one such tree, the old park bench inscribed with a collection of nonsensical doodles and confessions - irrationally labelled as forever - of so-called "love"; the silliest kind of love, if you asked her.

    Not that anyone ever did, you see.

    Jack Frost's breath rode along on the evening breeze, nipping at her nose and cheeks as they lay exposed, leaving them pinched and rosy-pink. It tugged at her hair and pulled on her scarf ends like a child wanting to play, but she was in a sort of trance and it was a moment or two before she absent-mindedly wound it tighter, tucking the stray ebony tendrils into the layers of scarf and sweater that were warming the nape of her neck. Re-adjusting herself to settle back into a comfortable stillness, she felt the soft, warm inner lining of the oversized sweater caress her skin gently. Pulled away from whatever other world she'd been dreaming up by the lights flickering to life along the pathways that stretched into the distance either side of her, she let her eyes rest on the horizon, the sky's silky cobalt overhead still clinging to the bruised purple-blues that rested on the fringes of the final rays of evening light.
    Why don't you run, Mary? Why don't you just run away?
    So she did.

    And that was how Mary wound up spending her first evening at the Circus of the Marionette.