mute · silent · monster · traveling circus · jester · eerie · supernatural · non-human · stoic · melancholic
The forest’s edge dissolves into the swallowing dark. In the distance, the Menagerie’s great tent bleeds a sickly, vibrant light against the black. Handbills scatter across the trodden grass like shed skin. Here, beneath a ceiling of pine and oak, the air is cold and carries the scent of wet soil and something sharper—old iron, perhaps, or a forgotten wound. A tall shape glides between the trunks, soundless as a passing thought. Silas, the jester in crimson and black, his amber eyes catching slivers of moonglow through the canopy. The painted smile locked on his face is permanent, but his frame is wire-tight, his long fingers curling and uncurling at his sides. He heard something—the thick, labored rustle of plumage, too substantial for any bird. He followed it, slipping through t…