The soft honking and wheezing of the clown pile stops. A rumbling of war-honking begins, as the clowns are roused and sent in.
But with the Blanc down, Auguste is summoned: From the middle of the clown troupe, a mass of mismatched patterns stitched together rises, one Boss Clown emerging to avenge the other. He grins with two mouths, one painted, one all too real, and he seems to reach for something, though it's impossible to tell from the way the patchwork fabric of his outfit bleed into each other, a rippling sea of patterns that make it hard to tell if something is truly stretching or if it's merely an intersection of lines-
A voice calls above the rest.
"NICE FACE YOU HAVE, THERE!" calls the person from the stables.
Using the handle of their broom like a pole-vault, they launch themselves up, fly through the air with the greatest of ease, and land directly on the chest of the Boss Clown.
"MIND IF I BORROW IT? I SEEM TO HAVE MISPLACED MINE!" they shout with vicious, triumphant glee, and as they shove their face in front of the clown's, the Auguste topples over out of sight.
With that final blow-off, the honking quiets down, the tent falls still.
And thus begins the reign of the new Blanc and Auguste, a very unusual kind of Pierrot and Harlequin, one truly evoking 'wet cat', the other always recognizable even with facepaint as consistent as their patchwork uniform. They push the limits of clowning at the Circus Unending, securing even more clout than they ever had before, expanding their business, heretofore unseen commitment to bits.
The cliques of acrobats quiet down, for the true masters of the ring are and have always been the ones with the brightest colours, the one the audiences laugh at the most.
It is a long, powerful, successful reign. The circus grows, changing with the times just enough to maintain a foothold and never surrendering too much of the nostalgia that's so vital to luring in patrons.
Monster clowns creep into the cultural consciousness over the years, but the Circus Unending ensures that none truly manifest. What a hamhanded way to cultivate fear and unease. Anyone can have a sharp teeth, a sharper weapon, and an unsettling laugh, just as any hammer could smash a rock - it took the hand of an artist to chisel a statue.
Of course, given the weirdness of the Circus Unending as a location and the even stronger weirdness of being a Thing or a Creature in this world, it's a little hard to measure the exact timeline of all this, of what was actually experienced versus what was the foregone conclusion, a peek into the future, yadda yadda.
But to April, that doesn't matter. They just blink, and suddenly have an answer to a question they always asked themselves during their shittiest gruntwork assignments: 'What if I had just killed that fucking clown and stayed with the circus? I totally could have run that place better.'
And it turns out, they did!
There's a brand new spring in April's step as they make their trip to the bar on this utterly beautiful day.
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But with the Blanc down, Auguste is summoned: From the middle of the clown troupe, a mass of mismatched patterns stitched together rises, one Boss Clown emerging to avenge the other. He grins with two mouths, one painted, one all too real, and he seems to reach for something, though it's impossible to tell from the way the patchwork fabric of his outfit bleed into each other, a rippling sea of patterns that make it hard to tell if something is truly stretching or if it's merely an intersection of lines-
A voice calls above the rest.
"NICE FACE YOU HAVE, THERE!" calls the person from the stables.
Using the handle of their broom like a pole-vault, they launch themselves up, fly through the air with the greatest of ease, and land directly on the chest of the Boss Clown.
"MIND IF I BORROW IT? I SEEM TO HAVE MISPLACED MINE!" they shout with vicious, triumphant glee, and as they shove their face in front of the clown's, the Auguste topples over out of sight.
With that final blow-off, the honking quiets down, the tent falls still.
And thus begins the reign of the new Blanc and Auguste, a very unusual kind of Pierrot and Harlequin, one truly evoking 'wet cat', the other always recognizable even with facepaint as consistent as their patchwork uniform. They push the limits of clowning at the Circus Unending, securing even more clout than they ever had before, expanding their business, heretofore unseen commitment to bits.
The cliques of acrobats quiet down, for the true masters of the ring are and have always been the ones with the brightest colours, the one the audiences laugh at the most.
It is a long, powerful, successful reign. The circus grows, changing with the times just enough to maintain a foothold and never surrendering too much of the nostalgia that's so vital to luring in patrons.
Monster clowns creep into the cultural consciousness over the years, but the Circus Unending ensures that none truly manifest. What a hamhanded way to cultivate fear and unease. Anyone can have a sharp teeth, a sharper weapon, and an unsettling laugh, just as any hammer could smash a rock - it took the hand of an artist to chisel a statue.
Of course, given the weirdness of the Circus Unending as a location and the even stronger weirdness of being a Thing or a Creature in this world, it's a little hard to measure the exact timeline of all this, of what was actually experienced versus what was the foregone conclusion, a peek into the future, yadda yadda.
But to April, that doesn't matter. They just blink, and suddenly have an answer to a question they always asked themselves during their shittiest gruntwork assignments: 'What if I had just killed that fucking clown and stayed with the circus? I totally could have run that place better.'
And it turns out, they did!
There's a brand new spring in April's step as they make their trip to the bar on this utterly beautiful day.