Somewhere else.....

  Inside the tent

  The ringmaster stands silently in front of a large mirror. A wistful smile plays over her painted lips and she strokes the face of the mirror with one hand. Joaquin appears behind her, wearing a wide grin of his own.

  Stepping beside the ringmaster, Joaquin uses his golden cane to tap the brim of his top hat. He slips both arms around the ringmaster's waist and chuckles. However, the ringmaster stiffens, her smile waning noticably.

  "Not a bad game," Joaquin says, staring deep into the mirror. "Can't say I wasn't disappointed in the young lady. But she was very young indeed. Love does not come easy. Or often."

  The ringmaster uses the mirror's reflection to study Joaquin. They have only been together a short time. Yet, she is finding his behavior to be rather odd. Not quite like the marked behavior she witnessed in Desmond, after the transference of Percival's essence. But, odd just the same.

  Another corrupted spell? How can that be? Joaquin is a clean slate. There was no lingering soul to interfere with the transfer. The true Joaquin is dead. What resides inside his fleshy shell is an amalgamation of her own hopes, dreams, and desires. In truth, this new Joaquin is merely an extension of herself. The lover she most wants and desires. No. Not quite. That love will never be again.

  "Master," Joaquin says, taking the ringmaster's right hand and kissing it.

  He spins his lover around to face him, planting his lips on her neck and kissing her there as well. Resting a hand under her chin, he grins down into her expectant face.

  "Master, I think our success calls for a celebration. We should visit the inn. We have not been there in some time."

  Joaquin returns to kissing the ringmaster's throat. He manages to get a few words out between light pecks.

  "We can take a long stroll through the sunflower fields...We can even have a picnic...I will make you delicacies you will quite enjoy."

  The ringmaster chuckles and rubs a hand down Joaquin's muscular back. He is very different than when he first came to her. When he'd first arrived at her tent, with his very pretty wife, Joaquin had been sick and weak. Having been close to death only weeks before. The Joaquin who now romances her is a whole new being. So vibrant and full of life. The energy siphoned from his growing number of fleeting lovers has made him strong. Very strong. Poor Monica. To have lost so wonderful a lover.

  The ringmaster's eyes shift and she observes the young couple trapped within the mirror's surface. They are posed in a terrifying parody of Grant Wood's American Gothic, faces expressing what their mouths no longer can.

  "Even so," the ringmaster thinks to herself. "At least, they are together. Which is more than I can say for me and my dear Percival."

  The entire time that the ringmaster muses in her own head, Joaquin continues to smother her in tender kisses. Eventually, it becomes too much and the ringmaster draws back her head. She places a hand on Joaquin's broad chest.

  "Enough, Joaquin," she says between a soft laugh. "You are beginning to remind me of..."

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Percy's name nearly rolls off of the ringmaster's tongue. She stops it before it can. Percy, her strange and loyal servant. Percy, her overly enthusiastic lover. How odd to suddenly miss his energetic kisses and willingness to please. How odd that she should feel this way about one whose blood is undoubtedly on her hands. But it would not be the first time.

  She had thought that by encapsulating him in that vile clown's body, she'd forget the first time they had ever made love. It was well after the first night. The night she'd foolishly enacted the spell of transference for Percival's essence. To her chagrine, Percy had spent the entire first night trying to remember who he was--and what he had been.

  With great despair, the ringmaster had realized that the transference spell had not done its job. She had decided to end Percy's life that very night. Yet, as the days continued to go by, she found herself making excuses to postpone the inevitable purge of Percival's essence from Percy's weakening body.

  What Percy could not remember, she could. The times of pleasure and deep desire. The softly whispered words in her ear. The feel of Percy's touch. Not hungry, like Percival's had been. But meaningful, almost loving--if not sometimes clumsy.

  The first night Percy had altered his physical form, the ringmaster had been taken by surprise. She hadn't realize he knew any spells. That he could learn any spells. He had managed to work around her most arduously created mental blocks. But why? How? Was he doing it consciously? Or was it Percival, working in the background and making his presence known?

  She had grown to distrust Percy. On many occasions, she had offered him pleasure, in order to distract him and cast her various spells. Over time, Percy became a shell of the man who had first made love to her. He became more like the confused being from that first night in her bedchamber. He became increasingly forgetful, making careless mistakes more often, and constantly begging for his Alice. It was his desire for a new Alice which had called down her wrath--condemning him to his fate as a dejected clown.

  She had never told Percy the true name of his lover. She hadn't dared. To have told him the truth might have dissolved the identity spell even quicker. It was enough that he knew the name of her great lost love. He was simply not smart enough to put two and two together that his name was a shortened form of that same name. Or so, Percy had allowed her to think.

  After Tanya was slain by Monica's dagger, the ringmaster had believed it only fitting that Percy should join his fated lover in death. She had lashed out in anger, wanting desperately to end the torture in her heart. With Percy no more, she could consider how best to put Percival into another vessel. But the torture hadn't ended that day.

  Cupping the side of Joaquin's face, the ringmaster kisses him tenderly. She gazes into his purple eyes. Eyes which remind her so much of Percival's.

  "Very well. We'll go to the inn. And afterward, we will have a picnic."

  =====================================

  The Ringmaster's Inn

  The four madam rabbits race out of the door to greet their master, as she appears on the front porch. Joaquin teleports beside her a moment later, a picnic basket draped over his right forearm. The rabbits offer a salutation in unison.

  "Good day, Ringmaster! We were not expecting you. We hope you had a good game."

  "A very good game," Joaquin says, placing an arm around the ringmaster's waist and offering her an energetic wink. "It was no trouble at all. Love is not what it used to be."

  The ringmaster locks eyes with Joaquin. His gaze wanders to her lips and then to her pleasant body. A spell can only do so much. It is her essence which captivates him. But he has noticed change. It is this change which worries him, which caused him to suggest a picnic at the inn. At the end of the test, she had very nearly offered the defeated couple a compromise. He had sensed it. More and more, she takes less pleasure in their triumphs. She has also begun to find less pleasure in him. She is changing. She is not the same ringmaster.

  He misses her fiery rages. Afterward, her kisses are like a raging fire burning out of control. He misses her cruel barbs which usually come before a tender caress. The shouting matches during which she hurls spells and magic are her finest moments. He has learned much about her during those turbulent times. And right now, the master is hurting. Only one thing can fix that.

  "I will take your basket, Mr. Joaquin!" the newest rabbit addition to the inn says, twitching her little nose.

  Joaquin hands the rabbit madam his basket and grins from ear to ear.

  "Thank you, Mia. You are most kind."

  To be continued................................................