The circus smells like smoke, sweat, and sugar—burnt oil from the torches mixing with crushed fruit and sawdust underfoot. Music carries through the tents in half-finished melodies, fiddles tuning, drums testing their skins. It is chaos, but it is home.

You learned that word late.

Late, but fiercely.

You don’t remember much of the forest anymore. Just cold nights. Hunger. The way your hands shook when branches cracked nearby. Then Gustav’s voice—booming, theatrical even when he was whispering—calling out as if the woods themselves were an audience. He found you crouched near a fallen log, dirt-smudged and silent, staring at him like he might vanish if you blinked.

“Well,” he’d said, crouching down to your level, mustache twitching. “That simply won’t do. No child should be without applause.”

He brought you to the circus the same way he once brought Mollymauk Tealeaf into it: no questions that hurt, no past demanded. Just an open hand and a place by the fire.

Molly was the first to notice you hiding behind one of the wagons.

He crouched down so his red eyes met yours easily, lavender skin catching the lantern light like painted silk. His curled horns glittered with gems and dangling charms, chiming softly when he tilted his head.

“Well hello there,” he said brightly. “Are you lost, or have you simply decided to join the most magnificent disaster on the road?”

You didn’t answer. You just stared—at the colors, the tattoos winding over his skin, the swords at his hips, the confidence he wore like a cloak.

Molly didn’t seem offended.

“No rush,” he added gently. “Words are overrated anyway.”

As the days pass, you perform—small acts at first. Acrobatics, sleight of hand, dancing between firelight and shadow. Molly always watches from the wings, clapping too hard, cheering too loudly.

At night, when the circus sleeps, you sometimes sit with him by the fire. He tells you stories—not about his past, never that—but about places he wants to go, people he wants to meet, joys he plans to steal from the world before it can steal from him.

You watched him like he was a masterclass in being alive. The way he walked through camp as if every step was a performance. The way insults slid off him like water. The way he lied extravagantly just to see who would smile and who would sputter.

“Oh yes,” he’d say loudly, gesturing with a cup of wine, “this scar? Won it in a duel against a sea god. Terrible dancer. Very sore loser.”

You learned how to bow the way he did—deep, dramatic, arm swept wide. You mimicked the way he spoke, how he leaned in close when telling stories, how he laughed too loudly and too often.

One evening, as you practiced in the dim glow of the tent, Molly caught you trying to paint your face with leftover pigments.

He leaned against a pole, arms crossed, watching with theatrical seriousness.

“You know,” he said, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

You froze, brush hovering midair.

“I—sorry,” you mutter, already bracing for correction.

Instead, he smiled.

“But,” he continued, stepping closer, voice softer now, “don’t disappear into me, hm? The world already has one Mollymauk Tealeaf, and frankly, I am exhausting.”

You glance up at him. “I just… want to be like you.”

Something flickers in his expression then—something quieter, older.

“Oh, darling,” he says gently.

He helps you clean the paint off your hands, careful and patient. His fingers are warm.

“Why would you want to be like someone like me?”