✿ ELODY THOMAS ✿ D2 [FIN]

I saw the autumn leaves peel up off the street,
take wing on the balmy breeze and sweep you off your feet.
You blushed as they scooped you up on sugar maple wings,
to gaze down on the city below, ablaze with wondrous things.

May-bell once told me that I look like a doll, and I suppose she’s right. (May-bell is always right.) Maybe that’s why people like me so much - I look like something to be played with, and people don’t like to break their toys. She says my skin looks like it could shatter into tiny pieces at the slightest touch - dark porcelain, my face almost perfectly symmetrical and round, like a doll’s. I’m tiny like a doll, too, with a little bitty waist and short legs and short arms to match - the smallest and youngest of all my sisters. May-bell also said I'm pretty, so I guess I'm that, too. (I don't really look at mirrors all that much, so I don't really know. I trust May-bell, though. She's my friend.)

I like costumes - one of the many things I love about being in a circus. Dressing up is fun, and I have so many different outfits. There’s a really frilly one with a bright pink tutu that’s fun to dance in- and I like dancing - and there’s one that has really fluffy sleeves, but that one itches a lot. My favorite is my bunny one, though. It’s a little silky red and black dress, but the hat is the best part. It’s pretty and lacy and black, and it fits perfectly on the golden-curls crown of my head, little wire bunny ears sticking out of it all cute-like. May-bell doesn’t like it (she says it makes it hard to see my eyes, which are round and seafoam blue-green, framed by delicate lashes), but I wear it anyway. I like the sound it makes when the fabric brushes flesh, the almost inaudible whoosh of the cloth as it cuts through air whenever I spin. I like sounds. May-bell does, too.

My favorite sound is the wind. Night’s the best time for wind, ‘cause it’s when the crickets start to sing and the noises of the night come out to play. (Maybe that’s why I try to make my voice sound like the wind, all whispery-soft and pretty-like.) I love it when it’s whistling through the trees, a waterfall of lovely sounds that bend the trees further and further back against its invisible force, so strong yet at the same time so silent. (I can bend like the trees, too, just like they do when the wind plays with them, but unlike the trees I don’t snap. What a horrible sound that would be.) I don’t like to talk when the skies are still - if the wind won’t speak to me, I won’t speak either. Not even to May-bell.

I guess it’s a good thing I’m not a doll, like May-bell says. Dolls break easily, and if I were truly a doll then I surely would have shattered a long time ago. (Dolls can’t twist their bodies the way I can; their backs can’t arch the way mine does and their muscles can stretch to the limit like I’ve taught mine to do.) We wouldn’t make much money if I really were as fragile as a doll. Back-flips and somersaults, cart-wheeling my way into the ring, tumbling and rolling for the audience- it’s what I do. Bell enchants the crowd and Rafael laughs as Cerise dances with lions, the twins curl and twirl through the air while Lucia juggles and Esther walks along the sky, but me, Elody- with my honey-golden curls and plump lips and star-sparkly eyes - I twist like the wind.

From the green belt balcony, the wildfires look so pretty.
Ponderosa canopy, I’d never leave if it were up to me.
To the ruby redwood tree, and to the velvet climbing ivy:
painted all mahogany, I’d never leave if it were up to me.

I have a garden. It’s out in a meadow far from the tent, through the woods and across a little stream. I don’t mind walking so far to get to it, ‘cause forest sounds are so pretty and I love listening to them while I walk, and it’s all worth it when I get there and see the blooming marigolds and peonies with all their bright, happy colors, tomatoes and watermelons round and ripe for the picking and sunflowers smiling at me from their healthy stalks. (May-bell likes the garden, too, but I think it’s mostly because she likes to chew on the blackberries that grow next to the tulip patch.) My sisters know I have a garden, but they don’t know where it is and they don’t ask. I wouldn’t tell them even if they did, though. It’s like my secret place, my sanctuary, and there are some things that I’d like to keep just for myself. (They got to have mom longer than I did, so I guess it's a fair trade, sorta.)

I’m pretty open about everything else, though. May-bell says that I’m an “open book”, which I guess is better than being a doll. I don’t like having secrets, ‘cause everyone would be a lot happier if everyone was just honest with each other, you know? Nobody would have to worry about being lied to and stuff like that. I try my best to not keep any secrets and tell everybody the truth, but sometimes it gets me in trouble. (I think that’s really sad, that when people tell the truth they get themselves in bad situations. Maybe that’s why there are so many bad people in the world - ‘cause the truth hurts.) I don’t want to be a bad person though. People wouldn’t like me as much if I was bad.

May-bell said she'd be my friend no matter what, but even mice can lie. I don't think May-bell lies, though, 'cause she doesn't like secrets either and she said she doesn't lie, so I'm gonna believe her. I think May-bell's my only real friend, even though she's not a person and everybody else said her voice is all in my head. (But I swear, I can hear her. You gotta listen real close, but really if you keep your ears open you can hear a lot of things you couldn't hear before.) That's what I like about sounds. A lot of people don't really listen to what beautiful noises the world can make - the hush of wind through a meadow, the scrape of paper against flesh when you turn the page of a book, the rush and flow of water in a stream. Even the simplest sounds can be beautiful - from the tiny ping of pin drop to the roar of a waterfall. (People would be surprised to find how beautiful things can be if they really listen.)

My sisters say that I'm naive like that - gullible, easily deceived, vulnerable - but I don't see it that way. I just like to believe that people are good, and that good things can happen even during bad times. (My sisters are always moping around 'cause Mama's gone, and I miss her too, but I believe that wherever she is, she's happy, and that's enough for me. Because why would she leave unless she wasn't happy?) May-bell says that's what she likes about me- that I always manage to be the bright spot in everybody's lives, the peacemaker and keeper, the little eternal ball of sunshine that keeps the darkness from creeping into my sisters' hearts. (I must not be shining very bright, though, 'cause my sisters always seem so sad ever since Mama left.) I try my best to make them smile - because they're good people and good people should be happy, right?

With a starry brush, paint the dusk venetian blue,
because in the evening hush, you’ll never believe the view.
And when the leaves return and their whisperings fill the night,
they’ll freeze and burn where fire and ice collide.

I've always liked making people happy. Even when I was a baby, Mama once told me. She said that I never cried, never threw temper tantrums or gave her any sort of trouble. I just gurgled out cute little baby noises and watched and listened to the world in childlike wonderment, and people were enamored with me. I made them happy, made hearts melt and eyes soften and lips curl up into affectionate smiles. When I got older I still managed to retain some of that magic, especially as I learned to dance - twirling about the house, twisting and spinning and long hair flying about around me in flashes of gold and tinkling bouts of laughter - it made everyone happy. (I guess it wasn't enough for Mama, though. When Daddy went away, not even I could bring the shine back to her eyes.)

I remember being sad when Mama disappeared, but I was just seven years old back then and it seems like such a long time ago now. (I still remember the sound of her voice, though - the way it rose and fell with the hummed verses of a lullaby and the light, airy way it sounded when she laughed.) I guess it's a good thing that I don't remember much of her, seeing the way my sisters agonize over her loss day after day. They're always guessing what happened to her- that she'd died or killed herself, been kidnapped, lost, or the most popular, that she's watching our every move. (I know I'm supposed to be the optimist of my siblings, but I don't think Mama's ever coming back. I hope she doesn't - because I want her to be happy - and while she was here, she wasn't happy.) There's another thing, though - a second reason as to why I don't want Mama to come back. I hold it close to me, stored deep in the back of my mind where no one can ever find it - a secret I'll forever hold close.

If Mama came back, what would happen to the circus?

I don't want the circus to close down - I never want to stop performing; never want the feeling I get when I'm out on a stage to disappear. I don't want the smiles I see from the crowd as I dance bend stretch for their entertainment to ever go away, to ever stop dressing up in my costumes, and if Mama came back and started making money again and nothing relied on the circus anymore, would she take it all away?

May-bell says that she would. May-bell doesn't like Mama- she says that she abandoned us, she never cared about us, and we should just forget that she ever even existed. May-bell has never lied to me, not ever, not once since the day I first found her sitting on my windowsill, beady black eyes staring at me with an eerie glimmer of intelligence that should never be seen glittering from the eyes of an animal. Never in all the times she's whispered to me in the night, assuring me that she is my friend and she's all I'll ever need, that nothing else matters but me and her, that Mama was a bad person - look what she did to your sisters, Elody - and that I can be perfectly happy without her. And May-bell is always right.

Always.

Can you feel a silk embrace in the satin air?
If we dissolve without a trace, will the real world even care?
Downy feathers kiss your face and flutter everywhere.
Reality is a lovely place but I wouldn’t want to live there.