@ncwiitch
loud, sticky, and overstimulating. that seemed to be the carnival in a nutshell. no surprise there, really. it was like that every year. when nora was younger, it had seemed like a magical place. she had all but begged her mother to let her take her sisters, each mccullough linked by interlocked hands. her allowance for working at the store was carefully saved and rationed out to buy a funnel cake big enough for them all to share, and she rode each ride with maeve so elspie and niamh wouldn't make her feel left out. it had been fun back then, light-hearted. nora's fear back then of losing sight of one of her sister's couldn't hold a candle to the overall dread she felt now.
the fact that niamh agreed to go felt like a) a godsend or b) a trick. nora hoped for the former but still remained way of the latter. it was hard to say these days. growing up always came with pains. growing up surrounded by magic was understandably even more complicated. nora had held elspie's hand as she walked through her magic manifesting, and she had expected to do the same with niamh. whatever speeches had prepared were quietly folded up and stuck in a drawer. there would be no lectures about how to use magic responsibly, no lessons. niamh was different, and in that differences, there was isolation. nora didn't know how to reach across the void to find her sister's hand again. pretending like it wasn't happening wouldn't make it go away, but how did they talk about it? they didn't, it seemed. they went to the carnival and nora kept trying to find the balance before reaching out but not pushing niamh away.
"hey, it's not that bad, right?" she asked, offering up the container of popcorn she was holding. the side was spotted with grease stains even though the popcorn had been handed to them already cold. "but was it always this small? i remember it being bigger. maybe it's because we were smaller."
