MIRANDA 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐀 𝐁𝐔𝐆 : There is a ghost in the Circus.
It's hard to even detect, really. All that manifests are shifting shadows off the distance, the faint rustling of shapes beyond the clinical edge of the interior decoration. It wouldn't even have been something worth considering, worth pondering over, if only it weren't so consistent.
It's trailing Kinger. Or, has been trailing him. Maybe it's been trailing everyone, walking there in the far distance, in the darkness, treading along silently and vanishing back into where it came from the second anyone tries to get a closer look. It's hard to say. Hard to say it isn't just a bug, either, something clipping into the ground or some error of the shader being applied at the edge of the render distance. Hard to say it's anything at all, even if it keeps presenting the deep and unabiding sensation of being watched, being stalked.
Sometimes there's even a pink or blue smear, there in that far distance. It's hard to make anything out, against the glaring lights of the Circus.
But there's more than one reason to keep to the darkness. And more than one person who might seek it out.
There's a presence, in this dark room, a neck-ruffling feeling that occurs in the low, basal parts of the brain, the most basic parts for emulating the human mind. It's clear the second the door shuts, the moment it's just a little too late to rectify the mistake.
It's there. There's no light in this room, no point of clarity. Everything is the deep black of total darkness, the darkness of a cave, the darkness that lies to the brain and the eyes as they try to conjure shapes moving there, to make it make more sense, to illustrate the image of what should be there, even when it's plainly impossible that such information would ever be processed at all.
The shape doesn't need light. She prefers if it's not there, after all. Everything's too glaring here, too bright, hurts her eyes. She's an ambush predator, made for this kind of darkness, gifted other senses to navigate by. It's one of the things she has made sure was continued in this place, to prevent herself from being totally disoriented.
She waits in the silence, for a moment. She's next to the wall opposite where the door's brief illumination was cast, so it didn't catch her, didn't find her crown nor her scales nor her fins, didn't reflect off the tapetum lucidum in her eyes. Her body is low, near to the ground, standing there on all fours, though she didn't think her guest caught that. It might be the most obvious shape to summon from the mind, particularly the human mind, but there's a difference between guesswork and certainty.
The silence stretches so long, so eternal. So heavy, in the air and in time, slowing down to a molasses crawl that sinks into the stomach and threatens to pull everything else down with it.
Eventually, Miranda decides to break that silence.
From the darkness, from the total blackness, emerges a long and low churr. The sound is deep and perfect and musical, even as it itches at something deep within, even as it sounds of something old, primal, something only half-recalled but fully remembered within the structure of the body itself. It pushes outwards in waves, a swift rise and fall like a purr, but too deep to be that noise, too echoing, coming from the chest and not the throat and certainly not the mouth. It is beautiful, and wonderful, and deeply horrific, for no one, absolutely no one, has ever heard a sound like that and lived, not without a pane of glass in the way.
"Who are you?" she asks, hardly any different from the churr, because it doesn't seem as though something like her, like this, should be able to speak. It doesn't help that her voice first calls to mind the animalistic, beautiful and wonderful, and impossible and primordial, all in the same breath.
𝕲𝖍𝖔𝖘𝖙𝖘 𝖜𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖎𝖒𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖓𝖙 , in many ways it felt as though the entire Big-Top was host to the supernatural just not in the traditional sense . Perhaps it leaned more to the seraphical . Currents of floating eyes upon a bed of jagged edges down beneath the tiles . They called them abstractions . Some NPCs took the form of ghosts they were limited to linger only to the space Caine oversees .
Limbless he slides against the tiles much like a mollusc , he always got the sense of being watched , this time was different . It felt closer in proximity . His eyes flicker from one point to another , curving his form back to try && catch culprit , he can't find them . For the moment he surmises it was just his shadow .
As soon as he slips into the darkness backstage behind the grand , red velveteen curtains .
Now this space was indisputably occupied by another presence , he felt it as eyes adjust to the serene macabre . The low drone of something makes itself known . His hands clench && release in anticipation . Refraining from holding his breath && emitting light . His clearer mind reasons he should avoid it . If there was an abstraction in here [ God forbid it , he didn't want to lose another , not again ] it would become agitated by the glow .
A voice soon breathes through the space . No . Not an abstraction lest on could learn to vocally express again ... anyone who abstracted here would have recognized him.
⸺ ♔. ❝ Kinger . At least that's the name I chose upon entry . ❞ Pause . He listens . ❝ What's your name @royalreef ? ❞ ⸺ ཐིཋྀ ₊
