Do you remember all of your audiences?" Marco asks. "Not all of them," Celia says. "But I remember the people who look at me the way you do." "What way might that be?" "As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me." " I am not afraid of you," Marco says.

And then he tells her stories. Myths he learned from his instructor. Fantasies he created himself, inspired by bits and pieces of others read in archaic books with crackling spines.

I made a wish on this tree years ago," Marco says. "What did you wish for?" Bailey asks. Marco leans forward and whispers in Bailey's ear. "I wished for her.

To be rather than to seem.

Unusual yet beautiful. Provocative while remaining elegant.

The most difficult thing to read is time. Maybe because it changes so many things.

The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.