It's a wonderful sort of feeling when people want to spend more time in a world you created.

It's not a real name," she says. "Not one that he's carried with him always. It's one he wears like his hat. So he can take it off if he wants.

The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on your fingers. Some people can get rid of it but it’s still there, the events and things that pushed you to where you are now.

You send me all these roses. Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up. I’m running out of vases. I didn’t know roses came in so many colors. You say they’re the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain. I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. And you don’t get it. You say you love me, but you don’t speak my language. You don’t even realize I’m an orchid girl.

So it’s really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.

Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.

They are enthusiasts, devotees. Addicts. Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent. They seek each other out, these people of such specific like mind. They tell of how they found the circus, how those first few steps were like magic. Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars… When they depart, they shake hands and embrace like old friends, even if they have only just met, and as they go their separate ways they feel less alone than they had before.