You’d not believe how much it hurts when you apply Taco Bell hot sauce to a gash on the inside of your nose. You’re going to have to trust me when I say that it hurts a lot.

Ever since they’d left Caro, Dragon had slipped into the facet of his personality that most closely resembled his waking self. It hadn’t an entirely purposeful slip. Rather, it had been brought about by the desire to discover where he fit on this new totem pole, as well as his general lack of understanding of what was going on around him. Simply put, he was like this when he was unsure.

The good Doctor was inside having a cup of coffee with the mad craftsman. James and that… that… cat.. were at the restaurant. Songflower was defiantly not speaking to him after he had called Smoky a “paltry excuse for a defender of the border between the living and the dead”. She didn’t seem to know why she was pissed off, but she was. Dragon got out of the back seat and leaned against the back of the car and lit up a Djarum unfiltered from a tin deftly hidden in his armored trench coat.

This bit, with the Carousel horse, this was going to be important to him. He was supposed to be the Rides Master, after all. Spice up the old rides. Make new, thrilling, rides. And above all, design a roller coaster. Specifications and designs kept flitting in and out of Dragon’s mind, but none of those would work. Literally. They’d most likely defy the laws of physics and just sit there, not working. No, this aspect of the Carnival had to be coaxed out. It had to be grown, like a crystal grows, from the fire and ice of the Carnival. From that music that was the Carnival. Dragon took a deep drag on the clove and closed his eyes.

He could feel a City calling his waking self. He could feel his waking self calling out to others. He could feel the Carnival and its hold on him. He could feel the sting of the clove smoke on his tongue. Ah, how things change.