Dragon soared through the skies and through time. This was perfectly natural, and in no way strange to him. Well, the “him” that he was at the moment.

He knew he was going back, but not too far. The words “Aqua Net” and “Bad Music” flashed from somewhere in his head, back where he was still human. Dragon shook his head and snarled. The shadow that was calling to him was what was important. The wooden horse needed to be part of the Shadow, as he was. It would become brethren. Clutch-mate.

Dragon bellowed again, softly landing in the grass. He looked around him, sniffing and tasting the air. Yes, this was the place. The air tasted like grease and gasoline and human. It was this strong in the trees, it would have been overpowering outside of them. He could see the square stone towers, and the light from inside them. They almost drowned out the stars… but it was not his place to punish them. Not today.

He positioned the carousel horse in the proper place, and peered carefully into the shadows. He could see what was to be slowly emerging from them. The Carnival would live here for a little while. He could hear the soft calliope music begin. Now was the time for ritual.

Dragon hefted his war-hammer high and roared defiantly at the stars. He struck the ground below him with all his might and all his will. The hammer began to glow… first red, then blue, then white-hot… wisps of smoke and flame shot out in six directions, then rose to greet the sky. The flames suddenly extinguished, and a twisted version of a carousel sat in their place. The new horse was there, as perfect as it had been before the flame, but in every other spot were the most finely wrought statues of mythical creatures both remembered and forgotten. Some of wood, some of brass, some seemingly of gold. The platform of the carousel seemed to be made of the very granite that was the bedrock of the park. The canopy seemed to be made of intertwined ivy and rose vines, trailing down both flowers and thorns. The carousel began to turn and emit the strangest song… it conjured images of dancing around a fire at a tribal gathering, fighting wars with those who do not respect, and coming of age in a society that knew what that meant.

Dragon nodded his wedge-shaped head in satisfaction at the carousel. He left it to survey the other rides that seemed to be growing out of the ground and the trees themselves. He would have to make sure that the technology-magic was playing as big of a part as the earth-magic. Peh. Humans.

“Stupid horse. Stupid cat.”

His nose burned. A lot. His back ached. A lot. His knees were sending lightning bolts of pain up and down his legs. A lot. And this gods-forsaken carousel horse was still on his back. And he’d walked a total of five miles in a generally eastward direction.

“Mother beetches.”

He unceremoniously dropped the wooden piece of art (it really was beautiful) onto the sidewalk. He stretched and grinned as about twenty pops resounded from his back. It was one of those nights where you just don’t say that it can’t get any worse, because it will.

“Well, at least it can’t get any worse.”

That’s when the Mack truck hit him. No, seriously. A big, 18-wheeled, Mack truck. Smacked right into him. It surprised him too. He wasn’t as surprised as the driver was when he discovered that Dragon wasn’t meaty chunks on the pavement. The semi rolled to a halt, and Dragon peeled himself off of the grill of the truck.

The driver blinked. He didn’t quite understand what he saw. His rational mind told him that something like this couldn’t exist, and was purely impossible. His instinctive side told him, “Run you stupid fuck!”. He just kind of stood there, torn. That was when the war hammer inverted the left side of his skull.

A hulking thing bellowed into the night, celebrating its kill. Its neck was far too long for it to be human, that and the slightly wedge-shaped head. It stood upright, though, and grasped a war hammer in a five-fingered (although scaled and taloned) hand.

No one credible believed their eyes when they saw the figure flapping lazily through the sky on scaled wings, holding a brightly-painted carousel horse in its feet, heading vaguely eastward.

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.

Duh.

I had missed it for so long. God damn duh. I wasn’t whatever Celestine was. I was close, but there was still that difference. The details. The time sense. The doubles. G.A. vs. Celestine. Big Dav vs. The TicketMastyr. Me vs. Him. I was furiously writing with that damn gel pen in that damn dragon book that Ani had gotten me. Dreamer vs. Dreamed. God damn duh.

I finished, and smiled as I looked over the few pages of scrawling about a Carnival, and someone entering with a normal ticket. I looked over the description, and couldn’t help but appreciate how fast those gel pens dry. Being left handed, it was important, so that I didn’t smear what I wrote, and get ink or graphite all over my hand. I looked down in front of me as I closed the book, and recognized the boots. The black pants. The leather trench coat, with bits of armor interwoven in it. I let my eyes trail up, noticing the details. He was a bit thinner than me, but not by much. His goatee was a bit more dark, his hair was a bit more light. His eyes were just as mesmerizing. There was a bulge under his trench coat at his hip. I knew what he carried there. He is hair was still loose and wild, and longer than mine. He had a wide-brimmed hat that I did not. He had the same pendant I did hanging around his neck. He was harder, more edged than he used to be, but then again, he wasn’t whole back then. He was just an aspect. Now, he was whole.

“You’ve changed.” It had been so long since I’d seen him.

“Of course. Even I am effected by time, as you are.” He flashed that grin, that big-ass grin that made his eyes sparkle. One of those grins where no matter how pissed or depressed you are, you smile back, and feel it down to your toes. I reached out my hand, which he took and shook firmly. He registered mild surprise when he took his hand away. “You’re giving me this?” He held up my Golden Ticket.

“Of course. It’s yours, you retard. It’s not mine. Give me the ticket I’m supposed to have.” He held out the normal ticket to me, and burst out in what only could be called a guffaw. I grinned back at him, and for a second, I couldn’t figure out who was who. I guess there wasn’t really much difference at that point. I took the normal ticket in my hands and tore it in half. I walked out the front entrance, grinning over another puzzle solved.

Dragon Weaver looked over the Golden Ticket. Where next? Well, the biggest show is always the best starting point for a puzzle. To the Big Top, then. Hopefully people would figure it out, about the Dreams and the Dreamers, before it was too late. Oh, well. If not, there was always the ticket-tearing method.

He patted the war hammer at his hip, and grimly hoped he didn’t have to use it.

I startled awake, after once more drifting off on the steps of Dr. Celestine’s trailer. I couldn’t keep doing this. This wasn’t right. None of this was right. The Time felt right, but the Place was wrong.

I took the torn pieces of G.A.’s Golden Ticket and pressed them against Dr. Celestine’s door. I was no longer surprised that a small metallic webbing sprouted to hold the Ticket pieces in place. Maybe the good Doctor would understand why I was here now.

I had just had a dream. You know the kind that just hover on the side of your memory? I had dismantled a giant model I had made of the Carnival. I had come to a grim realization that this place was destroying me. The me that I was in the dream. Or, maybe this was the dream. It didn’t really matter. I had to do the best for whatever me was awake at the moment. I had apologized to my roommates and decided to turn my life around, in that dream. I have decided to take similar control of my own situation here at the Carnival.

I had already gone to the Divine Gallery, before my ticket had started glowing pink. I had already visited the Acrobat. Mr. James’ booth had been closed for the majority of their time here in Caro. This morning, The Games of Skill were also closed. So much for those. That left the Hall of Mirrors, the Wax Museum, The Fortune Teller, the Freak Show, and the Big Top. I couldn’t remember when the next Big Top show was.

Best option seemed to go to the Big Top and find the time of the next show, then head to the Hall of Mirrors if I had the time. So I stretched my legs and strolled over to the Big Top.

G.A. was using a hose near the animal stalls to clean off his face. Either the “partner” had done his homework or he had just got lucky. G.A. has said before that he would stand in the sun and watch his skin bake and burn to dust before he’d wear sunscreen. Especially on his face. It was just a “thing” he had about it. No sticky stuff on the face. G.A. was remembering as he was washing….

***********************************************

Have you ever been in a dream, and then just SLID into a different character? Different scene? Different dream altogether? Yeah, me too. G.A. as well. He could feel those blood vessels bursting in his eyes. He could feel his heart trying to tear itself into about five distinct pieces. He could see the blood that he was coughing up. Yeah, G.A. knew he was dying. He had risked it all on Dr. Celestine not being real, on being a figment of his imagination, and had tried to wrest control of the Carnival. Needless to say, it hadn’t worked.

G.A. was dying.

Then a fat man in an all-black suit knelt down in front of him, holding his Golden Ticket. G.A. could almost hear the Carnival laughing at him. He could almost hear it taunting him for thinking it was his creation, and not something alive in its own right. He could almost hear its grim satisfaction in taking his life in return for his hubris. Almost. The light of the dusk sun glinted off of the dragon pendant that hung from the man’s neck, and he was reminded of Dr. Celestine’s cane in that moment of dying.

Then the fat man tore his Ticket in half. And G.A. slid.

He was standing outside the entranceway of Dr. Celestine’s Carnival of Souls. His heart was beating normally, as it only really ever did in dreams. He was not in pain, and actually felt a sense of light-heartedness at being at a carnival. The sun was rising. G.A. looked through the gate, and saw the man in all black (Skippy?! He was supposed to be in Lansing, not here in Caro.) sleeping on the steps of Dr. Celestine’s trailer. G.A. gave the Ticketmastyr his normal ticket without thinking, and entered the Carnival of Souls for the second time and for the first time.

He was hungry, and could use some breakfast, so he headed to the mess tent.

***********************************************

Songflower stopped screaming as she blinked, and her husband’s face was her husband’s once more. He looked up at her in a dazed, what the fuck, kind of way, and she just about collapsed with relief. She assured him nothing was wrong, it was just her, and they both went back to sleep.

***********************************************

I kept fiddling with the At-At, waiting for the Doctor to return. I know I’m missing something.