{"id":1938,"date":"2001-10-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2001-10-08T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=1938"},"modified":"2020-07-24T23:13:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T03:13:32","slug":"carnival-meat-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=1938","title":{"rendered":"[Carnival] Meat, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Duh.<\/p>\n<p>I had missed it for so long.  God damn duh.  I wasn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t help but appreciate how fast those gel pens dry.  Being left handed, it was important, so that I didn&#8217;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&#8217;t whole back then.  He was just an aspect.  Now, he was whole.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve changed.&#8221;  It had been so long since I&#8217;d seen him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course.  Even I am effected by time, as you are.&#8221;  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.  &#8220;You&#8217;re giving me this?&#8221;  He held up my Golden Ticket.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course.  It&#8217;s yours, you retard.  It&#8217;s not mine.  Give me the ticket I&#8217;m supposed to have.&#8221;  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&#8217;t figure out who was who.  I guess there wasn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>He patted the war hammer at his hip, and grimly hoped he didn&#8217;t have to use it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Duh. I had missed it for so long. God damn duh. I wasn&#8217;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. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/?p=1938\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,28,34,15],"class_list":["post-1938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-carnival","tag-fiction","tag-livejournal","tag-writery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paQnES-vg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1942,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions\/1942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcrampton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}