Name: Sebastian
Title: we thought we were playing a game we could win
Story: The unnamed Sentient Carnival verse
Colors: Halloween Orange: It was a shot of 'dumb idea' witha 'bad plan' chaser
Supplies: None
Rating: PG
Warnings: Nothing really?
Word count; 381
Notes: Okay, so this may wind up being the year of Sentient Carnival. I'm working on other stuff too but SC is coming really easily right now in terms of shorter stuff so we'll see.

It had been a game once, the way they slipped in and out of the house at night. Their parents were asleep, or out, or not giving a fuck and they were able to push open windows, sneak through back doors and, on occasion, just walk out.

It had been a game to see how much they could get away with.

Now it’s not a game anymore. Or maybe it is, maybe someone’s still playing it, but it’s not them. They lost and now they’re paying for it.

“Tell you a story! Tell you a tale! Might make you worry, but our predictions never fail!”

They call out the familiar words now, their voices being lost in the rush of the carnival. They live on scraps because it’ hard to get people to stop for fortune tellers these days. But they try because picking up stale pieces of popcorn and half eaten hot dogs was tiring.

Sometimes people stop though, kids mostly or stupid teenagers. They look like them, the teens with lazy, don’t-give-a-fuck expressions and eyes that say something “Man, I’ve been through shit,you don’t even know.”

But they do know, they can see all the petty woes and the ones that aren’t so much. They just have to look and touch and gates open to them, gates form the past and to the future. They see it all and they tell them.

Once, a guy tried to punch one of them, spat and cursed and got violent enough that they both had to run. He didn't’ like being confronted with what he’d done, nor what would happen to him now that he was changed. It scared him and he lashed out.

They couldn't’ blame him but they couldn’t lie either. The gates had been opened and everything flooded through, there was no denying it, no trying to blunt the edges of the sharpened truth.

Sometimes they wonder, both of them dreaming at different times, if they can pass this along. If somehow there’s magic that they’ve not tapped into. If they can set themselves free and find somewhere, anywhere, to go that isn’t here.

But the ferris wheel keeps turning, the music plays on and the girls keep learning what the world has done wrong.