Words, they can exist without ever having been spoken. They hang in the air like fine particles of dust, too small to see with the eye but heavy enough to fill your lungs with a certain ache. Words can cross lips and meanings can slide down throats like a slip of water, all without a single twitch of the mouth. These exchanges- these conversations- are the most difficult to listen to, you think as you stare at the boy waiting in front of you. The room is dark but you can still read the words that are etched into his eyes, eyes that are wide and earnest and so impossibly sad.

I’m leaving, they tell you, and you nod.

Yes, your eyes tell him back, and suddenly it becomes twice as hard to breathe in your flimsy nightgown. Yes, I know.

The two of you stare at each other, ignoring the sleeping bodies scattered around the room. Taehyung kneels before you, slowly and silently in an effort to avoid waking the other girls. It’s a sweet gesture but one that has little meaning- those girls couldn’t be wrenched from the arms of sleep if you tried (which you know from experience, thanks to the morning duties and responsibilities that come along with being the eldest).

At last you speak.

“Why are you still here?” At this, Taehyung gives you a rueful grin.

“I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye. You know that.”

He holds out his hands. There are a thousand things you want to tell him but you can’t bring yourself to say any of them, not through words and not through any silences, either. So what you do instead is look at the boy who is a step away from leaving you. The moonlight is weak but it’s enough that you can see the important details: lucent hair peeking from beneath a woollen cap. A canvas bag slung over his shoulder, worn more so from age than from an abundance of use. Starlight clinging to his eyelashes like silver dust; eyes boring straight into yours, b with a plea for you to understand and maybe even forgive what’s to come. You want to memorize it all, press all of the details into your mind like a carving on stone, because this moment is fleeting, and the only thing you can do is remember it to the best of your abilities. “They’re travelling to London after they finish their show this week. I doubt they’ll ever be back to perform here again, and you know how rare it is for a carnival to visit a town like ours. This may be my only chance.”

“You don’t have to explain.” Your voice nearly cracks mid-sentence but you manage to stave it off. “I told you, I already know.”

You open your fist and reveal the item inside- a little glass ball, filled with air pockets and gold flakes. You offer it to Taehyung but he shakes his head.

“That was my gift to you. I want you to keep it.”

“Are you sure? You may need it over there. It is your lucky marble, after all.”

“Was,” he corrects, and closes your fingers back around the glass. “And I’m sure. Where I’m going, it’s going to be leagues away from here. I won’t be able to run back and see how you’re doing, so this is my way of making sure you’ll be okay. Even if it can bring you just a little bit of luck then I’ll be satisfied, so make sure to keep a good hold on it, alright?”

You don’t respond to that. You think that Taehyung can understand the reason behind your silence, because his eyes soften. “Do you really not want to come with me? This could be our chance for a better life. We could find a real family there, you and I.”

Why can’t you stay here with me instead? you want to ask, but you can’t find it in you to say. Taehyung has always been painfully easy to read, and right now he’s looking straight at you like an open book. He’s waiting for your answer, he’s a smidgen uncertain about his departure. But behind it all lies something that hurts to even acknowledge: excitement. This is what he’s always wanted, to fly free with the acrobats in the land of the carnivalesque. He doesn’t belong here with you, you’re well aware. Taehyung is a boy destined for something beyond that.

And it breaks your heart to admit that you don’t belong in that something with him.

“I can’t,” you finally say. It’s never been more difficult to speak than it is now but you do so anyway. “The carnival is your dream, not mine. The children will need me here, and anyway, I wouldn’t know the first thing about surviving in the big tent. But you- You'll be just fine. You'll perform for audiences all over the world, and people will love you for it."

Taehyung reaches out and takes hold of your hand. The marble digs uncomfortably into your palm, but the pain is weightless compared to the feeling of his hand enveloping yours.

"Are you sure?"

You smile as widely as your aching cheeks will allow. “Of course. Just- don’t forget to write.”

If he catches the way your voice chokes at the end, he doesn't comment on it. All he does is squeeze your hand in a reassuring manner. "That was the plan all along.”

“Make sure to keep writing,” you add as he rises to his feet, “So I’ll know where to find you. And when we meet again I’ll be sure to bring this marble along, just to prove to you that I haven’t lost it.”

Taehyung laughs. “I’ll write to you everyday, then. You’ll get sick of it, I’m sure, but remember that you asked for it,” he jokes, and then too quickly he’s gone, leaving only empty air and a promise that you cling to like a lung starved for oxygen.

-------

The days pass by and without meaning to, you grow accustomed to life at the carnival. The crowds of people no longer overwhelm you with their intensity- instead, you become one of them, drifting from stall to stall and breathing in the scent of butter and fried cakes that hangs in the air. The circus folk recognize your face and call a greeting when they see you (the lion tamer has taken to tousling your hair and insisting you join them for their meals). You’ve been here long enough to see the tents rising up and down, standing proudly in the temperament of wind and sun alike. You’ve memorized the prices of the tickets, the ensemble that booms whenever the animals enter the ring. You’ve been here long enough to see all of which the circus has to offer.

Everything, except for the one thing you came searching for.

“Do you ever miss it?”

The words slip out without any particular thought. You think that you yourself are more startled than the lion tamer, who merely raises an eyebrow at your unexpected question.

“Do I ever miss what?”

You roll an apple in your hands. It’s smooth and surprisingly cold to touch- a token from the camp chef, who, with his fondness for marine boots and penchant for cooking mackerel one too many times throughout the week, seems as though he’d be better suited to a life at the rough seas than in the big tent (“‘Fraid this is it for now, lass; I only use the fire at mealtimes so you’ll have to wait ‘til then for something hot and proper,” he’d said, before rolling up his sleeves and proceeding to scrub potatoes with a vigor). “Home. Your home. Don’t you ever think of it?”

The lady looks at you for a long time, searching but not quite searching for an answer she already knows.

“What is home, girl?” she says eventually. Her own apple lies suspended in the air, but she ignores it in favour of giving you a steady, impenetrable stare. “Is it a roof over your head and bread on the table? Is it a place where you live with people you call family, just because you have the same blood flowing through your veins?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry-”

She shakes her head, effectively cutting off your apology. “Curiosity isn’t a sin. We all have things we want to ask at one point or another,” she says, and takes a bite of her awaiting fruit. She chews thoughtfully for a few moments before speaking again.

“I was fortunate enough to have both. A place to sleep, and somebody to call family. A great aunt from my mother’s side. She was the only relative I’d ever known, and, according to her, the only one willing to take me in after my parents passed on my first birthday.”

You bite carefully into your food. “What made you decide to leave?”

A shrug. “Didn’t you know? A person can have those things and more, and never once consider it a home. Aye, she did what she could to keep me fed and out of harm’s way, and I’ll always be grateful for that. But believe me when I say there was no love lost between the two of us. She made no secret of her feelings towards me- a deadweight, a sorry reminder of the only niece she’d ever liked.”

The lady plucks the stem from her fruit and tosses it into the empty fire pit. The bustle of the circus hardly reaches you here, and for a fleeting moment you feel as though you and the lady are in an entirely different world, one where the laughter and shouts of the outside world reach you like a faraway, muffled sort of dream. “She never laid a hand on me, but I think the both of us knew she didn’t have to. We lived that way for eleven years, strained and unknowable to the other, until finally one day I decided I’d had enough. At that time I was still a child, but I was old enough to know that this wasn’t my home. I wasn’t wanted, and it wasn’t where I wanted to belong, either. So you see, girl? It wasn’t a hard decision at all, to leave on the day the carnival came to our little town.”

All of this she tells you in a matter-of-fact voice, as though the story of her life’s hardships is no more pressing than one’s account of last night’s dinner.

The lady continues. “If you’re feeling sorry for me, girl, don’t be. There are some folk who think of the carnival life as a tragedy, but for me it was a natural decision. Leaving that aunt was the best thing I could have done.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” you tell her. And it’s true- the lion tamer is the kind of person who invites no room for pity. Instead, you can’t help but think of how brave she must have been, to have left her only remaining family in favour of this foreign kingdom, to have given up the closest thing she’d had to a home when she was hardly old enough to make it through the world alone.

Brave, just like Taehyung had been.

Her lips quirk upwards, as if to acknowledge the sincerity in your answer, but she only continues with her story. “The ringmaster was kind. In fact, they were all kind. They took me in, fed me, gave me a place to sleep when the nights turned dark and cold. Of course I knew I had to give them something in return, so I worked hard to care for the animals. It was the ringmaster who suggested I do this instead of tightrope walking with the other girls. He seemed to have a knack for figuring out other people’s talents before they did, now that I think about it.”

You glance in the direction of the oak tree, whose broad trunk shields the grand caravan from view. The lady laughs. “Not that one, girl. He wasn’t the ringmaster back then; he was learning to become an animal trainer, just like me. Does that surprise you? But anyway, my point is the carnival takes care of you, no matter who you are or where you come from. I told you before that it’s not just a show business. It’s a family. It doesn’t matter that we’re not related by blood. Home is something you can choose, and that extends to the people you decide to stay with, as well.”

"I don't have a home," is what you say after a moment. But even as these words tumble out, you can’t help but envision the face of a boy, so familiar and aching that it, too, seems like a faraway dream.

The lion tamer shrugs again and polishes off the last of her apple. "Then you can be a part of ours. You’ve heard it a hundred times before, I’m sure, but the carnival welcomes everybody who enters.”

You’re not sure how you should respond to this, but a loud shout suddenly interrupts the conversation. It’s coming from the animals’ tent, you think. You jerk your head towards the source of noise but the lion tamer is already rising and sprinting towards the tent.

“Quickly! Come quickly, the ringmaster is hurt!”

-------

“Does it hurt a lot?”

You glance at the ringmaster from the corner of your eye. He hasn’t said a word since you offered to help bandage his arm (a scratch, he’d dismissed when you and the lion tamer had arrived at the tent, but the lion tamer had insisted he get it treated immediately), and you, in turn, hadn’t wanted to bother him with your potentially unwanted questions.

He watches as you carefully wind the cloth down his wrist. “It’s only a flesh wound,” he finally says. You think that you can hear a grimace in his words, but when you look back at his face you can see nothing from behind his mask. “Nothing that won’t take a few days to heal.”

“Why were you with the lions in the first place?” you ask before you can stop yourself. You clamp your mouth shut but the ringmaster doesn’t seem to mind the question.

“One of the males has been acting up recently. It’s been especially difficult for some of the younger trainers, so I thought I would help and give the