What a Show!

What a show! What a show! 
A show as good as any other! Of course it was, of course it was!

All shows were good shows.

She smiled so widely, beaming brightly. The ringing in her ears never ceased as she caught her breath, breathing, roaring in and out, in and out, in and out.

What a good show!

Well done, well done, well done, Trickster. What a good show you put on!

Amazing, amazing, oh Trickster, weren’t you so amazing?

What a good show!

 

It was a good show, wasn’t it? It was always a good show when fire was involved. Fire, there was lots of fire.

There had to be fire.

Flames flickered and danced and seemed to sing to her. And it was just so beautiful. More fire, more fire. The flames were so beautiful.

 

Oh, almost as beautiful as hearing melodic screams from-

 

“No no, Trickster, you mustn’t let your flames go out of control,” she remembered an old woman’s voice. She was kindly, but she was stern with her. She didn’t like stern.

(Don’t ever, ever tell Trickster what to do.)

 

Fire, fire, she wanted to see the fire. She wanted to see the beautiful fire.

She so badly wanted to see the beautiful flickering embers, light light lighting the whole place up.

Watch it ignite, Trickster, watch it all go up in smoke and flames and tears and screams and-

 

Fire was just so beautiful to Trickster.

 

She’d always grown up around fire. Back when she was known by a different name. Back when everything was just fine and everything was just normal! The way it should be, but that’s not the way things ended up going.

Oh, snow, snow, snow, oh how she hated the snow. The snow quenched her flames, the snow destroyed the beauty.

It was the snow that destroyed her life.

Oh, snow, snow, snow, why did there have to be snow? Why did there have to be so much snow? Why was there so much?

Too much, too much, too much and no one was ready. Too much, too much, too much and it claimed lives of everyone she loved.

Too much, too much, too much.

Trickster needed to see the fire to burn all the snow away.

She needed to see it, she had to see it, she had to see the fire so she could watch all her locked away memories just burn, burn, burn away.

Burn, burn, please burn away.

 

“You put on a good show as usual,” she heard a man’s voice. A nice man. A good man. Anyone who allowed Trickster to use her beautiful flames was good in her book. He let her do what she wanted. He wanted her to do what she wanted.

And she wanted to make things burn.

The last owners, the elderly couple who took her in didn’t allow this. And Trickster? Well, she didn’t take too kindly to that.

(Don’t you ever, ever tell her what to do.)

The last she heard of them were their melodic screams piercing the smoky air as her flames burned higher and higher and higher and higher-

 

Trickster had been walking around for a while, hoping she’d run into those twins.

“What freaks!” She’d hear people exclaim when they saw them. What did they expect? Trickster didn’t care for the twins’ appearance.

They liked her, and she liked them. That’s what mattered.

Two of them, there were two of them and they always came with each other. They were a pair. They were never seen without each other.

They couldn’t ever be seen without each other anyway.

Trickster enjoyed their company and they enjoyed hers. They did not care for her nature, they did not care how abnormal she was.

 

And Trickster liked that.

 

“Ah!” She exclaimed upon spotting the pair. She rushed over to them, giving them a wide smile. “There you are.”

“Trickster!” The twins squealed and embraced her in a hug. “How have you been? What a good show we had!”

“Indeed, indeed, what a great show!” Trickster agreed. She was still smiling so widely at them. Other people would be creeped out and run away from her, but the twins weren’t other people.

“Can you tell us a story?” The twins asked in unison, clasping each others’ hands. “Please, please, oh pretty please?”

Trickster nodded vigorously.

“Of course, of course!”

“And pretty pretty pretty please can you show us a trick too?” The twins begged, showing their big wide eyes at her.

The twins loved her fire. They adored her fire.

“Alright!” Trickster said, holding out her hands. “Let’s watch it burn!”

She raised her hands up and she set fire to an overhead banner. Trickster smiled triumphantly as she looked at the twins, their eyes wide with wonder and excitement.

“Oooh!”

They looked upon Trickster like she was the most amazing person in the world.

“You’re so cool!” One said.

“Yeah, so super cool!” The other agreed, nodding. “Now tell us your story!”

“Oh yeah, tell us your story.”

“Pretty please?!” The two batted their eyes at her.

“Where do I begin?” Trickster wondered. She thought for a moment. “Ah! I got it. Roll up, roll and gather around to hear my amazing stories!”

The twins looked upon her, urging her to continue.

 

Trickster always told the greatest stories: stories of the old, the new, the unknown. She could even make ordinary things like spoons sound fantastical in her words.

“Fireworks are so pretty,” Trickster began. “Aren’t they? Tiny colorful fires exploding in the sky. Beautiful. Beautiful! We should always see fireworks, tiny exploding fires! Amazing! Well, this story is about a lost firework that didn’t explode.

“You see, this firework, she shot up and up and up and away into the air! Up, up, up she went, but she didn’t explode. No one let her explode. No colorful fires, no beauty… Everyone around her could show how magnificent they were but not this firework. She was all alone with no fire. Then suddenly another firework shot up, up, up.

“So beautiful, he’d be so beautiful but he didn’t explode either! He stopped by our firework and asked her, “Why haven’t you exploded?” Our firework explained that she couldn’t explode, no one allowed her to. So he said that she could explode with him. They’d be beautiful, he’d let her be beautiful.”

“So what happened next?” The twins asked.

Trickster began to smile widely again.

“So the two of them exploded together! They became beautiful showers of fire, colorful and fantastical. They exploded into thousands of beautiful tiny, tiny sparks filling the air. She was the biggest and most beautiful explosion out there. All with the help of that other firework…”

“Yay!” The twins clapped their hands. “How amazing!”

“How amazing indeed!” Trickster nodded vigorously. “How beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful fire.”

Oh yes, fire was so beautiful to her.

 

Oh, how she wished for the place to go up in flames one day. Beautiful flames. Striking, brilliant, radiant flames that engulf the place. Oh! To see the entire place filled with such glorious fire was something Trickster longed to see. To hear the screams, to see the chaos and panic… Oh, how beautiful that’d be!

 

Soon, she told herself. Soon. It’d happen soon.