Colorful cages and carts trundled by, clad in peeling paints in lurid shades. Grey-brown mud splashed onto their worn sides from the rain-soaked path.

Scaly limbs reached out from within the wheeled cages, and hungry mouths snapped within their dark recesses.

A misting drizzle, being the tattered remains of the previous fortnight's downpour, plinked down on the heads of the shambling figures, making dark dappled spots on their tawdry finery.

The sun had yet to rise, yet the sky was already pale grey.

This was a parade of freaks and misfits.

On top of the cart that led the procession, a tall figure with sticklike limbs stood, leaning on a makeshift trailing.

She leered excitedly down at the dilapidated road ahead, the tails of her maroon-and-yellow tailcoat fluttering and snapping in the bracing wind.

She raised the barbed leather whip that lay at her side and lashed out over the railing at the piebald, partially lame horses that strained to keep up the pace.

"Yah! Yah!" She shrieked out into the biting fall wind, which only howled back at her.

She burst into a peal of shrieking laughter, like a madwoman freshly escaped from the asylum.

Her wild mop of hair billowed out from beneath her patchwork top-hat, like a spilled phial of blood. The circus was coming to Red Rivers!

A/N

Ok, yes, that was incredibly short, but it was just a preface! There's more where that came from, to be sure.

Cheers, loves!

-Dashiell L. Mirai