His skin prickled with self consciousness, aware of the eyes that glanced at and then followed him as he headed toward the storage rooms with the littles. He tried very hard not to meet any of those gazes.

Trying to act like this was normal.

Dennin refused to be carried.

Instead he swung on Taiken’s hand and tried to pull away anytime something caught his attention.

Meanwhile Isha had resumed thumb sucking and put her head on the demon’s shoulder. Sometimes painfully pulling his hair as she played with it.

Because he wasn’t looking he didn’t see several women exchange winks, mouthing matching ‘cute!’s, and silent laughter.

When they reached the storeroom door he did notice when Dennin pulled his arm so far out that he got in the way of two men carrying a large and delicate stone table. With a startled yank he pulled the child out of the way, the lead man barely missing Dennin without ever seeing him.

“Wahh!”

“Don’t start that,” Taiken muttered sternly. He edged inside, relieved that there were no more immediate moving obstacles.

The storage room was arranged in rows. Some of the rows were shelves and others were just floor space. If he’d been in charge of designing the organization, he knew it would have been haphazardly stacked and stored wherever there was room.

Was it Sheldon or Kelly who organized this?

For an instant Kelly’s face and form flashed across his mind and he stopped cold. He had to take a few deep breaths as pain stabbed through his chest.

“Ken?”

It was Isha’s yank on his ponytail that pulled him out of the memory. She was looking up at him with those big, brown eyes. Impulsively he kissed her forehead and her face broke out in a big grin as she giggled.

“Mon!”

Dennin pulled at Taiken’s hand impatiently.

They found a pile of dusty blocks, the use of which he couldn’t remember. At first the children weren’t interested. But, when he sat down and started stacking them and pushing them over, Isha climbed off his lap and they soon started building and arguing.

Well, Dennin argued with his loud, insistent baby chatter while his sister just ignored him and took the blocks she wanted.

After getting them started, Taiken only had to occasionally join in. Usually when one or the other of them shoved blocks into his hands and insisted he did something with them. Mostly he just enjoyed watching and listening to the children.

And pretending to ignore the prop master, Fariz, and his helpers as they came and went.

“Iwannat!”

Taiken didn’t have time to decipher Dennin’s sudden shriek before the child was running down the aisle.

Panicked, the demon jumped to his feet and chased after him. Usually it didn’t take much effort to catch a two-year-old but the boy tripped and knocked over an old pole. It fell with a crash into something else.

Taiken didn’t have time to see the entire chainreaction. He just saw that part of a bigger stack was toppling in the child’s direction.

He scooped the child up and had barely backed away when the first danger crashed to the ground. Old pulleys, ropes, knick knacks and props, and other odds and ends spilling out of their crates where Dennin had been.

But, things weren’t done falling and Taiken was frantically trying to get the child out of range.

Frightened by the noise and furious about being picked up, Dennin kicked and screamed the whole way, distracting Taiken from his objective. Suddenly, as the last of the disaster ended, he felt something land point first into his foot. Straight through the moccasin.

The demon at first couldn’t breathe then sucked in a painful lungful of air.

“What’s going on?!”

Twisting his body around, struggling to hold the wriggling child, he saw the prop master rush around the corner and stop cold.

“Master Taiken, sir?”

Taiken said nothing, letting the prop master take in the sight and figure out what had happened on his own. Then his eyes landed on the knife in Taiken’s foot and winced.

“Will you take Dennin for a moment?”

Just behind the prop master Taiken could see Isha peeking around the corner of the row. Her eyes were wide and frightened tears were leaking silently out.

He knew that lip quiver. Any moment she was going to start wailing with her brother if he didn’t get control of the situation.

“Might I suggest, sir,” said the prop master, “that you entertain Verona’s littles elsewhere? Not that I mind seeing my grandchildren but it’s dangerous in here.”

Taiken flushed, gladly handing the upset boy over. Then he reached down and yanked the knife out of his aching foot. He put it on the nearest shelf.

“I didn’t think it would be so dangerous in here.”

His embarrassed blush deepened as he took Dennin back.

The prop master smiled wryly. “You’d be surprised with littles. I saw what they were playing with. Do you want me to have one of the boys put them in a bag and bring them out to you?” He looked pointedly at the screaming boy then down at Isha, who’d latched onto the prop master’s leg and had also begun to scream. “Seeing as you have your hands full?”

“Y-Yes. Thank you.”

He took the children out to the amphitheater, his cheeks refusing to return to normal for a long time. Even after calming Isha down and using demon touch to unravel the bottom part of his tunic just long enough to tether Dennin and let the child wander the bottom row of the bleachers.

Being allowed to move, thankfully, got Dennin to stop screaming as well.

It was the prop master who brought out the bag of blocks. He put it next to Taiken on the bench and ruffled Isha’s hair fondly while she pressed her face into Taiken’s shoulder.

“Cute littles.”

“Sometimes. I don’t know how parents do it.”

The prop master threw back his head in a laugh. “Not a skill demons usually have, eh? Not to worry. It’s like throwing knives or balancing on your hands. You learn.”

Instead of leaving right away the prop master groaned and sat down. Taiken remembered when this man had been a little as well. A chubby little thing that liked to sort the things he was playing with.

Maybe it was Fariz that organized that room?

Then Taiken had an awful thought.

That chubby little boy had existed close to fifty years ago.

I feel ancient.

He didn’t know that the prop master was thinking along similar lines. To his boyhood, growing up moving from place to place in an endless circuit around the lake. Wintering either in the Capital or Sherim.

Like the few older members that had stayed with the Circus this long, he’d seen a lot of changes.

Even in the ageless demon.

Fariz chuckled and stretched his aching shoulders. “I remember when Verona was that little,” he said, his thoughts shifting. “Voids, the time goes fast.”

“Do humans look forward to dying?”

Taiken didn’t mean to ask. He’d been trying to not think about things like that.

The question just sort of popped out and the man looked sideways at him. Taiken looked away, uncomfortable with eye contact.

“Some do. Some obsess with trying to avoid dying and getting old. Why do you ask?”

Taiken shrugged and wrapped his arms more firmly around Isha, who was showing no signs of getting over the trauma of loud, scary things falling to the ground.

“I just thought… that is… Sometimes I think it would be nice to look forward to everything ending.” Struggling to find words Taiken looked up at the wavering dome. “When you can say you’re done.”

Fariz considered it seriously. “I’m not ready to be heading out of this life. But, my father started talking like that about five years before he died.”

The old man, Taiken remembered, had died the previous year.

“I guess it’s possible to just be done.” Fariz winked. “But, I think it’d be hard to want to separate from these two.” He caught Dennin as the child came tottering back to tug determinedly on his leash. The boy screamed like the old man was trying to kill him. “Oh, hush, you little rascal. Just give your grandpa a hug and I’ll let you go.”

Taiken laughed and even Isha shyly looked up. When Fariz finally put the boy down, Isha abruptly turned on Taiken’s lap and held out her arms to the other man.

“But, why the depressing thoughts, sir?” asked the prop master as he picked up his granddaughter. He chuckled low in his throat. “I thought you were doing well as matchmaker.”

Taiken flushed. “Verona told you?”

“Well, she hinted.”

“It was her idea. I just did as she asked.”

“And I look forward to the wedding.” The old man bounced the little girl a little, though with her plastered to his shoulder like she’d been doing with Taiken most of the day, he didn’t get much affect. “But, you didn’t answer my question. Why the depressing thoughts?”

Taiken shrugged. “Maybe I’m actually a very tired old man.”

Fariz threw back his head in a laugh, which was not the reaction Taiken was expecting. While the demon tried to think of a response the old man stood up.

“Come along, old man, sir. It's about supper time. I’ll help you with the littles.”

They left the amphitheater, entering the Outer Complex.

Why the depressing thoughts? Taiken looked around, holding Dennin’s hand firmly as the child wriggled and pulled and chattered. So many faces that were different. So many changes.

He dropped his head to look at the ground.

“Isha, do you want to hold your own plate?”

“Uh huh.”

“Then you’ll have to let Grandpa go-”

I’m just… so tired. What else is there for me to do here?

As though something were sitting in his mind, waiting for him to ask the question, an image, no, a memory, flashed to the front of his thoughts.

Stubborn, foolish girl.

He had crouched behind bushes, waiting for her cries of relief and joy as she found the rabbit he’d carefully entangled in her trap. If he wasn’t careful she might actually notice her trap didn’t work and that the carcass had been planted.

Then she might ask who’d done it and become even more wary.

After two years of wandering around she’d lost weight she couldn’t afford and she’d stopped caring about her hair and clothes. Except if they kept her warm or not. Her feet were now bare most of the time. Because her moccasins had worn through enough that she now wore them only when it got cold.

And they were too small now, voids it!

There wasn’t much he could do except watch, plant a few animals in her traps, and watch some more.

Because if she even suspected that he’d been leaving the Circus for weeks at a time just to check on her… just to make sure the child didn’t starve or freeze to death… he didn’t want to think of how she’d retaliate.

He blinked away the memory. Remembering that he was supposed to be helping Dennin when Fariz handed him a plate from the family’s supplies. They then headed, slowly, toward the cooking end of camp.

Lita.

Unable to pinched the bridge of his nose with both hands full, he rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and let out a little laugh.

He was thinking far too much of one girl lately. And that one was going to do the impossible and turn a demon’s hair gray.

Stubborn, foolish, stuck on her own ideals, incapable of fully hiding any emotion she happened to be feeling at the time… And impossible not to like. Even when her beautiful eyes were glaring daggers into a demon’s soul and her lips were pinched into that stubborn line that no one can cross.

“Mon!”

Dennin yanked Taiken back into the present, pulling the two of them forward behind Fariz.

***

“Where’ve you been all day?”

Lita didn’t answer Gima’s sly smile as she pulled a clean apron off the wall. She’d needed something to shake off the remains of Dalius’ touch and decided that helping with dinner was just the thing.

“Went for a walk on the dock.”

“And?”

“And that’s it.” Lita shrugged and brushed by the girl.

Gima didn’t let it go. When they both had carts and were pushing them down the hall she leaned over and whispered, “So? Did you see his bedchambers?”