by Kessie Carroll

Created on: April 09, 2009

Dusk was a human sometimes.

She had to be a human to do her work, because that was the rule. But when she had no work, she returned to her true form, which was a fox with three tails. At night she slept in a kennel with a chain around her neck, because her masters knew that she would escape if she ever had the chance.

Dusk disliked her work. It was boring and repetitive. Every day, people came to her to see her paint illusions for them, and every day she painted the same ones. She would make a car look like a tiger, or make the side of a building into a movie screen playing a soda commercial. Her masters were paid according to how good her illusion was. They made her practice the same ones over and over until they were perfect. But perfect illusions were boring.

When Dusk was off having lunch, and the exhibition stage was closed, she made her bowl of dog food look like a steak, or a hamburger. Anything but dog food. But even an illusion could not mask the taste, and dog food just tasted like dog food.

Painting illusions was easier as a fox, but she was not allowed to become a fox in front of customers. Her masters said that there would be inquiries if anyone knew what she really was. But if she was merely a human, then everyone would think that she was just a magician, or even a witch. Dusk held real magicians in high regard. What they did was real magic, while all she did was make things look like other things. That wasn't magic. That was fooling a person's brain.

There were other people in the circus who gave performances. Dusk felt most sorry for the freaks from other worlds. They sat in their cages all day while people gawked at them, and took pictures, and screamed, and gasped. Dusk knew all of them, because she was something of a freak, herself. They all rode in the same train car when they moved from city to city, and there they learned each other's scents and languages.

Dusk was fluent in Human as well as animal speech, and she could understand the freaks well enough. They weren't so frightening. One was a rat the size of a horse. He was very polite and kept himself well-groomed. Sometimes Dusk was called upon to give him red glowing eyes and matted fur to impress a skeptical patron, and the rat found this insulting.

There was a morose centaur, and a ten-foot long lizard they called a dragon. He never did more than eat and bask in the sun, and Dusk tried and tried to persuade him to breathe fire. "Fire?" he chuckled at her. "I am no breathe fire. Is too hot."

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