Leap of Faith

Chapter Two: Life Begins

The sky over People's Park was abnormally clear, scattered with a sheen of twinkling silver stars that Darius attempted to loop his puffed-out smoke rings around. But the fumes dissolved, reshaped, and faded into the distance to pop and fizzle out. Darius sighed and peered over to the final preparations rising before him. He was avoiding mucking in, preferring to sit on the grass beside his luxury motorhome. He wasn't work-shy, merely avoiding the first night shenanigans that all the other folk would be excited about. He probably should help more. But no one bothered him for manual labour anymore. He was far too important. He was the star after all.

And a grouch.

A prickly grouch.

A prickly and now officially old grouch.

Inhaling the last drag from his imported cigar, he savoured the spicy, woody taste then blotted the end on the grass. He'd been waiting to smoke that through the entire forty-eight hours of travelling over land and sea. Which was the main reason why he'd declined to aid with the raising of the Big Top to indulge himself in Ecuador's finest. It was a present to himself—the cigar, and the solitude.

He was about to clamber inside his RV for a nightcap and wash down the hints of coffee and cedar with whatever liquor he had in his stash when the door to the caravan beside his flung open. Nina stepped out, swished her black shawl around her dainty figure squeezed into Lycra, and tapped kitten heels down the three metal steps to squelch into sodden mud.

"Do not think," she barked, pointing a finger Darius's way, "that you are not joining us this time."

Darius hauled himself up from the ground, wiping his hands down his baby-blue distressed jeans. Blades of grass tickled between his bare toes. He liked it. He rarely wore shoes anymore. He'd never worn socks, even in the height of winter when his motorhome had little heat, but recently, shoes had felt like yet another restriction and another conformity to a life he'd left some time ago. Real life. Civilian life. He didn't wear anything other than his old Levis matched with a tank top for the endless journeys, or his costume for performances. Why would he need anything else?

"Domnişoară," he replied in the grating tone the others in the crew had come to despise about him. But he wasn't here to make friends. Not anymore. Friends complicated things. "I am far too old to be gallivanting."

"But you're not too old to be swinging from bar to bar twenty feet above ground, no?"

Darius chuckled. "No, dragă. That I will never be too old for."

Nina stood in front of him, hands on hips and regarded him as though he were a petulant teenager and not a man twice her age. She'd joined Godaeux's a year ago. As tiny as she might be, she was feisty and had well and truly made her mark as one of the top-billed artists among the cast. She performed an excellent hoop act, contorting herself into all sorts of angles whilst spinning hundreds of hula-hoops on every limb. It was a wonderful spectacle. Yet, for some unfathomable reason, she was hellbent on getting Darius back into the centre circle of Godeaux elite, which he'd abandoned in favour of becoming a recluse a while ago.

For good reason.

"How old?" she asked and pouted her perfectly plump red lips. No wonder she had become the belle of the tent. She worked her femininity to the best of her ability. She'd probably left a thousand broken hearts in every city they'd travelled to. He'd broken a few hearts too, once upon a time. Not anymore though.

Not now he knew how it felt to be on the receiving end.

"That is none of your business," he said.