The Erotic Carnival

Welcome back to the Erotic Carnival, esteemed reader! As ever, thank you for both your enthusiasm and your patience. We hope you enjoy this, the second overall chapter of our sexy epic. If you're finding this installment first, we suggest you begin withThe Erotic Carnival Bk 01, Ch 01: "Aiden and Zoe."The latter parts of this chapter, especially, will make so much more sense. We promise.

In that inaugural chapter, our story's protagonists, Aiden Fletcher and Zoe Neemee, were swept up on parallel paths from a summer evening in the fictitious city of Arrowhead into a fantastical world of danger and desire. Each was summoned by a mythological cutie (a pixie and a siren, respectively) to a magical place called The Erotic Carnival, whose protections had been breached, and its structures and inhabitants decimated by mysterious and feral attackers.

The subsequent pages here will fill in some of the details of how those circumstances came to be, and we will meet more of the denizens of the Erotic Carnival: most importantly, its chief steward and protector, who this chapter's third-person limited narration will largely follow.

Just in the way of a heads-up, this chapter contains m/m, F/m/m, M/f, F/f, and some solo f. The overall epic will explore every flavor of love and desire, from the deeply intimate to the casual fling, from the classical romance to the hedonistic orgy, from the queer to the cis, from the hetero to the homo, and everything along each of those spectrums. What it will also do, though, is develop character and measure consequence. It will strive to explore meaning, connection, identity, and choice, even in extraordinary, fantastical, or delightfully implausible circumstances.

It will also present mysteries and easter eggs, clues and conundrums that will unfold deliberately as the narrative does. There are no accidental details, and the manuscript has undergone painstaking revision in order to ensure that those twists and turns planned for later in the adventure are appropriately scaffolded. If you find yourself wondering if something or someone introduced in earlier chapters will matter later on, the answer is yes.

We will do our best to reward your emotional investment in these characters and their arcs. We have come to love them, and hope to justify your falling in love with them, too.

Without further ado, then, let's dive into....

.......

THE EROTIC CARNIVAL - BOOK 01, CHAPTER 02: "THE RINGMISTRESS"

.......

Her eyes were pearls, but they were closed.

Dreaming. She must be dreaming.

Dreaming both of water and of lucid montages as on a fluid screen.

Things distorted. Things half-remembered, or half-perceived. Half-asleep, half-waking... or less than half.

Dark. Comfortable. Tangible enough, though.

A patter of activity around the edges of awareness: a panoply of fantastical characters sharing adventures, living magically, moving vibrantly.

Textures. Gestures. Sensory pleasures. Little bursts of light or laughter in the dark. Moans. Kisses.

Pleasantness. Community. Kindness. Sex. Love.

Love.

This was a good dream.

The stories and their personas rippled across Her subconscious as through gently folding water. She could almost feel them under Her eyelids, caressing Her memory like a playful lover might a cheek; or leaping with held hands and giggles from one synapse to the next.

Sublime. She felt... happy.

Then a slap against the water.

Harsh enough to disrupt the sweet symphony of the dream. Then another slap. The intrusion of cacophony. The punching of holes into the floating tableaus. The water-born images distorted.

No, not just that. Distorting the water itself.

Something outside of the dream pushing in. Violently. Malevolently.

And the dream dying... piece by piece... character by character... love by love....

Brief images of catastrophe: an angry redhead shattered into a million shards, a devil torn to pale shreds by ravenous canines, slivers of scarlet and gold blasted as with cannon and falling tattered into heaps like disassembled bones....

Pain. Fear. Grief.

And need.

Something had come. Something bad.

The hidden had been found.

She had been found.

Danger.

As though claws scratched at the water's edge, seeking, seeking, sniffing, pawing with some terrible mandate: they were here.

Sniff sniff.

How?

What... what had happened?

A tilting of head in water, a turn of wrists, a seeking back just a bit, and an opening of awareness that had been reposing needfully....

What had happened?

A more semi-conscious thought rose, the way one might momentarily recognize that one is mid-dream, and might exert some control within the dream. Closed eyes beneath troubled lids sought out those of...

a guardian: picking her out of the water like a masterpiece on wet paper.

And the desire to see what had been seen.

An active choice within a dream. The haphazard liltings of water restricted. A medium upon which the recent past might be reexperienced to understand....

What had happened to the Erotic Carnival?

The search for answers and solutions beginning with....

.......

Women.

On a titanium gangway, beneath a great canopied dome alive with lights and elliptical orbits like a planetarium's, and amid an otherworldly tableau of huge teethy gears, great spinning shafts of diverse lengths and widths, miles of fiber optic cables, translucent pipes, inductors, capacitors, resistors, transformers, transistors, diodes, glowing coils, and other incomprehensibly complex machinery, stood two beautiful brilliant women.

One was crowned with a cascade of blonde waves.

The other wore her red-orange hair long, vaguely straight, and unbrushed.

The blonde, sporting a tight white button-down blouse beneath an eye-catching tailed topcoat of shimmering crimson, leaned against a tall metallic support that stretched from the catwalk into masses of cogs and circuitry both above and below. Her arms were crossed beneath impressive breasts that threatened to break the buttons on her blouse and spill into view. One voluptuous and fishnet-clad leg casually crossed over the other, less out of a sense of restlessness than concern. From beneath the brim of a scarlet top hat wreathed with gold, her crystal-blue eyes fixed on a complex of bevel gears turning teeth in teeth. In her right hand, the blonde held a long black rod spun with red and gold scrollwork, its craftsmanship fine as any sceptre's.

With a familiarity that seemed born of a mature working relationship, she addressed a question to the other female. "So what's ðe dæmage to the Big Top?" A smoky Nordic contralto like the rough bark and needles of proud pines.

Her interlocutor, more lithe than voluptuous, wiped a bit of grease from the bevel gears with her thumb. Irises that seemed awash in shifting hues of saffron stigmas examined the viscous material. The redhead then wiped long greasy fingers on the bib of her machinist's apron: the only clothing she wore over a body that, had she been remotely inclined toward an interest in either wardrobe or public approval, could have graced any fashion runway on the planet.

"Damage? Minimal." Her brick-orange eyes performed a final survey of the bevel gears that she'd been assessing. "So far as I can tell, the Big Top is in prime working order." The redhead squared her thin shoulders to the blonde. "I have run two full diagnostics. Everything reports back green. Anticipating the potential for an instrumentation error, I am also three-quarters of the way through a manual inspection of the machinery."

The machinery in question whirled and spun all about them, some in ways the blonde understood. Other functions here required a deeper understanding of mechanical engineering and quantum mathematics than she'd as yet mastered. She knew what all of this technology ultimately accomplished, and she could, if needed, explain the principles upon which the Big Top of the Erotic Carnival operated, but the true expert on its functionality was the barely-dressed redhead with the greasy hands.

The report that nothing seemed wrong was itself problematic.

"Anyþing explain what we experienced coming down from the læst spin?" asked the blonde, absently scratching the red nails of one hand over the wrist of the other.

The mechanic shook her red-maned head. "I have catalogued the most egregious maintenance needs in the Big Top, and none of them come close to causing the, um, turbulence, we experienced... much less system failure."

The blonde thought about it for a moment. "How inconsequential are we talking?"

The redhead put a hand on her hip and began to recite from memory. "A loose flange bolt at C-131; two partially-stripped stud bolts on JA-12 and JA-15, respectively; a frayed Au bonding wire inside panel 2128F; a scrape along strut SSE-4 that does not threaten structural integrity; a slight corrosion on...."

The blonde held up a hand to pause the recitation of minor fixes. "Okay, yes, ðose are pretty inconsequential." The redhead relaxed as the blonde continued. "Just minimal maintenance ðen? Noþing to cause the turbulence?"

The redhead raised an eyebrow, as though her boss hadn't quite caught on to what she'd been intending to convey. "Astrid, I would surmise that these minor damages resulted from, rather than caused, our recent rough landing."

The blonde bombshell took the deep breath of a competent but concerned administrator. "Okay, so definitely not mechænical failure." Her mind did the math. "An external cause, ðen."

The redhead reached inside one of the pockets of her machinist's apron and retrieved a small socket wrench. She fidgeted with the convergence of the drive end and drive square while speaking. "Not mechanical failure."

Usually when Kenna started playing with tools, it was because she'd begun to grow bored. It wasn't deliberate rudeness, the blonde knew. Their resident mechanic's capacious brain just operated a mile a minute. It meant that the nearly naked redhead didn't feel like she had much more to contribute to the conversation. In this case, she'd been asked to assess a problem. She'd done so and presented her findings. She was probably a little anxious to conclude this work-related chat and complete her personal review of the mechanisms of the Big Top.

Astrid wasn't done extrapolating a course of action yet, though. She needed to keep the Carnival's orange-eyed engineer engaged. "So... could we have hit someþing?"

The redheaded machinist shrugged. "I do not drive the car. I am just the grease monkey under the hood."

"Yes," the blonde waved a hand to indicate that she understood their respective roles, "but I'm æsking for your expert opinion, Kenna."

The redhead raised an eyebrow again. "May I make a tangential observation?"

Astrid used an elbow to push herself up and away from the pillar, standing upright now on scarlet stiletto heels. "Of course."

"This bothers you. You are distracted."

"Well, I wouldn't þink...." The blonde stopped herself mid-sentence. A pause. Then deliberate articulation. "I'm doing it again?"

"It is your default form of communication."

Astrid cringed. "Sorry."

"I do not mind. You had merely asked earlier to be gently made aware, should you...." Kenna did not finish her sentence.

"It takes some effort," the blonde admitted.

"You do not have to police your speech," said the mechanic.

"I know... I just... I've been trying to...." Her voice trailed off.

"I know."

Another pause.

"Thanks."

"Of course."

The voluptuous blonde took a deep breath and let her gaze wander for a moment around the fantastical technological wonder that the two women occupied. Her breasts rose and fell within her tight white blouse, then rose and fell again, heavy as both mammaries and responsibilities could be.

Although her conversation with the half-naked and matter-of-fact mechanic was bereft of any romantic undertones, the blonde reeked of sexuality in a way that the redhead, lithe torso casually visible under her machinist's apron, could not quite be.

Astrid's calves and thighs rippled with sensual strength, as though she were as capable of killing a lover with her thighs as inducing an orgasm. The coattails of her red jacket wrapped almost obscenely over the curvature of her incredibly rotund backside. The fishnet stockings that graced these lower extremities extended from scarlet toenails up to beneath the hem of her flared blouse, which opened below its last button, left and right, just above the woman's visible pussy lips and a pronounced clitoris pierced by a shiny gold ring. Hers was a body meant to be ogled, and her wardrobe had definitely been designed to attract attention to every voluptuous characteristic.

The Ringmistress of the Erotic Carnival, indeed, cut a formidable figure.

Yet for all the overt eroticism, for all the sparkle and sensuality, for all the tits and ass on display, Astrid's queries of Kenna might have been appropriate for a boardroom or seminar: an extremely capable executive getting the best out of an exceptionally talented specialist.

"We've never encountered turbulence before," she admitted to the redhead. "I didn't know we could. I'd like to proceed with an abundance of caution... perhaps assess the potential for structural damage elsewhere in the Carnival."

The redhead stopped fidgeting with her socket wrench and looked up, more attentive. "That seems prudent," she conceded.

Astrid continued patiently. "Let's figure out what we might need to look for. We've ruled out mechanical failure. What other possible explanations can there be for what we experienced?"

Kenna thought about it for a moment. "Clarifying question: why did you spin to this event?"

Astrid grimaced. "I didn't. This was a bit of a crash landing."

The engineer did not seem to like that answer. "So this time and this place are an accident?" She glanced over her shoulder toward the command platform and its four-dimensional digital displays.

The blonde rubbed her chin before answering. "Well, I certainly didn't choose them."

"That seems problematic," explained the redhead. "The Big Top is not algorithmic. It does not anticipate events, and does not have an autopilot mode."

"I see." The blonde unconsciously ran a thumb along the baton in her hand. "So what I'm hearing is that the real problem might not be damage, but destination."

Kenna continued to expostulate her concerns. "The entire mechanism is designed around the requirement for a pilot." She looked hard at the Ringmistress, her eyes glancing up to Astrid's scarlet top hat. "For you."

"Right. That's part of my job," Astrid agreed.

Kenna shook her head. "I need you to hear me. The Big Top is not a computer. Nothing artificial could ever do what a sentient operator can do." She lifted the socket wrench for emphasis. "When you are piloting the Big Top, you are not turning a proverbial steering wheel or pushing levers. You are the engine. Your mind is."

The blonde thought long and hard. "Right."

"All of this..." the redhead gestured at the vast canopied space humming with gears, tubes, electrodes, magnets, and mechanical motion, "...exists to amplify and carry out the directives of the Ringmistress."

The blonde looked around at the unbelievably complex mechanism and nodded. "Is it possible that I subconsciously chose this event then?"

Kenna cocked her head. "Possible. Have you been here before?"

The Ringmistress glanced over at the digital display and shook her head. "I haven't." A pregnant pause. "Could we have skipped like... like a record player... to some event that the Carnival's been to... maybe before me?"

"Default to a prior command? Or a previous event recalled from travel history?" Kenna considered it. "That is possible. I do not have a means of confirming that hypothesis. The Big Top does not store that data. It is purposely designed to be a tool for consciousness, rather than a replacement for it."

"Would you remember?" asked the Ringmistress.

Kenna's saffron eyes unfocused for a bit. "Like you, I do not recall the beginning of my consciousness. I cannot remember being born."

"Anything from before me?"

The redhead shifted her weight from one long naked leg to the other. "I have some memories. None of them would be helpful at this moment."

"Nothing about... travel? Beta testing, perhaps?"

"I would not be able to specify any such event. I do not venture from the Carnival, as you know."

This elicited a frown from the busty blonde. "You can, of course," she offered. "You're not a prisoner."

Kenna's gaze wandered up and around the room at her stewardship. "I have work."

"Yes," agreed Astrid. "But you're you. Not a function."

The redhead's gaze swiveled back to her voluptuous supervisor. "As you are? More than the Ringmistress?"

The woman in the red jacket smiled. "Yes. I get to be me. That's that whole point. You get to be yourself. And decide who that is."

A tilt of the head. "You want me to leave."

Astrid closed her eyes tight for a moment and then reopened them. "I want you to do what you want to do, and not just what you are expected to."

"So... venture from the Carnival."

"If you wanted to."

"But not until I want to?"

"You decide what makes you happy."

"Happy." The saffron eyes turned down in a slight frown.

"Yes. Happy."

The lithe mechanic thought about it for a while. "I will consider your... suggestion."

"Good." An empathetic smile from beneath the crimson top hat.

"I still do not understand how the Big Top was directed to this event, though." The matter-of-fact mechanic seemed more comfortable in the realm of the pragmatic than the existential or emotional.

Astrid's eyes glazed over for a long moment as she considered something, and then shook her head. "Could it be... Her?"

Another pause almost as long, as though the two, although alone, were now discussing something taboo.

The mechanic frowned and lowered the volume of her voice. "Is She not asleep?"

"Yes. But... what dreams may come...."

"Possible. I am not an expert in the psychology of...." Her voice trailed off. "Perhaps you might inquire of the seer... or the incubus...."

Astrid thought about it. "Tess, I think."

"The less infuriating of the two," agreed the nearly-naked mechanic.

Astrid tilted her blonde locks. "I thought I heard you and Dev the other night...."

The redhead straightened awkwardly, her neck and shoulders flushing red-orange. "It is primarily out of necessity." Agitated. "Sometimes I require more initiative than my fabricants can provide." Embarrassed, even. "And when I grow aroused...."

The gorgeous blonde grinned. "It's okay, sis. I'm not judging. He's a fantastic fuck."

Kenna frowned, and tried to deflect. "I am the only one of me... and I do not wish to harm anyone."

"And you can't burn him. I get it." The Ringmistress offered a kind smile of acceptance. "I'll quietly ask Tess about the dreamwalk."

Kenna seemed satisfied to have the crux of the conversation move away from her sex life and return to the inquiries at hand.

"I think that prudent."

The tall redhead nodded. Another line of inquiry: "May I ask how the guidance felt in the moment?"

"Of turbulence?"

Kenna nodded again.

Astrid thought about it. "It felt... like...." She didn't seem to quite be able to articulate it. "I guess the way it feels when you feel a mosquito biting you, but for whatever reason you can't brush it away."

The redhead blinked. "What is a mosquito?"

Another pause. "Ah. Right. Bad analogy."

The mechanic leaned against the railing of the catwalk and crossed one foot across the opposite bare calf. "An intrusion or annoyance that persisted, then," she offered, showing a goodwill effort at communication.