"Yes, I was with a circus but not by my choice," Fade said. "I was the owner's slave..."
Rythern said quietly, "I'm sorry. I know how it is."
His path had been very different from hers, but he knew how the circus changed things. He'd joined and left it by choice, and yet he recognized - even now as he traveled in solitude - that the bright lights and the dark grins of that forbidden world had marked permanently him as its own. The circus changed things.
It was the black and white. The right and wrong. Everything wild and unstable in between.
When Rythern had given Fade his reasoning for journeying alone, the conversation went on a lighter note. "You often offend people?" she said with a smile.
Rythern attempted a nonchalant shrug, though his eyes were too bright and gave away the mirth. "Why? Have I offended you yet?" An idea sparked in his thoughts and he sheathed the knives. "You know what, Fade. We ought to do a routine together. It'd be fun."
Memories of parallel yet opposite pasts wound connections between the two. The black and white. The in-between. Here, in a city brimming with crossing paths, that fine line was not the only line they tread. Rythern felt mildly unsettled as he looked at the girl in front of him - not in a bad way, just in a way that made him curious. Thoughtfully, the young Vantha ran a hand through messy dark hair as his eye color drifted to a deeper blue. Chance and circumstance were funny things.