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For Kaosu, today really was unusual.

He seldom woke up during the daylight hours. He seldom ventured into Vargash. He seldom made it through a full ten hours without drinking, gambling, or pissing someone off. Yet here he was, safe, calm and bored. Above all else, K-tan hated to be bored. His internal itch to keep moving at all costs was insatiable. To have nothing to do was for him like sitting at a red light for five minutes when you're already running ten minutes late.

Unfortunately, there was no night life for him to entertain himself with in the middle of the afternoon. Instead, he decided to try for a different kind of thrill. Conquering his nerves, he had dragged himself all the way out to Farstep. What if he ran into Fao? What if he ran into Trystan? Oh-ho, that might not end well. But the risk of such unpleasant encounters made him feel more awake than wandering randomly would have. Thus, it was worth it.

He was passing through the games section, blending fairly decently into the crowds, when his gaze fell on a rather cheery little girl. For some strange reason, she looked extremely familiar. He could not quite recall where he had seen her before, though...

Kaosu flinched when the girl spotted him. Okay, so they definitely had met before. She clearly recognized him soo why did he not recognize her? He was confused for a brief moment before the truth hit him. Oh. An Essentic. His mind connected the dots. This chick was an alter. He had met her when she was a proto. That explained it. She was that perky, nosy butterfly who he had encountered in the middle of the night. Gahhh, Essentics matured so quickly these days! Had he really been gone THAT long?

What could she want from him now? "Rhian, was it?" he began cautiously. "Yes and no. I always aim to do something. What it is that I'm doing, though, I haven't decided yet. And you? You still live in this dump?"

"You mean you hadn't seen other places before?" Kaosu replied, his mind immediately flickering to Fao and Ziazan. It sounded like this Essentic's owner was just as over protective as that crazy fortune teller. How annoying. "Nevermind. I can't see why you like it here, but each to his own," he shrugged.

"Love, I've been wandering around for at least the last forty years. I don't know what you're insinuating, but my life hasn't changed much, no," he continued, albiet more cautiously. He did not like the direction this conversation was going. Already. She might be older, but she was still a nosy little bugger.

"I've never had a home. I don't really have a place to return to. So no, I didn't go back."

Kaosu could honestly not figure out what was going through this Essentic's mind. If she was really as intuitive as she behaved, she should have figured out long ago that he was not the kind of person she should be hanging around. He hated her very species. He disliked her owner by way of her husband. He was a loner. What made her think he wanted her company?

"The ocean, huh? I've always wondered what the sea was like," he mused. After all, the beach was one of Tryst's favorite places. When she offered to play games with him, he raised a brow. Carnival games were not exactly his thing. Besides, they reminded him of that last night... "I don't think so," Kao said bluntly, his feathers ruffled by the memories the suggestion roused. Maybe coming to Farstep had been a mistake. Whether he ran into anyone unpleasant or not, he would forever associate the place with his ex.

He quickly realized that his response had been perhaps a bit too curt. It wasn't Rhian's fault that he had issues with the very location he was voluntarily visiting. "I mean, I wouldn't be any good at those kind of games," he offered, trying to redeem himself slightly with the weak excuse. He pointed to his closed, missing eye. "My depth perception is pretty nonexistant these days."

"I'm not even going to answer that..." Kaosu sighed. Here we go again. You're tricking me intro betraying things I don't want to betray. "I don't care." Liar. The fact that the Essentic had not seen Trystan in a long time seriously bothered him. Did she not belong to the wife of his best friend? That meant that Tryst had not been around at all. And the last time they had met, she had mentioned something about suicide. That couldn't... I wasn't...

No way. I'm not falling for this again! Forget the past right now. I'm not getting all sentimental in front of an Essentic of all creatures. "That sounds like a good idea, though. Someplace new." He crossed his arms, "But why would a carnival need cottages?" Kao still thought Farstep to be a traveling show.

"So the entire carnival changed just because some old geezer got tired of moving? Sounds pretty crazy to me," Kaosu muttered incredulously. Perhaps he was a bit biased because he hated remaining in the same place very long, but the idea of one man having so much power over the entire group seemed strange to him. Of course, he had never really understood the workings of making money and hierarchies.

He was grateful she had dropped the topic of Trystan, and annoyed that he had even brought it up. He HAD to learn to control his emotions a little better. It just would not do for him to get all sentimental over something so... distant... just because he was revisiting old places. Getting stuck in the past was one of his biggest problems.

"A big house. I thought you said you were going to show me "cottages"." Vardo was a word beyond his vocabulary, so he had no comparison for the kind of living they had done previously.