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The calendars started with just one. She didn’t remember if she made it herself or if someone helped her. She joined the circus a few days after her birthday. Her then fiance had abruptly decided to break off their engagement, and her mother had supported him instead of her. Ragatha’s last words to her mother were apologies, before she ended the call.
She wasn’t one to drink, but she had gone out, bought some alcohol, and wandered the parts of the city she never usually went to until the rain caught up with her. The abandoned office that had been for sale for well over a year at that point seemed like a good enough solution to the problem.
The rest of the story was quite obvious, and she still beat herself up for being so dumb as to touch that stupid computer, let alone the headset.
That first calendar was both the reason she kept going and the bane of her existence in the circus. She marked off the days like it was her lifeline, at first. Awaiting the moment she would go back to the real world.
When it didn’t happen, she marked other things. Still counted the days, out of habit and just to keep track of it all, but she stopped counting towards the day she’d get to reconcile with her mother and instead started counting towards holidays to spend with the others, towards birthdays and anniversaries.
There were still ups and downs, of course. Just like any group, they argued, had worse days, sometimes were hit with that strange feeling of nostalgia and homesickness, but with each month that passed, she got closer to them, until they became closer to her than she could’ve said her family used to be back in the real world.
When her first years in the circus passed, she didn’t know what to do with the used up calendar, didn’t know how to really continue. The reality that she’d been there for nearly a year hit her, and… yeah, she had a pretty shit week, up until new year’s.
She wanted to stay in her room, but Lady and Queenie forced her out, dressed her into a black dress that even she had to admit she looked good in, did her makeup, made her laugh while trying to tame her yarn hair, before leading her outside towards a dimly lit picnic party that vaguely resembled a typical college New Year’s party.
That night, they watched fireworks that weren’t too loud or overwhelming, with alcohol that didn’t cause them hangovers, dressed in party clothes that didn’t leave them shivering in the December cold, and Ragatha for the first time understood that the circus wasn’t all about survival and coping, that it could be something beautiful if she just let it be.
The next day, as a group, they made their calendars. She wasn’t the only one keeping track, a few others had calendars of their own, so they decided to all contribute. They sat on the ground of one of the rooms, pencils, markers, rulers and paint spread everywhere around them, drawing silly things on the calendar pages. Most of them weren’t very artistically gifted, but the chaotic mess of themes, styles and mediums had so much human soul in it that just looking at it in the morning cheered her up when she really just wanted to stay in her room the whole day.
They did the same next year, and while the painted number 3 in the corner of the front page haunted Ragatha at times, she got used to it. Her third year marked the first funerals, somewhere in April when the flowers should’ve started blooming. Wormy and Queenie didn’t paint them ever again, and other, newer members joined in. It became routine. One of the only traditions that haven’t faded, although it did dwindle.
Kaufmo hadn’t joined ever since the majority of the old group abstracted, but Ragatha still asked Gangle to help her. She never asked Zooble, since they made it pretty clear they didn’t like people (or maybe just her, Ragatha sometimes wondered.), and Jax hadn’t been much of a person you could simply ask to do something like that for most of the time he spent in the circus. Before Gangle, she’d step into Kinger’s pillow fort and scribble her little doodles with him. While she loved Kinger and still reserved a page or two for him to make, she honestly felt like the days spent planning and drawing in Gangle’s room were the only time she really got to spend with Gangle, so she asked the woman instead.
The number in the corner of the front page had never stopped growing, but it did stop worrying her.
It became a comfort. Something that told her she knew how the circus operated. Something that reminded her she knew.
Knew about the nature of the circus. Knew about how Caine and his NPCs behaved.
Knew the people that came both before and after her.
It made her feel… important, in some twisted way. Nobody knew, but she held nearly the entire history of the circus. That was her role. She was the caretaker, sure, but she was also the only person who’s able to fully recall everything that happened in the circus from the beginning of its runtime.
Kinger and Caine technically knew, but Caine wasn’t programmed to really keep memories like that to recall on a whim, and Kinger… had chosen to keep it away years ago.
One day, she would no longer be there to count the days as they passed. She would have said that she hoped someone would pick it up after her, but she had long accepted the fact she could not keep this going forever, and with it, accepted she would simply be forgotten. It was a miracle she made it this long. She didn’t really care how the others chose to remember her when she abstracted.
The one she was writing in had the number 12 on it.
She marked with blue ink a new arrival on the 3rd. She had been about a week off, so she fixed the date. She’d have to ask Pomni for her birthday when she got the chance.
She marked a funeral on the day after. She never wrote down when the abstractions happened, just the funerals. Typically, they were on the same day anyway, but writing down someone’s death felt a bit harsh, so she settled for the funerals only.
Once done with what she had, Ragatha hung the calendar back in its spot by her desk, the page with June open as it hung.
There was a pile in her closet now. Pages of friendships, heartbreaks and memories, safety tucked away from sight to give space for new ones to form.