Evoloutions: Top Hat
Title: Evoloutions- Top Hat
Fandom: The Tribe
Character: Top Hat
Rating: G
Summary: Pre Tribe series. The stories of various Tribe characters and how their pasts shaped their futures.
Top Hat
The Making of a Pyromaniac
"Time for practice, now," said the voice, a shadow looming over him. It was gruff, sinister and unwilling to negotiate. It was the same voice, which had woken him as far back as he, could remember.
It was a fresh early morning, the sun was barely peeking over the horizon and yet the camp was already full of activity. Everyone had a job to do, whether it was caring for the animals, preparing early breakfasts or perfecting techniques. It was the usual routine, one that had gone on for the whole of his life. He knew no different, neither did the others of his age.
As he stood and followed the man into the fields, the others straggling behind, he pondered on the curse of showing talent at an early age. It had brought this whole routine upon him; as soon as he had shown promise, what had been an enjoyable activity in childhood became the bane of his life. Early morning he would wake up, exercise, have breakfast, be back in the field for practice, and eat lunch, more practice. He was being honed to perform, along with the other children he lived with. They were travellers and more importantly, performers, a family, a circus.
As time passed, he perfected a routine, which was added to and life became more monotonous. The routines grew extreme, wild and entertaining. Each time he would have to perfect it all over again with new additions, new moves, and new daring prospects to make the crowd shout in awe. Make mothers cover their eyes in fear, fathers gawp in praise and cause the children to dream that perhaps one day they could twist, turn, somersault and be as daring as the people they saw in front of them.
But routine was halted somewhere along the way. He couldn't pinpoint the time when things started to change. In fact, at first it was so slight he didn't notice, but less people came to the shows. The usual round route they travelled changed and they avoided certain areas, the city became off limits. First one caravan would stop travelling and then another, until the whole group was grounded and a fear hung in the air. The shadow and voice no longer bade him to awake and practice and he watched as his family grew old over few short weeks.
Eventually no one came for the dead and so as weeks passed, they held their own funerals. He watched fascinated as fires burned through the night and days, flames spreading eerie light over fields where he'd once practised with others. Young bodies no longer lithely arched over fields in weird concoctions of twists and turns. Now fire took its place and it danced a merry dance of its own.
He would sit for hours on fences overlooking the funeral pyres as more dead burned, people he'd had to help carry and place on wood he'd had to gather and burn by flames he'd started. It was intoxicating, hypnotising, how something so small, could grow and consume so much and cause so much destruction. Word spread eventually to his small part of the world. The virus as it became known had wiped out the entire world's adult population.
As he placed his father on the funeral pyre and lit a piece of wood to burn the body, he vowed to continue on. A New World was beginning and he was determined to carry on the works and traditions of the people he had come from. He understood the power he now could take control of; his father had been a powerful man in this small society, which they all played a part. And as the son, he would take on the same power.
The others who had practised in the fields with him, had grown up with him, each with their own arts to offer and be adored turned to him for guidance. Who was he to turn away such talent and willing subjects. And so he left the place of childhood memory, he'd leave it all behind, live his own life. He'd been honed and trained with skill and cunning and he would put it to good use. Armed with few keepsakes of his fathers, ringmaster tails, walking stick and top hat he led his tribe forward, to make their identity known in this strange New World.