Dreamworlds and their Denizens (I)
There are several wonderful places, visible within my head.
They are, almost consistently dark--unlit by any manner of sun. Rather, they most often are filled with stage-light, spotlights, or neon luminescence.
One of these places is a Circus. A circus in which, the 'animal act', consists of former humans--transfigured by magic, into furry-like monsters and mythical-beast chimeras.
The catch is that they are all very aware, intelligent creatures, capable of speech. Often nude as babes, and just as tantalizing as prostitutes, they are all very talented beings, who conduct their own performances, without the additional need of a tamer. Their life is lived to eat and excrete, and mate as wild animals do--but moreover, they live for the sheer spectacle of having an audience: A crowd of wondering, wandering, dreaming souls, to admire the bodies, and the many feats and talents these half-animal actors have been gifted to exhibit.
People who are also transforming seals and elephants, tigers, mice, various birds, foxes, and more--this is a world where man and beast most thoroughly intermingle in almost any appealing permutation imaginable. And along with them, a crowd of other peculiar denizens constitute the rest of the acts--various obscuringly-clothed clowns and acrobats, magicians and dancers of varying states of humanity or alieness to it, performing their own tricks, supplementing the dream.
Here, man and beast are all one great act. The circus is love, the circus is life, everyone's mutual passion is the circus. Within the bounds of its spectacles and performances is the magic of exhibition. And after the acts are over, there are few other 'animal acts', that are taboo. Food is plentiful, and the place cleans itself after every wild act of abandon, by its denizens. The only notable stipulation I can think of in this regard, is that beasts must go 'outside' the circus, to satiate any predatory hunting tendencies... which involves leaving to another world altogether.
As a whole, the only other rule within the grounds, is that the show must go on. Actors who choose, may abandon this world to another. And I... both abandon and return alike, quite frequently.
Perhaps some day, I will go to this world, to stay, once and for all, as one of its kind.