A Convention Fairy Tale

The princess's messenger brings the following message, sent with the fiery public dragons:

So it came to pass that the princess and her son, the young prince, visited the city of Baltimore, meeting there some jugglers. The princess had encountered a few of the species before and they pleased her very much, as they were different, evolved to a higher sphere from the ordinary species inhabiting this particular planet.

In the said city of Baltimore the jugglers did this: Anything that could respond to the law of gravity would be thrown up into the air, not once, but countless times, making beautiful colored paintings in the room. Balls, clubs, rings and other objects would be sent spinning and flying, sometimes from one person to the other. And the jugglers would laugh and smile, sharing tricks with each other, organizing all sorts of kind ways to make everybody feel welcome and loved.

Some of them had a very strange habit, though, called competition. None of them really like it. The young princeling attended one of these peculiar rites because he was excited that the competitors were beings his own age. But he fell asleep and said the whole thing was extremely boring. There was no fun involved. It was not done for the purpose of making others feel cherished and adoring over the way each was able to throw things up into the air. In the aforesaid competition each carried out a ritual of endurance, seeing who could throw things up in the air for the longest span of time -- no beautiful jokes or smiles, just repetition.

Some others, not liking the competition-rite, had evolved another form of game, called Club Renegade. Everybody loved this game. Most jugglers would sit down on chairs and watch one or two others at a time enjoying themselves on the stage. Most of this was really amusing -- except when they did things with their mouths, letting words issue forth. Somehow, not having mastered the art of speaking and juggling with words, they would sound like pigs -- grunting and very indelicate -- especially for tender ears.

Apart from the talking, it seemed that the people watching were carrying the people on stage on a cloud of love. When somebody would be doing something difficult, the breath of the audience would become suspended and let out in long "oohs" and "aahs." When one especially lovable person failed his last tricks, the whole juggling creation shouted his name with so much affection that he carried his performance to a successful completion.

As the days passed the difference between the competition rites and the Renegade rituals seemed to level out. More good fun and beauty would be included in the competition and the Renegades would oftentime resort to mere word juggling, of which, as mentioned earlier, they sadly came up short.

Another peculiar rite this tribe performed was the paper-passing game. Scraps of colored paper printed with strange runes would be exchanged as tokens in order to gain entrance to some of the performance rites or to obtain the tools necessary for the art of juggling.

The young princeling, being of a lovable disposition, encountered a miracle. His heart was set on some of these tools but he did not have the necessary paper tokens. Then he found that a mere stranger already had issued the paper needed for this transaction to take place. He was overjoyed! And sad. He wanted to express his gratitude to the unknown benefactor, who had made the prince's desire come true.

This wonderful incident was just one of many which the travellers encountered. It seemed as if a strange cloud of love had enveloped the spot of gathering. And the princess and the princeling found themselves carried on this cloud to new and glorious events and to lands and people unknown. But in their hearts they always carried the memory of the lovely gathering at Baltimore.

(Rikke Baifod and her son, Daniel, came to the convention from the mystic land of Copenhagen, Denmark, where Daniel performs for Circus Shanghai.)