Clifford

Clifford | Nursery's Entertainer

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"Last year I asked Santa for the sexiest person ever for Christmas. The next morning I woke up in a box"




Shocked. That’s what he was.
Fifteen years ago, Shatterskull Circus had been nothing more than eight dragons strong with a main tent that looked more like a portable shed and only a few caravans split between them. It’d been clean, but musty and lonely, surrounded by nothing but woodland on one side and farmers’ fields on the other. Only a dirt track leading to the next lair on either side split the two areas in half.
Now, as a 39-year-old male, Clifford couldn’t believe how much it’d grown.
He stood aimlessly at the edge of the circus, taking in his surroundings. According to Walter, the circus recently burnt down, blazing until next to nothing was salvageable, but he found himself pleasantly surprised by the hard work put into it by residents and audience; already the main tent—spotless and large enough to house a whole lair of 100 dragons—was standing tall and proud, with so many caravans already built or in the process of completion. There was even a showing, for those who were brave enough to perform and attend.
The only thought to cross his mind was; Damn. It looks fit enough for royalty such as myself now!
“Clifford?” a soft, doubtful voice inquired before him.
Shaking himself out of his daze, Clifford noticed that Vladimir “Viper” Azama stood before him. He looked exhausted; he swept his ruby-red mane to one side, his eyes were wide yet held nothing of the usual glint in them. Even his clothes looked tired, stretched thin from being used for other things no doubt.
He smiled at him, hoping to cheer him up. “Who else would I be?”
Vladimir shook his head and hugged him as soon as he got close enough. He never smiled. Not once. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Of course it is,” Clifford told him, returning it. His statement earned him a heavy sigh. What was wrong with him? He couldn’t help but wonder, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
After a second, Vladimir stepped out of it, looking no better, and began to walk away. Clifford followed close behind. “You know Torny’s been anticipating your arrival, right?”
“Of course he would, how can anyone resist my harmonious presence?”
Shatterskull’s mystic gave him a solemn look. “Harmonious, you say?”
“Well, how would you describe it?”
“Slightly annoying but overall an okay presence.”
Clifford scoffed at his friend but said no more.
The pair of them walked through jumbles of dragons. All of them varied in size, talent, colour and gene. Some looked old, the rest young and the odd few looked ageless, like Jack-O-Lantern.
He’d seen the Fae fifteen years ago, practicing stunts that even had a male like himself gape in awe. A fearless female, there was no doubt about it, and it seemed she hadn’t changed at all in those years. No wrinkles lined her features, no fragility or helplessness could be seen in her figure. If anything, she was donned in fresh scars that she proudly showed off to those around her. He waved at her as they went passed. She recognised him too, judging by how her eyes lit up with her wave.
Vladimir stopped suddenly, and Clifford strolled right into him.
“He’s over there, with Honk,” he said simply.
“Honk?” he asked, fixing his waistcoat.
“Our clown, and one of the few lights of the circus.”
He eyed the two males that sat a few feet away from them, keeping quiet for now. Both were young, no older than teenagers. All sorts of assortments draped over their backs, their wings, their faces. One was a multitude of colours, and he was dressed in the same orange and purple that he’d seen on another male no long ago, by the games. His face was as white as a fresh bed sheet and his nose looked as if he’d stabbed a tomato on it at one point and the juice never quite washed free. Clifford supposed he could, if he so wanted. He was a Ridgeback after all.
The other was like an inverted Christmas cane, with blue and green twisting around his body instead of white and red. Coating his belly were numerous shades of glittering green that threw light in all directions. He wore feathers and silks and a similar coat to the friend sat next to him, although it was slightly dirtier, as Clifford would expect. Bamboo pipes hung from his waist, with a very distinct, unusual name carved into them. Torny.
He wondered if Walter told him how his name came to be. He grinned at the thought.
Torny turned his head at Vladimir’s whistle and beamed at his uncle. When did someone not do that when he was around? “Uncle Clifford!”
“Come give your beloved uncle a hug,” he challenged, throwing his arms wide open.
His nephew obeyed, bounding towards him and leaping into his arms. He’d grown since Clifford saw him last, so it was harder to spin him around, but he managed. Both of them went stumbling into Vladimir after a few seconds, who was pretending not to know them. Typical ol’ Vlad.
“How’s my favourite nephew, eh?” he asked as he tried to ignore the world tilting around him. He wouldn’t show weakness, no siree… even if he was slurring slightly from the dizziness.
“I’m your only nephew,” he grumbled with a grin. The poor dear was clutching at his head and swaying on his feet.
“Well, yeah.”
He righted himself with a wince. “So that’s not much of a compliment, is it?”
“If anything,” Clifford told his nephew, sneering, “you should be more grateful about my comments. I don’t give them to just anyone!”
Torny stuck his tongue out at him. “Maybe you should give better ones!”
“Boys,” Vladimir groaned, “please keep it down.”
He made a show of looking offended. “Boys? I’ll have—”
He narrowed his tired eyes at them both. It was his signature glare—The Viper, unironically named after the barely-noticeable slits that replaced his pupils—and it shut the pair of them up with ease. Clifford couldn’t tell what it was that made him cower slightly, despite the evident height and muscle difference; the scar that sliced over one eye, one which shone brighter the more creased his brow got, or the green that settled in his eyes like a deadly mist ready to ensnare him, to torture him. Perhaps it was both, or perhaps it was because Vladimir was acting strange recently and seemed like he was in a mood to kill.
“Sorry Pa,” Torny mumbled, rubbing at the back of his neck. He looked how Clifford felt, which was guilty.
“Why the quiet?” he asked him, curious. He’d only just noticed how everyone was whispering amongst themselves near the largest caravan of them all.
Vladimir merely sighed. “He hasn’t told you, then. I was kinda hoping you’d just forgotten.”
“What do you mean?”
“Walter hasn’t told you what’s wrong in his letter.” A statement, not a question.
“Nope.” A cold fear rushed through his blood. He seemed fine when he sent him the letter. Joyous, even. “Is he okay?”
“No, to put it bluntly.” As Vladimir paused in thought, the cold got worse. He only started speaking again when he began to walk away. “You wait here; I’ll go see if he’s awake.”
Off he went into the only caravan that held Walter’s old family arms; a rose curled around a sword. Anyone else would think that it was merely a pretty pattern he had Torny paint onto the door of the caravan. Some would assume he did it because it was a cool design. Others would think it was to give the caravan—unpainted in the fixing up of the circus—some colour. All of those who thought that weren’t in Walter’s inner circle.
Torny’s pained exhale snagged his attention. “What’s up, small one?”
Clifford half expected him to snarl at him. He knew he hated being called “little”, “small” or anything similar from Walter’s letters. However, he didn’t, and it concerned him greatly.
“Pa’s not been alright since the fire.”
“What happened?”
“You’ll see,” Torny told him as he hugged him normally. “It’s kinda bad.”
As much as he wanted to, he didn’t push further and instead obliged to giving his nephew a proper hug. As you could possibly tell, he didn’t have the time to see his close friend and his family that often, so each minute spent with them was one the male would treasure, even though he’d never tell them as such.
“I’m gonna go back to my friend,” he muttered into his waistcoat. Not a very expensive one, but no one else knew that. “The poor thing’s probably being tortured by his mate.”
Clifford glanced over and nodded. The orange-purple male by the games must’ve sauntered over to him whilst they bickered and the look on the other one’s—Honk’s—face made it seem like he’d just sucked on a lemon. “They look like they hate each other.”
Torny giggled and stepped back, breaking the embrace. He was smiling and a drop of relief ran through him. “They just tease each other constantly, but they confirmed the entire circus’s beliefs just yesterday, so I guess they somewhat love each other.”
He snorted. “Was that their relationship?”
“Yeah. We knew before they did, I think.”
“You’ve all inherited that good sense from me.”
Torny gave him a look like he’d spoken in a foreign language before laughing. Clifford snickered alongside him just as Vladimir came trudging out of his caravan, heels dragging. He didn’t look happy, and their laughter soon ceased.
“I’ll go back to Honk now,” his nephew mumbled before speeding away, shouting taunts at the one called Strom.
“He knows he’s meant to keep quiet,” Torny’s father grumbled as he rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his paws. He looked like he hadn’t slept for the last week. “You both woke him up.”
“Sorry.”
He waved his paw dismissively. “It’s fine. He wants to see you, anyway.”
The pair of them strode towards the caravan. He stopped just before the steps, taking it all in.
It looked bigger when you stood right in front of it, but then again that was to be expected. It had a small terrace, just like the rest of them. It was oiled and stabilized by tiny pillars of wood with a few things—books, blankets, pillows—dumped in the corner.
The door was, somehow, even more gorgeous going up to it, the steps barely squeaking beneath his feet. With the door wide open from Vladimir’s entry, the light caught the blood red and the silver paint used, its green stem coiling gracefully around the steel blade and into golden pommel of the sword – or, more specifically, cutlass. Clifford couldn’t help but wonder if Walter’s parents had once been pirates.
Vladimir motioned for him to follow him inside, and when he did, he paused in the doorway. “Well, I had planned on saying that you look well, but now I’m not so sure.”
Walter snorted. He sat in a bundle of bed sheets, his hat discarded on the bed post that no doubt claimed his side of the bed. His usual pristine white mask laid face down in his paws. The rim was spotted in blood, all of which had come from the burn covering the right side of his face. Skin was dry in the least damaged areas. He didn’t dare look at his cheek.
“I told you not to take it off,” Vladimir groaned at his husband, taking the mask out of his paws and placing it in the empty space beside him.
“Sorry, my love,” Walter cooed. “It started to sting.”
He sighed. He was doing a lot of sighing today. Like, more than usual. “At least it needs cleaning, anyway.”
Clifford started back to life at the mention of cleaning, skin tingling slightly, and gestured towards the burn. “How in the eleven Deities did that happen?”
Walter looked up at him, smiling sadly. He, too, had bags under his eyes. “It happened a month ago, during the fire. A pillar from one of the caravans fell on me when we went round salvaging what we could.”
He didn’t know how to respond, so Walter took it upon himself to continue. “Poor Torny had the exact same reaction as you when he found out, y’know.”
“I don’t bloody blame him!”
Walter snickered as Vladimir slowly made his way towards stacks upon stacks of vials on the shelves. Most of them were your bog standard medicines for scrapes, bruises and small cuts, some even for illness. To the right, tucked away under a cloth of navy blue, was Walter’s medication. The pyramid of vials had grown since the last time he’d been to Shatterskull, all of them no doubt for what he called his “cell deficiency”. He remembered when he first met Walter. He’d only had to take half of one.
“It got worse,” the ringleader told him, noticing his stare and where it landed. “It’s still manageable, but being ill doesn’t exactly help when you’ve got a massive burn on your cheek.”
“Enough talking,” Vladimir grumbled. He’d grabbed the vials and a spare cloth he needed and once again perched next to Walter. He looked so tired. “I need to clean it.”
Guilty, Walter obliged. He turned his face so that his mate had better access to his cheek. It was only then that Clifford let himself stare at it, sitting at the end of the bed.
It ended near his horns. The skin on his brow was slightly blistered and red, but nothing more. Nothing to serious. It began to worsen near his eye, dried blood coating edges, and then again at his jawbone, where the burn had become slightly black with either soot stains or blood. He didn’t want to imagine which one was more likely. It oozed slightly with every brush of the cloth until it was cleaned; covered in three separate healing vials.
By the time it was done, Walter was hissing through clenched teeth and Vladimir looked ready to call it a week—or even a month—and pass out completely.
“You’re exhausted,” Walter said in a soft tone, wrapping his arm around his husband’s shoulders and planting a kiss in his mane. “Get some sleep.”
Vladimir yawned and shook his head. “I’ve got a circus to run in your absence.”
“Just put Aries in charge—”
“I need to make sure everything’s in working order for tonight.”
“I can help,” Clifford piped up, feeling slightly left out, “with my mastery of helpfulness.”
Walter snorted. “You make it sound like a skill you learn.”
“Is it not?”
“Of course not!”
Shaking his head, Vladimir stood up and made his way to the shelves again. He pulled down a small dagger. It was recently polished. Pale with a white handle, the blade acting like a snake as it slithered up into a pointed tip.
Neither of the other two males knew how to respond when he dragged the blade across the middle of his palm and tucked it away again. They still didn’t know how to when he picked the mask up, held it against Walter’s burn and started to draw a symbol... in his own blood.
“What are you—?”
“It’s a necromancy spell,” he told Clifford, focusing on the mask. “It’s used for skin, mostly, which is why it wears off on the mask.”
“I’m surprised you know it. You’re always against such things.”
He shrugged, grabbing the cloth he’d used for the burn and washing away the blood with it. “It’s not my specialty, nor do I agree with it under any circumstances, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t know any.”
Torny called for Vladimir from outside. He sounded excited.
“Well, I’ve got a show to put on,” he said with yet another sigh before leaving the two males alone. He looked on the verge of breaking as he left.
“He doesn’t look well,” Clifford commented. He hoped it didn’t sound like a passing observation.
“He’s depressed,” Walter said flatly, pain shining in his eyes. “The destruction of the circus took a toll on both of us, but him most of all. It was his first home, after all, and he put his heart and soul into it.” He chuckled, though it wasn’t friendly. “It doesn’t help that he thought he was going to lose us.”
“Damn.”
“He’s got medication for it. It’s the vial on the top shelf.”
Clifford raised his eyes to the shelves and there, in the top corner, was a massive vial the size of his wrist to the end of his middle digit filled with deep pink liquid. It looked speckled with a few bits of dust, but he brushed it off as just some kind of glitter.
“He’s gone through one of them already, and they’re the strongest we can buy. That one up there is the second.”
“Holy,” he mumbled, unable to tear his eyes away from the vial. “It must be really bad.”
“It is,” Walter agreed. “I’m hoping that it’ll pass as soon as the circus is up and running again, since then he’ll be distracted.”
Clifford turned to face his friend. For once, he felt genuinely pained for someone other than himself. That was how he proved to others he wasn’t a narcissist. “I’m so sorry, Walter.”
“Don’t you dare.”
The harshness in his tone made him start, and Walter spoke again. “I didn’t invite you here for your pity, Clifford, since you have next to none.” He smiled weakly. “You’re here as a friend who can cheer us up.”
“How can I do that?”
“With your masterful comedic skills.”
His brow furrowed and Walter laughed, as if he’d just proved his point. He thought back to when they first met, how he’d make jokes out of thin air at the expense of Walter’s dignity and when he surprised him for the first time by laughing with him rather than blowing smoke out of his nose like he was a Flamerest Fiendcat.
“I mean, I guess I’ll do that if you repay me for your ignorance,” Clifford tutted.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t know how one can manage more than a few days without even breathing the same air as me—” He watched with a smirk as Walter raised his only visible eyebrow. “—but you didn’t contact me for nearly a decade!”
“In all honesty, I do have a circus to run.”
“And I have a life to live!”
They sniped back and forth for only the Deities know how long, making arguments for and against Clifford’s baseless comments like “You forgot about me!” and “I’m obviously more important than your own son and husband, wouldn’t you agree?” Of course, he knew he was wrong when he spoke them, but he enjoyed having the debate either way, even if he lost each time. They only stopped it when Vladimir came home with Torny, both of them exhausted and only one of them looking like he was about to cry. His nephew’s costume was bedraggled, but at least he was smiling. Walter’s mate, on the other hand…
Torny immediately sat next to Clifford, shuffling his way under his large feathered wings and fiddling with the gold chains hung onto them, where his Pa scrambled into bed next to Walter and refused to talk.
“I only want a cuddle,” he said with a sniff.
His mate obliged, wrapping both arm and wing around him and letting him fall into a deep sleep. “How was the performance, Torny?”
“It was tiring,” Clifford’s nephew mumbled. He curled up against his uncle’s side, using his wing for warmth. “It was fun too, though.”
Walter chuckled softly. “I can only imagine.”
“Is it normally that tiring?”
“You bet your head feathers it is, but you get used to it over time.”
“Is your father finally considering you join the circus?” Clifford inquired, throwing a pointed look at Walter.
“I have my reasons for not letting him,” he sniped, grinning, “but yeah. He really impressed me the other day.”
“Thought he might, he gets it from me.”
“He gets nothing from you.”
“Sure he does!”
“Like what?”
“His name.”
Walter started, flushing slightly, and the two of them laughed at him. Vladimir was the only one to stay quiet, his face buried in the crook of his husband’s neck and accompanied by soft snores.
“Hey, Dad?”
Walter and Clifford both eyed Torny with questioning. “Yeah, hon?”
“Have you noticed that Pa hasn’t had any of the anti-depressant today?”
Shatterskull’s ringleader’s eyes widened in surprise. Then he looked up at the vial of pink, squinting slightly. He didn’t seem confident about his son’s declaration, yet he soon smiled to himself. His face seemed to relax with the realisation. Maybe that glitter had, indeed, been dust. “I hadn’t noticed that, no.”
Torny shuffled closer to Clifford for comfort. “Do you think he’s getting better?”
“I think so, Torny.”
The answer didn’t seem to settle him. Instead, he tugged his uncle’s wing further around himself and fiddled with his feathers. He, just like his fathers, didn’t look exactly perky, though he supposed that the practice session would’ve done him in.
“Hey, I have something that’ll cheer you up,” Clifford announced, grinning mischievously.
Both Walter and Torny raised their eyebrows at him.
Biting his lip, he covered Torny’s ears and, through his nephew trying to shuffle his way free, asked his friend, “Have you told him?”
“Told him what?”
“How you got his name?”
It took a couple of seconds, but Walter eventually shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”
“Can I tell him?”
“Go ahead, he’ll love it.”
“What’s going on?” Torny growled. Of course, he wanted to know.
Clifford uncovered his ears and waited for his attention to be on him. It took a second or two. “Have you ever wondered where your name came from?”
Torny looked unamused. “My dads would be my most likely guess.”
“Well, yeah, but there’s a reason it’s spelt the way it is.”
“Why’s that?”
He nodded towards his friend, who was looking around sheepishly. This obviously wasn’t how he’d expected it to go. “That one got so tired one night that he found a tear in one of my old waistcoats and named you after it.”
Torny just gaped at his father before falling into hysterics. His face lit up with the motion; his eyes went from a dank moss green back to their normal colour, and his nose creased as he fell back onto the bed—Clifford moved his wing out of the way just in time—and laughed so hard that no sound came out, just wheezy breaths.
“I thought it was cute!” Walter remarked, though he looked slightly guilty.
“And I thought it’d be embarrassing,” he cried breathlessly, covering his mouth to quieten himself, “but this is brilliant! I’m named after a tear in my uncle’s waistcoat!”
Walter groaned and rolled his eyes. “No need to bully me about it.”
“What the hell is going on?”
They’d woken Vladimir up, but he didn’t seem upset about it. If anything there was a small smile playing at his lips at the sound of his son’s uncontrollable giggling.
“Are you actually smiling, Vladimir?” Clifford inquired.
The mystic ignored him.
Walter turned his head, looking apologetic as they faced one another. “Our son might’ve just found out why he’s called Torny.”
Vladimir’s small smile turned into a full-force grin. He buried his face in his paws and laughed, Walter’s face and neck drifting into a scarlet colour. Clifford, who was more focused on the fact that Vladimir was laughing for the first time since he got here, couldn’t tell whether or not it was his husband’s laughing that caused it.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” he wheezed, kissing his son on his forehead. “It would’ve cost us at least six-thousand to change your name, and it was money we didn’t have.”
“OKAY!” Walter cried, crossing his arms and drifting into a grump.
Vladimir put a paw on his shoulder and grinned mercilessly. “If we ever get any more children, my love, I am not letting you name them.”
Even Walter chuckled at that, placing his head on Vladimir’s shoulder. Torny was still wheezing his way through a fit, and Clifford had to drag him to the other side of the bed to make sure he didn’t roll off and slam against the floor. Then again, he doubted he would’ve noticed if he had. He regretted it after realising how hilarious it would’ve been.
Clifford noticed something out of the corner of his eye; Walter, as he smothered his love in a shower of kisses that made Vladimir smile, had the slight trace of tears in his eyes. It was hard to tell with a Plague dragon, who always had a glint in their eyes—none of them knew what it meant, for it never went away—but he knew.
“Is something wrong, Walt?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“No,” he said, throwing his arms around Vladimir and grinning at him. “It’s just that this one—” He shook his mate, who shrieked when he fell back against Walter’s chest and looked ready to bite him for scaring him. “—hasn’t laughed in the past month.”
The weight of his words hit him heavily, but not enough to stop him remarking, “Do I get a kiss, now? It’s been fifteen years since you bothered to spend any time with the best person in your life.”
Vladimir quickly grabbed one of the pillows from his end of the bed and chucked it at him. It missed his head narrowly, a corner of it catching his antler and swinging from it. As much as he was tempted to leave it there, he tugged it off.
“Go on, Dad,” Torny taunted. “Give him a kiss!”
“I’ll bloody suffocate you in a minute,” Walter sneered, using Vladimir as a headrest. Torny only laughed when the pillow was thrown back to Walter’s mate and used to quieten their sixteen-year-old down.
“If you want, Clifford,” Vladimir began, Torny’s muffled laughter coming through the pillow, “you can stay for awhile and give us a hand.” His smile hadn’t faded, yet his eyes looked deadpan with exhaustion. A few minutes of a nap was nowhere near enough for him to look relatively okay.
“Of course I will,” he told him, smiling with him. “As long as your beloved mate gives me my much deserved kiss.”
“You’re despicable!” Walter cried. The same pillow hit him square in the face before falling to the floor. It was from Walter this time, and Vladimir’s eyes lit up as a snort escaped him. Although the pillow smacking him blinded him for a few seconds, it was a pleasant sight to see his friend’s mate happy for once.
Walter smiled with him and nuzzled his mane, whilst Clifford randomly started applauding Walter for his aim and Torny threw himself at his Pa, making both of his parents laugh as they fell back against the head of the bed. For a tiny Coatl, he definitely had force behind his movements.
“You just abused the sexiest male alive, just so you know,” Clifford sneered as he applauded them with a hint of sarcasm, poking his nephew with his feet. He kicked him in return.
Walter snorted. “You really think you’re sexy?”
“I must be if you name your son after my torn lapel.”
“OKAY, LISTEN—”
“I’ll be glad to stay and help, though,” he continued with blatant interruption, allowing himself to go serious. Walter pouted at his rudeness. “I’ll be able to stay for a couple of days, but then I’ll have to go back.”
Vladimir raised his eyebrow at him. He looked distrustful, but grateful at the same time. “You’d do that?”
“Of course, I’d love to embarrass your mate further!”
Walter’s mate snorted and earned a playful glare from his husband. Their son, wedged between them, grinned knowingly at his uncle.
They’d have a lot of stories to tell the Circus.


Gene changed from iridescent to alloy