There was, Sarah mused, a certain sameness about all carnivals.  The same rides, many of them looking too old to be trusted to hold together; the same smell of greasy food and sugar; the same almost desperate desire for fun filling the air.  And whether they spoke Norwegian or English or Swahili, all children must squeal the same way when they got overexcited.<br/><br/>She dodged a couple of shrieking preteen girls, who were apparently there on their own and in desperate need of some parental guidance, and kept walking at her steady pace.  Though she seemed purposeful, her steps were aimless.  She had, almost literally, nowhere to go.<br/><br/>She knew not to expect anything like overnight success.  But when the last three months of intense effort had produced nothing but a few jobs as an extra, two offers of employment as a cocktail waitress in bars of dubious repute, and countless offers of horizontal tryouts, she knew something had to change.  The trouble, of course, was knowing exactly what needed to change.<br/><br/>Without realizing it, she'd wandered closer to a female voice, speaking quietly but steadily, almost hypnotically.  Now she was close enough to the voice's source -- somewhere in a large, gaudy purple tent -- to make out a few words, and she realized, suddenly smiling to herself, that she was listening to a fortune teller at work.  It was not unlike giving a monologue, apparently, or doing improv theatre, more accurately.  She could do that, she thought, without even straining her acting muscles.<br/><br/>She lingered there for a while, listening appreciatively.  Whoever was inside was certainly putting on a good show, she had to give her that...