Your three friends and yourself decide to try on the baby rides. Because it was fun to do something childish but most of all because the lines at the other rides were quite long. And since the night was starting to slowly get late, few small kids were there to go on said rides. Also, some were quite serious-looking for rides destined towards kids. One was called a "Fairy Tale World" and you decide to go on that one. It's empty and it's better than nothing. Each wagon is quite stylishly decorated, with images of various well-known tales. You get into the tiny coach barely holding you displaying an old-fashioned painting of "The Little Red Riding Hood". It's got a wooden carving of a snarling wolf's head at the front. Your pal Matthew jumps into one with a green dragon's head and paintings of a knight brandishing a shield against a giant dragon bellowing bright flames at it. Your friend Tony chooses a wagon with a painting of "The Little Mermaid". Your last friend, Gabriel, jokes that the dolphin in front of the coach is not a bare-chested mermaid instead as he jumps into a coach with a griffin soaring through clouds, appropriately with a carved griffin in front. The ride starts soon after.
The ride surprises you. It is quite better than you thought at first. Among different sceneries, amazingly realistic animatronics move and dart, spraying steam, sprinkles of water and fire above you. Even the human characters look more like actual actors than automatons. You didn't expect such a level of quality! Mermaids in an aquarium wave at you playfully and splash their tails, laughing. A dragon snarls and blows fire, out of reach but still impressive. The Big Bad Wolf's growls and shiny claws were worthy of the best werewolf movies. You and your friend smile and start exclaiming your enthusiasm. The ride had no little kids so screaming was even more fun! So when the coaches entered a long tunnel with swirling fairy tales characters lit against the darkness of the walls, you stared, your eyes still mesmerized by what you had just seen. And mesmerized was the word indeed. For some reason, you couldn't tear your eyes away from the lights. They danced both in your eyes and brains. A sweet smell also came into the tunnel, cloying the vision and the senses. It was like honey and indeed not a reason to cough at all. On the contrary, all four of you inhaled it eagerly. It was a mixture of citrus and honey and fresh green leaves and grass. The smell of childhood, play and of long care-free summer vacations. So when your eyelids drooped and you slowly nodded off to sleep none of you really noticed. Or cared, for that matter.
When the coaches stopped, just a little away from the official exit, a carnie dressed as a wizard stared down at your sleeping form. Or rather, a wizard dressed as a carnie. He asked the creature that had played the smoking caterpillar in the "Alice in Wonderland" display to pick you up, and your three other sleeping friends, and to go find him in his trailer. The creature, now far from acting like an animatronic, nods and obeys. Carrying the four of you is no problem. After all, he's got twelve arms to use and you are now all very different. First of all, you have been regressed to infants of a few months old. Two of you are even into eggs! Since you picked the coach of "The Little Red Riding Hood" you have been changed into a grey werewolf cub. Tony is now a male mermaid, with a beautiful blue fish tail. Matthew and Gabriel are now eggs, destined to hatch a little later, since as respectively a dragon and a griffin, they age slower than humans. The two eggs are large, the dragon egg white and the griffin egg beige. The caterpillar monster goes away from the ride, straight for the trailer, while the coaches reach their final finishing line. Magical temporary clones have now replaced the four of you, mere illusions to leave the carnival and return home, to vanish by the next sunrise. Enough to make people believe that you all returned from the carnival and not to be bothered by the police. As for the very much alive creatures of the ride, they wonder who would become the new lucky parents of the new additions to their preserve of fantastical and mythological beings, their only shelter in a human-dominated world.