This is Halloween!

[we_bring_hell]

The Bar loves her holidays, but she is also capable of respecting religious strictures. That's why she put a lot of thought into finding a Halloween costume for Harrow that works with her face paint and general insistence on the monochromatic.

Harrow, for her part, is baffled by the white-pinstriped black suit and the oversized bow, but the gloves are very cool, and the buckled shoes suit as well. She has no idea what's going on but she can live with this.

The Bar seems even more unusually populated than usual, and there are a lot of gourds around. Hm.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

A small skeleton in a bowtie scampers up and offers her hard candy from a pumpkin-shaped bucket.

At the Bar sits the Queen of Halloween, in pinstripe suit and boney gloves and a bow-tie with wings that stretch almost to her padded shoulders.

[we_do_bones]

She takes the candy – of course – and makes her way to the Bar, though it takes her longer than usual to shoulder her way through the large and oddly dressed crowd.

"Hey," she says when she gets there. The suit gets an appreciative elevator glance, and then she turns to lean against the Bar and look out over the bustle. "Do you know what's going on?"

[we_bring_hell]

"It is a holiday," Harrow says, more discreetly observing Gideon's patchwork adornment. "Celebrating the dead and all things frightening. A post-harvest festival from ancient history, I believe, as the agricultural year turns into the dead season."

"Costumes, apparently, are required." She seems extremely cheerful about it, for Harrow. Of course, it is on theme.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon is extremely colorful and it feels deeply strange, like maybe it should be illegal to wear this many colors at once.

"Is that why I'm blue?" she wonders, then looks back over at Harrow. "Yours looks good. I like that suit. Very Ninth House-chic."

[we_bring_hell]

"I am a character from a story about the holiday," she says. "Perhaps yours is also a fictional individual."

The Bar helps out by manifesting a DVD cover.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon picks it up and looks it over, then looks down at herself.

"Well, I'm glad it didn't give me the dress," she says, and hands the cover to Harrow.

[we_bring_hell]

"I can't imagine you in a dress," Harrow murmurs; it's apparent from her expression she is, in fact, imagining it.

She reaches out and takes Gideon's hand, in conscious or unconscious imitation of the cover.

[we_do_bones]

There isn't a full harvest moon rising behind them, and they're at the crowded Bar instead of standing in a gloomy pumpkin patch, but Gideon leans to kiss her anyway.

[we_bring_hell]

"Griddle," she murmurs in protest; she doesn't stop her, though.

"We are in public."

[we_do_bones]

"Nobody cares," says Gideon, indicating the Bar. Indeed, in the crush of costumes, she sees more than one couple taking advantage of the high spirits and occasional lack of clothes.

Still, she straightens and leans back in her previous position. "Some of these costumes are wild," she muses. "I wonder where they're all from?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Lady Ingress is wearing something from a comic book," she says, with studied nonchalance.

[we_do_bones]

"Yeah?"

Now she's definitely interested. "I'd like to see that, I bet she looks great."

She might not be looking for herself, but...well, Ingress is a strapping young woman.

[we_bring_hell]

She squints at Gideon, but she has no moral high ground, so she just says, "Hmph."

"She looks... cold."

[we_do_bones]

That makes Gideon laugh: Harrow being slightly jealous over Ingress is miles better than Harrow being actually jealous over Dulcinea but not parsing it correctly.

"That sounds like a great costume."

[we_bring_hell]

"Do you recall that brief window when I was able to use Lady Ingress to make you jealous? I miss those days," Harrow says.

She reaches up to touch the stitches on Gideon's face delicately.

[we_do_bones]

"I'm sure she's around," Gideon says, grinning. "You could go ogle her or head off on an adventure in another world, and I'd sit here being all Ninth and melancholy and drowning in envy."

[we_bring_hell]

"Ah, but I promised you not to wander off," she says. "And I fear you would just ogle alongside me."

"What a vexation you are, Nav." Her voice is absent and fond.

[we_do_bones]

"That's true," Gideon admits. She has many fond memories of ogling Coronabeth Tridentarius, for instance.

"Come on, Reverend Daughter. You need a little vexation in your life. How else would you do anything but study all the time? I am happy to provide you that challenge, out of the goodness of my heart."

[we_bring_hell]

"Hmph." She straightens Gideon's tie and fidgets with the buttons of the jackets. "Dearest vexation that you are. Sweetest distraction."

"I would rather study your mysteries than the dustiest grimoire of Canaan House."

[we_do_bones]

Gideon leans almost close enough to nudge Harrow's forehead with her own, and waggles her eyebrows lasciviously.

"You haven't gotten tired of...studying my mysteries yet, Reverend Daughter?"

[we_bring_hell]

Gideon will always, always win at intimacy chicken. Harrow looks away and colors vividly, even under the paint, and pushes against Gideon's shoulder. Not very effectively, it must be said.

"You know I have not." She clears her throat. "If I find a subject worth studying, you know I will persist until I attain mastery."

[we_do_bones]

"You're definitely getting there," says Gideon, smirking in a way that probably means she deserves to get punted back into the lake again.

But oh noooooooo, she's not anywhere near it!

She does at least offer Harrow a reprieve by straightening and relaxing with her elbows back on the Bar. "I was talking with Ingress about how she grew up here the other day," she says, manfully refraining from mentioning that the conversation had grown out of Gideon being dramatically sad because she'd upset Harrow. "I can't even imagine. Look at this! I bet the Fifth is into this kind of stuff. I feel like Magnus would have loved this party."

[we_bring_hell]

She just colors further; Harrow is a teacher's pet at heart, and lives for good grades.

"You are not wrong. The Fifth and Third. Tradition and hospitality; decadence and social maneuvering." She waits a beat, and then says: "You might have had the chance, if I had been less bloody-minded seven years ago. But I might have had to marry Ianthe Tridentarius."

[we_do_bones]

"Ugh!" says Gideon, disgusted beyond restraint. "That tall glass of crazy? Harrow, no. Go for Corona, she is way hotter."

She doe not say that seven years ago Harrow would have delighted in keeping Gideon locked away on the Ninth, no matter what new people or riches might have arrived or new opportunities been offered by the Third or Fifth.

[we_bring_hell]

"I don't think you're given freedom of choice in such political marriages, Griddle," she says with a grim smile. "Indeed, one of the Tridentarii might be aiming high for the birthright of Drearburh, given the conceit that they are co-heirs; it would probably be some cousin or other."