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]

Harrow brightens considerably. "Skeletons are a traditional part of these festivities?"

She can get into that.

[herald_ingress]

"Oh, yes, you'd love it! Bones everywhere, hollowed out pumpkins with carved glowing faces, witches, ghosts, monsters. And candy. So much candy."

[we_bring_hell]

"That does sound festive," Harrow says, warming to this holiday even as she still avoids looking squarely at Ingress's acres of bare skin.

She turns on her stool and whispers to the Bar, dropping a handful of knucklebones on the surface like Death rolling dice. The bones vanish, and skeletons--in bow ties--begin marching out of thin air to place more grisly decorations around the room and begin taking orders.

"A night off for the faithful rats," Harrow smirks.

[herald_ingress]

Ingress is oblivious to the avoidance as she examines her costume more closely, checking with a hand to see just how much of her ass is hanging out of this costume.

(Thankfully, the answer is none at all. It's truly a bathing suit level of exposure, and Ingress can handle that. She's been to the beach! Just not... in quite some time.)

Plus, the little skeletons are adorable.

"They are so cute," she says, not quite squealing. "That's really cool how you can do that. I don't think I've seen powers exactly like yours, and I've seen lots of different kinds of magical powers."

[we_bring_hell]

"Most necromancers can handle a construct," she says, with a pretense of humility. "But the Ninth House surpass all competitors when it comes to working with bone and controlling constructs."

"And I have surpassed all my ancestors in the art."

[herald_ingress]

"I believe it!"

A large and heavily muscled person dressed in a caveman costume, complete with stone club, shrieks and jumps onto a chair at the sight of one of the wee skeletons.

Ingress laughs until there are tears in her eyes.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow smirks, which is probably the best you can get from her.

"I don't recognize almost any of these costumes," she says. "I'm afraid my education has been extremely narrow."

[herald_ingress]

"I know some," she says, her eyes sparkling bright as she looks around the crowd. "Others, I have absolutely no clue. It's not that you've had a narrow education, Harrow. It's that you've never been at the restaurant at the end of the universe."

[we_bring_hell]

"What are the qualities of your superhero? And..." She colors. "Do they all dress like that?"

Is Griddle going to get one?

[herald_ingress]

Only if we are all very lucky.

"They seem to. Okay, let me remember. Wonder Woman is super strong - like, indestructible strong, and she's a brilliant warrior. I never had lessons with her here, but in my world, her story is told in comic books, and I saw some. The golden lasso - if you wrap the lasso around someone, they have to tell the truth. They physically cannot lie. Um, she can deflect bullets with her bracelets, leap from high places, I'm not sure if she can fly, but I wouldn't be surprised if she could. And she protects the weak and saves the world a lot. Oh, and she's very, very kind."

[we_bring_hell]

Well, the lasso sounds frankly terrible. But otherwise: "She sounds very admirable."

"See, I thought it looked like a comic book outfit. All of Griddle's comics are about Cohort soldiers, though. Usually all-woman special forces units lost behind enemy lines on planets full of fabric-eating fungus."

[herald_ingress]

"Yes, yes, that sounds like a comic book to me. How things don't change," she laughs.

"A lack of clothing is a part of the Halloween costuming tradition. Sexy nurses, sexy vampires, sexy super heroes - it's a time to dress as what you wish you could be, how you'd like, for one night, to be different from all the others."

[we_bring_hell]

"I am thankful," she says, as much to the Bar as to Ingress, "to be a mere skeleton."

It does not seem to cross her mind for a moment that a well-fitted pinstripe suit might be sexy on the right kind of sharp-edged androgyny.

[herald_ingress]

"It's fitting."

Ingress does not say anything about that look being pretty damn hot in its own way. NOPE!

"I think I was dressed by Bar as a pirate once for Halloween," she says, trying to remember. "I think. But I was often dressed as a pirate, just for the hell of it, so maybe not. But I know Bar made me a princess, a fairy, oh, one year I was a dragon - all appropriate child costumes."

[we_bring_hell]

"What is a dragon?" Harrow asks. "People all seem to have strong feelings about them but I'm not really clear on the basics."

[herald_ingress]

"Bar, do you have a copy of Scamander's Guide to Dragons of the World I could borrow?"

A book appears with a Hungarian Horn Tail snarling and swirling within the confines of the cover. It breathes fire that also stays upon the page.

"They're marvelous creatures. Tom took us to a refuge once and I got to see them up close."

She does not have a wand with a dragon heartstring, so she doesn't know the pain of recent cultural clashes.

[we_bring_hell]

"Oh!" she says, startled. She looks at Ingress. "Magical book?"

She flips through it, comparing the images to what she's heard. It's definitely a better fit for some of the descriptions she's heard than others.

[herald_ingress]

"Mmmhmm," she nods. "From Tom's birth world. We visited often."

She points to one of the flying dragons on the page Harrow's looking at. "My costume didn't give me wings that flew or fiery breath."

MORE'S THE PITY.

"It was just cloth in a dragon shape. It was cute."

[we_bring_hell]

"I am afraid most beasts of Earth are extinct, in my time," she says, looking wonderingly at the great creatures. "God concerned himself with the people, and only a few have been salvaged by our scientists, even in a myriad."

"How marvelous."

[herald_ingress]

"Oh, that's sad," she says, blinking. "I didn't know that. I love animals."

[we_bring_hell]

Yes, you're sworn to a horse, I gathered as much, is not what Harrow says.

"It varies from House to House," she says. "The Third are our wealthiest House--I have heard they have even revived ancient companion animals, as a luxury."

"Most House can afford to sustain crickets and bees, at least."

[herald_ingress]

I loved animals well before the soul bonding, thank you very much is not what Ingress must reply.

She pulls a confused face. "Bees I understand, but why crickets? Do they do any-"

She recalls a certain food stall that's popped up from time to time at Floating Markets.

"Never mind, both would be useful."

[we_bring_hell]

"You can make flour," Harrow says. "And they multiply much more easily than wheat. Only they tend to escape, you know. And then they go feral and chirp all the time, or so I've read."

The Ninth is too poor for bugs.

[herald_ingress]

"I did not know you could make flour out of crickets," she says, impressed.

She has nothing against eating bugs! She'd prefer not to, is all.

[we_bring_hell]

"All we have on the Ninth are snow leeks," she says. "They're leeks that can grow in extreme cold. We use them to help cycle our air and we eat them."

Being a necromancer has a lot of facets and some of them are botany and managing food supply.