Transition's our profession and we don't work nine to five...

[asliceofchaos]

The night of the full moon is unusually warm after the recent winter weather, and those who follow the sound of music floating through the woods, the path lined by fairy lights, will find that it only grows warmer the further they go. By the time they reach the Carnival, there's no snow on the ground at all - only lush, newly-grown grass and

Comments

[The Midway]

[asliceofchaos]

There is absolutely nothing cryptic or horrible about free midway games. Really. Play your heart out.

....That's not sarcasm. They really are pretty harmless.

...This time.

[bestwillgowrong]

There's really not a chance in hell Nate can be convinced to play any of these games... or go on any of the rides, and she'd need a very compelling reason to even go near the bar or the gambling tent... but she's hoping that with this many fae in one place, there'll be at least one she can convince to point her toward a door home. Hopefully without asking for anything she's not willing to give in return...

She paces down the midway slowly, wings out and tense against her back, one hand in her jacket pocket where she can keep a grip on her knife. Like that's going to help much if she runs into hostile fae, but there's really no such thing as being safe in the shadow world anyway, only degrees of imaginary security. The knife is vaguely reassuring, and that's the best she's going to get now.

[invisibill]

After spending a while suspiciously exploring the carnival as a human, Danny had pulled a quick change and taken to the skies. And by skies, he meant he'd been hovering around the tops of different tents and structures, trying to figure out what was going on. Which would be why he was hovering close enough to the midway to spot the vaguely familiar girl. Hadn't she arrived at the same time?

Though the wings were new.

Now, Danny had never been the most observant kid out there, but he was fairly certain that he would have remembered if that girl had had wings when they'd first arrived.

"Nice accessories. Lose a fight with a feather bed?"

[bestwillgowrong]

Nate's wingtips twitch at the question, and she glances up with a faint frown that quickly shifts to quiet exasperation. Whatever this kid is, he's not a fairy as far as she can tell. He's also not anything she recognizes, but that seems to be a running theme here.

"I'd be careful who you say that sort of thing to around here. Keep it up and you're going to insult a fairy - the worst I'll do is punch you, but they've got a lot less restraint and a lot more creativity than me."

[invisibill]

Danny rolls his eyes. Like that had ever stopped him before.

"They're welcome to try."

[bestwillgowrong]

Nate stares at the boy for a second, and then shakes her head, muttering under her breath, "Why do kids always have to be so dumb?" The fact that she was just as cocky at his age - not that long ago, to be perfectly honest - reassures her not at all.

She makes some small attempt to at least shove her annoyance back as she studies him critically, and then asks, "What are you, anyway? You obviously don't belong here any more than I do..."

[invisibill]

Danny shoots the older girl an unimpressed look. Wasn't it obvious?

"I'm a ghost."

[bestwillgowrong]

Nate stares back at him incredulously, and then answers with a simple, flat, "No, you're not."

Because arguing with a kid about what kind of supernatural creature he is... is obviously the most productive thing to be doing right now.

[invisibill]

Danny stares back at her in disbelief. Seriously? Seriously? They were trapped in an alternate dimension in the middle of this creepy carnival and she decides to argue about his species?

"The thousands of people who've run away from me screaming 'ghost!' disagree."

[bestwillgowrong]

"'People say so' isn't really the best argument, you know." It's partially condescending, but... gently so, and more amused than anything. If that helps at all, which it probably doesn't. "You're awfully... I don't know, coherent for a ghost."

She contemplates throwing something at him to see if it'll go through him, but that just seems mean.

[invisibill]

"Its tended to carry the argument so far. Not that anyone has ever accused me of not being a ghost before. The glowing? The floating? Its kind of obvious."

Danny rolls his eyes. "Oh, so I can't be a ghost because I'm weirdly sane? I can totally do the whole beware speech. But I'm warning you, I suck at it."

[bestwillgowrong]

"Nnno, it's more like you can't be a ghost because you're... I don't know, aware of what you are?"

Nate pauses, frowning to herself, and then snorts in vague amusement. "That's actually a huge contradiction now that I think about it, but... I don't know, maybe it's just because I don't socialize with lots of dead people, unless you count the ones who're only half-dead, but I've never run into any ghost that was much more than an echo. But okay, fine. Just go with ghost if it makes you happy."

[invisibill]

Danny frowns thoughtfully as he processes that. "Sounds like you've been running into the blobs. Weird. Most of them never leave the Ghost Zone. And its a lot more common for people to have run-ins with the more powerful ghosts."

And he freezes as he belatedly catches a very important phrase from that. "Wait, half-dead? What do you mean by that?"

[bestwillgowrong]

"Well, I've never been to any... Ghost Zone, but I'll take your word for it." She spends more time dealing with demons, fairies and monsters than she's ever had to worry about ghosts, so between the two of them... Nate's willing to admit this kid just might be the ghost expert around here.

She grins a little at his question. "A... friend of mine. And her crazy brother. She died some time in the eighteenth century, he brought her back with magic, and now they're both... half-dead. Half-alive, too, but no one ever calls them that, for some reason..."

And she really wishes the aforementioned friend would show up already. Kara would know what the hell's going on here. And how to get them both home.

[invisibill]

"Um, that's interesting? And a little weird?" Danny grins nervously at her. Oh, this was so not good. He knew for a fact that one of the reasons no one had ever figured out his secret without actually seeing him change was that no one believed half-ghosts were even possible.

[bestwillgowrong]

She gives him a close-lipped smile, eyebrows arching a little in bemusement. "You're one to talk, Mr. Very Lucid Ghost. I've got wings, and we're surrounded by fairies - I think we can all take more than a little weird as a given at this point."