That trick-or-treat meme!

[magibrain]

You know the drill! Prompt me, and I'll write a snippet of fic for your candy bag. (Y'all should know the fandoms I write in now, and if you want an original snippet, I'll be happy to provide.)

Additionally, as I'm now staying with the former editor of a podcast, I have access to a fancy microphone which is no longer being used in the household. So if you'd like me to read something – say, up to 500 words? Flashfic, snippets of fic, my fic, your fic, poetry from around the web, Shakespearean monologues – you may request those, too!

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[magibrain]

And then I did both! And tied in the Night Vale snippet I wrote last time! Enjoy :).

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Diana has been watching the girl with the fox face and the bouquet of tails the entire time they've been here, and she still can't see how the costume is stitched together.

Across from her, Christie is fiddling with the radio, though mostly what comes out is static. A few times she hits on someone that sounds like a talk-radio host, but smilier and bubblier, and switches away from it even though he and a few dusty strains of country music are the only things they can get out here, and Christie has never been a fan of country. Neither has Diana. But at least Christie seems to be happy out here.

Which, how that came about was one day Christie says "There's this carnival outside of my hometown. It's kind of a Halloween tradition – you know, it comes by, it gets advertised on the radio, but no one ever goes? Well," and she flips her hair back, carefully careless, though Diana's a good enough cold reader to know she's not feeling that way, "I was kinda thinking that, you know, we could, this year."

Carnivals are not Diana's thing. But Christie is, and Christie has followed her up from DC to NYC on a favor, and so Diana takes a week's vacation and drives sixteen-hour days with Christie down long flat interstates. So here they are. Sitting at a picnic table that's been set up with an overhopeful dozen more under a series of shade canopies in a stretch of desert that makes Diana think that Christie's childhood must have been stunningly unlike her own.

"It'll liven up once it gets dark," Christie reassures her. The girl in the fox costume comes by and pours them more to drink – some form of alcohol that tastes almost exactly like roses.

And it does. Liven up. The sun sinks red under the horizon and more people come out, in owl masks and mockingbird masks and Regency dresses and a few who must be on stilts, they're so tall, and they're wearing some kind of lit-up mask or something that makes them hard to look at. She doesn't try to look at them long. But she sees them moving about, fixing the lights, hanging lanterns which spit and spark. Some of the bird-masked people take up instruments and Christie grins, grabs Diana's hand, pulls her up like there's about to be a dance floor.

"We're the only ones who didn't bring costumes," Diana says, and Christie just grins wider.

"Doesn't matter." She pulls Diana out onto the sand, and one of the glowing figures affixes a lantern above them – to what, Diana doesn't see. The sparks shower down around them, fat as fireflies. "Come on, Agent Barrigan. May I have this dance?"

"Well, Doctor–," Diana starts, and it's as far as she gets, because the band kicks up, and her feet are moving without her direction. It's the alcohol, maybe; it's the music, maybe; it's the sheer joy from Christie, a joy that carries its own momentum, spinning her around, and she's laughing. They both are laughing. Christie's never said, really, why she never goes home for holidays, why she never stops back from a visit, but here a stone's throw from the town she's never named (and Diana's never given in to the urge to find through the FBI), it's clear she's happy to be anywhere near there.

They dance and the stars come out, and the desert goes dark in all directions. They dance and the band plays without stopping, and Christie's kisses burn under the shattering sparks. Diana holds on and kisses back, and her lips and her tongue feel molten, sliding along Christie's mouth, her jaw, her neck. She holds on, because she has the sense that if she doesn't hold tight, the whole night will dissolve into lanterns and firelight.

She holds on.

But somewhere in the singing and the smoke that wreathes around them she must get lost, because she can remember the music, later, but none of the words, and not how the night ended. Not how they stumbled back to their hotel or tumbled into bed or found their way to sleep and through sleep and back to the morning. She just wakes up there, with roses still on her tongue and the desert light marching in through the blinds, bright and unapologetic even here in fall.

For a while, nursing something that's less of a hangover and more of a comedown, she doesn't want to turn around. There's a half-harbored superstition that either Christie's not there, or that she's there like Eurydice, and looking back to see her face will make her vanish.

But it's just a vague thought, lurking in the last vestiges of sleep. And when Christie makes a noise behind her and nuzzles into Diana's back it feels good, and right, like she's made a choice – like they've both made a choice – to be here.

[balsamandash]

Ohhhh. <3 This was really amazing, and lovely, and beautiful, and I am SO here for any expansion on the Christie comes from Night Vale story becasue yes, and just... eeee, thank you so much, this is wonderful. <333333