Witchy Inspiration (student lounge -- open)

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Dubhiarr couldn't believe her good luck at finding the student lounge empty in the afternoon. She smiled as she slid Hocus Pocus into the VCR and settled back on the couch with the remote to one side and a small pile of sewing supplies on the other. It was nice to have a visual reference when working on her costume. Stills from the film might be better, but this was far more entertaining. And it was an opportunity for her to practice that one song she fully intended to sing during the Halloween party, too. Bette Midler's "I Put A Spell On You" never got boring.

For now, though, she hummed along with the tune of "Come Little Children" as she added some more embroidery to her dress, and watched young Thackery Binx pursuing his sister to the Sanderson sisters' cottage in the woods.

[Aye Goyan]

Aye heard a familiar tune echoing from the door of the student lounge. She couldn't resist peeking in, and when her suspicions were confirmed she smiled, her piercings tapping quietly against her teeth with the movement.

"Would it be a bother if'n I joined you?" She watched the Sandersons draining the life from little Emily and tipped her head, a dreamy little grin spreading across her features. "I kinda love this movie."

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du looked around as Aye spoke, and grinned as she shook her head. "Feel free. I'll just move my stuff."

She shifted her pile of sewing things onto her lap so Aye could sit, and winced as the Sandersons cornered Thackery. "I always hated this part. Turning into a cat like that looks so painful."

[Aye Goyan]

"I imagine it is." Aye bounded over to the couch and crawled into the vacant space, happily tucking her knees under her massively oversized hoodie and hugging them to her chest, leaving only her tattooed feet visible.

"His entire bone structure is compacting and reshaping itself, not to mention his internal organs shrinking and shifting. He can feel all of that." Aye pursed her lips and looked up at Du with a shrug. "I wonder if some of the shapeshifters here have to go through that? If they can feel everything, or if their own magic makes the change easier."

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du shrugged. "I think it depends on the type of shifter, and possibly the animal involved. My sister says turning into a seal was pretty easy the few times she's done it, but Jason says his wolf changes always hurt."

[Aye Goyan]

Aye nodded.  "Jason was bitten, though, so his body wasn't born into that ability.  It's bound to be excruciating.  Is your sister a born shifter, or was she Chosen?"

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

"Aye, that's true. My sister was Chosen, just this past summer. That was a weird day. We had a bit of a misunderstanding with the local Fae."

[Aye Goyan]

Aye tipped her head in interest as she wrapped her hands in the extra sleeve fabric of her hoodie. "Oh? How'd that happen?"

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du grinned and shifted slightly, holding Aye's gaze as she related the tale.

"My family line, the MacNamaras of Aberdeen, has had a pact with the Merrow just off the east coast of that area for the past several hundred years. We own the land and the waters and keep them well, never overfishing or polluting, and they in turn don't trouble us. But this past summer we all noticed there were less fish than normal, even though we'd been taking less than we usually do. The Merrow weren't pleased, and they took Elspeth hostage one morning, or more likely the night before. Whether they thought we could give back the fish we'd apparently stolen, I have no idea.

"My parents and I contacted the Merrow, and that night we showed them our records of the fish we caught, those we ate and those we threw back, going back for generations. Then they told us Elspeth had vanished from her cell. You can probably imagine how well that went over. The Merrow promised to look for her, and we went home, only to find she'd gotten back before us.

"Turns out while she'd been captive, a seal spirit Chose her and told her to seek out the local Selkies for help. One of them was luckily right close by when Elspeth tried to escape her cell, and he kept her safe from the Merrow all that day until he could return her to shore after sundown. He mistook her for one of his own kind at first, because her eyes look just like a seal's now. That's probably part of why he tried to help.

"I also found out that part of the reason for the pact is because our bloodline is actually descended from one of the Merrow who live near our land, and I was named after her, knowingly or not. Which is seriously making me rethink going by Dubhiarr all the time." She tipped her head to one side. "I always suspected there was Merrow in me, but having it confirmed was awesome."

[Aye Goyan]

Aye listened with a look of awe. At the end, one eyebrow quirked upwards.

"Like, how many generations removed are you from that merrow ancestor?"

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du shrugged. "Enough that iron doesn't hurt me at all, my blood is very red, and I don't get scales on my legs when I swim. I imagine the pact has been around since that inter-marriage. Likely it's a result of it."

[Aye Goyan]

Aye chuckled. "So not enough to have any negative impact, got it." She gave Du a thumbs-up, then laughed.

"I'm jealous, though. I don't have any magic in my genes. I don't even have usable magic from my time in Arcadia. I just... glow. It's pretty useless."

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du tipped her head slightly forward. "I bet it wreaks havoc on your night vision. Do you mind if I ask how that happened?"

[Aye Goyan]

"I have no night vision whatsoever." Aye's eyes squinted in amusement. "Completely blind in the dark-- if something isn't reflecting my glow brightly enough, I can't see it."

She rested her chin on her forearms. "I was just a wee thing when I wandered into Arcadia. I was chasing fireflies and slipped into the Hedge. I guess I was making a lot of noise, because the next thing I know there's this troll chasing me. Only saving grace was my size, because I was able to scramble through brambles and underneath roots to get away from him. But I wasn't watching where I was going, and got swept up in a trap."

She swept her hair out of her eyes, trying to remember. "There were a bunch of imps-- I want to say there were an even dozen, but I can't remember. They chased the troll off, because they didn't want it stealing their catch. Then they realized I wasn't something they could eat, or that I wasn't something they wanted to eat, and started chittering about how they had caught me on the Sculptor's land, and how they should bring me to him, and that they might be rewarded for bringing him a gift, and then they lowered me down and untangled me from the net and pulled me along to this big mansion. It was so big, I thought it was a castle. I remember it was covered in... in these weird vines. Red vines with black leaves. I couldn't even see what color the stones underneath were. But when they brought me to the Sculptor, I was convinced he was a prince. He had crazy long black hair, I think I thought it was a cape at first, because it trailed along the floor behind him. And he was tall; As an eight year old I only came up to his hip. His eyes were red, too, and he was dressed all in silk with those red vines cinching his robe in place. I remember saying that I loved his castle and that it was very pretty, and then he smiled at me and asked if I wanted to play princess for a while." Aye gave a wry smile of her own. "Of course I said yes. So he took my hand and showed me around, and said I could have my own tower. There was this big glowing chandelier made of stalactites, with a room inside. When I got into the room, he locked me in. It was so cold. And he left me there. There were webs of frost lining the ceiling and each of the windows, and there were pi-" she blinked. "--Pixies stuck in the webs. Little wee fairies that glowed in shades of green and blue. Now I at least knew enough to not eat the food in that place, because my vati always told me old fairie tales and they warned about that sort of thing. But it was so, so cold that I couldn't sleep, and I wasn't eating, and I was so tiny that I started fading fast."

Aye rubbed her arms, as if nervous. "The pixies started offering themselves to me. They didn't want to watch a child die, but I couldn't bring myself to kill them. They had become my friends. They had to beg and plead before I finally grew desperate enough to eat. And that's when I started to glow-- over the years, after I ate the last of my pixie friends, I realized that their magic was my own. The passive magic at least." She wiggled her fingers, to demonstrate her glow. "My prison, that magnificent chandelier, was the centerpiece of the Sculptor's ballroom-- and my glow refracted through little windows and created lightshows as I paced the room. I was an attraction. The Sculptor's little glow worm, up in her tower."

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du's mouth dropped open in awe as Aye spoke. "You poor thing. How in the world did you get out?"

[Aye Goyan]

Aye rested her sleeve-covered fists on her knees, and propped her chin atop them. "Well, there was this big party during the summer solstice. It lasted three days. When everything was dying down, and I assume most of the guests had left, I heard a tapping at the walls. Then one of the windows was pulled open, and Neylen was there, grinning at me. I remember him saying that I was certainly not what he expected to find up there, but I stopped listening after that. He was the first source of warmth I had come in contact with in eight years, so I clung to him. He didn't seem to mind, though. He let me curl up with him, and I fell asleep for the first time in eight years. When I woke up, the Sculptor was there, screaming about the lights going out and Neylen breaking into rooms he ought not to, and he was ranting about adding two new sculptures to his collection, and Neylen swept me up and ran. Or flew, rather."

She looked at Du and smiled, a twinkle in her eye. "Been here a couple years, now. Ney's taking care of me."

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du nodded, grinning. "That's adorable. Lucky he found you. I can't imagine what that must have been like." She wasn't particularly sure she wanted to, either. She picked up her sewing again, trying not to prick her fingers on the needle. Bloodstains probably weren't a good addition to her costume.

[Aye Goyan]

Aye shrugged. "I try not to dwell on it too much. I'm just terrified the Sculptor will come looking to take me back."

She watched Du sew for a while. "Which sister are you being?"

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du suppressed a shudder at the thought of Aye's captor coming back, and latched onto the change of subject. "I'm going as Winnie, and Elspeth has more or less agreed to be Sarah. We're trying to convince Kemekin to be a gender-bent Mary. Or Marius, I guess."

[Aye Goyan]

Aye smirked. "I heard Kemekin talking about trying to choose between costumes the other day. Maybe Man-Mary is one of the options he's stuck on."

She ticked her fingers as she listed, "I've heard him mention Watson, and Krampus, and what might have been Grell. My suggestion to him was a gender-bent Sally."

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du grinned. "Wonder who'd be his Sherlock if he goes as Watson. Or the Jack Skellington to his Sally. Though if anyone dresses as Jack I think it should be Rhythan. He's got the height, build and complexion for it."

[Aye Goyan]

Aye giggled. "I know he got Jaebi to agree to Jack Skellington, but I have no idea who Sherlock would be. Though I must say that if Rhythan is Jack, Fable has to be Oogie Boogie."

"Or, a very, very horrifying Sally."

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du burst out laughing and stifled it with the hand not holding a needle and thread. "Oh... oh my. That mental image. He's definitely a better fit for Oogie Boogie. I just hope he doesn't drop bugs everywhere, for Allan's sake."

[Aye Goyan]

Aye beamed and bit her lip. "Maybe he can carry around bags of gummy worms and stuff and hand them out? And chocolate dice."

[Meriel "Du" MacNamara]

Du giggled. "That would work! I have to wonder how Rhythan would rope Fable into that, though. It's strange how much those two are polar opposites." She tilted her head. "I wonder if there's something more to that, honestly. They did sort of arrive here at the same time, didn't they?"

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