Hallowe'en

[archiveofarethusa]

Inishmore was as close to home as Cyprian had been in years, and he'd arrived at the worst time. All around were dead and withering things, soft murmurings as loud as any plant dared speak. There were round, deep saucers of milk placed in front of pumpkins on every doorstep, lit from within by candles that lifted the scent of asters in the air. If Cyprian had known he would arrive in his homeland at autumnal equinox, he would have rather braved Soonah in winter.

"What are these things? They offend me. I should kick their grinning dumbass faces in for existing, but I really like these boots and don't want them to subconsciously evoke pumpkin viscera. Why are they on every doorstep? This is your fault somehow, Cyprian, and you will tell me how."

"All right, first off, not every plant that offends you is to do with me. I am not actually their god, as I am neither many-flowered nor flaming. No, it's fine, I realize I walked jauntily into that one, but I guarantee I've heard it before. We carve pumpkins that way in Demonia to supplicate the Laughing Fate," Cyprian said. "And more than a few provinces in Sangre, too. This is the month the Pursuing Fate tires and the month Mirthful Helene takes to indulge her old hobbies. Murder, arson, torture, that sort of thing. You'd have gotten along great. She finds the jagged, laughing maws we carve into the pumpkins amusing somehow and passes over the houses which light them up. It also rather conveniently serves as a ward to the faeries who can't be bribed with fresh milk. Count yourself lucky you can't hear them, though. The ones in pain and distress are actually the least disturbing ones."

The look on Kristen's face had been surprisingly rapt. Jaida's disdainful, impatient moue, on the other hand, had been predictable to the exact degree her red lips had curved downward.

"Pumpkin carvings, really? I guess that's one way to ward against faeries and demi-gods," Jaida said, in a tone which heavily implied she was judging him and his culture. "I guess. I'll stick with wholesale genocide."

"Of course you will," Cyprian said. It was a tremendous effort to not roll his eyes, and one he didn't bother undertaking. "That's your answer to everything."

"Of course! Genocide solves everything," Jaida said, grinning. "I might even feel charitable later this evening, do a bit in that weird forest everyone's so scared of. Maybe I'll wear a crown of the bones of all the things these cowards fear. Think they'll make me their queen?"

"That's not how sovereignty works, Jaida," Cliff said.

"Is that what they teach good little nobles these days?" Jaida said. "It seems to me that crowns only care that blood earns it, one way or another."

"Excuse me," said a voice, and Cyprian jerked his head toward it in hopes it would distract from Jaida's bluster. There was a man, golden in hair and skin, his face fixed in a perfect picture of puzzlement. "Um. There was a man here a few weeks ago - green hair, horn rimmed glasses, million mile stare like he's maybe looking at you from centuries past - who wanted me to give this to you. He said you met while he was cleaning up a beach?"

Cyprian's blood had never frozen solid in his veins, but he now had a good idea of what that might feel like. Unbidden came the images of his friends and allies all scattered on the beach, as numerous as the sands, and the unearthly half-man gathering their souls. He shook off his reverie, and took the small package from the golden man's hands. "Thank you," Cyprian said.

After unwrapping it with some difficulty, Cyprian saw the package contained nothing but strange soil and a host of seeds. He reached out to touch them and felt that they were old and unfamiliar, something that didn't have a name and hadn't for longer than he could guess.

There was a note attached, the words printed crooked but deliberate.

"You exorcised Purance, and saved my father and I," it said. "I give you means to save yourself. Don't fuck it up."