it's a dead man's party

[self_composed]

The guest list winds up being pretty huge.

To start with, there are now eight Bells. Pattern isn't bringing anyone besides herself, and Aegis no one besides herself and her Whistle, but everyone else -

Between Alice, the Joker, the rescued Queenie, Kas, Micaiah, and Sue, plus Ghosty who Amariah picked up on her way home, that's seven Whistles. (Stella thinks ahead: there is a soundproofed orgy chamber away from the main party awning. With a few nodes off of it in case more than one orgy forms; she can think of at least two other likely ones.)

There's an equally absurd number of Sherlocks and Tonies if you count them together. They have Juliet's matched set, Shell Bell's matched set, two other matched sets from Bell-less worlds (one with souled vampire, one both human), a stray Tony, and a stray Sherlock from Downside.

Amariah grabbed a random Libby on top of the random extra Whistle, but at least she's not incorporating anyone from home.

Golden's bringing much of her family and many of her friends - although Edward is staying home, that still leaves Elspeth and Jacob, Alice and Jasper with little Brandon, Rosalie and Emmett and little Henry, Nathan accompanying his mate and their child Kerron, Esme and Carlisle and their Lily, Addy, and Elena who'll get to see her brother. Golden claims that this is a conservative list and she could easily have produced another twenty enthusiastic guests. Stella doesn't doubt it. She puts up a few signs reading Please Conduct Adult Conversation Only Via Brainphone. Little Half-Vampires Have Good Ears And Perfect Memories. As a last-minute surprise, Golden has taken Elspeth's suggestion to bring Edward's deceased mother Elizabeth, too.

Juliet has, on top of her boyfriend and his - progenitor? - her tiny Libby, James, a tagalong thereto called Virginia, and a ghost called Minnie, plus Giles.

Angela's list is more modest: her, her husband, and their friends Alleluia and Caleb.

Shell Bell is responsible for half the Sherlocks-and-Tonies all by herself, a tagalong called Pepper, and also someone called Darcy and also Matilda. (Shell Bell is also the reason Angela is not inviting her brother-in-law.)

Stella herself is responsible for inviting Libby, Orfeo, Chris, Mary, Anna, Sandy, Eights, Chainsaw, Lazarus, Kolya (who is informed that it would be awfully inconvenient for a majority of Bells to all have to coordinate on pretending he doesn't exist when only one of them has even met him to be able to identify him in the first place, so he can simply stay home if he's planning to be hidey), and Bridget.

Stella sets up a name tag system. Everyone will have a tag stuck to them. Solo persons - a minority - will just have their names. People with template names and nicknames will have both stamped on automatically. ("Hi! I'm a Bell, and you can call me Stella!"; "Hi! I'm a Whistle, and you can call me Alice!" "Hi! I'm a Sherlock, and I don't have a distinguishing nickname yet but as soon as I pick one it will appear here!")

She conjures up a nice buffet of food and beverages which will stay its correct temperature until consumed, and assorted synthetics for the vampires (labeled not for human consumption), and dishes and flatware (all glass; even some of the food-eating guests might dissolve anything else) and fusses with the awning opacity until it lets in just the right amount of sun, and, what the hell, she throws in a stage in case Angela wants to sing or she decides to play the flute or someone decides to pentagon some other performative skill to entertain the crowd. She makes sure there are enough bathrooms for all the people who still need bathrooms.

She puts out a few tables here and there with little bowls of squares and triangles - a mix of her glowing red and Alice's shifty black - in them for everyone's convenience. She accumulates coins in those sizes faster than she generally uses them and has a great many, so there are plenty for anyone to dip and wish if something comes up. She double-checks to make sure the Martian ground rules prohibit any misuses available for those size coins.

Jane gets one of those high-tech holographic projectors, on wheels, which she promptly manifests in, drives around the floor, and makes faces through.

Comments

[colorshapes]

"Why?"

[truthwright]

"Because I'm a daemon and that's how we work," says Petaal. "Most daemons can't hardly touch anybody who's not their person, but we're special and I can touch a lot of people. But I have to know them first, and even then I usually can't."

[colorshapes]

"Why doesn't everybody else have one?"

[truthwright]

"Because usually it's just people from my and Amariah's world who do," says Kas. "But if you see Sue around here—"

Another Whistle appears, this one a little younger than Alice.

"Somebody say my name?" he inquires.

"Speak of the devil!" laughs Kas. "Is Ivy around?"

Ivy instantiates as a small white fox curled up in Sue's arms.

"Sue came to my world and now he has a daemon too," explains Kas.

[colorshapes]

"Aw, but she doesn't want me to touch her either and she looks soft," complains Kerron.

[temporal_affairs]

"People being soft isn't anything to do with whether you can touch them, only to do with whether you want to take them up on it if they offer," says Nathan.

[pythbox]

Ivy un-instantiates in a brief sparkle of golden light.

Sue looks approvingly at Nathan.

[truthwright]

Kas grins.

Then he turns into a fennec fox and hops into Sue's arms. (Petaal, now a hummingbird, hovers off to the side.)

"You can pet me if you want," he invites.

[colorshapes]

"Ooh," says Kerron, and he pets the fox-Kas, head to tail. He is reasonably good at being gentle about this.

[truthwright]

The fox-Kas is pleased!

[gunpowdergelatine]

"Now that," Queenie says consideringly, "is adorable."

[colorshapes]

"Mummy, how come you're never a fox? You're magic! You could be a fox or a whatever. How come I never get to be a fox?"

[yourheartstrings]

"Never thought of it," she says cheerfully. "You wanna be a fox, munchkin?"

[colorshapes]

"Yeah! I wanna be a fox! I wanna be a blue fox!"

[yourheartstrings]

She taps him on the nose.

He is now a blue fox.

[colorshapes]

"Yay! I love you, mummy!" Kerron the blue fox gambols about. It is perhaps the most ludicrously adorable thing of all time.

[temporal_affairs]

"If I were not multiple kinds of immortal," says Nathan, "that would just about slay me with cuteness."

[yovahs_kisses]

Micaiah drifts into the cluster.

"Hi, guys! Is there a reason we're not—sweet Yovah singing, where did that come from and how is it so cute?"

[yourheartstrings]

"That," the Joker says smugly, "is my kid. I made him." She pokes Nathan in the ribs. "He helped."

[colorshapes]

"I'm Kerron! I'm always cute and right now I'm also a blue fox!" says Kerron, propping himself up by his front paws on Micaiah's knee. "You look like Mummy too, how many Mummy-people are there?"

[yovahs_kisses]

"I think I might be the last," he says, glancing around. "Can I snuggle you a little?"

[colorshapes]

"Yeah!"

[temporal_affairs]

"Wasn't there going to be another one?" asks Nathan, glancing around.

[yovahs_kisses]

Micaiah snuggles Kerron the adorable fox.

[manofmyword]

And a person appears out of thin air, not all at once but in stages, building himself from the inside out. Very quickly, but not too quickly for a vampire's sight to catch the intermediary stages.

He has the Joker's scars.

He is wearing a little black dress not dissimilar to Queenie's, or at least, he is once it assembles itself on top of his skin; last of all, a nametag sticks itself to his chest, declaring him to be a Whistle whom you can call Ghosty.

"Boo," he chirps.