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

[bellfounding]

"I was thinking of asking her myself, actually," muses Pattern. "Hmm. Have you asked Golden about this before? Or any of the others? Is there some compelling reason for you not to know?"

[manofmyword]

"...How much do you know about me?"

[bellfounding]

"Snippets that came across when were linked up and I was getting the executive summary. You have a colorful history, you got on Stella's nerves and she stuck you on an asteroid, eventually she remanded you to Golden to be Golden's mint and now you're with that Nathan guy, if I understood what Henry was talking about one of his little friends is yours."

[manofmyword]

"Yep! We made a munchkin," he says cheerfully. "Anyway, I guess they're afraid I'll do something they won't like. Not that I blame 'em, but it's kiiiinda silly, 'cause especially these days, if I wanna wish upon a star all I have to do is hop over to, say, Pluto."

[bellfounding]

"Maybe they're afraid you'll tell someone who will do something they won't like and can't or doesn't have the impulse control to visit Pluto first," suggests Pattern.

[manofmyword]

"Am I always gonna have the impulse control to visit Pluto first, is the question."

[bellfounding]

"Yeah, there's that. Are you likely to send Golden's or somebody's sun supernova casually wishing on an evil?"

[manofmyword]

"Oh, probably not," he says cheerfully. "Unless I forget."

[bellfounding]

Pattern blinks.

"They make boosts for that, yanno," she says, like she's advising him of the availability of a plastic consumer good of some kind. "For not forgetting stuff."

[manofmyword]

"Mm, but too many of those takes all the fun out of life."

[bellfounding]

"I was proposing only one. The kind that makes suns not go supernova."

[manofmyword]

"No thanks."

[bellfounding]

"If you aren't sure you'll remember to ask Golden or whoever for whatever large wishes you might want to whimsically make, what makes you think you'll remember to do spooky secret star safety stuff?"

[manofmyword]

"The spooky secret star safety stuff," says the Joker, "works in advance."

[bellfounding]

"What makes you say that?"

[manofmyword]

[luminous_regnant]

Meanwhile, Golden is looking for Mary.

[bellfounding]

"No, seriously, what makes you say that, I have not been around that long, I don't know what you saw."

[pythbox]

[Yes?] says Mary.

[manofmyword]

"I know how you guys work," says the Joker. "Doesn't make sense any other way, the way you handle 'em."

[bellfounding]

"Maybe you should just have a stash of safe ones, then," Pattern suggests. "That doesn't necessitate telling you how they work."

[luminous_regnant]

[The Joker wants the star secret. How much of a disaster is that, please?]

[pythbox]

[It isn't one,] she says. [At all. If you don't tell him, he mostly seems to find out anyway—I think the chance of that just went up by a lot, for some reason. If he doesn't get it, there's a tiny chance of widespread destruction in some universe or other someday.]

[manofmyword]

...The Joker smiles.

[bellfounding]

"What?"