"And I got to feel a boob, so I double-won." She laughed. "But yeah, I'll keep an eye on you. I am a responsible DD."
"A DD with DDs," said Lilly with a snicker.
"I haven't fit into DDs since high school. You know this."
"Yeah, but the joke doesn't work if I use your actual bra size."
"You know, my boobs stopped growing when I was eighteen. They stayed the same size for two years, and then when I met you they started growing again." Rose leaned forward. It was a testament to Aura's skill that they didn't fall right out of the corset. "I think they got jealous."
Lilly whistled. "Good lord, sweetie. I mean, god damn."
"Speechless?" Rose grinned. "Good. That's what I'm going for. Where's my phone? Oh, there it is. C'mere, let's get a picture before we go!"
—
"Are we in the right place? This doesn't seem right..."
Rose glanced at her GPS. "It's definitely the address that Mari gave me, anyway."
"Yeah, but..." Lilly looked out the windows of Rose's car. "There's nothing here. This isn't a neighborhood, it's just a side street." Indeed, there was nothing around them but grass, the occasional bush, and, off in the distance, a small forest. There were no houses in sight.
"It's still half a mile away. Maybe it's just up ahead?"
It was hard to see in the dark, but it definitely didn't look like there was anything ahead of them. "Maybe. Mari's already there, right?"
"Yeah, I think so. Call her?"
Lilly did just that. When Mari picked up she could hear laughing voices and Halloween music in the background. "Hey! You two almost here?"
"We're on our way. Is this place actually just in the middle of nowhere, or are we going to the wrong address?"
"Yeah, it's out in the boonies, but there's a ton of people here, and most of 'em seem cool. Doesn't Rose know where it is?"
Lilly looked at Rose, who shrugged. "What? No. Why would she?"
"Oh, I guess she's just never visited her, huh?"
"Um. No?" What a weird thing to ask.
"Right, so it's in this weird neighborhood right at the edge of town. You're on Ridge Road right now?"
"Yeah."
"It ends in this little cluster of houses, you're looking for the two-story one with the lights on. There's pumpkins and stuff in the windows, you can't miss it."
"Oh, hold on. I think I see it." Just as she had said, there was a group of twelve houses off in the distance huddled around the road, which ended in a cul-de-sac. Eleven of them were dark and quiet, with no lights, either inside or out. One of them had boarded up windows.
"There are no cars in the driveways of any of these houses..." said Rose.
"They all have garages though," said Lilly. "Oh, and there it is." Right at the end of the cul-de-sac, just as Mari had said, there was a two-story house with the lights on and pumpkins in the windows. Both the White Moon and the Blue Moon were full tonight, and they seemed to almost flank the place on either side, like a great pair of eyes in the sky. They could clearly see people inside, and there were plenty of cars outside. One of them was Mari's. "Okay," she said to Mari over the phone. "We found it. We'll be in in a second."
"You two are going to flip your shit when you see my costume," she said, and then hung up.
"Right," said Lilly as Rose parked. She took a deep breath. "Okay. This'll be fun. We're gonna go inside and talk to people and drink and it's gonna be great." She didn't sound excited.
"Party anxiety setting in?"
Lilly flipped up the hood of her cow costume and hid her eyes with it. "Mari's the only person in there who we know."
"Aw..." Rose kissed her on the cheek. "Don't worry. I'll stick with you the whole time, and we can leave if you get too uncomfortable, alright?"
"I don't want to make you leave early on my account. No, I'll stick it out. Might have to hide in the bathroom once or twice though." She looked at the house again and her lips grew thin.
"Want to take a second to mentally prepare?"
"If I do I'll just psych myself up about and make it worse." Lilly took another deep breath and opened the car door. "Time to rip this bandaid off! Let's go!"
As they approached the house they could see through the windows that there were at least twenty people in the spacious living room, which was bedecked with cotton cobwebs, plastic bones, and black and orange streamers. The party seemed lively- people were laughing and chatting, drinking and eating snacks. There was a television in the corner, and several people were gathered around it playing a game, though they couldn't see the screen from the front porch. When they rang the doorbell they heard a feminine voice, not Mari's, call out "I'll get it!"
The woman who opened the door was cheerful and smiling, but both Lilly and Rose found themselves a bit taken aback. Their own costumes were fantastic, because Aura was a skilled craftswoman, but whoever did this person's outfit was at least as good.
She was dressed as a vampire. Her skin was pale, almost supernaturally so, moon-white and free of even the smallest blemish. It had to have been makeup. Her hair, too, was vivid white, and her eyes were a pale, icy blue, and slitted, like a cat's, but the contacts that she must have been wearing looked eerily lifelike. The dress that she wore was like something out of a fantasy novel: long and flowing, silken, with lots of lace and ruffles, but the cut and design did not seem to be inspired by any real-world historical dress. It was wholly new and imaginative, fantastical, and like nothing that they had ever seen.
It also showed a lot of cleavage. She was big. Not as big as Lilly (nobody was), or even Rose, but still. Her outfit was clearly meant to draw the eye to them- it projected them upwards and out, just like Rose's did.
"Hello!" she said. "You must be Mari's friends! Oh my gosh, I love your costumes!" She had pointy vampire fangs, and like her eyes, they looked entirely real.
"Thanks!" said Rose. "Yours is really amazing too! That dress is gorgeous!"
She giggled and did a little pirouette. "Thank you! I am very proud of it." Her accent was unplaceable. Some sort of European, perhaps? Mari had a lot of friends from other countries- BPU's linguistics program was a field where the university really excelled, and it attracted lots of exchange students.
"You made it yourself?"
She nodded, and Rose let out a whistle. "Damn, girl, you've got skill! I'm Rose, and this is Lilly."
"Hi," said Lilly nervously.
"The flower couple! Mari has told me many things about you. Come in, come in!" She beckoned them into the foyer. Off to the left was the living room, where a few of the guests were looking curiously at them, or, more particularly, they were looking at Rose. She smiled and waved at them. "The kitchen is back there, past the living room. There are foods and drink there, help yourself to them. Oh, and my name is-" She said something, then, that sounded like hay plague, only with some sounds that Lilly was pretty certain did not exist in English.
Rose, of course, reproduced it perfectly. Or at least, so close that Lilly couldn't tell the difference. Apparently the vampire lady could though, because she laughed and said "Very good! You are close. Xeplegh."
"So where are you from, if you don't mind me asking? Is that a German name? It sounds kinda German," said Rose.
"Oh, I am from, how is it called in English? Ukraniya."
"The Ukraine?" Rose offered.
"Yes, that one! My name means 'water flower', so I am a flower too!"
"Awesome! Flower power!" Rose raised her hand for a high-five.
Hay-plague looked at it, clearly confused for a moment, then she cheered. "Yes! Flower power!" She didn't complete the high-five though, so Rose simply dropped it. "Mari is there in the living room, I think. If you will excuse me, I must go upstairs for a moment. She beckoned towards the living room as she started stepping up a staircase on the other side of the foyer. "Please, enjoy yourselves! I will be back in just a moment."
"Righto! It was good to meet you, Xeplegh!" Once again, Rose pronounced it nearly perfectly.
"Yes, you too! Go have fun!"
Not all eyes were on them as they entered the living room, but most of them were. Lilly had a pretty good idea as to why. "We've got the biggest boobs in the room, as usual," she said quietly to Rose.
"Since Mari's here it's you two who have the biggest boobs," she said cheerfully. "Do you see her anywhere?"
"Nope. How does a person speak English so well without knowing the English word for their own country? Wouldn't that be, like, the first thing that you learn?"
"Dunno. That was kind of weird, I guess. She seemed nice though."
"Yeah. Really pretty, too."
"Her boobs were awesome."
Lilly laughed. "I noticed."
That was about as far as they got before the flirting started. Two guys, one dressed as some sort of medieval peasant and the other as a pumpkin-headed skeleton, approached them almost in lockstep. "Hey," said the peasant with a suave smile that he was just handsome enough to pull off. "I like your costumes."
"Yeah, said the skeleton. "You two look great!"
"Ils aiment tes seins," said Lilly. She didn't speak French very well, since she hadn't actually started learning it until she'd met Rose, and what she did know she learned almost entirely so that she could have sneaky conversations with her in front of strangers.
"J'pense qu'ils aiment aussi les tiens, ma petite adorable vache," Rose quickly whispered back before saying, loudly, "Thanks! A friend of ours made them for us."
"Yours is very cute!" said Pumpkin-head to Lilly. "But why a cow?"
Lilly looked at him, then she looked down at her chest. She put her hands on them. "You do see these, right?"
"Oh. Right. I see." His face was hidden by his pumpkin-mask, so Lilly couldn't see whether he was blushing, but she suspected from the tone of his voice that he was.
"So are you two sisters?" asked the peasant.
This took both of them by surprise. They blinked, looked at each other, then looked at him. "Uh, no?"
"We're dating," said Rose. "What makes you... We look nothing alike."
"Yes."
Rose cocked her head to the side. "You okay, dude? You don't seem drunk, but I think you might be drunk."
"Are you two friends? That's what I meant!"
"Oh. Well, yeah. We're dating. She's my girlfriend."
"Sorry," he said. "I think I am very drunk."
Rose laughed. "You were doing a good job of hiding it for a moment there, but you didn't stick the landing!"
"Can you drive me home, man?" he asked Pumpkin-head.
"Yeah, sure, bro. Come on." The two of them hobbled off, towards the front door.
"That was weird," said Lilly. She looked around. Most of the partygoers were talking and laughing amongst themselves, a few of them were looking at the two of them, smiling, clearly trying to grab the attention of the sexy newcomer and her short, chubby friend. She was fine with being the one who didn't attract any attention- she preferred it, in fact- but the typical self-consciousness that she always felt at parties was starting to set in regardless. "So, uh. What do we do now?"
"It's a party, chérie." Lilly smiled at that. She liked it when Rose called her that, and Rose knew that she liked it, and she knew that she had done it with purpose. "We have fun! Mingle a bit, talk to people. Make some connections. And don't worry, I'll stick with you the whole time."
"Since when is talking to people fun?"
"Lilly, come on." Rose wrapped her arm around her shoulder. "I know that you're not used to doing things like this, but I promise, you'll enjoy it if you give it a shot. Look around, who's catching your eye?"
That ever-present fear that had been with her since childhood was starting to grip her. She felt like running back out the front door and waiting in the car. But she took a deep breath, and she didn't do that. Instead, she grabbed Rose's arm and looked around.
Halloweens were weird ever since the Quake. With all of the weird magical shit that every person had going on with their bodies now, it was hard to tell exactly what was part of a costume and what was just... part of a person. There was guy on the couch who was blue, and that was probably just his magically natural skin, since it didn't actually make sense for his costume, which was a caveman. Over there was a girl with flowers in her hair, but she was dressed as an elf, so those could have been natural or just part of her costume. There was a guy with... Oh, wow. It looked like he had a sausage stuffed in his pants. That was probably natural, considering he wasn't even wearing a costume. Or maybe he was just the type of person who would consider that to be dressing up. There was a girl in the corner, typing something on her phone, whose long, black hair moved in the air as if it was completely unaffected by gravity, like she was underwater. That was clearly magical, but it also fit with her costume. Like their host, she was dressed as a vampire, only she had gone with more of a Dracula sort of look. She had on a black cloak and a finely-tailored suit which was quite regal and unrevealing, yet hugged her slim form.
"She's pretty cute, I guess," said Lilly, pointing her out. "I like the whole dangerous-but-sexy thing she's got going on, and her hair is neat."
