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A new temporary co-op shop called the Boo-tique has opened up for the holiday season. Folks from all around the city are selling neat odds and ends to celebrate the spooktacular parties and events to come at the end of the month. While you’re trying on one of the many costumes for sale, you leave the dressing room and find yourself engulfed in a world associated with whatever costume you put on. You can't go far--only a few feet in any direction, as if you hit an invisible wall. There is no person there, no animals, but a very vivid sight. After a few moments, you blink once and it's all gone--you've returned to the mothball-smelling, dusty dressing room you’d originally entered. The costume you’d put on has no price tag and if you approach a staff member to purchase or question it, they take it away and apologize -- it shouldn’t have been out on the floor to begin with. What… exactly happened?
The store was on the same corner of the street that Austen's tattoo shop ("My shop," Blue had said more than once, a stern expression on his face) stood on. It had arrived unexpectedly and without warning, apparently overnight, which made it all the more exciting. She stood now in front of it, staring up at the brightly colored streamers, the orange and black marquee, the flashing lights, the fake cobweb stretched across the front doors, and thought to herself, This is perfect.
Austen loved Halloween. She loved the chaos, the candy, and the trick or treating. She loved the scary movies and the stupid comedy tropes and the elaborate and sometimes terrifying decorations. But most of all - most of all - she loved the costumes. The wildly creative, hilariously entertaining, ridiculous, amusing, outrageous, and inappropriately sexy costumes (the latter of which she had partaken in mostly as a gag, because there was something hilarious about dressing up as a purposefully sexy shark when such a thing should not have even existed in the world).
There was already a crowd of people milling about the store when she arrived, as buoyantly eager to see everything as ever, her pale hair pulled back into a messy ponytail at the back of her head. Austen gave a fluttering wave to Blue - she could see him skulking around near the front of the tattoo shop - then took a breath and dived into the thronging people, weaving and darting and maneuvering her way in between people with a practiced ease. Austen went to a variety of conventions, most of them comic in nature; being around large and sometimes packed groups of people was nothing she wasn't used to.
Inside, it was just as chaotic. The bright orange hit Austen like a train and kept rolling forward, and she slid beneath the outstretched arm of a jabbering teenager girl in order to make a beeline for the massive wall of varying costumes stretched out across one wall. It was currently occupied by a laughing, screeching group of girls who were all very interested in the inappropriately sexy costumes, but Austen herself had spotted a pair of sparkling fairy wings a short distance up the wall and immediately made a grab for it.
The fairy costume was not, per say, an original one, but it didn't matter. Austen had never cared about being original, she cared about dressing in something she felt good in, felt herself in. She held it up in front of her, gaze flicking across the bejeweled hemline of the short skirt, and then draped it over one of her arms, fighting her way through the crowd of people to find the fitting rooms.
They were a sectioned off area in the back; a line of essentially stalls, with cloth hangings as barriers, rather than full doors - not that Austen was shy at all. She would have stripped down right then and there if there hadn't been an open room, but, well - there were children present, and something told her that the shop owners would frown if she just suddenly got naked in the middle of the floor.
And, fortunately, there was a stall open. Austen skittered towards it before anyone else could, flashing a beaming smile at the irate looking woman who had also been stepping towards it, giving her a fluttering wave of her fingers before she darted inside and yanked the hangings shut once more.
She changed quickly and without shame, pulling off her own shorts and brightly colored sweatshirt to don the sparkling miniskirt, its faux corset top, and of course the wings. Austen stood in front of the mirror and turned sideways, admiring the fit of it, and then bouncing up a little up and down to see the effect of the movement. Glitter fell from her wings, and with a pleased nod, she threw back the curtain of the stall to see if there was a bigger mirror outside that she could see the full effect of the costume.
Except the store wasn't there anymore. Austen's fingers fell away from the cloth.
A sprawling landscape of lush green grass and thick, moss covered trees spread out in front of her. Brightly colored, dew dropped flowers in shades of orange, pink, an impossible purple and an odd looking blue were dotted around the ground, nestled into emerald colored leaves, nested at the base of old, knobbly looking trees. The air itself seemed to shimmer slightly - whether from the dew in the air or something else, she couldn't tell; it smelled fantastically of something sweet. She could taste vanilla on her tongue.
Austen stared.
"What the bloody hell..."
Her thoughts fell away again. Austen took a few haltering steps forward, her eyes wide, and the grass felt springy and light beneath her bare feet, tickling her soles. She could feel a slight dampness; dark lashes flickering upwards as she looked around, her heart pounding more rapidly than she remembered it had been a moment ago.
Austen was not averse to strange happenings, but it so rarely happened to her that she sometimes forgot that magic could exist. And since she had it, as Adelaide, she knew that it did; knew that it could exist. This was a world where anything and everything could happen, after all.
But this - this felt somehow different.
She stretched out a hand, wanting to touch one of the trees, but her fingers hit something - an invisible barrier, some sort of wall, and no matter how hard she tried, or where she pushed, or what she tried to do, she could not push past it. Austen tried again, this time in a different direction, but encountered the same result, the same thing again.
It was a little frustrating. Austen took a breath, willing herself to remain calm, and forged ahead again, only to stumble back as she hit something solid that she could not see. Her feet slid on the dew streaked grass; she blinked -
- and she was standing in a simple, unadorned fitting room, and the loud gaggle of voices and laughter outside was from a crowd of people, not the twittering sweetness of birds. Austen blinked slowly, frowning, and then slowly took off the costume, folding it carefully and neatly as she got back into her normal street clothes. Holding the wings gingerly in her hands, she slid from the room and made her way up to the front counter.
"Oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry - this wasn't meant to be on display," the cashier told her, giving a tinkling laugh. "This was just - well, I do apologize, it's not for sale, I'm so sorry."
"What - " Austen started to say, but the woman had already glided off, costume in hand, leaving Austen standing there, staring after her.
