A More Peaceful Endeavor

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Icon	Xanadu story universe

{{#ifeq: |User| (aka Milk and Chocolate) | (aka Milk and Chocolate)}}[[Title::{{#ifeq: |User| (aka Milk and Chocolate) | (aka Milk and Chocolate)}}| ]]
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 {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}} | | 
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     Author: [[User:{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}|{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}]] [[Author::{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}| ]]
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     Author: {{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}} |
     Author: [[User:{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}|{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}]] [[Author::{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}| ]]
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   {{#ifeq: {{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}} | | Authors: ' | 
     Authors: [[User:{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}|{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}]] 
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     Authors: {{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}} |
     Author: [[User:{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}|{{#ifeq:  |User| Joysweeper | Joysweeper}}]] 
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I resettled my hooded cloak - a bargain at eight dollars the day after Halloween - across my shoulders. It kept slipping back and pulling at my throat. Not very vampiric - not that I was trying to be, but even a vegetarian vampire doesn't want to stop and adjust his cape-clasp in mid-feed, does he?

"Co-dy," Dove half-sang. "Put your teeth back in. You look silly."

I did so, popping the hinged glow-in-the-dark fangs in over my braces and biting down as best I could. I bared them at her and summoned up my cheesiest Transylvanian accent. "Don't call me Cody. I'm Durinnial, the vampire."

In response Dove smirked, whitened cheeks pulling up. Her true skin color was barely visible beneath the makeup, I remember. "All right, 'Durinnial'. Aren't you a little rosy for a vampire?"

"It's this new milk-and-supplements diet," I told her around the fangs, deadpan. "Does wonders for the complexion, and doesn't shoot up the cholesterol levels the way blood does." She smirked again and I continued more earnestly. "Besides, I'm allergic to the cheap white makeup, like what you've got. Amazing how hard the expensive stuff to find at this time of year. You're a bit articulate for a zombie."

Following my lead, she smoothed her face into seriousness. "I'm not just a zombie. I'm an Undead Gothic Lolita. I've only been telling everyone since Devil's Night." She hadn't been wild, the night before Halloween. Dove used to act crazy now and again, but she's never been stupid.

"What's the difference?"

"It must be the diet," she said, making a show of examining her black-painted fingernails. "Chocolate has phenethylamine, just like brains, and without all that work to open up a skull. Plus, I don't have to rot. Ew. Big mess."

A hairless hunched-over man with enough white makeup pancaked over the latex mask on his face to satisfy two Doves, and with enough darker makeup to turn the spaces under his eyes into black silk purses, apparently heard us and scowled, baring yellowed crooked false teeth that probably had a price somewhere in the triple-digit range. He turned away, muttering something to himself. It sounded like "Damn kids never taking these things seriously..." but we could have misheard. Yeah, he was probably mugging for attention just as hard as we were.

Dove, taking her improv classes to heart, cupped her hands around her mouth and called out mockingly, loud enough that people turned to stare. "But we are serious! You don't have to kill people to be happy!" Someone in the crowd around us cried a return sally of "But it's fun!" and the crowd chuckled, then turned back to its own, individual business.

I may have a memory for dialog, but I've never been the most observant member of our group. When we'd first walked into the convention center, I'd gaped and gawked at all the pretty costumes, trying to pick out who'd come from Midtral, trying to fix things in my memory. After a half hour or so, though, they started blending together. It was easier to snark around with Dove than to play tourist.

"So where's your sister, anyway?" I asked my friend. The glow-in-the-dark fangs almost slipped out of my mouth. I shoved them back in, firmly. "She said she'd meet us here, next to the Ipod vending machine. Was it eleven forty she wanted, or sometime in the afternoon?"

"I don't really know. She's entering her costume into one of the contests, I don't remember which one. Wants to get the cash prize." Dove sighed. "Art students, always starved for money... or pretending to be."

I raised my eyebrows. "She is? But at the big party on campus she was just a witch. Didn't look like anything special, not like that guy in the Star Wars robot tank thing."

My friend shrugged, rustling her uber-Gothic dress. "Isabelle told me that she wore that because she didn't want 'it' to break or get spilled on. Which makes sense, considering Midtral, but we're in the same apartment and I haven't seen it. She told me that her face is in the open, so we'll know her, but she wants the costume to be a surprise."

In response, I winced. "Dove, you know I like your sister. You're a pair. But she's too reserved. I don't have the faintest idea what her notion of a 'surprise' is. Unlike your notion, which is leaping out from behind curtains, screaming."

Dove chuckled evilly, as well she should have. "Still haven't forgiven me for the Great Flan Incident?"

"How could I?" I asked, remembering the Transylvanian accent. "I vhas vheeks kleaning hthat up." The fangs, nudged by my tongue, tried to pop out again, and I clamped down.

Right on cue, Isabelle appeared in a doorway, head to toe in pale green. My eyebrows raised again as we came towards her, maneuvering around the various conventioneers. I recognized a few casual friends from the Art Department. Not much of a surprise, really - Midtral had let out for the week so to let everyone get to the various events scheduled around now. Xanadu was a bigger draw than that ceramics thing closer to campus.

Isabelle was the first to get a word in, immediately taking charge despite having a voice quiet enough that I had to focus to hear every word. "Hello, Cody. Are you wearing my black slacks? If you wanted to crossdress, I would have just given them to you." Her sister, driven by that urge to be as contrary as possible, immediately started arguing, telling her that they weren't Isabelle's, they were Dove's, and I wasn't crossdressing. Sometimes I thought that if Isa stated that the sun rose in the east, her sister would immediately claim that it came from the north. Dove loved making a scene, Isa not so much.

This gave me a chance to figure out what Isa was wearing. Recognition came quickly. I didn't bother to hide my skepticism; did Isabelle really think that she'd win a prize as the Statue of Liberty?

But as the argument wore onwards, Isa displaying exaggerated patience in the face of Dove's near-histrionics, I changed my mind. The layered green toga-looking thing that she wore had obviously taken a long time to make, and it had been carefully textured. The spiked diadem fixed to her dyed, pinned hair didn't so much as quiver when she moved her head. Both the torch and the tablet had been transferred to the crook of her right elbow, and they too had the same texture. At some point she'd also subtly changed the shape of her face, with cheek-pads or something, so it looked surprisingly Roman.

The makeup on her skin covered everything. Lips, eyelids, eyebrows, fingernails - everything. Somehow it looked textured rather than caked. Also, as I saw when she gestured, she'd somehow gotten tiny seams and rivet-imprints in all the right places. It was a surprisingly subtle effect. I still don't know what she used or who helped her, but then, I haven't asked.

A furry pantomiming wild laughter backed into Dove, almost knocking her over. I sighed and spoke up, getting the attention of both sisters. "Maybe we should move this to someplace a little quieter?" They quit heckling long enough to follow me out into a hallway. "Sisters," I muttered to myself, flamboyantly folding the edges of my cloak around myself so that it didn't billow too much. It never hurt to play to a crowd. "Making me glad that I'm an only child."

"Wait up, 'Durinnial'," Dove announced a few minutes later, tugging at my cloak. I turned to regard Isabelle, who was walking in a slow and stately manner. "Isa, can't you go any faster?!"

"I'm 'Liberty Enlightening The World'," she informed us with great dignity. "Of course I can't. It isn't seemly. I am not an undead Gothic punk." She was wearing her poker face, but I knew Dove's quiet, composed sister better than that. Hadn't we grown up in the same neighborhood?

While Dove sighed in vexed frustration and struck up a debate with a random stranger, I hung back to talk to Isabelle. "So, how'd the judging go?"

She smiled thinly, the skin around her eyes remaining uncrinkled. "As well as can be expected, I suppose. I don't think I'll be awarded any prizes - you should have seen the other contestants. One did complement me on my attention to detail, but I'd just as rather stay away from the awards ceremony altogether. I left before it could start. The other contestants just make me feel so... inadequate."

"Then we will avoid the awards ceremony, my dear," I told her, smoothly, looking the short distance down into her eyes. "I'm sure someone's taping it and will make a montage. You do look good. How long did it take to set that costume up?" For once, my glow-in-the-dark fangs didn't try to pop out.

"Oh... I've been planning it for more than a year," she said, voice faint enough that I had to lean towards her. It sounded vaguely... hollow. I frowned, uncomfortable. My stomach felt vaguely unsettled. "Isa, is something wrong?"

Her pale green eyebrows had just drawn together in a frown when the world seemed to lurch; a migraine built and faded between my ears. My vision grayed out and returned in a split second as a woman that I didn't know shrieked.

The woman shrieked again, a high-pitched horror-movie type scream. I turned and stared at her. My eyes went, first, to her throat. She had a healthy neck, with good color. I admired it briefly, noticing that she smelled - she smelled nice. Warmed peanut butter was my first impression.

Her white hands clutched at the red velvet of her round, plunging neckline. My gaze followed the movement, and I found myself staring at the exposed cleavage. Warm peanut butter, bananas sliced into it, over fresh bread. I turned my head and looked away as soon as I realized what I was doing, but the damage was done; I was suddenly hungry, so hungry, and my teeth ached. I ran my tongue over them and winced, surprised to encounter sharp points.

From the sound of things, the shrieking woman ran off then, staggering on stiletto heels. The overall noise level had kicked up a notch or three, and I heard a note of panic that hadn't been there before. I inhaled and tasted a banquet of mixed smells, many of them deliriously appetizing. Beef jerky, tough and stringy, teriyaki style... Peeps, just slightly crushed, left out to get stale... authentic root beer made with sarsaparilla, poured onto a great soft scoop of double-churned hand-dipped vanilla ice cream... Tomato soup with cut-up onions and some parsley... Sweet-and-sour chicken on fried rice, extra egg... No, I reminded myself forcefully, swallowing hard. Not for you. The diet, remember?

The scent I identified as Dove's, while not unpleasant, was bracing enough to distract me from the other smells. Chill and earthy, hint of earthworm, smallest trace of hot cocoa. Her voice was oddly raspy, and her face was, if anything, paler than before, eyes both larger and slightly redder than they should have been. She was hugging herself as if cold. "What on earth? I know I didn't drink the punch..."

"Neither did I," a soft hollow, brassy voice murmured. Instinctively tasting for scent - cold, cold like nothing living, like nothing that had ever been alive, copper and metals and oils - I glanced at Isabelle. She didn't look all that different, even maintaining the same serene expression. It was something subtle. It was-

I blinked. "Are you wearing sandals?" My voice, too, had changed, smoothing out with a touch of accent that hadn't been there before. It was neither as exaggerated as my Transylvanian attempt, nor as free as my normal speech. Or so I decided later, anyway. At the time I just thought there was something wrong with my ears.

In response Isabelle raised her bare foot in a stately manner, the folds of her outfit rippling slowly. It was green. Hesitantly, I reached over and touched her shoulder briefly. It was cold, and although the cloth gave and rippled under my fingers, it felt like metal. I looked into her serene pupil-less eyes, both the white and the iris the same textured green as her skin. They were level with mine. And then, somehow, they became just a little bit higher.

Thoroughly unsettled, I withdrew. "Let's... let's get out of here."

"Agreed," Isabelle murmured. "No argument here!" Dove added hastily.

We fled the scene. Luckily for me, we took an exit that wasn't completely packed. As it was, I was once almost overwhelmed when we got swept up in a crowd. There is nothing quite so cruel as staying on a diet when there are such mouthwatering people around! Baked wild salmon, grilled in butter and its own soft white fat, still hot enough that the juices, spilling out around it, bubble and crackle. That one was the worst. I was hungry, and they were so close. I'm just glad Dove was there. We distracted each other by breaking into furious arguments about the stupidest things, I don't even remember what. Isabelle stayed mostly silent.

There was a bigger problem when we got out.

From that point on, nothing particularly unusual happened. We fled the scene, just like lot of others, and managed not to get attacked or arrested or anything. Everyone already knows how insane Xanadu was right about then - to tell the truth, at the time I barely noticed. I'm not really that observant.

Isabelle's keys had vanished, but Dove's hadn't, so we loaded into her minivan and drove until Isabelle became too heavy and she had to walk. The campus, we knew, wouldn't be happy to see us, so we kind of hid in the woods. We really didn't know what else to do. Nobody was thinking straight.

The next day the police found us. I think they were attracted by the torch. I also think they expected us to get violent, but we went with them.

I requested and then gulped about a gallon of milk without trouble - it was disgustingly cold - , and they gave Dove some Hershey's bars, but they kind of locked us up. We made them nervous. I didn't really understand why. Yeah, Dove didn't have a pulse and was cold to the touch, but she talked in full sentences and moaned only occasionally. I didn't know why they were afraid of me at all. I can do cool things with my cloak, but I can't even turn into a bat unless it's midnight. And then I'm a bat until next midnight. Not that useful.

Of course, logically I do know why they didn't like us. We identify ourselves as what we are. And what we are scares people. I know I should be worried too, but I'm not. She's a zombie. I'm a vampire. So what?

By the time the police locked us up Isabelle had grown to the point that she could only fit through the door by crawling... that made them really nervy. I can't blame them; Isa makes me nervous, and I know her. She doesn't eat or drink, you know, and I'm not sure if she sleeps. Nobody knows when she's going to stop growing. They put her outside and pretty much held us as hostages. She behaved. There wasn't much trouble from the inmates.

Few days later, some people in suits came by and we were released after swearing to a girl who was holding griffin feathers that we had no intentions of causing trouble/taking lives/taking over the world, that kind of thing. Midtral kicked us out, us and everyone else who went to Xanadu. We got our stuff back, and some of the tuition money was refunded; some of the others weren't so lucky. More people in suits came by and talked to us - to me and Dove, really, but you don't argue when the quarter-sized Statue of Liberty insists. You just don't.

Apparently Dove and I, while being a zombie and a vampire, respectively, are different. We're not the only ones who've kept our wits. Not by a long shot. But we were the first to find substitutes for our "natural" foods - brains and blood, respectively. It doesn't seem to work with all zombies or vampires, but we're hopeful that some of them at least can stop craving death and be turned to a more peaceful endeavor.