Magic and Camouflage

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Halloween was only a month away, which meant that costume shopping needed to begin in earnest. Tsukiko already knew exactly what she wanted to be, but although her costume idea was simple it was one she didn't have any of the components for. So she had roped her friend Julia into coming with her to Clothing Poverty on a costume hunt.

She had headed past rows and rows of blouses and pants, straight for the hosiery section.

"I need green, do you see any green?" She frowned as she pushed packages of tights forward in order to see. "Black, black, nude, navy, hounds tooth..."

[Julia Taylor]

Like her friend Kiko, Julia already knew what her costume was going to be, so now it was just a matter of finding all the right pieces to put it together. Her husband was lucky: his half of their couple's costume was easily made up of things he already owned, so he was already done. She was pretty sure she wouldn't find what she needed at Clothing Poverty, but she thought it would be fun to look through the racks with her friend regardless. And who knew, maybe she would find what she was looking for.

She didn't need anything in hosiery, but that's where Kiko was headed so she followed along. "Green, green..." she repeated, poking her way through the piles of tights. "Um, here's more of like a turquoise," she offered, extending one package of blue-green tights towards Kiko. It looked like the color of a mermaid tail, to Julia, so maybe not green enough. She resolved to keep looking even as Kiko evaluated her first find. "What are you going as, again?"

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Kiko shook her head at the package her friend offered. "I'm going as Poison Ivy!" She answered as she continued to push through packages of stockings. "So turquoise isn't going to work very well."

Rome had agreed to use his plant manipulation for her costume, which of course made her decision that much better.

"What about you?"

After all, she needed to know what sort of pieces she was keeping an eye out for.

[Julia Taylor]

Julia tossed the turquoise stockings aside just as quickly as she'd initially grabbed for them. "Right, right," she stated, taking a moment to commit the other woman's costume to memory so she could be more precise in her selections. She didn't remember very much about... whichever of the movies Poison Ivy had been in - it seemed like decades ago that she saw it - but she knew enough to know that Kiko's costume had to be green. Definitely green.

The brunette's face lit up when her friend asked her about her own costume. "Oh, John and I are going as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald," she said. "Well, really I just wanted to go as a flapper, and he wanted to do something easy. So he's wearing a suit and I'm finding something with sequins." There would be more to her costume than just the dress, but that was the main item so she was determined to find it first, and build the rest of her costume around it.

"Ooh!" She lunged across the table for a package of green stockings that had been made visible by Kiko's own rummaging. They were sized Extra-Large. "These are huge, but maybe we can take them in?" She offered. Of course, but 'we' she meant 'someone else,' since she had no idea how to sew.

[Tsukiko Aoki]

"That's so clever!" Kiko admired her friend's costume choice. "But I don't know how many sequins there are here. Maybe we can hit a dance store later since I need a leotard and they might have something with sequins there. Or a party store, there's usually at least one flapper option around Halloween I think."

She accepted the package gratefully and turned it over in both hands. "Maybe!" She tossed it into her basket. "They aren't too expensive anyway so even if I find something my size later..."

She was sure she could find someone to help her adjust the size if not.

"Or maybe buying nude tights and dying them green would be easier," she mused, picking the package out of her basket again. "What do you think?"

[Julia Taylor]

Julia listened to her friend's suggestions before nodding her head. "Ooh, yeah, I'm sure one of those pop-up Halloween costume stores will have something like what I'm looking for," she agreed. "If not, the dance store. Heck, maybe the school's theatre department has something I could borrow..." She trailed off thoughtfully: it was clear she would find her costume, she just might have to make a couple of stops first.

She thought for a moment about the possibility of dying a pair of tights green. "Well, you'll need to work on it either way," she stated. "So what do you think would look better: perfectly-colored tights you had to resize, or perfectly-sized tights you had to re-color?" As an English teacher, she rather liked the parallel structure of her last sentence. It would be a hard question to answer, perhaps, but it was key to deciding which item to purchase.

"Maybe..." she paused for a moment. "Maybe dying them is better. It might be hard to take in tights without having really obvious seams." She didn't know much about sewing, but one would have to cut out some of the material and sew it up tighter, wouldn't one? "Soaking it in some green dye would probably be easier," she concluded with a shrug.

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Kiko nodded and shoved the green tights back on the shelf. "Yeah, I think you're right. I don't know if you can even take tights in."

Given how often they seemed to rip maybe that was a bad idea, after all.

"Nudes and dye it is, then."

Fortunately, nude tights were much easier to find; she tossed a pair into her bag, and then turned to her friend.

"So where to next? The dance store or the costume shop? Oh, if we go to the costume shop maybe I can find a red wig..."

She patted her dark hair thoughtfully. "But I don't know if I would make a very good red-head, not with the bright red Poison Ivy has."

[Julia Taylor]

Julia didn't have a preference between the dance store and the costume shop, so when Kiko suggested that she might be able to find a wig at the latter, Julia was game. "Costume shop it is!" She agreed eagerly. She had realized that she wasn't going to find anything she needed for her costume at this particular store: the only thing they might have was black heels, and she already had those at home.

"I bet you could pull it off," the English teacher said with a nod. In truth, she thought anybody with bright red hair that wasn't naturally that color looked kind of ridiculous, but it was Halloween! Looking a little weird was the fun. She'd be getting her own hair styled in a bob for the first time in her life, something she'd probably never do again. 'Tis the Season and all that.

The brunette waited patiently while Kiko rang up her purchase, discreetly checking her phone to make sure there were no urgent messages from home. Johnathon was home with Stefanie that weekend afternoon, and while she trusted him completely, still she worried...

"So, how is everything?" she asked as the two made their way out of Clothing Poverty and down the sidewalk in the direction of their next destination. "How's Roman?" She added, more specifically.

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Kiko shrugged as they exited the store for the parking lot.

"Oh, he's great! He's so excited about Halloween. We're making a haunted house out of the garage and everything!"

She laughed when she recalled how excited he had been at this prospect; just like a big kid. He would make a great father one day, if they could conceive.

That if caused a slight frown, and she confessed in a hushed whisper, "We're hoping to get pregnant."

If anyone could understand her fears about conception and fertility it would be Julia, who had also had her child rather late in life compared to when society said women should have babies.

[Julia Taylor]

A haunted house sounded like fun to Julia, if it wasn't too scary. She wasn't great with scary things, but she really liked Halloween and understood that being a little bit frightened kind of came with the territory. As long as there was nothing nightmarish, Julia was game.

"Oh!" She exclaimed when Kiko said she was hoping to have a baby; she considered that to be good news, since she was three years a mother herself and generally loved it. "Oh..." she repeated, softer and more sustained, as she realized that Kiko was essentially telling her that she and Roman were having a lot of sex. Of course, that was what she and her own husband had done when they'd decided to start a family and was perfectly natural, but sex was one of those subjects Julia really didn't love to talk about. It made her feel awkward; one might think having a baby would help her get over that sort of squeamishness, but evidently it did not.

"How long have you been..." she began, trying her best to find a tactful way to ask the question. "...You know, trying?"

[Tsukiko Aoki]

"A couple of months," Kiko admitted as they made their way to her car. She fumbled about her pockets for her keys, hitting the unlock button. She could see the flashing of headlights that meant the buttons had done her job, and headed in that direction. "I'm a little concerned we might have waited too long. Did you have trouble when you were trying?"

[Julia Taylor]

Julia nodded as Kiko informed her that they had been trying to have a baby for a little while. Julia could sympathize with that: it had taken her and John several months, too, though part of that was because they were just so busy that they didn't have time to 'try' very often. It was kind of amazing how many couples - or people who weren't couples - got pregnant when they didn't mean to, yet people who actually wanted a baby had to try so long to make it happen.

The brunette opened the passenger side door to Kiko's car, climbing into the front seat; they were driving around in the same car so they could spend the whole time together, and for environmental reasons (one less car off the road). "It's not too late," she advised. "I mean, you're the same age now that I was when I had Stefanie." It was harder, yes, but certainly not impossible. People older than they were were having babies, at any rate.

She hesitated when Kiko asked about her own experiences. She really didn't want to get into specifics, but she did want to be as helpful as possible to her friend. "Um, it took us a while, yes," she said with another nod. "But, you know, it will take as long as it takes, and... you know, just enjoy the process..." She sank slightly into her seat as she said that.

[Tsukiko Aoki]

Kiko laughed as she turned the key in the ignition. "Oh, we're enjoying the process," She assured her friend despite the other woman's obvious discomfort with that aspect of the discussion. "I just don't want to find out, oh, actually we need fertility treatment to even have a shot! That's so expensive, and not even a guarantee."

She craned her neck to look out her mirror, checking to make sure no other cars were coming before she began to back out of the parking space.

[Julia Taylor]

Sometimes Julia wished she could be the kind of woman like those in "Sex and the City" and other shows where they were really open about all kinds of things and never felt modesty or shame. She was the opposite: she wasn't good at opening up to strangers, and even with good friends like Kiko there were certain subjects she'd rather not broach. It was just who she was.

"Well, that's good," she said when Kiko assured her they were having a good time with it. "That's good for... you know, the relationship." She was content to leave it at that unless Kiko wanted to continue discussing it further.

"Oh, I hope you won't need that," she said, shaking her head. "Yeah, so expensive. If you can avoid it, do it." She sat for a moment as Kiko drove them from one store to the other. "Have you considered adoption?" She asked suddenly, turning towards the other woman. That was also a very long process (and a lot less fun than sex), but if she couldn't have a baby, that was an option.

[Tsukiko Aoki]

"We could adopt," Kiko agreed as she pulled out of the parking lot. "I want to know if we can get pregnant before we consider that, though. Or we could foster," She added, "James tells all sorts of stories about students he's recruited."

James was Roman's best friend, and the former head of recruitment at Hammel. He had a great deal of experience with students and their families, and how traumatic those experiences could be.

"I know some students could use a foster family. It might be a little selfish that I want to try getting pregnant first..."