here is my AE Tilly

Name:tilly,tills

AE

pronouns:she/her

apearance:inky black hair,blue sky eyes

personalty in seven words:quiet,shy,sweet,woodsy,worriys,kind,quirky

What would you wear to a party? a black fleared mini dress and a top hat and suit jacket

other:she loves to write.she also does not know that im putting her in for this 

My appearance:D

Last day for form-submitting!

@Writing, are you going to bring along one of your AEs, or no?

@WiLdSoNg, again, would it be okay with you if I referred to you as Wildsong/WildSong in this ski lodge?

I'm soooo excited...!!

Part one!

(for future reference, since there are two Amethysts in this ski lodge, Ame will be Sterling's AE and Amethyst will be our lovely neighborhood CBer.)

Also, please yell at me if I'm using your pronouns incorrectly. Also also, please comment! It's a tad early for murderer guesses/diary entries, but later on please do contribute those if you have them. Or any general thoughts, should you have those either.

All right. Hold on to your hats, lizards. Here we go.

---

The night was still and dark and quiet.

Because nights generally were still and dark and quiet, and this was a perfectly ordinary night, Reuby told herself, a little crossly. There was no reason why it shouldn't be.

She was awake in her bed, plagued by a persistent shapeless insomnia. Her room was a soft watercolor of grays and blacks and whites in the sparse light from her window and the red, alien glow of her digital alarm clock: 11:49 P.M. It was December eighteenth, and Reuby had almost nearly given up hoping that the letter was real, that Calloway was real, that magic was real. She had given up hoping, by all rights and appearances. She had never hoped at all, really.

But perhaps her subconscious hadn't quit quite yet, because she could not sleep that night. Because, still, she waited.

Reuby strained to hear beyond the quiet, persistent hum of the radiator; the subharmonic creaks and groans of the house's settling bones; the distant, wild howl of the wind through her window pane. She strained to hear -- well, she wasn't sure what, exactly. What exactly did the transportation provided by enigmatic shapeshifters for the guests of their parties sound like? Calloway had said that his sister Pix 'would be along to pick you up on December eighteenth.' Well, it was December eighteenth -- for a few more minutes, anyway -- and Pix, whoever she was, made no sign of appearing.

Reuby knew it was impossible. It was just a strange letter -- really, it was just a fairly run-of-the-mill ski lodge intro, a pretty common sight on the Chatterbox. She had no business lying awake on December eighteenth and waiting for magic just because somebody else had decided to write a ski lodge. Just because somebody else had decided to write a story about her lying awake on December eighteenth and waiting for magic. It was like believing in fairy tales.

Even though she knew it wasn't true, even though she knew it was impossible, even though she knew the world was exactly as complicated and boring and magicless as it looked, she still wished, somewhere inside her. She wished that Pix really could come to her and take her to a grand, ancient, occasionally cantankerous, very large house where she would party with other Chatterboxers until somebody got murdered. Preferably without the somebody-getting-murdered bit.

That wasn't how the world worked, though. Pixes and Calloways and castles by lakes didn't simply spring into being because somebody decided to write a story about them. That was absolute nonsense. That was the stuff of fairy tales and dreams. It wasn't the real world.

11:51, Reuby's clock glowed, and she sighed sharply and flopped back on her pillows, pulling up the blankets and closing her eyes and trying to forget that she had ever believed in magic, trying to find the dreams where she wouldn't care.

She had almost fallen into that deep dark place where ideas come to life and cats can grin when there came a persistent rapping on her window pane.

Reuby jolted awake, searching the shadows and finding a slight, fair-haired figure perched on her window sill. Her moonlit face was young and expectant, with bright ocean-colored eyes and pointed, pixie-like features. Reuby had the curious, uncharacteristically fanciful thought that she looked a bit like Peter Pan. If Peter Pan had the wings of an overlarge moon moth, and wore an emerald-green smoking jacket, that is. 

The figure -- the fairy -- Peter Pan's winged female doppelganger -- Pix, Reuby realized with a rush of wonder and magic and glorious possibilities -- banged on the window again, looking disgruntled.

Shaken out of her daze, Reuby slipped out of bed and crossed to the window. Her fingers fumbled for the window latch while she stared, frowning, at Pix. Pix, the real, true, flesh-and-starlight living breathing sister of a ski lodge host, sitting wonderfully impossibly outside her window.

Finally she managed to get the window, pushing it up and shivering at the sudden breath of frosty air -- it was December, and chilly. Pix slipped through the open window and into Reuby's room, her movements light and graceful like a dancer's. She appraised Reuby, her ocean eyes guarded. "Hello," she said. Her voice was light and childlike -- she couldn't be more than eight or nine -- but she moved with a hardy confidence that didn't seem to match her young face. "What's your Chatterbox username?"

"Uh... Reuby Moonnight," Reuby said warily.

"With an 'E'?" Pix asked.

"With an 'E'," Reuby confirmed.

Satisfied that Reuby was indeed one of the guests to her brother's ski lodge that shouldn't really be happening in real life, Pix nodded. "Lovely." She smiled a little, a brief and complicated smile that had a conversation with itself in a language Reuby didn't understand. "Are you ready to go?"

Reuby glanced down at her clothing, and remembered with a touch of wistfulness the outfit she'd described when she submitted her form to the Chatterbox, only three days ago. "Well --"

"Oh, your clothes'll be there when we get to the Castle, and so will your alter egos, if you brought any. Don't worry." She grinned, suddenly an enthusiastic eight-year-old girl instead of a short, strangely imperious fairy-creature that couldn't possibly be real. She fluttered her wings. "All the magic's taken care of."

Reuby suddenly grinned too, at the thought. This was really happening. This was really happening. She was going to wear her rad gothic partywear, and she was going to have Strawberry really truly beside her, in all her chaotic random glory, and she was going to meet all the other Chatterboxers in real life and she was literally going to a ski lodge, she was going to a Castle by a Lake somewhere that didn't exist. It was awesome.

"Wait," Reuby said, realizing the obvious flaw in this plan. "How are we going to get to the Castle?" She raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Fly?"

"Of course," Pix said, straight-faced. She spread her wings for emphasis. "Haven't you ever read Peter Pan?"

"Um --"

"Honestly, kids these days," Pix said before Reuby could answer, hands on her hips. "Haven't you ever dreamt? Everyone flies in their dreams, don't they? It's easy. It's like that. C'mon." She turned and climbed easily out the window and stood on the sill in what would be a very precarious position, if she did not have wings.

"C'mon," Pix insisted when Reuby hesitated, unsure of the wisdom of following a weird stranger into the night. Pix extended a hand through the window.

After a moment, Reuby cast her doubts aside. This was a ski lodge. She was in more danger of being stabbed with her own knife than she was from not flying. She clasped Pix's hand, and Pix pulled her through the open window to stand, shivering, on the sill beside her. Pix's hand was small but sure in Reuby's, and after a moment and a flash of a grin, she jumped from the sill, pulling Reuby after her.

For one terrifying second, Reuby was falling and she was inwardly cursing herself for following a weird stranger into the night and suddenly hoping that this was all just a terrible dream --

but then she and Pix spread their wings and the wind caught them before they could hit the ground, and -- wait a second.

She had wings?

Yes -- they were flapping all on their own, and she was flying, and Pix let go of her hand but she didn't fall, and she was soaring over the top of the world. It was cold and windswept and it stole her breath, but it was amazing. She had never felt anything like it, and she suspected she never would again.

It was over in what seemed far too short a time, and her wings were vanishing and she was landing on the morning-gilt grass. Yes, it was morning, although only a few minutes ago, it seemed, it had been midnight. The sun gazed dozily over the tops of the tall dark pines beyond what must have been the Castle, skipping over the moving glass-like surface of the Lake, caressing Reuby's cheeks with the absent-minded fondness of a shy aunt one saw only once a year.

The Castle was vast and grand, a complex of tall turrets and portcullises and other castley architectural features Reuby didn't know the names of. It looked the way she'd always imagined Hogwarts or King Arthur's castle looked. It was ancient and grand and slightly haphazard, as if, here and there, bits had been added on or taken off. It sprawled elegantly from across the lake, which was black and gleaming in the Castle's shadow.

"Ohmigosh ohmigosh ohmigosh," chirped a voice beside Reuby, far too excited to make proper use of punctuation.

Reuby turned, and she saw that Pix had gone, and in her place was a short, bunny-eared girl with curly black hair and light brown skin. She beamed, clasping her hands together enthusiastically as she stared across the Lake at the grand Castle. It was Strawberry, exactly how Reuby had always imagined her. "Is that the Castle?" Strawberry exclaimed, and not waiting for an answer, asserted, "That's the Castle, Reuby ohmigosh isn't it awesome?" She twirled, her pink dress fanning out, and laughed dizzily, leaning on Reuby's black-clad shoulder.

Black? She was wearing black?

Actually, she was always wearing black. This was no cause for alarm. But she was wearing different clothing than she had been what felt like only a few minutes ago, when she was standing in her bedroom and reflecting on her not-exactly-party-suitable attire. She was now, like Strawberry, definitely wearing party-suitable attire. But Reuby's was of a decidedly different flavor: one of her favorite black T-shirts with black fishnet sleeves, black ripped jeans, and those tall lace-up black boots with the chunky soles.

Reuby grinned. She was ready to party like nobody's business.

"Oh look!" Strawberry exclaimed suddenly, pointing towards the shore of the Lake, where a little wooden rowboat was tied to a pier. "That's our way across! Let's go!" She grabbed Reuby's hand and pulled her across the grass and across the pier to the boat. Strawberry climbed into it with characteristic carelessness, and Reuby, only a little leery of the fact that neither she nor Strawberry had ever rowed a boat before (not that the boat had any oars), followed. She began untying the rope that bound the boat to the pier, but a shout stopped her: "Hey, wait up!"

Another girl ran across the pier, shoes clacking on the wooden slats, and stopped at the end of it, panting, with her hands on her knees. She was slight and pretty, with eyes like the blue sky above them and hair like the shadowy water beneath. She wore a black mini dress, a top hat, and a suit jacket. Reuby approved.

By way of greeting, Reuby asked, "Who're you?"

The top-hatted girl straightened, and said in a smaller voice, "I'm Tilly. I'm, um, luna silvermoon's AE." She squinted across at the Castle. "Uh, where are we?"

"The Castle!" Strawberry said, grinning. "By the Lake! We're going to a party! Isn't it awesome?"

"Um," Tilly said, a little doubtfully. "Parties aren't exactly... my thing."

"Come on! It'll be fun!" Strawberry insisted, and with a small, half-convinced smile, Tilly carefully lowered herself into the rowboat beside Reuby. As soon as she was settled, the rowboat shot smoothly across the water, like they did at Hogwarts for the first-years.

As the rowboat -- stubbornly disregarding its name -- did not row, but glided across the Lake, Strawberry chattered excitedly to Tilly, who spoke about one word for every ten of Strawberry's. Reuby simply watched the Lake rush by them, black shining water, and the Castle come closer, grand and ancient and so very large. She didn't know exactly what she'd gotten herself and Strawberry into, but she was certain that it would be strange and magical and impossible, if the last half-hour was anything to go by. It might be dangerous. It would probably be dangerous. But it would also be amazing, because this, somehow, was magic.

Calloway. You are so skilled with your words. I am beyond impressed and look forward to more and more and more -! 

Ooh, I'm really looking forward to the next part of this! Your writing is so vivid and poetic, and I really want to know what happens next.

@Celeste: Thanks! That is sage advice; I shall follow it duly. 

@Hawkstar: Merci beaucoup. I'm glad I've managed to get you hooked.

@Poinsettia: Tysm. It means a lot.

@Echo Hallowswift: my thanks, again! And, actually, I've already been correctly guessed (by Poinsettia) as Artemis.

Anyway. Part two! This is where things get murder-y. (And vaguely creepy, at the end. There is some blood and possibly a few insane ski lodge hosts.) Tell me your thoughts: who is the murderer? If you're not sure about that, who definitely isn't the murderer? What's up with Calloway's shadowed past? Do you have any diary entries? (These are much appreciated.) General thoughts? (Also appreciated.)

I recently read The Ominous' recently-finished Disorienting Express (which is awesome, by the way; go read it right now (after you read this, of course)), and I so enjoyed the references rampant in that that I've snuck in a couple of my own into this part. Harry Potter, the Raven Cycle, Illuminae, and something that might possibly be interpreted as Doctor Who, I think. Read on!

---

It was loud. It was chaotic. It was awesome.

By Hex's count, there were only twenty people in the room, if you counted up all the CBers plus Pix, and once Reuby, Strawberry, and a quiet AE in a top hat had joined them. And the room was big -- very big, in fact. It looked like it might be a ballroom, or a throne room without a throne. A grand room, made for conducting grand affairs. It had tall ceilings and full-size portraits of strange things like unicorns with wings and boys with horns hanging on its walls, and a polished wooden floor that, if you cleared away all the people, made an enormous mosaic mandala out of different shades of wood. A long table had been set up on the far side of the room, laden with all sorts of party food -- a viridescent punch that tasted peculiarly like summer, hypoallergenic cupcakes, Doritos, an old-fashioned popcorn machine that never ran out, and, for some strange reason, mint humbugs. Chatterboxers and alter egos spilled across the room, chatting and laughing and eating cupcakes, dancing if they were brave enough and reading books in corners if they weren't. It was as if somebody had set up a middle-school graduation party in an ancient castle -- which, Hex reflected, was pretty close to what had actually happened.

Anyway, it was a big room and not really that many people. So, by rights, it probably shouldn't have been this loud and chaotic and awesome. To be fair, though, they were CBers. And AEs. Chaos was what they did on a daily basis, if they weren't fanlizarding over mutual favorite book series, or drawing pictures of each other, or writing stories about Chatterboxers partying in Calloway's Castle before getting murdered.

Hex herself was sipping punch and watching the shenanigans unfold. Some of the Chatterboxers had drifted into clusters of laughing children in many different shades of party clothing, green punch in hand. A couple, as aforementioned, sat by the sidelines, reading books they had brought or just watching the others. Hex saw the top-hatted AE -- Tilly, she was pretty sure -- discussing a novel with another quiet AE, also blue-eyed (and blue-haired, and blue-shorted, and blue-beret'd). Pix, who had changed from the smoking jacket she'd flown into Hex's room in, to a sleeveless, decidedly more fairy-like green dress, was chatting with Artemis and a CBer Hex was pretty sure was called Azalea, who coincidentally also had moth wings. Azalea's wings were of a color that wasn't seen in the real world: young, living green that faded to a deep rose at the tapered tips.

Some of the CBers were also dancing. At some point during the festivities, Artemis had produced her magic earbuds, and she and WiLdSoNg had figured out how to hook them up to the speakers that had conveniently and spontaneously appeared in the corners of the room. (Hex had her suspicions about Artemis' connections with the existence of Calloway and the Castle by the Lake, but in interest of preserving the fourth wall, she didn't voice them.) So now dance music reverberated through the maybe-ballroom, for what was probably the first time in the Castle's existence.

Currently, the dancers included Strawberry, Ame, Darkling, Writing, and Celeste. Strawberry and Ame were doing a sort of impressive improvised two-person brouhaha that Hex couldn't exactly figure out the steps to. (Of course, knowing AEs, they were probably making them up as they went along.) Darkling and Writing, who made an oddly matchy-matchy pair with Writing's extremely-fancy Victorian gown and demonias, and Darkling's secretly-much-fancier-than-it-appears-to-the-undiscerning-eye pinstripes, were also dancing. As neither person was making any attempt at looking like they knew what they were doing, they both came out looking like they knew exactly what they were doing, which gave Hex a headache but was entertaining nonetheless. Celeste danced by herself, a bit fairylike; they were candelit by the chandelier.

Reuby Moonnight, WiLdSoNg, Darkvine, and Hawkstar talked in low voices by the double doors across the room from the buffet, and Poinsettia, Amethyst, Echo Hallowswift, and Sapphire, with slightly more net grins, ate popcorn on the sidelines and watched the dancing.

Hex drifted into Pix and Artemis and Azalea's conversation, setting down her punch glass by the bowl.

"This is so cool," Azalea was saying. She gesticulated vaguely around the room. "I mean, everyone wants to meet Chatterboxers IRL, and here we are, doing it!" She grinned and shook her head. "It's awesome."

"Not to break the fourth wall, but thanks," Artemis said, reflecting the grin a little.

"Doesn't referring to the fourth wall at all count as breaking it?" Hex asked matter-of-factly.

Pix frowned thoughtfully. She was much shorter than the other three -- Hex and Artemis were both quite tall already, and Azalea, of course, was the oldest of all of them. Pix, on the other hand, was about eight. Although it was easy to forget it, the way she acted. Hex was half convinced she wasn't really eight at all, just very short and remedial. "Well, maybe," Pix said, in reply to Hex. "I mean, the wall's fragile. Implying that it exists definitely gives it a good shaking, if not an all-out shattering."

"This is a weird conversation," Artemis reflected, obviously.

"This is a weird situation," Hex said, slightly less obviously. "I mean, honestly." She pointed at Azalea. "I never thought I'd meet you face-to-face -- or you, Artemis. I mean, we're kids. We're kids who frequent the same social media site with a population of about sixty, and it'd take a whole lot of coincidences for us to meet in real life. And yet, here we are." She pointed at Pix, too. "Also, we're talking to Peter Pan's long-lost, moth-winged twin sister that, not to break the fourth wall, but you invented, Artemis. This is, like, weirdness incarnate."

"Hey!" Pix protested, although it was hard to tell what, exactly, she was protesting. "Careful with the wall."

"Still," Hex said. "You have moth wings."

"So do I," Azalea said, and fluttered them a little. "Yeah, it's crazy. It's also great."

Hex allowed a bit of her grin to slip through. "It really is."

Artemis glanced over to the middle of the room, where the dancers congregated. Poinsettia, Amethyst, Echo Hallowswift, and Sapphire had joined them, in a variation on one of those circle dances in all the faux-medieval-European fantasy movies, when the heroes pass through the cheerful village on their way to slay the dragon. "I still can't believe that Darkling is actually over there. And Writing_in_the_Dark. And CelesteOfTheGoldMoon, for crying out loud. All the famous cool CBers are dancing in my living room."

"They are a bit loud, though," Pix observed.

"Well, what did Calloway expect, when he invited any number of CBers to a party at his cantankerous mansion?" Artemis said. "You get what you pay for."

Artemis was very much enjoying the dramatic irony of this, Hex observed. Aloud, she said, "Where is Calloway, anyway?"

Azalea frowned and scanned the partygoers, as if she might find Calloway among them. "I don't know. That's strange. You'd think he'd be here to greet us." She glanced at Pix.

Pix's face did something complicated and painful, and she looked away from Azalea. Her ocean-colored eyes gazed at the dancers without seeming to see them.

"What's --" Azalea started, but Artemis interjected, saying, "Sorry. Calloway's [REDACTED CUZ SPOILERS]. It upsets her, as you might imagine." She frowned, unused to hearing anyone, least of all herself, speak in brackets. "Um. Classified information, I mean. Calloway'll probably be along later."

"Right," Azalea said, and fiddled absently with the strap of her purse.

Hex remembered that this was a ski lodge. It was a mystery -- and, more importantly, a murderous one. She suddenly wished that CBers would write stories about fun things, instead of creepy mysterious murderous things. This was a cool party, sure, but it was also a ski lodge. It would, inevitably, end in murder. All at once, the dancing CBers and the laughter of Hawkstar's cluster by the door and Lyra's and Tilly's quiet smiles seemed too much, too loud, too bright. Hex wasn't one for sentimentality, but the fact was that they were all going to die, and they were all so terribly oblivious. They had forgotten whose Castle they were dancing in.

Azalea rubbed her forehead and said, "Is there anywhere we can go that's a little quieter? Pix?"

Pix's ocean eyes snapped back to the present, and she nodded. "Of course. There's a library."

"Yeah," Artemis said, a little distantly. "I'll show you; c'mon." She showed Azalea to a side door, and both girls slipped out of the crush of people.

Echo Hallowswift suddenly ran up to Hex, stealing her attention. She was a little flushed from the dancing, her blond hair flying around her face. "Hi! What's your name again?"

"Hex."

"Cool! I'm Echo. Um, so, d'you want to dance? Writing wants to do one of those fast Irish thingies, but I don't think you've danced yet, and it's better with more people anyway."

"Um," Hex said dubiously. She peered around Echo: Strawberry, Ame, Writing, Darkling, Poinsettia, Amethyst, Sapphire, and Celeste had all paused their dancing, looking breathless but happy, as people usually did after they danced. Reuby, WiLdSoNg, Darkvine, and Hawkstar had shut off the music and were fiddling with the speaker-slash-magic-earbud contraption. Lyra and Tilly were still absorbed in their novel. "Sure?"

"Fantastic!" Echo said, and, grabbing Hex's hand, pulled her into the group in the middle. Before any fast Irish thingies ensued, however, Pix clambered on top of the popcorn machine and pulled out a megaphone. She held it up to her mouth and called, "Okay, folks! We're probably going to have to wrap this up at some point in the not-too-distant future, but before we do, I just want to call everyone's attention to the fact that there is a library. If you want a little peace and books, it's just through that door, third doorway on the left." Pix pointed at the side door Azalea and Artemis had gone through. "Anyone who stays behind will be required to dance. Oh, and WiLdSoNg, I'll help you with that music in a mo. Thanks." With a quick smile, she hopped neatly off the popcorn machine.

Lyra and Tilly went off to the library almost immediately, both laughing over this or that, and Poinsettia, Celeste, Darkvine, Reuby, and Hawkstar soon followed. The halved partygoers gathered in the middle of the room. Pix snapped her fingers and the buffet and popcorn machine vanished; then she headed over to the dancers.

"Okay!" Pix shouted. "We need music. Is anyone a musician around here?"

"I can't play the violin," Darkling volunteered.

"Excellent," Pix said. "I'll find you a fiddle somewhere. Everyone else, let's figure out how to dance an Irish thingy. Does anyone have Irish relations? Or a cell phone? Does anyone here know how to dance at all, even?"

It was actually pretty fun. Yes, it was chaotic, and yes, hardly anyone knew how to dance properly, and yes, Darkling was not exactly Mozart. But that was all right, because they were Chatterboxers, and who really knows how to dance properly anyways, and Mozart played the piano, not the fiddle. By the end of it, Hex was laughing too. It was really was fantastic; for a little while, she forgot that someone was going to die.

Meanwhile, in the library, something happened.

Well, a lot of things happened. Some of them are terrible. Some of them are secret. Here they are, more or less:

Firstly, the library was very large. Large enough to get lost in, and, eventually, the readers were separated, lost in their own separate worlds.

Secondly, I killed two people. The first one screamed, but it was the second one they noticed.

The second one was Azalea, found collapsed as though sleeping in an emerald-green armchair by the great roaring fireplace. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban had fallen from her hands and under the chair. It took them a long time to find her, and when Hawkstar did, she thought Azalea was sleeping.

She thought Azalea was sleeping until she didn't respond when Hawkstar spoke, shook her, screamed.

After that, it didn't take long. Hawkstar found the other readers, told them in shaking, tear-stained words what had happened. They sent Darkvine to tell the dancers. The dancers told Pix, and Pix turned white like the moon that shone in the dark sky outside (but it had been morning only a few hours ago, hadn't it? Hadn't it?) Pix ran into the library, and she saw Azalea, collapsed in the armchair, definitely, terribly dead. Lyra wept. So did Pix, when she saw her. It. The body that had been a cheerful, smiling girl, only an hour before. She wept and she stroked Azalea's cheek and she whispered words meant only for me, her brother, her brother who only wanted what was best for her, who only wanted her to live, by all the stars why couldn't she see that why can't she see me why did she weep for this girl she barely knew?

Why do you cry for them, Rose?

She whispered, "Not again, Danny, please." No one heard her but Strawberry, the silly bunny-eared girl who had been shocked into silence at last by Azalea's death. And she didn't understand Pix's words. To them I was only Calloway, the Master of the Castle by the Lake, the host of their lovely terrible little ski lodge that had gone wrong, gone wrong like they always always do because that's what they are, that's what I am, Rose.

(I can't change what I am.)

And then Rose, Pix, this strange little girl that I love too much, she stood up and she brushed away her tears and she turned to the shocked, saddened, frightened Chatterboxers and their alter egos (made for laughter and unsure of what to do with their tears) and Pix said, "I must get you all home."

Ah, Rose. When will you learn that you can't save them?

"But -- but what about Azalea?" Ame stuttered, unfamiliar tears rolling down their cheeks. "We have to bury her?" There were question marks at the ends of their sentences.

"I'll do it," Pix said. She is so strong. Sometimes I forget she is only eight years old. "Come, Echo Hallowswift. I'll take you and Lyra home."

"Your wings are gone," Celeste said quietly, and Pix turned and looked behind her and saw that they were right. Her moon-moth's wings were gone.

"So are mine," Writing exclaimed, turning around, xyr voice suddenly fearful.

"So are Azalea's," Hex said, pointing. She was right; where there had been beautiful, impossible pink-and-green wings, Azalea now had nothing. She was just an ordinary girl lying murdered in an emerald-green armchair.

"How do we get home now?" Eclipse asked. "Is there some other way? Surely if you can have wings in the first place and -- and can make popcorn machines vanish when you snap your fingers, you can find a way to get us home?"

Pix shook her head, grim. "No. Someone is trying to keep us here, and I don't have the power to fight them. You'll all have to stay at the Castle until we figure out what to do."

The CBers were frightened. Of course they were frightened. One of their own had just been murdered -- Azalea, who no one could possibly have hated, had been murdered.

But, like Pix, they were strong and they were determined. Like Pix, they thought they could save them.

They were wrong, of course. But I'm nothing if not fair. I'll give them a running start.

Good hunting, my darlings.

Most sincerely,

Calloway, Master of the Castle by the Lake

---

Dead: Azalea

Alive: Echo Hallowswift, Lyra, Hex, Ame, Eclipse, WiLdSoNg, Artemis, Sapphire, Darkvine, Celeste, Darkling, Hawkstar, Poinsettia, Writing, Amethyst, Reuby, Strawberry, Tilly

@Writing: ahh tysm I'm figuratively dancing !!! i will take note of your susness !! that's because you are so cool, lizard ! seem that way to me, anyway. (to be perfectly honest i think everyone is so cool internally, but some people are less shy about acting on the outside like they are on the inside. do with that philosophical digression as you will.)

@Hawkstar: still dancing 'cause you're still hooked !

Part three! This one feels kind of quiet; mostly in-between stuff. No wild parties or murders this time, just a burial and more of Calloway's (read: my) musings on stories and humanity.

---

Pix went about dispatching orders to the CBers, more for their sake than for hers. They needed something to do, to take their minds off the girl who was lying dead only seven feet away. "Hawkstar, Tilly, Darkvine, go fetch blankets. You'll find them in the rooms on the right side of the hall, and the ones up the stairs. Eclipse, Strawberry, Amethyst, you go with them. Darkling, Cel, make tea. The kitchen's on the right-hand passage off the ballroom. Ame, WiLdSoNg, Writing, Lyra, find lots of books. I don't have to tell you to steer clear of Agatha Christie. Reuby and Sapphire, there's candles in the kitchen cupboards above the sink. Fetch them for me. Hex, there's shovels in the garden shed. Echo, Poinsettia, Artemis, you stay here with me."

Everyone obeyed. What else could they do? Azalea was dead, and everything was confusing and frightening, but Pix seemed to know what was going on, even if she was only a wingless eight-year-old girl. Unconsciously she led, and unconsciously they followed.

Poinsettia was shocked. She hadn't spoken much to Azalea during the course of the party, if at all, but she'd seemed nice. She'd seemed like the sort of person Poinsettia would like to be friends with, in another world. And now she was dead. Just like that.

Of course she knew that was how ski lodges worked. But that didn't make Azalea any less dead. It didn't make her less frightened -- frightened for herself, for Sapphire, for Amethyst, for everyone. A part of her wanted to do nothing else but sit in a corner and cry.

But another part of her, a larger part, knew that she couldn't do that. She had to be strong, so that she and her friends would survive. She had to believe they would get through this, as impossible as it seemed.

"We have to bury her," Pix said. She'd kicked off her pale green heels in preparation for the aforementioned deed. Poinsettia was suddenly glad she hadn't worn a dress, even though she hadn't expected to bury someone. Even though it was a ski lodge, and that was what happened in ski lodges.

"This shouldn't have happened," Echo Hallowswift said, kneeling by Azalea's body. Something diamond glittered in her eyes. "This shouldn't have happened."

"But it did," Artemis said. She ran her fingers through her short dark hair, and sighed a sigh that seemed to shudder all through her like the wild wind through emaciated autumn leaves, trembling before they fell. "Pix's right. We have to bury her."

"Are we strong enough to carry her?" Poinsettia wondered aloud. She wished these weren't the sorts of questions she had to deal with. She, Echo Hallowswift, and Artemis were all rather slender, and of course Pix was eight. But they could probably manage it.

"I can probably --" Pix began, snapping her fingers. Nothing happened. She frowned at her hand, then at Azalea's body, and snapped again, like a broken cigarette lighter. Nothing continued to happen. Pix sighed and whispered something to me ("Thanks, Danny") and said aloud, "Yes, we'll have to. My magic's gone, it seems like." She walked over and, for the second time, sighed and stroked Azalea's cold cheek. Then she nodded to the girls, and, carefully, Poinsettia and Artemis lifted her and began carrying her out of the library.

Echo Hallowswift noticed something beneath the chair. Crouching, she fished out a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. She pressed her lips together and tucked it into the pocket of her sweater, then ran ahead to help the others, Pix holding open the doors.

They took Azalea out of the Castle, to where the pines grew. Hex had fetched the shovels, and in the dark, they silently dug a grave for a girl who should not have died.

Darkvine, Hawkstar, Tilly, Eclipse, Strawberry, and Amethyst gathered blankets from a series of linen cabinets and fancy unslept-in bedrooms, and made up nineteen makeshift beds in the ballroom. They worked quietly, even flamboyant Strawberry shattered by Azalea's murder. When they finally finished, Darkvine flopped back on one of the messes of blankets and stared up at the ceiling. "Why do we write these stories." It was not a question.

Eclipse flopped down beside her and covered her eyes with her hands. Amethyst, Tilly, and Strawberry sat down nearby, their legs folded underneath them. Amethyst pressed her hands together tightly, and Strawberry's lip trembled. Tilly kept readjusting her hat without noticing she was doing it. Hawkstar simply stood there, her hands on her hips and her eyes on the ground.

All five Chatterboxers were awakened from their respective thoughts by Echo Hallowswift's voice, coming from where she stood just inside the door of the ballroom. "We're burying Azalea," she said, and without a word the other girls rose and followed her directions to the dark night-shadowed pines beyond the Castle.

Celeste and Darkling made tea. The kitchen was a strange bit of modern furnishing in the ancient Castle, with an ordinary stove and sink and even a refrigerator, finished with white-speckled tile. The tea they'd found wasn't anything they'd ever seen before, though: unlabeled teabags that, when they steeped in the eclectic collection of mugs salvaged from the cupboards, smelled of strange impossible things like snow and autumn and despondency and books.

Darkling stirred their tea with a silver spoon. They hadn't known Azalea; they didn't think they'd ever even spoken to her. But still, her death was jarring and disturbing and something that might be frightening, if Darkling was the sort of person who was frightened by the sudden deaths of girls in libraries.

They thought, now, that they might be that sort of person. Though before it wouldn't have occurred to them to be frightened of anything much at all.

Celeste was reaching for the snow-smelling tea, their amber-golden eyes somewhere else entirely, when Echo Hallowswift slipped into the kitchen and told them that Azalea was being buried, and Pix said to bring the tea to the ballroom before going to the pines behind the Castle. They did as she told them, because there was nothing else they could do.

WiLdSoNg descended the tall narrow ladder that led up to the highest shelves in the library, her arms full of books. She, Writing, Ame, and Lyra were all rather in a daze. Ame was crying; Lyra still had tear tracks on her cheeks; Writing looked like he might start any second. WiLdSoNg was too shell-shocked to weep; everything was still so new and sudden and frightening, so frightening. At least she'd had the presence of mind to direct them towards poetry. They didn't need any scary books, or sad books, or mysterious books. They already had enough of that in real life. Of course, no one felt like laughing, either, so they didn't want funny books. They wanted comforting books, and poetry, WiLdSoNg figured, translated to everybody, regardless of age or mood or personality. She wasn't sure exactly why Pix had told them to get books, but she seemed to know what she was doing, so they'd done it.

When she reached the bottom of the ladder, Writing glanced over the tops of their own books to WiLdSoNg. She pointed to a title facing out in WiLdSoNg's stack. "Look," xe said. "The Collected Works of the Regular Poetry Thread, by numerous authors."

WiLdSoNg glanced at it; she'd pulled books rather indiscriminately from the shelves, and hadn't given much attention to their titles. "Cool," she said, the word sounding flat and out of step in the quiet library, where no one could forget Azalea had been murdered. She pulled it out, careful not to dislodge the other books, and set it on top of the stack.

Then Echo Hallowswift, the messenger, appeared, and told them to put the books in the ballroom and go to the pines to see Azalea buried.

"How many do you think we need?" Sapphire asked, her usually-bright voice quiet and quavering.

Reuby stared at the pile of candles in Sapphire's arms, and shrugged. "I don't know," she said flatly. "Lots, I guess."

Sapphire nodded and set the candles on the counter, reaching up to pull more down from the cupboard above the sink. She stacked the pale waxen sticks on the counter, like so many bones. She didn't look at Reuby, focusing on the candles, when she said, "It was just so sudden, you know? I mean, I didn't talk to her very much, but I saw her, you know, in that dress with the flapper purse and those wings, and she was so alive, you know? She was laughing. She was alive. And now she's... not."

"I guess," Reuby said again. She picked at her fishnet sleeves. There was something strange and sheathed in her golden eyes, something Sapphire hadn't seen in them in the few hours she'd known her. Something that might almost be called sadness.

Sapphire's thoughts were interrupted by Echo Hallowswift, who appeared and told them to bring the candles and follow her to Azalea's grave.

It was dark in the pine grove, the white moon now hidden by roiling clouds. The Chatterboxers and other alter egos were merely black shapes, the curve of a head or the slope of shoulders or the sharp points of Writing's horns and Reuby's wolfish ears.

Ame stood next to Strawberry, shivering in the frigid bite of the wind -- it was cold, but not, they noticed distantly, as cold as December ought to be. Maybe they were somewhere warmer. Maybe they were somewhere that didn't exist. Ame shivered.

Hex, Poinsettia, Artemis, and Pix had dug a grave in the dark earth, and Azalea's body lay beside it on a gray wool blanket, just another shade in the night full of shades. Now Pix struck a match, and it glowed warm in her hand, painting her features sparse and eerie and fiery. She lit a candle, and lit another with the fire from the first, and handed lit candles around to all the CBers and AEs, to light the night. Slowly, the little flames multiplied, and Ame saw the faces of all of them, lit so sparingly by candlelight, limned by captured fire.

"We really ought to have done this in the morning," Pix said, breaking the silence held by the whispering trees and quiet CBers. "But I don't know when or if whoever has done this is going to do it again, so I want to get it done."

Abruptly, Echo Hallowswift walked over to Azalea and knelt. Handing her candle to Lyra, she carefully untangled the black flowers from her hair, and wound them through Azalea's brown curls. Then she stood and took her candle back, and returned to the circle of people.

Pix knelt by Azalea and said something inaudible, her lips moving in the light from the candle, and then she stood, brushing earth off of her green gown, and said quietly, "Goodbye."

Some of the CBers knelt by Azalea and whispered things, or left things. Some of them didn't. Ame, feeling that something ought to be done, unclasped one of their golden star-shaped earrings and slipped it in Azalea's pocket. Then they buried her; carefully lowering her into the ground and then replacing the earth they'd dug up. Then it was done. A makeshift funeral with no special words.

Most of the CBers slipped away soon after that. Hex and Pix and Artemis and Poinsettia and Echo Hallowswift -- who had spoken to her last before she died, who had buried her -- stayed behind a little longer, but eventually they left too, so Pix was left alone in the dark pines. She was weeping again.

Inside, the CBers found the makeshift sleeping places Darkvine, Eclipse, Tilly, Hawkstar, Amethyst, and Strawberry had made, and settled down in them, some talking, some sipping tea, some reading books from the stacks WiLdSoNg, Writing, Ame, and Lyra had brought in. Some simply stared at the ceiling, or tried to sleep.

Pix came in a half hour after the last CBer had left, and she stood by the door, watching them, looking centuries older than her eight years. She said at last, everyone's eyes drawn to her even though she spoke softly, "There should be sleeping clothes in the guest bedrooms, if any of you want to change."

Most of the CBers drifted upstairs to find said sleeping clothes. Ame, though, was too tired and emotionally wrought to expend the energy, and they simply removed their sandals and lay down on their blankets. Neither Reuby nor Lyra heard Pix in the first place -- the one was lost in her head, the other in a book. Darkling could not find it in themself to care. Neither could Artemis, who just unlaced her doc martens and undid the clasp of her cloak, folding it over itself as a makeshift pillow. The rest drifted downstairs in different versions of quintessential pajamas, from what looked like several different time periods and possibly different planets.

When most of the CBers and their AEs were settled, Pix said sharply to the chandelier, "Oh, go out, why don't you," and this time her magic obeyed her, albeit a mite cheekily, and the ski lodgers were left in darkness again.

Pix, businesslike, lit a candle and fetched a book from the stack. Without preamble, she began to read aloud from it. No one protested, either out of want for silence or misplaced indignance at being told a bedtime story at their ripe old age of twelve or fifteen or eleven, because Azalea was dead. Really, I don't know what that has to do with it, but grief does strange things to people, and so does fear. It did to me, anyway.

Pix's book was The Collected Works of the Regular Poetry Thread. There was no such book, of course, but again, there was no such Castle, either, and no such world where girls were murdered in it. So it was all right. 

"'Explosions are beautiful', by Booksy Owly. Thirtieth of April 2017, eleven forty-four P.M.," Pix read. Her voice was quiet but clear, giving each word its proper time and not rushing through them like a New Yorker on an escalator. (Not that I have ever seen a New Yorker on an escalator, but as a metaphor it sounds admirable, so I shall use it.) "Explosions are beautiful./The way millions of particles collide all at once and/Worlds are formed from pure/Dust. I live for the bang of crashing/Forces...."

They were familiar words to several of the CBers, who'd perused the early pages of the Regular Poetry Thread. It was a small comfort, to hear those words at such a time, in such a place. A reminder that they were all Chatterboxers, and this was a ski lodge, and really, after all, it was just a story, wasn't it? They'd be home again soon, back in the real world where there was no magic or Calloways or Castles or dead girls without wings in emerald-green armchairs. (Wouldn't they?)

The problem was, they knew stories. They read stories and they made stories out of thin air, paper castles, and they lived and breathed stories. That was why they were Chatterboxers. That was why they were here, in this Castle that didn't exist in this story that wasn't real (right?) listening to a girl who wasn't really there read them poetry. It was just a story.

But they knew stories, and they knew that stories, however impotent and silly and fragile they were once you'd left them, once you'd read 'The End' and closed them and put them back on their shelves, could be real. They knew those forgotten dreamt moments when they were reading or writing stories, and they would become lost in them, and they would forget for a moment who they were, because they were living in their dreamlands. Just for a moment, so small, impossible to recall, impossible to actually ascertain the existence of, like a dream you forget upon waking. But it was there, that moment. That was when they felt things, when they smiled or shuddered or laughed or cried. That was when the stories became real.

And they knew that it was just a moment, that eventually they would wake from this dream and everything would be okay and normal and unextraordinary again. But they were living in that moment then, that kairos, and while you live in that moment, the stories are real. While you live in that moment, Calloway and the Castle and the un-winged Peter-Pannish girl reading you poetry and Azalea's murder are real.

I'm not sure exactly what drives you to write your stories, but I think that moment is part of it. That glimpse of what could never be. You do so love the impossible, don't you?