“Alright, everyone…we need to get everything ready…we’re heading up on Halloween!” a voice called out over a tectonic sized city that…weirdly was a perfect mirror of Mexico City, but plunged into eternal night, vivid neon and color covering everything, blimps and balloons shaped like pumpkins floating past raining marigold petals everywhere in their wake, intense Latin music filled the air along with the scents of cinnamon, clove and sugar.

            The figure who called that out was standing at a balcony overlooking a matching workshop to the winter one, but everything themed to Halloween and every/all aspects of fall, huge cauldrons billowing smoke pouring out thousands of pounds of candy, huge ovens pulling out trays filled with all sorts of toys and treats. Tricky things like fake eyes, fake limbs and matching toys and treats of playful trickery being carried about by massive bats and various other Halloween themed creatures. The woman who shouted that out brushed out her gown, impossibly tall…maybe pushing eleven feet tall or so, but impossibly thin to an inhuman level, looking elongated and disproportionate for her height, what skin was showing was a softer, but warm tan and hip length loose hair as black as shadow fell down her back, her upper face however was decorated like a sugar skull: cheekbone up being stark white with patterns of orange, purple and green along her cheekbones, nose and temples, upper teeth painted over her upper lip, nose painted in black and sockets filled in black around glowing pink eyes, throat covered in black with adorned vertebra depicted against her skin, dressed in this overly long and sprawling orange gown with a marigold colored flounce along the bottom hem, the cuffs at her wrists and the top of the neckline, sleeves billowing akin to a flamenco dancer and the crushed lipstick colored velvet adorned with depictions of Halloween, a string of candles affixed to the bottom hem of her gown, the skirt wrapped and showing her knee down showing black and bone legs matching her throat and the upper half of her face, mile high red pumps on bone painted feet and a massive fan held in bone painted hands. As her skirt shifted and moved, piles of marigold petals were left behind it as she turned and looked around, a massive hat atop her head matching her gown in crushed pumpkin colored velvet, a string of marigolds around the shallow bell and candles forming a ring around the hem as the flames would randomly pop or crackle with puffs of marigold petals. Small creatures would soon come into view, sweeping the petals away before carrying them off to various other areas of the palace. She looked around nervously as she looked down towards her hand, a large letter in hand in a parchment envelope; the pale paper fading to a rich purple along the edges, closed with a large dark purple seal adorned with a many, many headed dragon atop the seal, the pattern of the stamp brushed off with brilliant silver, the parchment soft and sleek to her fingers as the scent of smoke softly tinged the parchment, spots of burns and soot along the edges as if the letter had been passed through smoke to get to her.

            Full skeletons walked on the workshop floor pushing cauldron carts overflowing with candy, toys and various other tricks and treats, swarms of bats swirling before condensing into vampiric figures who handed off papers before scattering back into bats, flying off through open windows, a massive wolf ran in as they skidded on the stone floor shifting into a human form handing off something to someone on the workshop floor as zombies milled about the control panels for the massive cauldrons of boiling thick green fluid before they tipped over, the green sludge materializing into candy and other fixtures on long conveyors that carried the piles of things off, hoppers and flaps depositing the candy into waiting cauldron carts which was passed off to someone awaiting it, pushing it off through a large doorway or carrying large crates, boxes and carts of things off onto massive pumpkin trucks or giant winged cauldrons or pumpkins who flew off into the night sky carting off their sugary cargo. A massive pumpkin made of sculpted marigolds constantly raining petals down caught in baskets by the hands of awaiting attendants, who would empty out the petals into waiting hoppers as they petals were carted off, candles being sculpted, prayer candles being poured and righted and photo frames being polished as the scent of cooking adobo, steaming tamales and rich, sweet pan dulce.

            “Where could he be hiding?” she asked herself quietly, softly tapping the corner of the letter on her palm, knowing the person whom bears that seal, she looked around intensely as her glowing eyes surrounded by pure bottomless black filling her sockets making the glow seem to consume her eyes as she focused and tried to search out the quarry of the letter. She sneered softly in a spot of frustration as she just seemed to grab the air as magic smeared as she grabbed a large stick of black licorice which she took a sharp bite of as she looked around, drumming massive neon painted nails on the twisted railing of the balcony, nervously and pointedly chewing the black licorice as she looked out through the massive windows into the city around her, the huge softly glowing jack-o-lantern lights around her softly crackling with lime green flames that softly licked past the pumpkin carved eye sockets. “If they’re contacting all of us…they must have a very…very good reason. They don’t usually meddle with all of us” she added to herself looking down towards the letter as she looked out over the workshop grounds preparing for the coming holiday, even going through the many centuries of her memory, she could not recall a time where these people found themselves needing to communicate with herself or any of the others like her, they usually are left to their own very, very much so, not knowing what exactly was making them want to contact them all was making her very confused and only that much more worried as to why her name wasn’t on the letter, but his, what about him was what was needed for the work that they are wanting to do and or what problem was rising that not all of them were needed, but him and the others. That purple many headed dragon glaring up at her like a giant question mark that plagued her mind. “There must be a reason for them to be doing this.” She added quietly whispering.