Once again, Bailey turned to his friend and frequent collaborator Roshie Armin-Zadeh for his outfit for Carniveil. Unlike their previous team-ups, this one was a more equal partnership, a compromise between Bailey’s preferred color palette for dresses and Roshie’s love for pretty patterns. He wore a black fit-and-flare silhouetted dress that came halfway down his thighs, with a rounded neck and long sleeves. The skirt of the dress was plain, but the bodice had a scattered white star pattern to give it a pop of energy. Roshie paired it with black heels, while Bailey brought back his red knuckle duster clutch for good measure.
Having cut his hair short for Mallory and Eri’s wedding, he decided to go to a magical hair salon and have his hair grown out to its usual longer length. Instead of letting it fall back in its usual neat and straight waves, he had them pull it up messily atop his head, in something that almost (but not quite) resembled a bun. It helped frame his face better for the makeup he painted around his eyes and across his nose, from his temples to the tops of his cheeks: a purplish black twilight, with glittering stars curving around his eyes and towards his cheekbones.
Bailey found a cheerful looking drug dealer near the entrance to District Avenue, sporting some illusionary wings that contrasted sharply with his green-and-white striped track suit and shaved head. The man claimed to be selling “pure happiness in pill form,” and while Bailey seemed a bit skeptical of his claims, seeing a recent customer take one of the pills and not immediately fall over convinced him to roll the dice. That and the dealer charged him 25% less than the going rate for MDMA.
Bailey watched the acrobats and fire eaters while he waited for the pill to kick in, ignoring the entreatries of the white rabbit holograms and rainbow roads to follow them to additional drinks and drugs. He did snag a bottle of water of an enterprising hawker making his rounds through Carniveil’s grounds, stashing it in his personal portal to the Hedge until he needed it.
The drug didn’t kick in exactly as advertised, but the sensation was pleasant enough that Bailey didn’t care. The feeling fell somewhere between watching a pile of puppies sleeping and seeing a crush smile at you from across the bar. It mixed well with his base layer of amazed contentment at surviving another year, in spite of everything thrown at him.
He let the beat carry him out onto the dance floor, where he lost himself to the music like he had so many countless times before. When he glanced up at the DJ booth, he found himself surprised to recognize the DJ from the previous EgoTrip event he had attended nearly a year and a half ago, right before his exile from the city. Feeling a little braver than he had the last time he spotted her, he went up to the booth and asked Mori Midori to play a
song for him:
When the ball finally dropped, ushering in the new year, Bailey kissed whoever was nearby that seemed receptive to his affection and not already partnered off. He may have done so more than once, if there were others nearby who looked alone and welcoming. He didn’t quite make it to sunrise, but the sky was definitely starting to lighten by the time he headed home.
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