Once again, Kaat has set out to decorate for the holidays. There's tinsel and fake snow and colored lights, all in terrifying quantities. There's hot chocolate and frosted cookies in the shapes of snowmen. She's hung a banner reading "Happy Christmahayulwanzaa!"

There are even stockings, tons of them hung squished together on the mantle. She's determined to make one for each and every resident of the Mansion, although she's finally given up on individualizing them. Unfortunately, exhaustion seems to have overcome motivation, and Kaat lies curled up in front of the fireplace, a half-filled stocking clutched in her hand, a mostly-empty glass of heavily spiked apple cider sitting nearby.

The stockings themselves are mostly filled with the usual sorts of things -- chocolates, cute little stuffed animals, candy canes, etc. -- but many residents will find a more, er, adventurous sort of stocking stuffer, such as a little keychain flogger (handmade!) a cheapo vibrator, a sample packet of flavored lube, or something else of that sort.

Enjoy, folks.

A young lady in her mid-twenties enters the main room and after glancing about carefully, drops to the middle of the floor. She crosses her legs and reaches into the pocket of her jeans. In the blink of an eye, there are half a dozen children's books scattered on the floor in front of her. A notebook and pen appear in her hands as though out of thin air. A little magic never hurt anyone who was trying to travel lightly, now did it?

Bridget studies each of the books carefully before selecting one on dragons. What the casual observer might not notice at first is that the dragon on the cover of the book moves about freely as colorful sparks flow around it in spirals.

She's intent on her lesson planning, but is free to be interrupted by old friends, family, and random passersby.

Typist: Introducing the final Prewett!spawn, Bridget Aileen Prewett. She's about to turn 25 and teaches nursery school and tutors wizarding kids on the side. She should recognize pretty much anyone who went to Hogwarts the same time she was a student there.

The mansion's been fairly quiet lately, but that doesn't mean nothing's happened. Plenty has, and while most of it has passed without incident, not everything slips from memory so easily.

Something's happened to Castor Lestrange. That much is apparent as soon as one enters the kitchen. It may not be a surprise, exactly, to see a young man who's been living on the streets his whole life come to an end, but it doesn't make it any less of a shock.

Castor lies on the floor of the kitchen in a broad pool of his own blood, arms sliced cleanly open from the wrists to the elbows. A knife lies where he dropped it, a few feet away. His face is smeared with blood where it was rubbed in the puddle, and a trail of red footprints leads from Castor's body to the doorway, where they disappear.

There was no reason his killer should cover his tracks. It's not, after all, as if anyone would miss the little squib.

Typist: Hooray for twinly fratricide. >___>

It's been a long time. Over six months, in fact, since William Prewett was last here. In those few months, he has aged profoundly. Both his hair and a beard have been "allowed" to grow longer than he usually keeps them. While he has always had an athletic build, his muscles have hardened significantly. His face is thinner, as though he's lost the last of his "baby fat." There's a new scar -- faint, but definitely there -- just to the side of his left eye. If you look carefully, there's a small bruise on the left side of his face as well.

Will's once boyish and jokester nature is more subdued than it was before. He's still Will; his typical goodnaturedness is certainly still there, waiting to be called upon. However, an air of newfound maturity and seriousness surrounds it and for the last several months has served to keep his usual silliness at bay.

He looks conflicted as he lets go of the trunk he had been pulling and drops his duffel bag to the ground with a gentle thud. He glances around the room, feeling a strong sense of deja vu, before murmuring to himself, "Guess I'm home."

Typist: Will's back, and so am I! ^__^ The whole brood of McKinnon-Prewett spawn used to be here before, but were dropped after some typist personal issues. I'm back now, and am picking up with Will where we left off. Basically, he's been off doing intensive Auror training for the last several months and is home for a break now before he begins real work at the Ministry of Magic Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

He's there rather without appearing to have come: a dark young man of Mediterranean aspect, twenty-five or so, soberly dressed. He stands easily in the doorway with his arms folded, surveying the room cautiously.

Typist: This chatty lad is Leonato, offspring of Don John and Hero. He's mostly harmless.

A notice, pinned in a prominent place on the bulletin board:

Arcadio himself isn't exactly watching over the notice, but he is sitting nearby, sipping from a cup of coffee and contentedly reading a newspaper-- it's his break between projects, you see.

Typist: Er... yeah.  If your puppet is a filmmaker, a musician, a visual artist, an actor, or interested in becoming an adult actor, send 'em on over!  Or if they just want to chat up the pornographer, feel free to send them over too. :D

"...Ceri? Ceri, it's not funny anymore. You win, alright?" The young man who emerges from the bushes has a smudge on his nose, some leaves in his hair, and is just old enough to begin to get lanky. "...hello?" He frowns and looks around. "Shoot."


I couldn't resist. Pedr, Ceri's younger brother and the son of Peredur and Cimorene. He's about 13, but Ceri always forgets and thinks he's older. Or maybe she's just teasing. He can't always tell.

A skinny man -- well, boy, really, he's never seen himself as a man and probably never well -- clad in skinny jeans and a zip-up sweater wanders in cheerfully.  He's not coming through without purpose, though, because on his feet he's sporting a shiny new pair of pink Converse high-tops, complete with a black-and-white checkered tongue and a black skull and crossbones on the side.  He flops down somewhere and puts his feet up, on display, beckoning people to notice the fancy that is his feet.  All compliments can and will be accepted readily.

Typist: Oh lordy indeed.  Presenting Disgleirio, son of Tibbett and Avaric.  It's a long story, but you can ask him about if you want.

As anyone who's met him can attest, Dave's not one to stand on ceremony. Special occasions are few and far between for him, and he'll endure them rather than enjoy them. Holidays are a different matter-- he'll never pull out all the stops but he won't entirely miss the day either.

Since April 20th is a holiday, if you engage in certain activities, Dave's celebrating a little. It's nothing fancy, something easy to miss, but he's tossed his pack of Next cigarettes onto the couch next to him and is busily twirling a freshly-rolled marijuana joint between his fingers. He'll share if anyone would like.

So, Georges is sprawled across a couch, with a bottle of absinthe and a pile of papers nearby, writing rather busily. He's completely forgotten his birthday was yesterday; he looks like he hasn't gotten sleep in a few days. What can we say, when the muse finally appears, she arrives with a vengeance. (In other words, yes, he has been writing for two days.) Feel free to poke at him, insult him, or give him presents.

"Ma?" She looks up from her book, face wrinkled into a frown, and gets up, wiping dirt off her dress. There is always dirt on her dress, kind of the way her long red hair is always messily coming out of its braid, or the way she always smells like food.

"Ma? Da?" Hands on her hips, she looks around. "Pedr? Oh, shoot."

Ceri is the child of Sir Peredur and Princess Cimorene. She has inherited her father's hair, her mother's temper, and a sizable farm.

There is a daisy chain draped over the porch railing. Twice. And extending down several feet onto the lawn, terminating in Annuska, who is briskly tying more daisies on. Go on, ask her what she's doing.

It isn't a perfect day, but it is a beautiful one -- the sky is mostly blue and it's warm enough for comfort if one is dressed well. Joash Hawke took it upon himself to make this as good as possible; he's picked some small, grassy hill, dotted with wildflowers, and he's done his best to decorate it well without overdoing it. There are rows of chairs arranged on the flattest part of their location, placed so their occupants can all face in the same direction: toward the arch, made of what looks like intertwined vines (yes, yes), likewise dotted with carefully-placed flowers that's been set up in the front. There's a miniature bouquet of bluebells attached to the back of each chair, as well, because he's a little single-minded. Beyond that, there isn't much fuss -- there's a small table of refreshments, mostly sampler cups of red wine along with some cheese and crackers, and the grass is clipped down a little between two sections of the chairs to make something suitably like an aisle. A few hundred feet or so away, there's one of those temporary white tents for the groom and the other groom to prepare.

Oh, right. If you weren't aware, this is the day that Joash Hawke and Phlegethon (the angel) get married. The following people will have, a while back, received "save the date" cards and then formal invitations:

Gabriel (Phlegethon's father), Raphael (Phlegethon's other father), Gabriel (who's actually the one to marry the two of them), Raphael, Mephistopheles, Michael, Bael, Joffy Hawke, Ursula Hawke, Miles Hawke, Joffy Next, Anton Hawke-Next, Spike Hawke-Next, Anton Next, Phlegethon Hades, Alitheia Hades, Seraphina Hades, Xathanael Hades, Diomedes Hades, Erebus Hades, Meg Hades, Matthias Hades, Vincenzo Pendergast, Kaetelynne, and Milton. The invitations will also have asked them to bring any friends, significant others, or family they wished along.

Which means that they're not only wanted there, they're expected, really, and for the sake of this post, we'll assume that they arrived and that they brought others with them. At present, Joash and Phlegethon are hiding in that tent, waiting for the right time to walk down the aisle together.

( The ceremony itself, co-written by both of the typists. )

Whatever wing of the mansion that's nearest has been reserved for this purpose -- there are long tables of refreshments and Joash has emptied out a good portion of last year's savings into hiring a string quartet to play for them. Everyone invited is more than welcome to dance, listen, eat, and converse. For their part, Joash and Phlegethon will be alternately taking advantage of that music to dance and conversing quietly in a corner where they're easily accessible for said conversation.

And then there is Lena, in all her bright-colored glory. Possibly looking nervous. And shifting her weight from foot to foot.

Deciding that this is easier than telling people individually, she pins a piece of paper up.

Yeah, so. So you all know.
Dario Bosch and Lena Thropp-Cohen got married last weekend in Vegas.

And added in Dario's hand at the bottom, "Send presents"

Typist: It's scary, but true. This is what happens when you get too drunk and happen to be in Vegas, kids.

There's nothing to brighten the mood like another spawn of Satan.

No, really. Seriously. Don't you see the familial resemblance, and don't you see the quite literally bright clothing that he's wearing? You really can't miss the bright pink scarf draped around his neck. Then again, you might be distracted by the half-lazy, half-flamboyant way he's entering the room, or perhaps the cheerful smile he's giving the room at large (it really is a charming smile, distinctly friendly but with a mischievous hint to it), or the - well, there are a billion things about him that could be described, but there's one thing that's clear. If you had gaydar, it'd be going off like mad right about now.

In any case, he's there. And since he's there, it's time for entertainment and fun and debauchery, clearly, because glancing around with an expectant look, he leans back to stand on the heels of his feet, tucks his hands behind his back, and grins again at the room. "Hi," is all he says, and for all the world, he almost looks like a child expecting a treat from out of a cookie jar.

Humour him, please.

Typist: Chrysanthos Onoskelis Crocell Kypris-Satan, child of - well, Lucifer/Aphrodite. Call him Chrys. (And ignore the initials, that was the result of silliness.) But pay attention to the pretty, pretty PB! There's no way for Rufus to be the PB of someone who isn't flamingly gay, srsly.

In the evening of February 28th, a celebration of sorts took place. "Of sorts," we say, because it was only truly enjoyed by one party involved. That party just so happened to be one Eridanos Hades. The celebration? Why, there is no better reason to celebrate than for the selfish commemoration of one's own birth. And so, much like last year, his unwitting victims are to be found off of the main halls, this time purposefully moved from their original scenes of death and into a series of otherwise pristine rooms, like some gruesome form of traveling museum. Their murderer, of course, has left no physical traces of himself and is nowhere to be found.

( Continue for the aftermath, including the deaths of Eliot Finn, Anton Hawke-Next, Tori Hades and Pollux and Castor Lestrange. )

The smell of cigarette smoke precedes him, if not by much. Likely, whoever may be in the room is just starting to perk up, sniffing at the air and wondering where that's coming from, when he steps in, lowering the cigarette in question from his lips with two fingers, checking the clearly heavy and expensive wristwatch on his other arm as he does so.

He's tall, perhaps inevitably so, an inch or two over six feet, with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and a faintly amused expression on his face, which is composed of features simultaneously angular and quite attractive in a vaguely dangerous sort of way (say thank you to his parents). His hair is dark brown, just long enough to be artful about it, and slicked back from his face a little, likely just with a little gel and a sweep of his fingers; he has, somewhat conversely, got a grease-stained white T-shirt on under his much more formal black blazer, and while he's obviously polished his shoes, the toes are definitely and noticeably scuffed anyway.

His face doesn't betray any actual surprise when he glances up from this and notes that he's somewhere quite different from where he thought he would find himself, unless you count the little quirk of an eyebrow as surprise. Expression still unchanging, he puts out his cigarette against the inside of his wrist, apparently not registering any pain; only then does he give a slight, crooked smile. "Missed me?"

Typist: Finally finally, the last of the Aphrodite/Cocytus Hades/Ares spawn, also known as Alexandros.

A notice, placed prominently:

Seeking persons experienced in the field of magic, willing to offer points of instruction (and to do so discreetly).

Please contact Miss Louisa Strange.

The Miss Strange in question may be easily found. She dares not stray far, in hopes that she will receive a response.

The door swings open, rather abruptly, on a fair-haired young man with a sword in his hand and a determined expression. "Where's my sister?"

t: Lyonce is Gaenor's better more mature uh, other half. He takes after his papa. Oh dear.