Coping with the Broomstick Ban

So, I finally got this finished. And I was going to wait until Halloween was a bit closer, but I know a couple of people were keen to see this when I mentioned Manassa, so...voila

I had such a blast with this that it's not even funny.

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Show: Hallows Eve HARPG Event
Host:
Stable: Lakewood Farm
Horse: Syn's Palabra Tácita
Rider: Avery Synclare
Class: Costume Class
Setting: One of Lakewoods fields; night-time.

No, Manassa has not sprouted wings. They're fake. More on that later

The rest of the costume:

Ava's in an asymmetrical skirt patterned with cats and edged with fire effect fabric over a mesh like layer. She has striped sleeves and stockings, a star-embroidered, velvet corset and matching boots and hat.

Manassa's bridle is simple enough, but he has purple reins and a Bat browband. There's herb/potion/hex bags hanging from the reins (nothing really in them, so it doesn't weigh on his mouth) and a fake cauldron is fastened over his back. Some of his mane and tail plaits are decorated with Halloween beads; bats and a pumpkin.

The board over his neck reads 'Coping with a Broomstick Ban'.

....

And for Ava's home, think this: www.examiner.com/images/blog/E…

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The huge iron wrought gates slid open electronically with a faint clanking sound, into the stone pillars that framed the entrance drive to Avery's home. The school bus was already moving off down the road. At first, there would be rows of faces pressed right to the windows as Ava's school mates stared in astonishment at the sprawling mansion her family owned, but now they were used to her, and no one looked back. She did, in fact, own a car, but many of the kids she went to school with didn't yet have one, so she preferred to take the bus with them.

Harold, their groundskeeper, looked up from an impeccably maintained bed of plants with seed cases that looked like miniature jack o'lanterns. Avery knew which plants weren't supposed to be in Manassa's field but she didn't know garden plants quite like her mother did.

"Afternoon, Ava," Harold called out, smiling as he pushed off his little wheelbarrow. A flat cap sat over his wispy greying hair and he had a green quilted gardening jacket on. A thick pair of gloves stuck out of one of the pockets.

Ava waved to him, shrugging her backpack higher on her shoulder. She glanced back to make sure the gates were sliding closed again on the quiet, bowed road of Sycamore Lane, and started the trek up the white paved drive to the house.

Their house was a country style, three floor mansion, set back from the road by the driveway that curled around the gardens and ended in a circle before the main door, with two side branches; one to their garage, and the other to the stables. It was made from old stone; mostly pale grey, but the occasional rose hued one had been worked into the walls. Slanted roofs jutted out here, there and everywhere, over white edged windows that were dotted all over.

Ava slid a glance across to the stables. It was actually a sort of open barn attached directly to the house and made from matching stone; an aisle ran the length of it, from the path at the front through to the back where the fields spread out. That was the one thing Ava missed about stabling Manassa at Lakewood Farm; she could no longer come home from school and take a detour through the stable to see him. But it was better this way; he had more interaction through the day and Ava herself had more chance to make friends. She'd never felt like she fitted anywhere as easily as she fitted at the crazy little Farm.

She checked the time on the watch face on the inside of her wrist. Four o'clock. One of the gang would have just brought Manassa in from the field. She had half an hour to say hi to her mum, get changed, and drive down to the Farm.

She raced up to the front door, plucking her keys from her pocket as she went. She let herself in to the sunlit, spacious hallway. Blinding natural light poured through from their huge kitchen beyond, and a set of wide shining stairs curved elegantly around the edge of the room, rising to a galleried landing above. Right by the door was a blue, doorbell-like button. Ava pressed down on it.

'Hi, I'm home!" A cheerful, female voice said, ringing through embedded speakers. The voice was human, but not anyone that Ava or her family knew.

"Hi, Honey!" came a reply from beyond the hall.

Ava hoisted up her bag again and followed the sound of her mother's voice. There were other buttons just like that blue one in the house; Her mother had gotten them installed for her to make her home life easier when she stopped speaking.

Her mother was preparing a stir fry in the kitchen. Diane was a wonderful woman, Ava had always thought. She was a little unique; she loved art and painting and had sold a few pieces for good prices, even though her job often had her working early hours. She would come home in pressed skirts, blouses and tall heels and in ten minutes be in a pair of paint splattered overalls and wellington boots while she went to fetch in the pony or make after school snacks. She was digging through cupboards, her auburn red hair twisted back and held with a silver fork from the cutlery drawer. They used to joke that her mother was a real life little mermaid, when Ava was a child.

"How was school?" she asked, smiling brightly as she shuffled through a tray of spices.

Ava nodded, smiling back.

"Good," Diane said. "Your dad's meeting finished early so he bailed at the office. He'll be home by five. I thought we'd do dinner at 6:30. Does that give you enough time to see Nassa?"

Ava quickly calculated the time in her head. If she left in fifteen minutes, she'd be at the Farm by half four. Two hours was plenty. They could even go on a quick hack. She nodded again.

Diane beamed. "Lovely. Have you got much homework?"

She shook her head. It was the end of the week but their english teacher was going on maternity leave so she'd let them all off and their science teacher...well, after what happened with the fume cupboard when Timothy Hutton accidentally tossed a matchstick in it, they'd all evacuated the room too quickly to get homework assignments.

"Well, I have to send off a couple of reports - I wish the office would leave me alone on my days off - so I'll go do that now." Diane slipped around the kitchen island and gave Ava a one armed hug. "See you later, Darling. Give Nassa a hug for me."

Ava nodded as her mother hurried off and then turned back, jogging up the stairs in the entry hall and to her room. It was at the end of a corridor on the third floor, up a spiral staircase. It was a large, airy space, with slants cut into the walls and thick rugs littering the plush carpet. A huge bay window sat across from the door, looking out over the side of the house towards the stable, and her double bed stood facing out into the room from the right.

Jinx was asleep on her rocking chair. Jinx was a sleek black cat with a habit of appearing where you least expected him but he was quite fond of most of the chairs in the house. He was supposed to be an active mouser, but with no mice or rats to speak of, he'd contented himself with being an active scrounger. His luminous golden eyes could get people to part with almost any titbit of food at the dinner table.

Ava ditched her back pack and crossed to her cupboards, digging for a change of clothes but before she could get far, her phone beeped in her bag. She quickly threw a clean shirt down on the bed and riffled between her textbooks for her mobile. A text message had come through from Becca, at the Farm.

Check your e-mails. Hope you can come!

Curious, Ava crossed to her built in cupboard and pulled back the folding doors, revealing not clothes or storage, but a workspace tucked inside. A desk and chair fitted easily in the walk-in space, and still left room for a bookcase, saddle stand and small chest of drawers. The drawers were filled with all sorts - from discarded dandy brushes to new hacking quarter sheets, still in the packaging. Manassa's bareback pad sat on the saddle stand, since she no longer used it, and on top of it was a small, beaten up saddle that used to belong to their little pony, Oreo. She powered up the laptop on the desk as she changed clothes and then sat down to check through her messages.

There was an e-mail from the school, reminding them about their teacher's maternity leave; one from the dentist, reminding of the usual check up, and the third was from Lakewood's e-mail address, titled simply 'Event flyer'. She clicked it.

It was a Halloween costume show.

Avery quickly scrolled through the details, already with an idea forming and wanting to check it would be allowed. Seeing nothing against it, she hastened to text Becca back that she would be there for the event and that she'd be up soon anyway. Minutes later she had packed up, grabbed the bag she took to Lakewood every day, and left her room again, jinx still asleep on the rocking chair.

Diane was on the phone in the drawing room as she passed, so Ava just waved through the doorway rather than interrupt. She slid through their utility room and into the stable from the side door. Of their four looseboxes, only one was in use. They only had three horses and Manassa was away; Herbie, Diane's old medicine hat gelding was out in the field still, but a little silver black shetland cross pony had its fuzzy head craned over the lowered door. They had only had Oreo a few years; originally intended as a companion pony. His taffy mane fell into his eyes and a small pink diamond mark stood out between his nostrils.

Ava gave him a pat and handful of haylage before racing through the front entrance, across the driveway and to the garage.

Her little white car was parked by her mother's Mercedes inside the large structure, but Ava bypassed it for a moment, heading for the locked workshop at the back. She keyed in the number on the pad and let herself in. The work bench in the room beyond was clear, but an assortment of tools, bolts and wood offcuts littered the countertop at the far side. There was a radio buried somewhere in the mess that was almost always pounding out country music if her dad was working out there. It was full of shadows, the only light from a high window at the back, but it was on the wrong side of the garage to be of much use at this time of day.

In the far corner, a huge crate sat on the floor. It was nearly the length of an average bed; two feet high and three feet wide. Ava lifted the lid and slid it back with an ease that spoke of practice, delving in the silk wrappings under it until her fingers touched something not satiny, but downy.

An excuse to use these again was just what she wanted.

Carefully, she lifted the contents from the crate. They were lighter than they looked, but solid and strong in her hands. They had a huge reach when stretched wide, and all the feathers arranged along the aluminum and fabric framework were real; the same champagne mottled colour of Manassa's main coat, with feathers on the inside arch dyed individually to represent the other two chimeric colours in him.

Ava stood back, a smile bursting onto her face in the gloom of the workshop, as she gazed at the gigantic pair of angel's wings laid before her, catching the weak light from the high window on the tips of the feathers.

A winged horse was a good alternative to a broomstick in a Halloween show, right?

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Since this is Avery and Manassa, I thought I'd tailor the story a little to Avery's life. I know a few people were interested by her, so hopefully this ticked a few boxes

So. The wings . Avery loves Halloween, but she's fond of costume classes in general; anything a little creative and out of the norm. So, what with having wealthy parents, she had a pair of fake wings commissioned for her for Christmas one year. A little man in the middle of nowhere made them in his workshop, carefully dying the feathers and matching the wings to the pictures of Manassa he'd been given. They were shipped privately to the Synclare's home and when Avery went down to see Manassa on Christmas morning, she found him in the yard with wings on his back.

They're not nearly fully functional. They have seams under the feathers so you can access the framework, and a number of hinges allow the wings to collapse down somewhat naturally, but they don't flap or actually aid flight. They're padded at the base so they don't rub, and they fix to the horse via an elastic surcingle girth.

I just freaking love them. So much fun... I know the feathers aren't perfect, though. I got the primaries and secondaries, but the wing arm is just this fluffy shapeless thing - in my defence, that's because it has to hide padding, hinges and framework, because the wings are fake There are, however, the same number of feathers in each wing. I counted before I finalised the lineart

And the rest of that costume - I just had so much fun doing it all, from the Bat browband to Avery's hat.

I may yet shade it for kicks, too.

Anyway, I need sleep, so I'm going. And lets see some more entries for the costume class, folks!

Time - lost count. Hours over the last three days or so.
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