Halloween Costume Series Day 11: Gypsy Girl’s White Tunic with Purple Embroidery, Violet-Blue Paisley Sash, and Pink and Purple Belled Full Skirt

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Violeta claims she makes up all her fortunes like everyone else and it’s not her fault there’s so much bad luck in this wicked world, but all the same her family won’t let her talk in the future tense. She can never get past “I will” or “Tomorrow” before one of her sisters tackles her and claps a hand over her mouth, none too gently either. They resent her because as the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the legendary gypsy mystic Simza, she was supposed to inherit the family powers, and since they were all brought into the world to facilitate her arrival there should have been some payoff for them. Instead, they switch off days shadowing her, protecting their family, their friends, for all they know the world from this lightning rod of misery, their uncanny and dangerous sister. Violeta floated the idea once of billing herself as a sort of goddess of curses, and her mother would have thought it a terrific joke for another of her daughters, Zora perhaps, to make up theatrical fake curses and fleece all those who sought to bring harm on others. Violeta, however, seemed to be at the mercy of some demon that hijacked her tongue when she foretold the future, and her mother had better sense than to try to profit off of such a thing. Even the fortunes she told that sounded positive brought only wretchedness. (Would that she had never told Carmen about that darkly handsome rich man!)

Forbidden contact with the future and silenced by the tender ministrations of her sisters, she pours her energy into other things, trying her best to walk straight on a twisted road. She paints and repaints intricate and vivid patterns on her family’s wagons, she knows all the names and uses of everything that grows in the forests, and she makes up wild, violent dances, stamping the ground with the intensity of a curse.

New poll, and rather a silly one. I drew from my Halloween pile, but all my paperdolls are potential warriors here, so if you want Calamity Jane’s trusty shotgun I’m not going to stop you.