Epona Halloween fluff

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Epona loved Halloween. It was, she sometimes thought, her favourite holiday of the year. Oh, Christmas had its appeal as well, and Beltane was always fun (although she was never sure it was healthy to spend a fertility festival with one’s grandfather) but Halloween/Samhain was undoubtedly her favourite.

This Halloween, admittedly, was not going to be as good as last year. Last year she had had Kael with her, and this year he was very far away, and Epona was unsure where. She didn’t like to admit it, but she missed him like crazy. She always did when he wasn’t around. Still, it would be a good evening, she was sure of that.

At some point, she suspected, her family obligations would kick in and she’d be expected to attend some kind of Samhain celebration, which featured actual religion. Epona, who was pagan in the same way that most people were CofE, wasn’t particularly looking forward to that, but accepted it as a valid part of the celebration. There would be a bonfire at least, and normally Peace could be relied upon to provide some hot chocolate later on.

Then, once she’d paid her dues to the traditions of the ancients (or at least the traditions laid down by the 19th century occultists and scholars of folklore, who, Epona felt, had as much right to invent their own religion as any 1st century Nazarite) she could settle down to the much more important business of celebrating Halloween.

At home in Wales, in front of the caravan, she’d been hanging a variety of ghoulish looking objects from the trees. Paper ghosts and goblins danced in the breeze, and she had invested a great deal of time in trying to work out how to produce green smoke for the camp fire. She’d peeled apples and discovered, slightly to her disappointed, that she looked unlikely to marry Kael and was instead going to marry someone who’s name began with some kind of arcane squiggle, according to the apple peel (and she ignored her father’s amused eyebrow when he dropped by and found her doing this). She made home cooked toffee apples, which she took into her capoeira glass and inflicted them on all her students, and she even made a large horse shaped piñata which was now hanging up before the caravan looking slightly scared and waiting for the end of its short but colourful existence.

She had also been painting rocks, slowly and carefully. In ancient times, she’d once been told, there had been human sacrifices made. In time this had faded away, but in the old Celtic lands, people had lain rocks down instead to represent the sacrifices that once would have been made. Hundreds of years ago, each man and woman would lay down a stone to represent themselves by the bonfire and in the morning, if it was displaced, they knew that they would not live out the year.

Epona never did that. Instead she painted rocks to represent those who had sacrificed themselves already; those who had died. She painted rocks for her cabal, for her mother and grandmother. She painted them with love and affected and let them sit by the fire all night long, just so for a while she could believe that they were with her again. And then, when midnight came, they would all go into the fire.

She did this because Halloween was not just a festival of toffee apples and piñata. She did this because Halloween was, after all, a celebration of the blurring of life and death, and a time when that which was meant to be scary was celebrated. It was a time when you embraced the darkness and made it glorious and colourful and Epona approved of that wholeheartedly.

She also approved of remembering the dead. She approved of bringing them home once in a while and letting them know that you still cared. But she also approved of letting them go.

The October air was sharp and brisk. The bees were long gone now, and the chickens huddled indignantly in their hen house. The foxes had been prowling around recently and Epona had lost four chickens before she’d given up on subtle magic and set her trees to aggressive watch over the hens. The night came early and soon it would come earlier soon, and that, in and of itself made Epona smile. She liked the night and the way it changed the world around her.

Halloween was really truly coming, Epona thought. She could feel it in the earth, feel it in the air. Halloween would be here soon and after that she’d have the winter to settle somewhere and wait for Kael. She had hopes he’d be home for Christmas, and that would be enough of a gift for her. The very thought of it made her cheer up even if it was a shame that he wouldn’t be home for Halloween. For Halloween was, after all, her very favourite time of year.