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Dusk in Fabulous
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Could be better but still not bad.

She hangs a light from an overhead branch - her spot is basically a tent, now, not just a hammock, she put up sheets of fabric before she tried the lamp at all - and gets back to that idea she had last night for making the stars on her outfit glow. The magic won't do it, but she's seen Christmas lights before, maybe she can rig something up indirectly. She doesn't want to be tethered to the tree, that obviously doesn't work, but maybe she can get outlets and wires that are small enough to put on herself or her clothes.

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If she hides an outlet on her costume she can cartoon-light herself. The effect is... cartoony; the magic doesn't think it's pretty.

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Fair enough. She goes to change her gloves to have places for cartoon bulbs, anyway, so she can use them as flashlights without tying up her hands; while she's figuring out how to make that work, it occurs to her to check whether she can add a real Christmas light bulb, there, and a real wire and outlet, and have that work.

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Her clothing powers do not extend to adding trailing wires, let alone real outlets.

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- real bulb, though? Do a cartoon wire and outlet work with it?

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Eh, it was worth a shot.

That's killed a couple hours, but that only makes it afternoon, and she's not coming down from this tree until night... can she make a book?

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She can make a cartoon book full of gibberish. Its pages don't turn right; she can make it look like she's turning pages but can't get away from the apparent middle.

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Again, it was worth a shot.

She cleans up, and naps, and then fiddles with the editor a bit until the sun starts to set, trying different variants of things in her outfit to see if she can come up with anything the magic likes better.

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There are lots of small tweaks with small positive effects. If she tries a skirt that's a solid boost. She could also stand to put stuff in her hair.

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She wants to keep the pants but she can put a short translucent ruffly skirt over them and move the star gradient to it, that looks nice. She does eventually think to put a wide cloth headband in her hair, and then tries a ponytail briefly before going back to loose hair and adding alternating indigo and orange ribbons to the headband to move with it.

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The headband doesn't help. Maybe the magic thinks it clashes with antennae. It prefers her hair down to a ponytail. The ribbons don't help.

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She's not married to the antennae; does it prefer headband-no-antennae to antennae-no-headband?

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Antennae are preferred.

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She'll stick with what she has, then, it's not obvious that she could add anything without cluttering things up too much - blue-silver streaks, maybe, if she's careful about where she puts them; framing her face?

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That's good!

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Cool.

How's the park looking, is it empty enough for it to be safe for her to come down yet?

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Somebody's emptying the trash cans.

After that the park is empty.

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Time to go, then. She avoids the school; the gas station is presumably still open, but if it happens to be closed she'll stop in for something to eat, and otherwise she just heads out, in roughly the same direction as yesterday, avoiding people as well as she can and keeping an eye open for meal opportunities.

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The gas station is indeed still open.

There's a poster with a picture of her on a telephone pole.

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That's not great. What does it say?

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It gives her name, and says she's missing as of yesterday's date, and has a number to call.

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She tears it down and takes it with her. Tears down the next few, too, until she realizes that she'll leave a trail that way. Sets off perpendicular to her path until she's found and removed a few more, then turns back the way she was going.

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She's not very recognizable as the girl in the poster, anyway.

Synagogue daycare bakery bodega pet shop bike store massage parlor.

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...bikes exist, right. She's never ridden one, but maybe it's not too hard to pick up, and maybe a cartoon bike will be easier than a real one. Next time she sees a park she gives it a try. (She gives herself a helmet before she gets on, modeled after the ones on the bike shop's signs, with sparkly indigo foam and an outer shell that matches her shirt, clouds and all; she adjusts the shape of her antennae to sit right at the base of the shell.)

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