Chapter Text
Shizuha covered the leaf in red paint. She flicked her brush over its surface for a few seconds, then stopped to examine her work. After a second, she grabbed a brush with a bit of yellow paint on it, and dabbled the yellow pigment over the red.
Once Shizuha was satisfied with her work, she set the leaf aside, and grabbed another one. For once, the goddess' work room was mostly empty. There were just two bags next to her painting table, one for unpainted leaves, and one for the finished products.
The bag of unpainted leaves was almost empty. Shizuha's work was almost done. The only problem was that it was still early August. She'd finished all of her work for this autumn several weeks early.
It was still muggy at night, and the days were either hot or marked by daily thunderstorms. It was not autumn, it did not feel like autumn. If Shizuha tried to turn the leaves red now, it would cause an incident.
Shizuha leaned back and groaned. Without the distraction of painting leaves, how would she cope with the wait for September? She set her brush aside, stood up, and headed out of her work room.
Shizuha looked around the house until she found her sister. Minoriko was engrossed in her own godly duties, inspecting an apple with a magnifying glass.
“Minoriko,” Shizuha said.
Minoriko didn't look up from her apple. “Yes?”
“I'm out of leaves to paint. Do you have any more?”
“No. Didn't you paint like a million of them?”
“Yeah, and now I'm out of unpainted ones.”
“That's good.”
“It would be if it wasn't still summer.”
“So? Just go read a book... or why don't you go paint something else? There are these little figurines I saw-”
“I have something more ambitious in mind. I need to expand my field.”
“Expand your field? Like you want to change your domain as a goddess? Like how Kanako's trying to become some sort of tech god?”
“No, I just want to expand it.”
“What exactly do you want to do?”
“I want to spread out to more autumnal things.”
Minoriko put the apple down. “You aren't planning on becoming a harvest goddess, are you?”
“No, I want to do a holiday, too.” Shizuha leaned closer to her sister. “You know, a fall holiday.”
“What, like back to school day?”
“No.”
“The autumn equinox? Sports day?”
“Not that... Come on, what's the big one?”
Minoriko paused for a moment. “The day when all the stores start putting Christmas stuff out?”
“No! Halloween, duh! Why didn't you think of that?”
Minoriko raised an eyebrow. “You want to be the god of Halloween?”
“Yes! Who wouldn't?”
“But you're not scary.”
“I don't have to be scary! It's a kids' holiday!”
“You have to be at least a little creepy.”
“I can do that.”
“How?”
“Well...” Shizuha's voice trailed off.
“Have you thought about running a haunted house?”
“A haunted... house?” Shizuha paused to mull over Minoriko's words. “Yes! A haunted house... Wait, where would we set that up?”
“Not here.”
“Moriya... no. Maybe the human village has space?” Shizuha put her hand to her chin. “But that's just the first step. What are we even going to put in there?”
“I think I know someone who can help us.”