#outsider-safe

Let's talk about how they celebrate Halloween at the Den!

Quick refresher: The Den (specifically the main Den in this context) is the central headquarters of the Healers on earth, as well as a sprawling underground city. It is located in the Raven region of (what our world calls) Tennessee in a long-dead volcano. Being a city, there are many places within the Den where creatures can live. Most who live here are Healers, but some outsiders also reside here for a variety of reasons.

Community gatherings are fairly frequent these days, and they're an absolute blast. Food, live music, the works. Anyone living in or visiting the Den at the time is welcome, Healer or outsider.

As you can imagine, Halloween in particular is a HUGE deal at the Den! They have a festival that begins a week before Halloween. The celebration ramps up every day, culminating in a gigantic party the day of Halloween itself.

A new addition to the celebration is a set of haunted house attractions around and within the Den. These were set up here after an... Incident just a few Halloweens ago. They range in their scariness from kid-friendly to genuinely terrifying. These are set up outside the Den itself, and it's encouraged for residents to bring guests here to check them out!

Trick-or-treating is a huge deal here, too. There are candy and treat stations dotted all over the Den, and you can get candies here that you can't find anywhere else! Everyone is allowed to trick-or-treat here; It's not restricted to just kids.

On top of the candies here being unique, there are cultivars of produce you can't find elsewhere, too. There's an orchard where all types of magically altered fruits are grown, including a type of green apple that's green all the way through. These apples taste much like artificial green apple flavor, but with more depth and balance, and they're perfectly juicy on top of that. They're used for making perfect caramel apples, and a spicy, shockingly neon green cider.

Healing is pretty strong magic, and it never shuts off. Even while the Healer sleeps, even when truly unconscious. It becomes an integral bodily process, like their heartbeat and their breathing. It never stops as long as they live.

Obviously, this uses lots of energy. Because of this constant energy use, Healers have to eat quite a bit more than outsiders of their same species. They eat bigger portions and eat more often than others tend to, given good conditions.

Healers are also blessed with more powerful and more attuned senses, including their senses of taste and smell. Good flavors in their food are amplified. They can even taste flavors that outsiders fully can't. You know those jokes about shrimp colors? That's what these flavors are like; an outsider can't even imagine them.

Fun real-life fact: You gain more nutrition from your food when you enjoy eating it. Look it up, it's true!

With all of these factors combined, I come to the main point of the post: Healers have their own cultural foods in places where they congregate across the world. This food is very calorically and nutritionally dense, and also incredibly flavorful. If an outsider were to eat this food, they would likely need only half or even a quarter of the portion that a Healer would need of the same dish.

I just find it neat.