A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
You hear the voice one beat before the speakers do.
It's 11:40 p.m. on the harbor, and the breakdown has the whole crowd suspended. A synth pad hangs in the wet air like mist that forgot to fall. Thousands of hands rise. Thousands of mouths open, waiting for the vocal, the line every trance kid on this waterfront knows by heart.
Someone sings it first.
One voice, somewhere behind you, high and clear and close enough to touch, landing on the first word a heartbeat early. Then the speakers catch up, the whole field roars the line at the sky, and the voice is gone beneath it.
The hair lifts along your arms.
You turn. Flags everywhere: country flags, fan-group flags, a bedsheet painted with two enormous white wings, all of them snapping and sagging in the salt wind. Between two poles, for half a second, you see a hood. A long cloak in the exact periwinkle of your own, white flourishes curling down the back like frost lace on a window.
Then the fog rolls in off the water, and the cloak walks into it.
✦
You go after it.
The crowd is warm and damp and smells of sea salt, glitter and somebody's vanilla body spray. Kandi rattles on wrists as people part for you. A girl in fur leg-warmers catches your hand mid-stride and runs the handshake with you, peace sign to peace sign, half a heart to half a heart, palm to palm, fingers laced: peace, love, unity, respect. Then she lets you go, laughing.
The breakdown climbs. A hundred and thirty-eight beats a minute, rising.
And there it is again. The voice. Singing the second verse a breath ahead of the speakers, like someone who can't wait for the good part.
You push toward it. The flags close around you like a forest in a gale, nylon slapping your cheek, a pole knocking your shoulder. You pull your hood up against the damp, and the fleece folds over your ears in sudden, total warmth, and for one moment the voice is right there, inside the hood with you.
You break through the last row of flags.
No periwinkle. Only a bare flagpole planted in the grass, and caught on it, swinging, a kandi cuff. Pony beads in blue and white, with four letter beads strung in the middle.
N. E. L. L.
"Nell!" you shout into the fog.
The voice stops.
✦
Without it, the night tilts.
The music is behind you now, a pulse trembling in the wet asphalt. Ahead, the festival thins into harbor: wet asphalt, string lights haloed in mist, the smell of diesel and kelp and cold iron. Somewhere out in the white, a foghorn groans so low you feel it in your teeth.
Then the fog thins, breath by breath, and the ship is there.
An old ocean liner, longer than the whole festival, three funnels rising into the mist, rows of portholes glowing gold like a city that went to sea and decided to stay. Her bow looms over the water. Beneath it, the harbor breathes, black and slapping at the pilings.
Two ravers sit on a bench wrapped in one flag, sharing a single pair of LED gloves, one glove each.
"Did someone in a blue cloak come past?" you ask. "Singing?"
The one on the left tilts their head. "An angel? Babe, everyone's an angel at this one."
The one on the right squints into the fog. "Although," she says, "the gulls went quiet a minute ago. The gulls never go quiet."
You turn the kandi over in your fingers. The beads are warm. Warmer than your skin, warmer than anything should be at 52 degrees in harbor fog.
Across the water, faint now, the breakdown reaches its peak, that suspended instant before the drop.
And from the far end of the pier, under the liner's bow, the voice begins to sing.
✦
You run the length of the pier, planks booming under your boots, fog beading on your hood like cool silk.
They're standing at the rail at the very end, facing the ship, hood down. The periwinkle cloak lifts and settles in the wind, and in the glow of the portholes the white flourishes and flower-of-life curls on the back look less like a print than something grown there. Frost lace. A cathedral window lit from behind in blue.
They're singing to the water. Not loud. Every word arrives a beat before the faraway speakers, so the whole harbor seems to answer them.
The song ends. The drop rolls across the water like a tide coming in.
They turn. Fog-wet lashes, dark eyes, a face that catches the liner's gold as if there's a light switched on behind it.
"You found her bracelet," they say.
"I thought it was your name."
"It's my sister's." They lift it from your palm, and their fingers are warm, impossibly warm. "Nell sang this song a beat early. Every time. In the car, in the shower, at her graduation while the whole gym stared. She said she was giving the words a head start, so they'd get where they were going first."
The foghorn sounds. They wait for it to finish.
"She strung this in her last week. In a hospital bed, with our tickets to this taped to the wall where she could see them." A small laugh, cracked with salt. "I couldn't sing a note back then. So I learned. Every word, her way. Somebody has to keep singing it early."
Their eyes drop to your cloak: the same periwinkle, the same frost lace curling down your back. Something moves across their face.
"She picked out mine," they say. "Said it was the closest thing to wings anyone sells." A pause, soft as the fog. "Then she picked yours too."
You will never know if they meant it as a joke.
✦
They hold up the kandi. "She'd want it traded. That's the whole point." They run the handshake with you, the way the girl on the dance floor did, and on the last word the kandi slides from their fingers onto your wrist, beads clicking. Peace. Love. Unity. Respect. Their fingers stay laced in yours.
The fog has closed behind you. The pier is an island now. Water knocks against the pilings, and the portholes' gold trembles on the waves.
"Can I?" they ask, close enough that the words land warm on your lips.
"Yes."
The kiss tastes of salt and night air, and then of nothing but them. Somewhere across the harbor the bass is still going, and you stop hearing it. Your hood slides back. Their hand finds the nape of your neck, warm as a mug on a cold morning.
They draw their zipper down, slow, and open the cloak, and the heat of them pours into the damp. You open yours. Fleece meets fleece. Their heartbeat against your chest runs one beat ahead of yours.
You let it lead.
Whether they walked out of the fog or came down out of it, you never ask. The foghorn sounds, long and low, the mist rolls over the rail, the ship's lights blur to embers, and the last thing the harbor sees is two cloaks of the same blue light closing around each other like one window, whole.
The cloaks at the end of the pier
Both cloaks come from Magus Fawn, and together they make the matching rave outfit for couples this story ends in: the Blue Cosmic Flower of Life women's festival cloak ($250) and the Blue Cosmic Flower of Life men's festival cloak ($250) carry the same visionary art: periwinkle, sky blue and white symmetrical flourishes and flower-of-life curls, airy as frost lace. The Flower of Life is the sacred-geometry pattern of overlapping circles, long read as everything connected to everything, which is exactly how a trance breakdown feels from the middle of the crowd.
- Women's cloak: micro-mink outer · ultra-soft fluffy microfiber fleece lining in black or white faux fur · listed fabric weight 200 g/m² · double front zipper · heavy drawstrings · four pockets (two interior stash pockets, one zippered, plus two deep side pockets) · unisex fit, XS–5XL.
- Men's cloak: the same spec and the same Blue Cosmic Flower of Life art, also unisex fit in XS–5XL, so a matching pair comes down to size, not label.
Find your own pair: women's cloaks · men's cloaks · hooded blankets.
What do you wear to a trance festival?
Wear something that shines and something that warms. Magus Fawn's take on a trance festival outfit is pastel or electric-blue sparkle for the dance floor, kandi stacked on both wrists, and a hooded festival cloak for the hours after midnight, when waterfront nights turn damp. Trance runs on euphoria, so celestial, angelic prints fit the music.
- The trance dress code: sequins, holographic and iridescent fabric, glitter and rhinestones, LED gloves and flow toys, fur leg-warmers (fluffies) and platform shoes, in pastels and electric blue.
- PLUR and kandi: bring extra kandi cuffs to trade with the PLUR handshake. The trance family takes it to heart, and half the friendships on the floor start with one bracelet.
- Flags and capes: country and fan-group flags wave over every trance crowd, and on a cold night plenty of ravers wear theirs as a flag cape.
- Matching rave outfits for couples: two cloaks in one print read as a pair across thousands of people, which makes finding each other after the drop wonderfully easy.
- Harbor nights: damp marine air feels cooler than the number on your phone, so zip up on the walk between stages and open the cloak once you're dancing.
For real-world trance nights, Dreamstate SoCal fills the Queen Mary waterfront in Long Beach each late November, with damp harbor nights of 50–55°F; EDC Las Vegas gives trance its own quantumVALLEY stage in mid-May at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where 70–80°F nights still turn breezy around 4 a.m.; and Countdown NYE mixes trance with bass and house at the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino on Dec 31–Jan 1, with nights of 40–45°F.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cold at Dreamstate at night?
Cool and damp more than cold. Dreamstate SoCal runs in late November on the Queen Mary waterfront in Long Beach, where nights sit around 50–55°F and the harbor air clings to skin and sparkle fabric alike. Dance in your shine, then zip a fleece-lined hooded cloak over it between sets and for the walk out.
What should I bring to Dreamstate?
Bring a flag or kandi to trade, comfortable shoes for hours on the dance floor, ear protection, a refillable water bottle if allowed, and a warm layer for damp harbor nights around 50–55°F. A fleece-lined hooded cloak zips over sparkle outfits between sets, and its four pockets keep essentials close without a bag.
What does PLUR mean at raves?
PLUR stands for Peace, Love, Unity, Respect, the rave-culture code that trance crowds hold especially close. It lives in the PLUR handshake: peace signs, a shared heart, palms pressed flat, then laced fingers while a kandi bracelet slides across. Bring extra kandi to Dreamstate or any trance night, because trading it is how strangers become festival family.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 on Etsy (4.7★ from 144 reviews as of October 2026) and here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
0 comments