pumpkinhollow (
pumpkinhollow) wrote2024-07-21 01:43 pm
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July Mini Event - Seaside Sway
Pumpkin Hollow Community Bulletin
It’s the end of July. Summer is peaking, hitting its stride. In the forest, frogs sing and fireflies dance through the night, and dragonflies go about their business in the sun. In town, farmers roll up their sleeves and young ladies swap out their many layers for breezy floral gowns. And on the beach, swimmers take to the sea for water at its warmest and young crabs climb up from the sun-drenched sand. Kora’s glory at its finest!For about a week now, a flier has been up on the community bulletin board. :
Midsummer Beach Festival!
Join us on July 21st and 22nd for our annual beach bash! Organized by the Temple of Sacred Roots in tandem with Town Hall, all townsfolk are invited to join in for seaside festivities in honor of the height of summer. Activities will include:
- Live music (Sign-ups for performers will be available at Empty Pockets Music Bar)
- Locally made strawberry wine from last summer’s strawberries
- Beach pit barbecues for lunch on both days
- A hot food banquet for dinner on the 21st
- A fish fry breakfast on the 22nd
- Paper lantern float
- Beach games
- Tents and bed rolls for beach camping
And, as promised, the festival opens up on the afternoon of July 21st, where the smell of barbecue rises up from Tawny Beach. Tables sit on wooden plinths to avoid sinking in the sand, bearing fresh summer fruit and drinks. Pork, fish, and lamb roast in a sand pit. Enchanted barrels covered in magic frost keep frozen treats like orange juice shaved ice and strawberry sorbet cold. A station for assembling little wood-and-paper floating lanterns can be seen off in the distance and Cormac and the Banshees are setting up for their opening set. Tents and bed rolls have been set up toward the Marina. Literally everything is decorated with thin golden coins on strands of twine, sea shells, and sea glass. In the center of it all, stones have been laid into the shape of a massive compass rose, whose center houses the makings of a bonfire.
Those who were here last year will recognize that this festival is much larger than last year’s, and was not preceded with desperate pleas from Town Hall for help providing food and decor. It speaks plainly to the health of the town now. Even with all that has been going on, the growing population and renewed sense of community and purpose have improved matters around the island considerably.
Near the tent area, a family of crabs (one red, one blue, and three purple) can be observed. The small purple ones are poking each other with sticks. The Limoncello has made port, and Royal and his crew are splitting helper duty with the staff of Town Hall, and are dancing and partying the rest of the time. All is as it should be. For once, there is no dangerous surprise lurking in the shadows.
So, what’s on your agenda? During the day, volleyball, swimming, and a game that involves throwing small fabric sacks of dry lentils into wooden hoops in the sand can be enjoyed, alongside a plethora of frozen treats. At night, food and wine and lemonade are served at the banquet tables and lively music plays on the temporary wooden stage for dancing by firelight. There is also the lantern float, which encourages participants to send a glowing lantern out on the water in honor of the lost and the distant, ending the first night in a moment of peaceful sobriety. You may also notice a charming stranger milling around, cozying up to Royal, and drinking after nightfall--- a woman with dark olive skin, raven hair that soaks up the firelight, and rum brown eyes who wears a billowing blue dress and (whenever she hasn’t placed it onto someone else’s head for fun) a wide-brimmed black hat.
Then, at night, camp on the beach under the stars or head home by additional lantern light. The festivities will continue until the following afternoon! Feel free to share your beach fit in the fashion show thread below, as well. Enjoy!
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By now, he knows the gist of what Ms. Birnbaum can and can't do. Sometimes it feels like she's gotta follow more rules than the army, but if there's one thing Radar knows how to do, it's learn all the regs inside and out and make sure everybody's got what they need.
He takes a sip of his wine. "You building anything in particular?"
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She surveys her incomplete work with both satisfaction and calculation. "You know what I might do," she says, "is make a paved path. If there's enough good pebbles for it."
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Okay, it's not that far, but who knows what might happen to an unattended sandcastle. He rubs his chin, thinking.
"What about seashells? I seen a lot of broken ones around, and I could go swim to find more."
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She gets to her feet with more efficiency than grace, and dusts some of the sand off her caftan -- a losing battle, she's perfectly aware. "Seashells might be nice too, now that you mention it."
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"Depends on the beach," she says. "Some have really got barely any stones at all, just sand. And some barely any sand, just rocks. Here we are ..."
She crouches and comes up with a handful of mixed sand and pebbles, some smaller than her pinky fingernail. "Oh, perfect. These tiny ones, see?"
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As he brushes a little of the sand aside, he reveals a minuscule seashell no bigger than the pebbles. It could fit on Radar's thumbnail with plenty of room to spare.
"Wow, look. Can you imagine a clam that small?"
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He nudges the shell just enough to flip it. "Aw," he says, a little disappointed, "just a half. But we gotta save it with the pebbles and pick a good place to use it."
No way can they drop something that neat back into the water.
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Crouching to pick up another handful of stones as she speaks, and she'll swish them briefly in the incoming wave like a prospector panning for gold.
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(If this were Korea, or Japan, he'd put a few in an envelope and mail them home to his family. Wish you were here. Wish you could see this, too.)
Radar does locate a few more tiny shells eventually -- and a piece of blue seaglass, which prompts another soft oh! as he unearths it from the palmful of sand and rock.
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She grins at him approvingly. "Well spotted."
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"Yeah! I found it around here, c'mon -- "
He starts digging with renewed fervor close to where he found the sea glass.
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One last thing she snags before they head back: a ribbon of some kind of seaweed, bright green and rippled along one edge, trailing in the sand.
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They settle in back at Zivia's creation. Luckily (or unluckily, as time will eventually attest), Radar's wine cup is still there; he grabs it for another sip before he begins sorting through their treasures.
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That last is quite cheerfully said, as she starts lightly pressing a circular pattern into the front wall of the sandcastle's central rise.
"That was bigger than a castle really, we had a whole landscape stretching out. Roads, walls, tunnels ... we definitely got carried away."
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(And politely not agreeing with the bit about Zivia being old. At least not out loud. Fourteen years ago?! He was only five years old then! He wasn't even in kindergarten!!)
Having collected all the seaglass into one spot, he experimentally starts arranging it in a few different patterns, trying to figure out what'd look nice on the castle itself. "How'd you get all the tunnels to stay up? Every time I've tried digging something like that it's fallen down pretty quick."
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Abandoning the seaglass for a second, he scoots a little closer to Zivia, paying avid attention as she works. It's way more fun to dig this kind of thing than dig a latrine, for sure.