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pumpkinhollow) wrote2024-07-21 01:43 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote2024-07-21 01:43 pm
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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Speaking the latter's name makes John smile--a reflex he can't control.
"And sure, we were brought here for a reason, but...she gave us a choice. Life isn't for everyone--sometimes the end can be a blessing. The fact we weren't forced to come here, says something about these goddesses. They're kind. They'll make good on their word, and they'll pull those strings."
Though for a moment, seeing that image Gaeta conjures--if he'd been in the military just a few decades earlier, he probably would have ended up in front of a firing squad of his own for his nervous breakdown. The idea that something like that could have happened to Gaeta...
"They'll make it right." he finishes, looking into Gaeta's profile, the extra weight there in his words.
You'll live. You'll be free. You'll beat whatever put you in front of that firing squad.
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"I'm sure they will," he mutters, not sounding like he really believes it, but willing to play along for the moment. (Sometimes, even Gaeta needs to let himself have a little hope.) "But with all due respect, sir, don't tell me there's some great cosmic mystery to the way the gods work. I'm not a fan of leading by prophecy and scripture."
He gestures to the distant lanterns again.
"That's why we spent four years chasing after a planet that was DOA. The 'mysterious ways' of the gods got us frak-all."
CW: mentions (non graphic) of child abuse
"They say 'God helps those who help themselves'...well, that's not faith. It's true." John finally replies. "And if you don't have that kind of faith, but you're still doing stuff like this? The lanterns on the water? Maybe your day's come. I have faith, but I'm not talkin' about faith. I'm speaking from experience, man: the only reason I'm here is cause I fucked up. I've been back, man. And they were as good as their word, I lived. Just went and got myself killed again is all."
no subject
He takes in a long breath of the salt-stung air; lets it out, slowly. Listens.
And feels an unpleasant realization unfold, deceptively gentle, somewhere deep in his gut: maybe I'm not worried that Mortanne can't do it.
Very quiet, Gaeta says -- more to the ocean than to John -- "Do you ever worry about what's waiting for you when you go back?"
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Because he knows the answer, and he isn't proud of it.
"I know what's waiting for me." he replies softly. "I'm not worried about it...I'm more worried about what I'm going to do. Because it's not gonna be good for the men I'm gonna kill."
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"That's the only way to get out of it?"
Muses and their damn one liners
“There is no way out of it for them.”
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"Yeah," he agrees at last. Out in the distance, a few of the lanterns wink out, either extinguished by the water or drifting over the horizon line. Gaeta draws a slightly ragged breath. "You know, I hoped -- if I got the chance to do it over again, fewer people would die. But I think you're right. There's no way out of it without at least some people dying for me, too."
(It, it, it. Such a coward that he can't even name his actions for what they were.)
His mouth twists. "And then all of us, eventually, but. Who knows, maybe we'll get a couple extra months."
no subject
Brow furrowing, there's no judgment in the quiet question that comes--because at this point, with everything he's been through? He could see where something like that could happen.
If Trautman had been a little more like Galt or Teasle...
"How'd it go down, man? I mean...why?"
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He shifts so he's facing John in full, looking him dead in the eye. "Swear you won't tell any of the poker gathering about this."
Some of them probably wouldn't care. Frak, the ones like Hawkeye would probably high-five him, they hate their army so much. But they're still military. They all still swore an oath; learned to follow the orders of their superiors.
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To do something like that when it goes against everything? Maybe Gaeta did it, but no one who's truly guilty would ever feel regret for a decision like that.
He opens his mouth, then shuts it and starts patting himself down. He ran into it earlier when he was looking for his housekey that morning as he left, kept it to include in an offering to Serranai later on...
Finding it, John pulls out a single chicken feather from his pocket--shed by a very specific chicken--and hands it to Gaeta with an absolutely serious, absolutely sober expression.
"Swear on her life." he assures him. "This stays between us."
no subject
Gaeta exhales, a little shakily, and accepts the feather with a nod. He holds it tight between two fingers like it's a replacement for his cigarette: something to keep his hands busy while, at last, he talks.
"The Colonies," he says, "were destroyed about four years ago by a race of sentient machines called the Cylons. Only about fifty thousand of us survived, mostly because we were in the air at the time. The Cylons kept hunting us for every last one of those four years to wipe out the rest of humanity. And my commanding officer, Admiral Adama -- "
His jaw twitches.
"When a few Cylon models split off from the rest and came to the Fleet claiming they could help us, he let them in. Couple months later, it turned out someone high up the chain who'd been on Galactica for years was a sleeper agent, and the admiral didn't care. He let them stay. He was about to let the Cylons graft their own tech onto Galactica even though the only reason we survived in the first place was because the ship's a frakking antique and they couldn't hack into our system. We had nowhere to go, nothing left we could possibly do, and instead of leading, he threw what's left of humanity to the godsdamn wolves."
He hasn't raised his voice this whole time, but gradually, it's become more strident, more furious. The simmering anger that flickers under Gaeta's genial demeanor every so often has finally erupted to the surface.
"So I mutinied. I allied with someone on the civilian side who'd overthrow the president at the same time, and we did what we had to do." He huffs half an unamused laugh. "Obviously it didn't work. Not in the end. We came close, but -- " Some of the anger gutters, winks out. "But I wasn't going to sit by and watch him lead us all to our deaths again."