pumpkinhollow | July Mini Event

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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

We look forward to seeing you there!

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Shen Qingqiu feels his face flush bright, bright red. Nobody's ever -- what even is that? It's almost like Anzu's talking to him like he's a recalcitrant child, except not really? For some reason he's reminded of the way Luo Binghe would blush and fluster when Shen Qingqiu himself had to -- very rarely -- scold him, although his mind shies away from examining that too closely.

"Um!" Shen Qingqiu's gaze can't seem to settle; it meets Anzu's for only a few seconds before darting away like a butterfly. He coughs nervously into one hand before finally muttering, "If I could remember, I'd tell you?"

Which still doesn't tell the whole story.

Anzu lays his other hand on Shen Qingqiu's cheek — not restraining the other, but gently keeping him facing towards himself, with little room to duck his head.

Still speaking softly — sternly, but without anger — he says, "and what led thee to wander around the farsholtne¹ woods for a month? Nu, sweetness?"

¹ intensifier, equivalent to "damned".

Shen Qingqiu blushes again, placing a hand on Anzu's with the intention of removing it from his face -- but instead he finds himself curling his fingers around it instead, and simply...holding it there.

"I'm afraid I did something very foolish," he admits, and lowers his gaze. "Has anyone told you about the shared dream which several of us off-worlders had? In which we caught a glimpse of the past, and the activities of a cult that used to torment this community?"

"I'd heard a little about it, darling," Anzu says; he doesn't make Shen Qingqiu look up again — he's made his point. "Not enough to know exactly what happened. So, ah. Why don't we sit down, and I hear of what happened from thee?"

His tone is still gentle; he doesn't move his hand away just yet.

"Y-yes, alright." Shen Qingqiu takes a couple deep, calming breaths as Anzu sits next to him, and manages at least to stop his shaking and cool the temperature of his face. But he leaves one of his hands lying open on his lap, palm up, just...You know. Just in case Anzu might like to hold it or something. It's up to him.

"So, I...I spoke to that entity the cult was worshipping," he says quietly, in an unsteady voice. "It had the same name as a...a fictional god I'd read about in my original world. A character in a story, invented to amuse and frighten the author and his penpals...or maybe not." He shrugs. "The...entity I spoke to claimed to span dimensions, it even said it wasn't going to let some 'jackass from Rhode Island' tell it what it couldn't do. Maybe Old H.P. touched something real, when he was writing his stories..."

Anzu's eyes go wide, as chill runs through his entire body; he looks genuinely frightened. He reaches for Shen Qingqiu's hand, and grasps it tight, pulls the other man closer to him in an embrace. He's shaking.

It isn't the name that jolts him, nor the placename, but the description. An author and his penpals ... there's two that Anzu's aware of, that might've written ghost stories and other horrors as a diversion — and somehow he thinks it wasn't harmless old Reinhardt Johannes Montague's ghost stories, the ones where a scholarly nebbish encounters a little more history than he bargained for.

"What kind of ... what kind of entity?" he asks, his voice trembling. "Entity. I shan't call an idol a god. But. The name, ah. Tell me not the name, darling. The name is immaterial. Names change. What is it like?"

"It was...god. It was awful." Shen Qingqiu shakes his head, frustrated with his own inability to put the experience into words. Top commenter on Zhongdian Literature website three years running, and look at him now. He turns his face to press into Anzu's shoulder and says, "It spoke to me mind-to-mind. Its thoughts were...oily. They clung to me, cold and stifling. I accused it of having lured us into the dream for its own amusement and it danced around me, neither confirming nor denying. I don't think all of its followers are really dead."

"It offered to show me things from its perspective. I was so stupid. I thought I could steal knowledge from it, the identities of its worshippers, its plans, something useful. I saw...I can't remember exactly what I saw, just that I saw it. The universe from the outside, galaxies so small they looked like stars. A shining blade neatly dividing the fabric of time into thin strips, reading to be knotted or woven like ribbons. Other things, I can't..." He winces, clutching at his head. "It's all. Walled off now. I had to seal it all away --" He gasps with pain. "It's all a blur, but I think...I was dead for too long. I couldn't hold those memories in my mind and stay alive at the same time."

"Hush, darling," Anzu says, softly. He holds Shen Qingqiu close, and strokes his hair. "Such wights, feh, they contrive to show truth only to mislead. It matters not. If thou stood'st a chance of gleaning what it knew, it would have stooped not to showing thee."

But there's a note of tension in his voice, of worry — he thinks he might know what Shen Qingqiu is talking about. Or at least, he knows the shape of it. The shape of its stories, and the stories told about it.

"But, ah. We really ought to talk, darling, about how to parlay with such entities, nu? For the future. Now that it's spoken to thee, it may be back to taunt thee further."

"...Yes, I suppose it might." With the topic changed to a less metaphysically painful subject matter, Shen Qingqiu indulges himself far enough to turn his face into Anzu's shoulder and slump there, eyes closed.

...Huh. Anzu's hair smells really nice.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "For, you know. For worrying you."

"Ah, nu. Lev's made me worry just as much before, darling, I'm used to it," Anzu says, softly. He's too preoccupied with comforting his friend to really double-check what he's saying. "What am I to do with thee? With you both?"

He sighs, still stroking Shen Qingqiu's hair, thinking about how he and Lev have always talked about how nice it would be to date someone else together, rather than limiting themselves both to hook-ups and strictly-friends-with-benefits arrangements. It's not that jealousy is an issue. Time is. Time and opportunity. But Shen Qingqiu is nice, and they've already discussed with each other how hot he is ...

"You should be nice to me," Shen Qingqiu says immediately, too exhausted and in pain to censor himself even before the petting starts to turn him into putty under Anzu 's hand. He leans more heavily on his friend and mumbles, "I'm just a little guy. I don't really know what I'm doing, I just got used to pretending that I do."

Anzu sighs, and pulls Shen Qingqiu closer to him.

"None of us know what we're doing, darling," he says. "Worry not none about it. Just rest, now. There'll be time for recriminations and grave conversations later, I'm sure."

July Mini Event - Seaside Sway

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i think we can wrap here!