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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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All but said aloud: not long enough.
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Degas nods, rather than voicing that thought.
"Where did you meet him?"
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That smile's widening a little; the memory's pleasant and painful in varying measure, and right now the former is winning out. "What happened is we promptly ignored everyone else there to talk to each other, without even noticing we were doing it."
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"What's a TV show?"
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Yes, he just said his son is in cahoots. Because language is fun.
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"Well -- TV is short for television, and it's a little like if you took cinema and made it smaller and put it in people's homes like radio. So you get serialized storytelling -- drama and comedy and all kinds of things. We liked a lot of the same ones."
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"Solid guess." She's smiling. "Stuff we could talk about afterwards. And especially stuff we could argue about. Also comedy, though, we both really liked that."
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"And it developed from there? How did he court you?"
Unspoken: how should one court her?
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"I don't know if I'd call it courting, really. We were both kind of frustrated with the ... the norms, I guess you'd call it, the unwritten social rules of how that sort of thing was supposed to go. And we talked about that, and ended up deciding, let's just spend time together and make it up as we go along. And we eventually decided we wanted to ... keep doing that, just officially."
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Degas nods, watching Zivia thoughtfully from a wholly polite distance. It's like there's a curtain there he's seeing her through. No, he will not make an actual move tonight.
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The rest is history, he says with a gesture.
"That was long before I became preacher. Though Merrick and I were good friends for many years, so maybe it makes some sense that I was picked, after his death."
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