July Mini Event - Seaside Sway

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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!

Comments

fever (dark urge) | baldur's gate 3 | ota

[abhorrently]

sun's out.

It wasn't fully her department to look at the planning for all of this, but Fever's been trying to peek at the details in Town Hall since she caught wind of it. It sounded fun, low stakes, and important in terms of what it meant - and being here, she's glad it all came together. Her dress is closer to local styles, and that means it keeps her feeling cool, seawater kissing the hem when she walks to the water's edge. And thankfully, the place needing helper staff means she's in a decent mood attending to tasks here and there. If people need assistance with getting things organized, moving them around, she'll do what she can or find who should be helping.

That said, she's not passing on the food, doing what she's done before and trying a bit of anything and everything, sometimes deep in thought about what to try or accidentally bumping into someone else reaching for the same tray. Or sitting down with a grimace and holding her head - the culprit now isn't her own condition, but the shaved orange ice sitting before her. Apparently you can't eat this too fast.

summer nights.

The night is here, the refreshments haven't ceased, and this is when she relaxes a little more. It's inevitable that she'd wind up dancing with people, enjoying the music, but she's also liable to just go walking along the shoreline. Glass of strawberry wine in hand, watching the lanterns go out from a distance, trying to dwell in the happier moments of the day, resisting anything wretched that billows up.

When her thoughts get loud, that's when she fully strips down and goes out swimming, clearing them out via activity. She has very little shame about her own body, particularly when other people won't see as well as she does. Darkvision has a few perks. If she knows you well enough and you're part of the group? You just might get someone swimming up behind you, whispering boo into your ear.

wildcard.

We all know what this one is for. Anything else, go for it, or talk to me if you're unsure.

Summer nights

[redlightgreenlight]

She's said she wouldn't go swimming, but when she sees Fever walking out into the waves, she leaves her own dress in a puddle on the sand and follows her out.

"It's warmer than I thought it would be."

[abhorrently]

"It is, isn't it? It's actually nice to swim in at this time of year."

The saltwater half holds her up, and Fever looks over at where the others are - quieter, but things haven't subsided yet. It'll remain to be seen how many want to sleep in the tents, and Fever's debating it herself.

"No incidents, good food, good company...if I wake up right now back home and it's all a dream, I'm going to be so annoyed."

[redlightgreenlight]

It's easy to float and the waves are fairly calm at the moment, contrary to what she feels from Fever, though the soothing sounds of the sea seem to be helping.

"Oh, I don't think I ever want to go home, there's nothing waiting for me there...And I would lose all of you."

[abhorrently]

"You can come back in the morning, you know. But then you'll miss out on the breakfast they've got planned."

And being out here with people, doing things, swimming under the stars - it helps settle her mind. She knows what Valdis really means, though.

"...If you've got nothing going on back there, though, does it really count as a home? It's just a place you were."

[redlightgreenlight]

"Oh, I'll probably stay the night, keep an eye on those who drank too much."

She takes a deep breath, then flips to float on her back, looking up at the stars and the moon.

"I don't think I ever had a home before, not until the Eterna...and that wasn't exactly a pleasant place either."

She knows that isn't true, Eden had been her home, but it's destruction had been her fault, she's not sure she could ever go back.

[abhorrently]

"It was no place to build a life."

It doesn't count, in her view, if someone can't figure out those roots that people talk about.

"I don't know if I ever had a home either, somewhere back before the amnesia. I'm inclined to think not. Don't even think I'd know what to do with one if I found it."

[redlightgreenlight]

No, it never had been, too much pain and chaos to ever be a place of rest.

"I don't think I could have found one as I was. I cannot know my future back where I came from, but if I hadn't found it in several hundred years...I don't know if it could be found."

Not unless she met someone like Max again. Or Maybe Crichton or Fever. Erin. But none of them were in her world.

[abhorrently]

"I know none of us chose to wind up there, or here, but...I see enough people that are doing better for it. Like so many people needed some intervention to have a chance at happiness."

She remembers words spoken in snow, buries them under other thoughts so they don't flow outwards. Mutually beneficial.

"Or at the least, to be able to find their footing someplace."

Summer Nights

[mindflayed]

Someone else has Darkvision as well, but he's not really paying much attention to her out in the water. Imbros is standing at the shoreline, the tide gently lapping around his bare feet, back in his normal black leather robes he got from the House of Cards.

He's holding a paper lantern in his hands, studying how the candle flickers and casts shadows against the stark white folded paper. There's a few false starts, almost like he's hesitant to actually put it in the water and send it off.

[abhorrently]

She sees him, but she makes the decision to go around in a circle. Back to her clothing, redressing swiftly before she decides to approach him. Much as she doesn't care about scandal, it's a form of being on her guard that she wants whenever she interacts with him. Soft, quiet steps in the sand, not really trying to be stealthy but not trying to be unknown.

"Having second thoughts?"

Hells, she'd avoided the lanterns herself.

[mindflayed]

"I shouldn't have taken one of these," then realizing how that sounds he quickly follows up with a lie, "I don't understand the concept."

He definitely does, but he's having complicated emotions about maybe missing people from his past? That's not a thing he should be capable of feeling.

[abhorrently]

"What's not to get about it? You write down the names of those lost to you, or far away, and send it out. Sending your thoughts out with them."

He's a very smart squid. There's no way he doesn't understand the concept.

[mindflayed]

"There's no way they could possibly perceive that."

Even though he knows that it's for the person with the lantern, not for those who have no idea this is even happening.

He walks a few more steps into the water, setting down the lantern and giving it a nudge so the tide takes it away. There's a part of him that hopes a wave crashes into it and destroys the thing so he can stop looking at it. But no such luck, it spins a bit but steadily floats out towards the open bay.

Folding his arms, he stands there in the water, the bottom of his robes swaying gently with the ebb and flow.

"The harbor is going to be filled with these things."

[abhorrently]

"That's someone else's problem in the morning, isn't it? They knew this was going on."

There it goes, bearing out his feelings on the tide. The ones he might not want to admit he has.

"No one's going to deride you for participating, Imbros."

[mindflayed]

"I will." It seems as always, he has to do everything himself, including being disappointed in himself.

"I was not anticipating being here this long." Because he foolishly assumed he could solve the barrier problem in a few hours when others had been working on it for years. Overconfidence strikes again. "My body is probably rotting away somewhere, assuming it wasn't dumped into a pit in Avernus."

[abhorrently]

"And what are you inhabiting now, if not your body?"

Why would his body be rotting? He's in it right now. Unless he's not in it, but it's still animated.

food!

[not_the_last]

"Are you all right?"

Cassandra's holding a plate of food in one hand and a shaved ice of her own in the other, and is regarding Fever with a look of concern.

[abhorrently]

"The ice has decided I don't need to be eating it."

She looks up with a slightly miserable expression at Cassandra, and gestures at the shaved ice.

"All I did was take a bite. No one told me it would hurt."

[not_the_last]

Cassandra blinks at it, startled.

"Too cold? Or is there something in it that doesn't agree with you?"

[abhorrently]

"The cold."

Finally, it ebbs away, and she can take a deep breath again.

"It felt like someone was driving a spike into my head. Like they were trying to freeze my very skull."

[not_the_last]

"Oh," and her eyes widen with sudden understanding, "oh no, I know what that is. You can fix it with a hot drink, or -- try pressing the pad of your thumb to the roof of your mouth? It never works for me but I know it does for some."

[abhorrently]

It's as good an idea as any. She pops her thumb in her mouth and presses - no dice, but the headache's starting to wear off anyway. That was terrible, hitting her even through her earlier medicine.

"Is this sort of thing common?"

[not_the_last]

"Hirnfrost? Oh yes. In winter, children will dare each other to suck on an icicle or eat snow until one of them gets it. I wouldn't have thought you could get it in the summer, even eating something cold."

[abhorrently]

"Hirnfrost."

She repeats the word, committing it to memory.

"Maybe...since snow and shaved ice are both cold, it's just to do with when your mouth gets cold enough."

She's so close, but so very far in true understanding.

"Don't worry, I'm not daring you to eat your ice fast and join me in misery."