The Feast of Flowering
🔸💐🔸
“It’s a cervine, I tell ya,” a properly sloshed young suid in a violently green jacket declares with certainty to anyone who will listen to him.
“Look at the...the...the antlers there.” The square burgeons with noise and expectation. Children in gaudily painted Fortune masks—the young ones always liked the smile painted widely on them—hide behind vendor carts and jump out at passersby who startle theatrically and shoo them off with encouraging glee.
“Pies! HOT fresh pies! Juicy fruit pies for sale here!” a camelid vendor crows, swaying past with a tray of steaming, perfectly browned pastries.
“Get your pies here!” An older bovine with ram’s horns curled tightly around her head flags him down to snag one, munching into it as she regards an Order mage putting on a display for a bunch of chattering children. An illusory explosion of fire clouds the children, the sparks spiraling off to become little dragons that nip at their heels as they run, squealing with delighted fright from the show.
“Disgraceful,” the bovine mutters to the pie merchant.
“t’ain’t right. I’m fine with them bein’ about with the monsters ‘n’all but there’s no need for ‘em to be showin’ off.” The merchant, tactfully, gives a non committal nod in response before taking up their barking again.
“Ugh, Billy!” an adolescent equine frowns down at a relcaltricant cervine.
“I told you. You have to weave around the others instead of just running around the pole!” She demonstrates, looping her bright yellow ribbon in latticework around the red and blue streamers of their fellow dancers. Billy sticks his tongue out at her in response.
“BilLLY! Aunt Joanna! He’s being impossible!” “Listen to Cara, Billy, or I’ll come over there!” an older cervine, presumably Aunt Joanna, calls back reflexively, not turning her head from her conversation with her fellow adults. Billy peers at her for a moment, trying to gauge the actual threat level before huffing.
“Fine. But I don’t see why we have to do all this for a stupid yak.” “It’s not a yak,” Cara says automatically.
“And we weave the maypole to keep us all safe and together. If you weave it wrong the monsters can get through and it will be all YOUR fault.” She uses her telekinesis to retie Billy’s green ribbon around his stub of an antler.
“It’s gotta be a pig, right?” a shaggy little pony asks their friend.
“Like, those haunches can’t be anything else, right?” Their friend peers up at the looming mountain of woven sticks and straw. They open their mouth, perhaps to agree or perhaps to not, but their gaze lights on what would be the thing’s face if the sculptors of this huge creation had given it anything more than the blocky shape of a head. Something there closes their mouth again and they shake their head, unsettled.
The wicker creature dominates the skyline. Approaching pilgrims see it as a dark bulk of a shape against the filigree background of Faline City arcing behind it. They resolve in the distance, to get closer to get a better look at it. Once there, between the shops and the crush of the crowd, they realize they have no better angle than before. Staring up at it is skewed. Even with the healthily respectful distance the crowd keeps from it in anticipation of its lighting, they feel dwarfed in the viewing.
A mage tries to encourage a copse of intoxicated, oblivious revelers who keep straying into the cleared zone to return to safety. As he is distracted, a young child slips past him and runs for the creature. One of the drunks taps him and he whirls to see the child slowing as she gets close to one of the massive legs.
“Hold! Hey! Hey! Watch out there!” He runs for her, knowing that the lighting will be happening momentarily. He scoops her up with his telekinesis and turns to evacuate the area once more before she wails at him.
“No! I have to put her in!”Startled for a moment, the mage pauses to ask.
“Put who in?” The child stares up at him with brightly determined green eyes. She lifts her doll, a worn, well-loved thing, from her bag.
“I have to put her in. Mama said we have to give to keep us safe and last year I didn’t.” She glances down at her hooves.
“I was bad. I’m not going to be bad this year. I need to keep Mama safe. I need to put her in.” The mage softens.
“Ok. We’ll make sure your dolly gets counted.” He turns back to the creature and lifts the child up to place the toy in a crevice created by knotting branches.
“There. She’s all tucked away and the Patrons will be sure to see. I know Grace must be keeping a special eye on you. Now lets get you back away from here.” He sweeps the child back to safety—and her concerned mama—in the crowd.
