The Feast of Flowering

Having prepared some special ingredients for noodle soup, Verek went to the Market to set up his booth for handing out the shared food as usual. Of course, he had heard about the festival and people trying to cancel it. But why would they. He even made the effort to craft a small effigy to burn later that evening, since none was made this year. It looked vaguely animal shaped. What animal it was supposed to be? There was no way to tell. But he felt it was an important tradition and especially now people should have the opportunity to celebrate and alleviate some of that build up stress that has been accumulating throughout these times. Was it to spite the authorities? Certainly. But there was nothing they really could do. He even managed to get some of the guards to join in. Including shy Yanan and Favian. The effigy was too small to be any real danger anyway, once he’d set it up in the firepit.