tornheart | [OPEN] FLOWER FESTIVAL

Who: Open Log (All)
Where: Point-à-Tarte
Summary: A festival of flowers.
Warnings: N/A

" Ah... the Festival of Flowers while a dreadful deadline looms! Enjoy what normal life you may have left...soon you may long for the return of these simpler times..."

A week of celebration (General Prompt)

At Point-à-Tarte, at the edge of the largest park in Eddan, booths that have been worked on for the past week are finally being opened to the public. Colorful banners decorate every single tree and and even the dullest of areas are covered up in the most creative of ways.

The booths themselves have everything one could hope in a flower festival, from mountains of flower crowns and necklaces being given to every resident of Eddan for free to the flower-shaped candy to the city-approved businesses touting the latest and greatest of the upcoming flower technology. New flowers, some supposedly glowing under UV light and others made to look like galaxies, are being sold at eye-popping prices.

The food, as always, is delicious and fresh, with early spring greens and even flowers themselves being added to salads. The only negative to the entire festival (if one can call it that) are the giant counters displaying the remaining time before sunset that serve as a reminder of Eddan's strange nature.

Opening Ceremonies (Special Prompt)

Sunday's opening sees the release of over ten thousand 'floating' seeds into the wind, a promise from the city to continue to make Eddan the greenest city in the entire world. Each person coming to the festival is given tulip bulbs in a variety of colors to be taken home.

The mayor takes time to speak about the recent string of murders and assures the people that they city shall continue to be vigilant to make sure that its citizens are kept safe. This is greeted with cheers from most of the population. Even the rainy weather doesn't keep such a happy day down!

An hour before sunset, the opening ceremonies close with a fireworks show. Due to the fact that they must be released only during the day, the explosive components have been changed as to give the night varieties a run for their money.

As the bright lights fill the sky, those soon-to-be-Awakened may have a flash of a memory from their past lives, such as a happy moment they spent with someone close to them or a moment of glory. This will soon be drowned out by ringing in their ears. For a few, brief seconds, they may notice figures close by glow oddly, their forms becoming distorted, but before they realize what has happened, blinking returns their vision to normal.

The headache, however, lingers until bedtime.

Weekly contest (week prompts)

Royal Mount opens its WonderWorld Park to the public on Monday. For its opening week during the festival, the rides are all free.

Green Valley Organizes a flower judging contest for the various schools on Wednesday. Students are asked to present their most beautiful and unique flowers. Flower arrangements are also judged and with prizes evaluated at over 20 000 Macca, the stakes are high!

Eastmount offers rides in flower-shaped carriages driven by mechanical horses that could almost pass off as the real thing. (Though it is only the latest technology, thus keeping the entire thing animal cruelty free!)

The Giant Float Parade on Friday afternoon travels around the vast forest of Point-à-Tarte. Each school has been encouraged to enter its cheerleaders and theater productions into the parade. The Flower King and Queen greet visitors at the very end, throwing little presents for the children.

The festival continues until Saturday Nightfall. The schools visit the festival in turn, sometimes for education courses about the various flowers and trees that dot Eddan's landscape, sometimes to show off flower and plant-based sculptures that the various clubs have worked hard on.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yoshio has been wandering the festival for a couple of hours himself, and peeking up at the timer above him (it's not even close to time), he decides it's probably about time he finds a snack. He's surprised and not surprised to see John there, and joins the line just behind him. John's pretty nice. Some of Mako's friends he's a little shy of, but not so much John, who has always shown himself to be pretty decent.

"Hi," he pipes up, a small voice from behind him. "You're not working today?" He saw the cafe's booth, naturally.

John's always been fairly easy going -- even if he can be a little bit of a spaz sometimes. He's endearing and so he makes friends easily or people feel at ease around him. After all, he's such a dork and an open book himself it's hard for others to feel self-concious or like he might judge them.

The lines for food are always long at the festival and usually you have to go in with that expectation. But, John knew it was worth it. When he hears a voice he turns and smiles, "Oh! Hey Yoshio." He glances over his shoulder, stepping forward as the line moves, he then turns back, "Mom's not making me work the booth until Tuesday. Something about enjoying our youth or something." She'd made a bigger deal about it because John was 18 now, but he'd started to tune her out when she rambled about youth being wasted on the young or some such. "You'll have to stop by later -- we have some stuff here that we don't have at the cafe, special for the festival."

"Oh...but how are you? I haven't seen you in awhile--but I guess I've been pretty busy with festival prep...I've barely even seen your brother."

"Really?" New things... He will, then. The Blue French Horn is always good -- he goes there with his brother every now and then, and sometimes alone, though that won't be happening in the near future. At least not until that countdown is done. In the meantime he nods, then looks thoughtful. How is he?

"I'm okay. But you're not missing a whole lot. Mako's as boring as ever." He's teasing, though. "He's pretty busy himself." There's always something going on at the dojo.

John nods, smiling with just a little pride. A few of the ideas had been his suggestion after all, and his mom had actually taken him up on a few. Admittedly it had still been more work than he had anticipated, but it was still worth it to see the look on customer's faces when they saw pastries shaped like flowers and could eat their famous gumbo out of a small-flower shaped bread bowl.

"Yeah. I gathered that much when I emailed him a few days ago," John admits, though he supposes he shouldn't go into specifics on that. "Is the dojo doing any demonstrations here? Either way, I'll try to make Mako take a break if I can." But, he has someone else to see to right now, "So where were you heading though? I've heard there is a lot to do this year."

He won't pry about that email, though he's curious. "I think so?" He's not associated with the dojo as closely as he might be, given that his brother teaches there, but he feels like he remembers something about that...

"You mean, after my lunch or before?" He smiles, linking his hands behind his back thoughtfully. "No, uh... I thought I'd check out some of those weird flowers." The weird galaxy ones he saw pictures of in the brochure.

John makes a mental note to check out some of the fliers and see if he can find out if there is a booth Mako would be working. OF course, he could also just text him...that might work better.

"Uh...I guess after. Do you have a food stall in mind you were wanting to check out first though?" They certainly had a lot of options to pick from, and John was hoping to try them all.

He smiles, "Oh yeah, I saw some pictures of those. Pretty weird."

"They are weird! I like the one that looks like stars. About food, though... not really. I thought I'd see what you guys were doing." He saw the pictures of the tulip-shaped bowl. It was entertaining enough to entice him over in this direction.

"About Mako, text him later. He's here somewhere. I'm not supposed to go anywhere on my own right now, but within the festival was okay." He's sort of grounded -- not because he did something, he's never been the type, but because Mako asked him not to go off on his own until the twenty-one days were up.

"Yeah, I saw that one on a flier. I don't know if I'd be able to afford one, but I definitely want to see it in person," John admits. He grins, "Well, they are specials unique to the festival--there's no way we could make this everyday. So, yeah, you should definitely check out our booth. But, while I love our food, I think for the first day I plan on trying food from some of the other setups first. I heard there are a couple of different groups from our school doing things food-related. Might be fun to check that out." He knew there was a cafe for one, but he'd also heard there was everything from an ice cream stand that was serving floral/plant inspired ice cream flavors to a meat-on-a-stick booth. Not to mention your typical festival food like cotton candy and funnel cakes.

John was never going to eat it all.

John came out of his food introspection to look down at his friend's brother, "Oh yeah? Why's that? You didn't get in trouble did you?" It seemed unlike him, but John was also familiar with how protective Mako could be.

Yoshio shakes his head, folding his arms and frowning. How does he talk about this? They'd all already had headaches when the app had first appeared, so talking about it didn't produce another, it just amped it up, which was hard to tell. But with that in mind, he has no idea how to explain it to John -- in fact, the feeling he's getting right now is one that makes him extremely reluctant to speak of it.

"Um, it's... no, I didn't." He bites his lip, looking away, which puts his good eye on the side where he can't see John. "I don't really... know how to explain. I'm just not." He shouldn't have even said anything, really...

John can be a little clueless sometimes, but even he can pick up on the fact that he might be pushing a little too far. "Hey, don't sweat it," John says, trying to wave it off. "I was only curious...and it's none of my business anyway," he admits. Mako wasn't the type to usually be so strict on his brother. Maybe if he asked Mako...

but, no, he just admitted it was none of his business.

"No, it's okay. I'd tell you if I was able," he replies hurriedly. "It's not that I mind telling you. I... just can't." But he's sure that if John were to ask Mako, he'd get the same response. If their experiences so far were the same, then Mako would probably just get the same sort of feeling of existential dread as Yoshio is getting right now.

"It's okay, seriously," John says, waving off his concern as best he can. He looks around, "Let's just go try some of these food stalls and maybe I can get you a discount at our stall if that's where you want to start." He hopes that will at least cheer him up a little, John felt a little guilty for pestering him.

"Okay," he says, and immediately he does smile, mouth curving beneath that mop of silvery hair. "Let's do that." Changing the subject is probably best. Besides, he wants to enjoy the festival. His flowers will wilt if he just stands around, after all.

[OPEN] FLOWER FESTIVAL

sunday afternoon

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