Post by Beets The Beetle (Feenix) on Jan 3, 2023 19:00:29 GMT
New Hill Borrow had honestly looked buggin'magical today for the Winter Festival.
The hundreds of glowing lanterns and small fur trees strung with decorations, the delicious smells wafting through my flightpaths, the many laughing and smiling faces of families and children down below. So this was what a proper Winter Festivals was like!
I only remember grabbing small snatches each year of my old village's own winter celebrations back home in the Feywild. The distant glow of the lanterns, the odd echo of a song twitching my straining ears from my tree top perches.
Oh how I'd wanted to go to experience it, to be part of it. The secret hope that maybe, just maybe the hope that song line'-goodwill to all fey-kind' could actually even be extended to me one year.
But it never was, the few attempts I'd tried to venture in I'd always left colder and sadder, the sting of the snowballs pelted at me by the village fairy children hurting just a little less than their cruel words. No, winter had always been a much more..humble affair, with Gramps, Pa, and me...Just like the rest of the year.
Last winter though had been different, my first month at Fort Ettin. A merry blur of festivities and feasting and songs and the most ferocious snowball fights I'd ever experienced. It had been a completely buggin'sensual overload! It had been wonderful.
I'd needed it...After losing Pa, and Gramps.
If I thought last year's snowball fights at Fort Ettin had been fun, they were nothing compared to the bout we had at the two fancy dressed doggies'-Bert and Ernie's-Snowball Championship.
With my team made up of mighty Ghesh, fierce Varga and stealthy Itzal, the halfling/gnome white-camo combo team of New Hill Borrow hadn't stood a flittin'chance.
Okay so we..-alright mostly me-may have gotten a teeny buggin'bit carried away with making colossal snowballs, but it was all in good fun... Even though that last snowball would've probably flattened that poor halfing girl if hadn't stopped just short..phew.
But anyway-we buggin'won! And got little metal medals which actually make it snow, so flittin'cool!
Woooooo-yeah! Snow Bois! Snow Bois! Snow Bois!
The sky was turning crimson as the festival rolled on into the evening, it's hue usually one I'd find much more foreboding giving previous months. But today it was just plan festive, adding a most beautiful backdrop as I flitted my way over to a large colourful tent pitched at the edge of town.
The Night Circus. Or at least, 'what was left of it', was part of the conservation I caught as I made my way inside, coming to land amongst small group at had assembled to survey the mix of performances spread throughout the tent's interior. So this where a lot of them had gone after pitching up for a time at Feylight Theatre, I wonder if they'll-
"Hello Beets!" A warm voice said above me. It was Seraphina, the pretty amber girl with the halo horns from our pirate voyage, oh and Velania and Vos too! Guess the circus really does bring people together. That human guy Voss was an 'interesting' fella too, I mean anyone who can refer to someone as lovely as Serphina as a 'god-bother' has gotta have a bit of a backstory.
Together as a makeshift group we decided to indulge in some circus theatrics.
First off we shared group fortune card reading by a mysterious madame. I pulled a strange card of a woman holding a baby in one arm, and a strange orb in the other-The Matron it said.
We then hit the high wire-a bit of a recall to my old 'strong-bug' performance days, though there was little bit of a difference in my case to the others should they put a move wrong. Voss and Vox actually proved themselves to be quite the high fliers though, even better than me I have to admit!
Serphina and I agreed on a catchup later that evening once things quietened down before we excited the circus, joining the throng building around the central bonfire to help ring in the new year.
Big laughs, new friends and a warm glow building in my belly this festival had left me with as we sounded out the final count down.
A new hope to hold onto. A hope that this year, would be an even better, happier, and hopefully less painful year than the last.