Chapter 48: 51. Respite and Disturbance Part 1

The festival of God King Gwasila is located in the neighborhood of Pulloy, where Angelidis’ family lives. However, the venue is a few blocks away from their apartment complex. Today, four roads are closed off to carriage traffic. Luckily, the festival is mostly out of the way from the main roads.

These four closed-off roads each terminate in the Maz central square. That is where this year’s Gwasila effigy is standing. It is made of wood, carved by several carpenters who spared their time and effort to make it look nice for free.

The effigy is sturdy, but not as accurate a depiction of Gwasila as the artist's renderings. This is not due to the craftsmen lacking skill, but because of the surprising complexity of Gwasila’s body.

Maz square is where the festival attendees will gather to watch the burning closer to the evening. It is wide enough to fit six thousand people. The square is fully paved and surrounded by residential apartment buildings all around it. Even the city walls can be seen nearby, but they aren’t too close to the square.

Along the roads leading to Maz square, there are various food stalls, games, and special exhibits. Through one of the roads, Dzantemir and Sigvor enter the festival grounds. 

It is almost noon, and the late fall air feels chilly. They can (almost) see their breath. Dzan is wearing a light-gray shirt, brown pants and mid-calf black boots. He has his cloak on to protect against the weather and more easily blend into the crowds.

His dark violet hair is messier than usual and he has bags under his eyes. His fox ears on top of his head droop down, his earrings resting on his hair.

Sigvor is wearing a black dress with long sleeves and a turtleneck. The dress is striped bright blue in a symmetrical pattern, and her skirt extends to her ankles. He is also wearing knee-high black boots hidden by her dress skirt. Her long, light purple hair is tied in a ponytail that falls below the back of his neck. Her pointy animal ears are up.

“Dzan?”

“...”

“Dzan.”

“Huh? What?” Dzan is dazed for a moment as he walks with Sigvor, but turns his head to look at him.

“Dzan… You don’t look too good. What’s the matter?”

“...Ah. Well… It’s nothing, I-I just need a bit more sleep, that’s all.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. You know, normally I’m awake at night so I had to change my schedule to get here relatively early for the festival. Don’t worry though.” Dzan smiles tiredly at Sigvor. She believes him for now and continues looking at each stall at this festival.

Dzan takes a flask out of his pocket and drinks from it when Sigvor isn’t looking. Just a little nip to get him through the morning. He didn’t tell Sigvor the whole truth, but he’s not ready to share his problems yet.

“Hey, Sig, are you gonna be working today?”

“No, Dzan, not today. No stealing from all these nice people, please?”

“I-I was just asking. There are a few humans here, though…”

“They’ve probably got nothing if they’re coming to this festival. The upper commoners won’t be found here. Well, I’m not going to stop you if you need to get some quick cash. You sure you’re ok?”

“Yeah…”

Dzan looks over at something and Sigvor follows his gaze.

“Come on, come on, you can do it!”

A mother is offering encouragement to her daughter while she’s playing a game. The object of the game is to throw a ring so that it lands on one of the prizes. The little girl, about four or five maybe, is being held by her mother as she throws her rings.

Since today’s motif is the crawlers, the ring itself is made of segmented pieces. It is colored dark brown and has fur on it that makes it seem like a crawler antenna.

“Come on, just try again, darling.” Dzan and Sigvor watch the child attempt to throw her five rings, but she misses every one of the prizes. The little girl starts to cry. Her mother calms her down with a warm hug as she holds her in her arms and sways back and forth.

“It’s ok, it’s ok, you’ll do better next time… Come on, let’s get some food over there, come on, you love that stall, right? Remember last year, you had that delicious food? It’s ok, it’s ok, darling…”

Dzan wonders if the child can remember coming to this festival last year. She’s old enough that her first ingrained memory might have been just a few months ago. He smiles while looking at the two of them. Her mom reminds him of his own mother. Of Malia’s mother too…

Dzan doesn’t want to think about that again, he’s been thinking about it enough already.

“Come on, Sigvor, let’s go find… huh?”

He turns towards Sigvor, but finds him not standing beside him anymore.

“Hey! Dzan, come on!”

He turns to see Sigvor calling him from afar. She is standing there with someone. The woman is wearing a long, brown cloak over a dark red dress. She is also wearing a gray head wrap. Dzan runs over to the two of them.

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“What’s up, Jelli, you're wearing a different head covering today?”

“Ah, this? I just saw how Shaula was wearing it and liked the style.” Dzan smiles wryly. He’s noticed that Angelidis likes to keep the blue feathers on her head covered up in public. Normally they’re under her cloak hood, but today she’s wearing this wrap.

“Come on, we gotta find Ajax and Shaula now. Hope they can find this place…”

“It’s pretty hard to miss, Jelli.” Sigvor laughs as they continue walking. The festival is pretty large and loud. Its detractors often comment on it being an eyesore…

“Yeah, yeah. I’m looking forward to showing Shaula around.”

“It is kinda rare to find humans who’d like this sort of thing. Are they broken?” Sigvor remarks with a glint of amusement in his eyes. Every year this festival is made differently, always something novel for them to find.

***

“You smell that?”

“Yeah… that’s a lot of people…”

“The food, Ajax, I was pointing out the food!”

“Oh, y-yeah, sure.”

“Come on, don’t be so serious, not today! Of course there are people, and miella too, but there’s a lot of street food. You can hear it too, right? A lot of people having fun with their families! A lot of children playing, all of them enjoying seeing cryptids, alien bug monsters, you know? That’s fucking cool!”

“...You like these kinds of events too much.”

“Maybe. Come on! Let’s check this shit out!”

Shaula and Ajax walk into the festival. They can both see the square where they assume the effigy burning is going to be up the road. They decide to see how things are at these stalls first. Shaula knows the layout of the festival. She’s been told how it’s made of four closed off roads.

She can smell Angelidis, Dzan and Sigvor up the road as well. She assumes they’re walking along one of the other three roads or maybe walking in Maz square itself.

Shaula is currently wearing a gray cloche hat, still making sure to cover her hair. However, she has noticed that her hair grows faster than back on Earth. Since landing on Omicron completely bald, her eyebrows have already grown back as well as her lashes. The hair on her head is already about two inches long.

She is wearing a simple Victorian-style olive dress with long sleeves. Its skirt extends to her ankles. There are a lot of styles available for women, but, as a rule, women must cover up their skin.

She’s also wearing lace-up leather sandals that go up to slightly above her ankles. Meanwhile, Ajax is wearing a long sleeved, light-red shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He’s wearing dark blue pants with suspenders and dark brown, suede-like soft shoes.

Today, both of them are dressed mostly for comfort. Nobody to impress, nothing to worry about. The two of them can see entire families walking around the festival, mostly beastkin but a few humans too.

Everyone is having fun here today. The humans who are attending are considerate to the beastkin stall operators and food vendors. Perhaps the bar is too low in this world, but the lack of open (or even subtle) racism is a welcome sight.

Shaula starts her festival experience by going from stall to stall as she looks over the games first. Most of them are simple games, nothing too complicated or fancy. They’re not free, but she doesn’t mind. There are a lot of games with simple analogues to Earth carnivals.

Ajax and Shaula visit two game stalls and one exhibition stall. At the exhibition stall, there is a man speaking loud and fast and trying to get a crowd around the artifact he has on display. It is the scepter of a crawler queen, a crawler type that is created directly by the usurper.

It produces eggs which eventually become the crawler workers and champions.

The scepter itself is as large as a gymnastics balance beam. Whether it’s real or not, she wouldn’t be able to tell.

Shaula checks it out along with other festival attendees, both kids and adults. Everyone tries to touch it and lift it off the ground. It is quite a solid thing, not hollow at all, and heavy. Too heavy for anyone but her, Ajax, and maybe Angelidis to be able to lift off the ground.

Impressive… Looks pretty cool… 

It is surprisingly complex as a staff. Its engravings are precise, delicate and beautiful, not something an unintelligent creature could make.

“Shaula, I think Jelli and Sigvor are nearby, wanna come along or should I bring them here?”

“Bring them here, bring them here! They’ll love this…”

Ajax walks away from the exhibit to get Angelidis, Dzan and Sigvor. There is a picture of the crawler queen holding the scepter, an artist rendering. It looks far more inhuman than the art of Gwasila. Shaula tries to imagine the creature in her mind’s eye. It is grotesque and creey, but, at the same time, fascinating.

She smiles as she sees the sun above her in the sky.

 

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