Hardly like she needs to ask - but she does, if only to make sure before she nods to her own people, they begin to arrange themselves carefully, making sure they were covered in the long looping material, to keep themselves obscure. To make it seem like they were just an odd family out to enjoy the festivities. Like anyone else.
Here's for hoping no one else looked aside. But once it's done - her hand grips to the sword at her hip in comfort - her eyes forward and she nods at them to open the door that connects the rooms to the streets outside and it's a floodgate opening to step out into the street.
The firecrackers are loudest. Set off in these back streets and from rooftops, the thick wash of smoke that filled the air, the shrieks of laughter, singing and the drums - beaten over it all filling the streets. Each doorstep with images of lotuses in brightly coloured powder (a great deal smudged now from when they had been done in the morning). Flowers that hung in ropes of rich jasmine that made the air sickly sweet that hung around the necks of men and women, and caught in the hair of children as they ran with sparklers - and around everything, lights. Thousands upon thousands of lights, lanterns and oil burners left that became brighter as the sunset.
There was a different tang to it, at least tonight. A fullness in the air, a snap to each breath that she took. The people looked just as she said, hungry. Lean. Some of them half starved. A sharp edge to it, no matter the festivities. Waiting, with a deep, deep breath before a deeper plunge. The night air at least was not as hot, as they came into cooler seasons. Made the fires seem warmer, a relief to be near.
No need to rush, now, to seem like any other family moving through the crowds as they began towards the main streets. Because there was one thing that cannot be ignored, the people on the streets were dressed in a dozen colours, wearing their newest clothes, as fine as each person could afford. Every colour, and many of them all at once. But removed at the side of the streets, were the UC guards. Dressed in the favoured deep red and white of their uniforms. Wearing their plasma rifles openly without even the pretext of stunners, helmets over their faces. Removed and joking amongst themselves as they stood at the edge and were given wide birth by almost everyone. A palpable fear of them in the way people turned their faces away.
She slipped until she was standing beside Naismith, dropping low to speak to him. "Tonight we celebrate the triumph of Good over Evil. When Lord Rama defeated the Demon King Ravan."
no subject
Hardly like she needs to ask - but she does, if only to make sure before she nods to her own people, they begin to arrange themselves carefully, making sure they were covered in the long looping material, to keep themselves obscure. To make it seem like they were just an odd family out to enjoy the festivities. Like anyone else.
Here's for hoping no one else looked aside. But once it's done - her hand grips to the sword at her hip in comfort - her eyes forward and she nods at them to open the door that connects the rooms to the streets outside and it's a floodgate opening to step out into the street.
The firecrackers are loudest. Set off in these back streets and from rooftops, the thick wash of smoke that filled the air, the shrieks of laughter, singing and the drums - beaten over it all filling the streets. Each doorstep with images of lotuses in brightly coloured powder (a great deal smudged now from when they had been done in the morning). Flowers that hung in ropes of rich jasmine that made the air sickly sweet that hung around the necks of men and women, and caught in the hair of children as they ran with sparklers - and around everything, lights. Thousands upon thousands of lights, lanterns and oil burners left that became brighter as the sunset.
There was a different tang to it, at least tonight. A fullness in the air, a snap to each breath that she took. The people looked just as she said, hungry. Lean. Some of them half starved. A sharp edge to it, no matter the festivities. Waiting, with a deep, deep breath before a deeper plunge. The night air at least was not as hot, as they came into cooler seasons. Made the fires seem warmer, a relief to be near.
No need to rush, now, to seem like any other family moving through the crowds as they began towards the main streets. Because there was one thing that cannot be ignored, the people on the streets were dressed in a dozen colours, wearing their newest clothes, as fine as each person could afford. Every colour, and many of them all at once. But removed at the side of the streets, were the UC guards. Dressed in the favoured deep red and white of their uniforms. Wearing their plasma rifles openly without even the pretext of stunners, helmets over their faces. Removed and joking amongst themselves as they stood at the edge and were given wide birth by almost everyone. A palpable fear of them in the way people turned their faces away.
She slipped until she was standing beside Naismith, dropping low to speak to him. "Tonight we celebrate the triumph of Good over Evil. When Lord Rama defeated the Demon King Ravan."