Disciple of Fire

Chapter 14: The Festival

We approach the main road, carts full of goods slowly filing in amongst the sea of people, the cart owners rushing as fast as possible to find the best spots to set up. Silven still has my hand in his grasp, holding firm so I don't slip away, and he's practically dragging me along. Joffrey stops about a hundred feet before the road begins, turning to us.

"You all, uh, go on ahead. I'm going to wait here for Marianne, see if she needs any help."

"You sure?" Silven questions.

"Yeah, go have fun. I bet they have plenty of things to do."

"Okay, don't try too hard to impress her, alright?" Silven sneers.

"Oh, ha ha." Joffrey replies, deadpan, "Go on, get in there." He moves to give Silven a push in the back, but he dips out of the way, leaning into me.

"Haha! Too slow," He cackles.

Hrithika jumps into the conversation, "Look, everyone! Someone's bringing a Tigerbear through!" Everyone's eyes turn to the road as a hulking creature, easily the size of the carts, with orange fur and black stripes is being led on a rope by a man through everyone, the crowd splitting as the beast treads down the middle of the road.

My fear of crowded spaces leaves me for a moment as I watch this beautiful animal walk, the muscles in its legs visibly constricting as it applies pressure to the ground.

"Whoa..." Silven and I speak in tandem, our jaws reaching toward the ground in awe.

"I wonder where they're taking it," I questioned.

"Maybe they're an animal tamer? We had a few of those in the Kingdom," Oswin theorized, scratching his bearded chin.

Kendrick interrupts everyone with a loud shout, "They have free drink tokens!" He juts his finger forward, pointing out a small kiosk handing out coins. All of the adults' heads snap to the stall, Joffrey included. "Come on! Let's go get in line."

We leave Joffrey by the front as he goes through an internal crisis. His head snaps back and forth between the forest and the town, debating whether to continue waiting as we take our place in the queue. The line moves surprisingly quickly, and we reach the front in just a few minutes. I see three people working the stall, one at the counter and two in the back, and notice that the coins are being handmade by the back two. One of the men is grabbing small globs of mud, rolling it between his hands as the wet sludge slowly shapes into a ball, and a small teal glow radiates from his palms. Quickly, the mud hardens, growing shinier and smooth, turning into a small sphere of pure copper. He then hands it to the other man, who's holding two small metal plates with engravings on them. He places the ball between the plates and squeezes his hands tightly together. The plates grow red hot, melting the ball of copper until it becomes a flat, embossed coin that he proceeds to release from the press into a bucket of cooling liquid. That's so cool! I wonder how their Specialties work. The man working the counter hands each of the adults two drink tokens and sends us on our way.

The flow of the crowd is relatively easy to follow, which has all of us thankful, and we continue down the main road, looking down side roads to see if anything interests us. I see a boy roll past carrying a cart full of beautifully crafted pottery, and can't help but stare at the intricate and vibrant patterns. Before I can draw anyone else's attention, Hrithika booms out.

"There's a zoo!"

My eyes break away from the pottery and I see her pointing down a side road, a large sign at the end with the words "Verdangrove Zoo" written neatly and decoratively. The first thought that occurs to me is, What's a zoo? I turned back looking for the cart of pottery, but they were lost in the sea of people. The bustling of the crowd sends me shrinking backward, my breath catching in my throat. I stumble backward into Silven, who turns and catches me with a surprised shock on his face, nearly falling back into Hrithika.