The Chained Watcher

Festival

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This was originally gonna be a more normal exploration of the town with his friends, but this goofy little song manifested a festival out of nowhere. Not a bad thing, considering how much fun I had with the festival, but still rather silly.

~~~

Grian happily hums a little tune, skipping around from stall to stall in the food court, buying whatever catches his eye using some copper coins he made from a copper ingot. Forging currency is so much easier with physical money. It's, unfortunately, one of the things he has trouble with when trying to legally obtain things in a tech-based society.

But that's not a problem here. Magic-based societies almost always operate on some kind of physical currency, usually going copper, silver, gold, sometimes platinum, and beyond that is either a magic-saturated material or bartering. As long as he's not after anything exorbitantly expensive, his forged currency will be all he needs to buy what he wants.

Oh! Another fun thing! Spatial storage is a thing here! He still needs to pretend to store stuff in a bag, since genuine storage accessories aren't something the average person can find or afford, but he can use his inventory as long as he pretends it's a spatial bag.

...Which he actually brought a few of, but that's not the point here. Those are just for if he ends up splurging and buying a ton of stuff in a single trip without the chance to dump anything back at base.

There seems to be some kind of festival going on right now. He's not sure exactly what it's about, nor does he really care as long as it doesn't affect his enjoyment of the festivities. And look at all the fun little things they're doing!

There's apple bobbing, where there's a bunch of... Okay, they're not apples, but they've got a bunch of fruits floating in water, so same difference. The goal is to bite one of the fruits out of the water with nothing but your teeth. Kids love it! Especially with how, instead of a trough or a barrel, the water is floating through the air under the control of a water mage. They're sitting next to the fountain, and whenever the quantity of water in the air shrinks too much, whether due to evaporation or little kids dunking their entire heads in to get the 'best' fruit, they'll top up with the water from the fountain.

With the happy, silly mood around the place, Grian tosses a golden apple into the water stream, winking at the mage when they look over in surprise. They can't focus on him for long though, as the shiny treat immediately grabs the attention of a bunch of kids nearby, and all of them rush over to try to be the one to grab the special prize.

Amused, Cleo elbows him, teasing, "What happened to just walking around to get a feel for the place?"

"It's a festival," he dismisses with a wave of his hand. "It'll be fine! A lot of parents use this kind of thing to introduce their kids to magic in a safe, happy environment, from what I read beforehand. Worst that'll happen is someone will ask where I got the magic fruit. These guys don't seem to be too pushy about stuff, so if I say I usually keep it for myself, but the festival air drew me to give one up, they should drop it."

"You're usually more cautious than this. I guess the festival air really is getting to you."

Grian smiles. "I suppose it is."

They move on, wandering around to look at the next display of innocent magical expertise. A giant rimmed metal dish filled with sugar is being spun at high speeds, a fire mage heating the bottom to melt the sugar while an air mage guides the wispy strands of molten sugar that fly out the tiny holes along the rim to form an airy castle made out of cotton candy. Half the material is spent on birds and other animals, to keep the sugar-hungry children from snatching parts of the castle to munch instead.