I am not lonely [Mystrade] - BOOK 2

CHAPTER 204 :Monkey

Red and yellow has always had a festive appeal in many cultures and Asians weren't stranger to this. The streets of London's Chinatown were flooded with red lanterns and streamers reflecting in the equally gold and red windows of the shops and restaurant. A huge crowd was gathered in the narrow streets, curiously looking up to the decoration and the noise was barely bearable.

Although not being too keen on crowds and noise, Mycroft Holmes had insisted on taking his family out to admire the festivity of the Lunar New Year. Ever since he had allowed himself to broaden his horizon and step out of his comfort zone of the high end neighbourhood of the British capital a couple of decades ago, he had always liked wandering around Chinatown and at this time of the year it was even more of a delight.

Concerned about loosing either Alden or Aelane in the crowd, the official and his husband had put them on their respective shoulders. The children, and Alden in particular, had never really enjoyed that usage but as they were still quite small in that specific moment, it was pretty much an advantage to be raised above even the taller person.

They were slowly making their way up the main street when they started hearing the loud bangs of drums and saw the crowd parting and squeezing themselves against the shops on both side of the street. The drummers' sound became louder and louder as they came closer and it wasn't long before the first one of them turned the corner of the street, closely followed by the entire parade.

Right behind the drummers was thirteen men holding long sticks that were attached to the figure of a long, snake like dragon. Moving in a carefully studied choreography, it made the dragon feel nearly alive, like if it was dancing on the top of the crowd. The length of the wood and fabric dragon was impressive and lights attached inside it made his red and gold skin shine. The head, made of painted cardboard was both frightening and grotesque and despite the first scare it caused the children it soon made them laugh.

After the serpentine dragon came what looked like an army of Chinese lions and their even more grotesque heads. Under each costume two men were mimicking the dance of the lions. From time to time they would stop and do all kind of acrobatics, climbing one on top of the other or jumping from one side to the other of the street. The over sized mouth of the mask would sometime be opened to throw sweets and oranges to the kids in the audience or to let out a roar nearly impossible to hear due to the noise of the crowd.

Arrived in the middle of the street the entire parade stopped and created a circle closed by the drummers on one side and the dragon on the other side. The lions in the middle started an elaborated dance were one of the two men under the costume would climb standing on the shoulders of the other one, the mask nearly blinding him and would try to keep his balance whilst the second one would continue dancing from one leg to another, going back and forth on an increasing speed. The serpentine dragon then started running around the lions on the tempo of the drums before going through them making everyone wonders what would happen if someone deviated from the choreography.

As they resume marching one minute later, a second group of parader was already turning the corner of the street. Accompanied by yet another set of drummers, dozens of female traditional dancers were putting on an elaborate show, framed by four Chinese lions which goal seemed to jump as high as they could on every beat of the drum.

Even for someone like Greg who was pretty in shape and possessed a naturally good stamina, the idea of doing just ten of these jumps was already exhausting so it was not even thinkable to do so during a three kilometres parade.

"Can I eat this ?" Alden asked the elder Holmes, showing him a small white candy.

"We are going to eat in less than half an hour, maybe keep it for later would you ?" his father answered, trying to be reasonable.