Doctor Sweet

The Lanterns

The FLINSATURUH finally landed, both of us dazed and confused as to what happened.

"Where are we?" Liv said, she started hastily walking around the console.

"I'm not sure," I looked towards the doors then back to Olivia. "Lets find out..."

We travelled to the door, and opened one. A vibrant orange light glistened through the room, our ears met to the sound of laughter, fireworks, and instruments playing harmonic music. We both sorta squeezed to through the door closed it, and looked around like curious animals.

 Our eyes adjusted to the surrounding light, revealing a greatly decorated street, filled with people conversing and wandering from one place to the other. Lanterns were scattered and hung above the streets, light glistening from cutlery, windows and pots. Baskets were tossed and spun, juggling rice balls being prepared for customers who swarmed the area. Figures of dragons were danced around like ecstatic eels by groups of dancers, people stood adjacent admiring the dances. The place was full of life all around.

We were unnoticed at the edge of the horde of people which flocked the area in front of us as we had parked right between two Chinese styled houses. 

"We must have arrived during a Chinese festival or something." Olivia stated.

"Yeah, this is incredible." I said, shocked, enjoying the euphoria of sounds vibrating through the street. I looked up, it was night time, a full moon watching over us as we started to explore with wonder.

"Well lets ask where we are." I walked up to someone Olivia following, "Excuse me," I walked to a guy dressed casual vibrant clothes.

"He won't be able to understand you Lewis! Don't you realise we are somewhere in China." Olivia said with her arms spread in front of her.

The guy turned around, "Yes, hello, and of course I can understand you, you're speaking Chinese."

"Wait, no I'm not." She said with a bit of agitation.

I pulled her to one side, "Sorry, excuse us for a moment."

"Of course." He replied.

"Olivia, we may or may not be speaking Chinese right now." 

"Boy, I'm clearly speaking English." She said with a sort of familiar tone which I wasn't really a fan of.

"Its the FLINSATURUH, it like auto translates or something like to the language we are most familiar with, so to these good people we are speaking Chinese as that is their main language, and vise versa to us. I don't know how it does, then again, I don't know how most of it works."

"Ohhhh, okay that makes sense now." We turned back to the guy, still patiently waiting there.

"Patient man, thanks for waiting, epic guy, sorry for the miss-hap. My friend and I are pretty new to all this, so if you don't mind me asking whats going on, is this some sort of festival?" 

The guys face lit up, "What, you two don't know, its the final days of the New Year celebrations, the Lantern Festival." He gestured around to the festival, the town thriving in the background as we spoke. 

"Well this is incredible!" Olivia said.

"Yes it is," I was practically speechless as I'd never seen anything like it.

"Well whats your name anyway?" I asked as we all appreciate the celebration around us.

"My name is Kai-Kuan." He said holding his hand to his chest.

"Well nice to meet you Kai, I'm Lewis and this is my best friend Olivia." She smiled and waved at him.

"Sorry for before."

"No worries, I'll show you guys around a bit."

With that, we wondered the grand festival and arrived at the stall which was a family that were selling rice balls in bowls. "I'll get you these, on the house." Kai asked for 9 rice balls, on three plates, he handed them to us.

"Thanks, we didn't have any money anyway, what are these?" I asked as Olivia started to try one.

"It's called Tang Yuan, its like a rice ball but sweet and filled with sesame and sugar. There is other flavours though."

"Oh, I don't know what to think of that," I then tried one, I think we both were unsure whether we liked it or not. It was pretty sweet though so that kinda made up for it.

Kai showed us around for a while, as we saw dragon dancers swiftly and effortlessly dance through the street, enjoyed lanterns being lit and sent up in the sky. We visited stalls and browsed the festival...

"Oh, Olivia, come with me," I asked as I began to walk towards the small peer that led to the lake. "I rented out a little boat. We'll be able to get a better view of the lanterns they are about to release tons. I want to use this opportunity, it is Valentines Day for us after all, I want us to have a perfect view." I said, jumping in the boat.

"Aw, that is so sweet." She smiled holding her hand to her chest and hopping into the boat beside me. I smiled after she said.

We rowed into the middle of the lake, and angled to have a perfect view.

We stared back toward the festival, and arrived just in time as they released a swarm of lanterns into the air. They hovered all over as they gently blew around like leaves falling from trees in Autumn. They blew all over the area of the lake barely staying above the water level. This far out, it still manage to bring life to the surroundings. Like souls dancing freely in breeze. The lanterns reminded me of fireflies. That reminds me, I still haven't seen fireflies yet, I need to at some point. 

We relaxed as the lanterns danced around the boat.. It reminded me of something.. I turned to Olivia who had a lovely smile on her face, as did I, she ambushed me with a tight warm hug. "This is so nice Teddy Bear, thanks Lewis!" It was really nice to hear both my name and her nickname for me, or whatever it was. And it felt she was actually saying it to me too since she used my name.

"Its alright," I couldn't stop smiling, it felt like a dream come true. "I'm happy you think so." It was kinda weird since she was recently kinda keeping her distance from me and I weren't sure whether she still even liked me. I never thought of that till a while after. But either way it was a really lovely moment, perhaps the best so far.

I never got any hugs at all, so it was amazing to finally be able to receive one, especially from Olivia... Olivia started to sob a bit, she squeezed me tighter, she was always physically affectionate. So it was nice to finally be there for her, properly this time...