genessia | Welcome to the Festival of Fireflies

Welcome to the Festival of Fireflies

Who: You! Anyone and everyone is welcome to come!
What: A Festival of Fireflies with games, food, rides and more!
Where: Genessia
When: August 15th-20th. Starting at 7pm
Warnings: Be sure to warn in your threads appropriately.

[The gates are open and the air is filled with the sound of music. Whether you're a reveler, a vendor or anything in between-- come and enjoy the festival!

The Firefly Masquerade post is here]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Airy doesn't realize that Cloud has approached until he speaks. She blinks a few times and looks up from her nonsensical dirt drawings. The first thing she sees is the bright happy bear and for a fleeting second she considers that the voice had come from the bear. Except that bears cannot usually talk. Then she sees the fingers holding the stuffed toy and she follows them until she's looking up at Cloud.

Emerald eyes met his gaze with a look of pure and utter confusion.]

You're giving this to me?

[Airy looks between the bear and Cloud a few times before she slowly reaches for the bear. Her fingers brush against his, grabbing the stuffed animal at it's sides. It's soft and she feels a small smile creep over her lips.]

He's cute.

[How Cloud Makes Friends: By falling onto their flowers. By finding them in musty old coffins and refusing to leave until they've agreed to come along. Now he can add handing a sad looking girl a teddy bear to that list.]

You looked like you could use a friend.

[And what better way to cheer someone up than to hand them a brightly colored stuffed animal, right?]

[Airy takes the bear fully and hugs it, pressing the soft fur against her cheek. She might be in her early twenties but she can still hug a teddy bear in public and feel absolutely no shame. She looks back up at Cloud feeling her smile strengthen.]

Sorry if I worried you but thank you.

[She rests the bear against her stomach, holding it with two hands as she looks up at Cloud. His hair is very pointy.]

Does he have a name?

[In his opinion, there are much worse things someone could do in public than hugging a teddy bear. And it had gotten her to smile, which had been his intention all along.]

You're welcome.

[His hair is incredibly pointy. Thankfully, he was at least wearing relatively normal clothes, instead of his normal outfit from home with the ridiculous amount of belts.]

I haven't really thought about it.

[Okay, he'd given it zero thought. All of the other's were sitting in a pile in the corner of his room, unnamed and discarded.]

[Slowly Airy begins to feel more like herself. Nothing has actually changed and she doesn't want to stay sad forever. She'd thought she'd gotten over it but there is still time and she has her friends and now this guy too.]

We should think of one together.

[A hand lightly pets the bear on its head as if it is a puppy.]

I'm Airy by the way.

[If anyone knows about holding onto things, it's definitely Cloud.]

We can do that.

[Was it really that important that a stuffed animal had a name? Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he could practically hear Marlene giving him a lecture on the subject.

Well. That was an interesting bit of irony. One that had amusement crossing his features.]

I'm Cloud. [He'd never actually met anyone else with a weather related name before.] Do people have a hard time believing that's your real name too?

[Airy laughs.]

I've actually never had anyone ask but I did met someone with the last name of Storm. [She likes fun names and find that they grow on people as much as people grow into them. Airy has no doubt that Cloud's name fits him.]

He said he knew a Dr. Doom so I think there are silly names no matter where you go. [It's something Airy's put a lot of thought into. She looks down at the bear for a second and then back up at Cloud.]

Cloud and Airy... what if we call the bear calm? Because it's cloudy and airy just before a storm.

[Having the name Cloud alone likely wouldn't have been so surprising, but when you coupled it with a last name like Strife, it started sounding far more like a bad alias than anything a mother would actually give her child.]

Guess that only happens to me.

[That or they ask how he got his hair to spike like that. He's honestly not sure which one he dislikes more.]

Calm. [Why he was actually getting into giving this bear a good name was absolutely beyond him.] I like it.

[Marlene was going to be so proud of him.]

[Airy continues to smile up at Cloud.]

I think so.

[Her last name is Miller which is one of the most common names in the United States. It isn't easy to make fun off and 'Airy' is an interesting enough name that those in her class just thought it was cool. Then again she'd grown up in a very small town.]

Cloud?

[There is a moments pause where she puts together a few pieces of information in her head.]

What are you doing here? I mean don't you want to go enjoy the carnival?

[It was a good question. Wasn't he only here to get rid of that ridiculously brightly colored bear? He had gotten her to smile, had gotten her to stop looking downwards. Hadn't that been his entire objective?

But then she'd started talking and he'd been drawn into the conversation and it had stopped being entirely about making her smile and getting rid of the silly bear and turned into something different like it so often did when he met someone new.

He really had to stop collecting people.]

You looked like you could use a friend. [Offering her a small smile in return, he quickly glanced over his shoulder taking in the flashing lights of a near by ride.] Want to try it out with me?

[Airy follows his gaze and then nods.]

Yeah. [If he leaves she and the bear will be drawing incomprehensible shapes in the dirt. She doesn't want to be stuck in the past and maybe enjoying herself is the best way to stop herself from thinking on it so much.]

Have you been on a lot of Carnival rides?

A few.

[Those that were being offered weren't so different than those found at the Gold Saucer. Maybe a little more grand with promises that offered fear instead of a good time. The one nearest them seemed relatively tame, bright flashing out the name 'Tilt A Whirl'. Another, a little ways behind the first, boasted the name 'Skycoaster', an impossibly tall incline followed by a swift, quick drop.

It was probably best if they started off small.

There wasn't much of a line, so they wouldn't have a very long wait once they entered it.]

What about you?

[Airy pads behind Cloud with the bear in her arms. She looks over at Cloud before looking back at the rides.]

I have before. I used to go to festivals with my family. [When they were still alive.] Tilt A Whirl was my little brothers favorite.

[There is a note of sadness in her voice.]

[There's a moment's hesitation, hovering near the end of the line for the Tilt A Whirl, before deciding that maybe it wasn't the best idea. If she had already been sad before hand, he didn't want to do anything that may add on to that.]

Ever been on a roller coaster?

Huh, yeah.

[She looks up at him a little confused.]

We can do that next. Actually I didn't like Roller Coasters until I was fifteen... They scared me before that but I found one I liked that was really small and have loved them ever since.

[Airy likes sharing memories.]

They're not that bad once you get used to them.

[And magically get over the motion sickness you used to be plagued with.

The line in front of them shifts and he steps forward, following the ebb and flow until they're left holding third place for the next batch.]

Just make sure you hold on to Calm. Don't want him flying away. [That. Is the most ridiculous sentence he's ever spoken.]

[Airy laughs softly, looking down at the bear in her arms. He really is cute.]

I won't. He's family now. [She has no idea why she puts so much meaning into toys.]

How long did it take you to get used to them?

A while. [Five years and a few magical doses of mako but that's a really long winded and complicated explanation.] Took me a while to get used to flying too.

[It was probably a good thing he had, or all of that time he'd spent in Cid's airship would have been extremely miserable.]

Flying? How do you fly?

[She really wants to fly but the idea is scary. She's only been on a plan once in her life and that'd been... interesting.]

I want angel wings. [Airy pauses.] That's a weird thing to say isn't it?

A friend of mine has an airship. [Being in the air had never really bothered him. There was a strange sort of thrilling freedom that came from knowing you were in a space you shouldn't be, alone except for those who had taken that particular journey with you.

But then her words make him go silent, just for a moment, attention falling from her face and landing on a particularly interesting spot upon the ground.

Once he might have thought so. Once when he had been younger before everything had fallen apart.]

No. It isn't.

[Airy looks over at him, her emerald green gaze curious but not prying.]

I'm sorry... did I say something wrong?

[She wants to ask about airships because it sounds awesome but this feels more important.]

You just reminded me of someone.

[But that person was gone and lost in the past and he'd already spent far too much time dwelling on it.]

[Airy shifts her weight awkwardly from one foot to the other.][She falls into silence for a moment before looking back up at Cloud.]

How do Airships work?

A lot like a plane. Just bigger.

[The ride comes to a halt and people start to disembark, piling out slowly through the exit as the line in front of them begins to move.]

[Airy steps forward, her gaze flicking between the line and Cloud. She's going to try and not run into the back of people but it really depends on how much she pays attention.]

There are so pretty big planes. The only time I've been on one was to Rome. It was pretty.

[She pauses and wrinkles her nose.]

Not the plane, I mean the plane was okay but Rome was pretty.

Welcome to the Festival of Fireflies

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