On the morning of the Spring Equinox Festival, Solveis woke up before the sunrise. By the time that the rest of the cabin had woken up and were wandering out into the small living room, Livia’s family had already arrived, and Solveis had already dressed in her outfit and done her hair in an elaborate faun hair style. Juju, Papi, and young Joao were sitting in the living room chatting with the only two people who were awake and ready, Solveis and her father.
Sensing that everyone was waiting on them, Livia and the Eigeroy clan got ready quickly. As soon as Livia had her princess dress on, she came out to the common room. They all admired her while she was spinning, dancing, posing, and talking on and on about all the good things that were going to happen that day.
It was only an hour or so after sunrise when the Eigeroys and their friends loaded onto the cabin boat. It was a short ride to the mainland, during which Solveis styled Livia’s hair to match her blue dress. From the mainland dock, they had a taxi ride to the Eigeroy house for snacks and water. At the Eigeroys’ suburb home, they split into two groups and packed into the two family vehicles. The kids begged to ride with the fathers, leaving the mothers and babies in the second vehicle.
The Eigeroy party arrived at the fairgrounds promptly, just before opening time. After wrestling through a nightmarish parking situation, the party gathered at the grounds entrance. They stood at the big western gate, where a horde of people waited for entrance. The sheer number of people, the enormous size of the single entrance gate, and the cacophony of humanoid noises all combined to be quite overwhelming, especially to sensitive Solveis. It gave her the opportunity to have an out of body experience. The little yellow bird escaped its cage and floated above her. She felt this would be a day full of opportunities for out of body experiences.
Solveis’s yellow bird watched her people from some distance above their party. Livia, among the commotion and cacophony, was not only comfortable, but thriving. The meaning of the phrase ‘like a fish in water’ suddenly became perfectly clear to Solveis. People were approaching Livia to compliment her princess costume. In return, she sang the character’s song for them. She danced and fluttered. Her Papi put her up on his shoulders, and her eyes wandered gleefully at her superior height.
Arlendr was being impish, hitting a lamp post with a stick. Dueling with it? He knew better than to harm public property, so he kept his attack to only partial strength. Around him stood an audience of little boys who looked as though they had a strong desire to find branches, pick them up, and join in. Their child instincts seemed just about to take over.
The Eigeroy parents were chatting with Livia’s parentals, forming a little cluster of bodies, slightly separated from the mass of lingerers.
The little bird observed that the whole mass of people was not unlike a scattering of rice, with the grains/people at the edges of the crowd more spaced apart than those nearer the center. Like fallen rice, there were little clusters of tightly packed grains, with space between them and the other clusters.
Solveis was comforted to notice that some of the members of the crowd were in costume like herself. A higher percent of costumed people would have solidified the social acceptability for her though, and made her even more comfortable. Reproductions of outfits from the same play as Livia’s princess outfit were some of the more common costumes to see. The eptill and the princess were particularly common.
The little yellow bird cocked its head in remarking that the rice spilled out here was of many grains and colors, metaphorically. The crowd represented some members of almost every people, ethnicity, and nationality. The people of Amalga, and the people of the world at large, were typically not categorized so much by their ethnicity or nationality, but rather as being either hu-legged or beast-legged. The beast-legged were so called because their legs resembled the back legs of some four legged beast, like a horse maybe. They also had hooves like these animals. The different ethnicities of beast-legged type referred to themselves with names such as: horse-hu, goat-hu, sheep-hu, deer-hu, and so on. On the other hand, there were hu-legged, or humanus-legged. They had legs that more closely resembled those of creatures who could walk on two feet, like apes. Their legs ended in feet rather than hooves. There were multiple ethnicities who had hu-legged body styles as well. They included: aepsis, oggos, attos, eptills, and frople. There was a third category besides hu-legged and beast-legged, but people tended not to count them. They were the irdies. Irdies had a couple of characteristics which caused them to be counted almost as a category of their own. They were the only sentient members of society who were fully beast. They were birds, fully birds, though generally much larger than a wild bird. They had a humanus nature though, being people who spoke, and thought, and had corporate jobs. They had the unusual tenancy to be migratory or nomadic, and they didn’t require homes to live in, even though some did choose to live in traditional homes.
Solveis noticed the scatterings of each people group standing outside the festival gate. The distribution of peoples seemed to be a slightly more diverse version of the actual total population of the nation of Amalga. The majority of people in the crowd were, as expected, aepsis. Aepsis were always the filler grain in all rice piles in Amalga. The next most prevalent group was oggos, also to be expected. Wherever aepsis were, oggos lived among them. Most of the oggos present weren’t tinted violet-blue like Livia and her family. They were dots and clusters of varying shades of tan, sandy brown, and carob. There were some sheep-hu and goat-hu scattered about too. Solveis figured that she had a cousin or two represented in those groups. In smaller quantities, the rest of the peoples of the world were represented: deer-hu, attos, eptills, etc. Irdies were hard to see unless they were flying, as they were crushed between the bodies of bigger beings. No frople could be seen among the people. Amalga was not their home. They were separatists who lived on the other side of the world. They referred to themselves as sepigau rather than frople, and they rarely traveled.
After some time waiting at the gate, people watching, it opened to Solveis and the crowd at large. The people walked up to the ticket counters, past security people, and into the festival.
Shortly after entering the fair, Solveis’s group was past the crowded entrance and her little yellow bird was settled back inside the bars of her rib cage. Her group had stopped to decide how to structure the day. The plan was to do rides first, at the back of the fair grounds, then looping back for food, shows, and booths. Solveis’s mother hurriedly led her clan to the back of the fair grounds. The group reached the relatively sparsely populated area of the rides. Livia’s parentals bought some ride tickets for each of the three bigger kids.
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“No. Please. We’ll get tickets for the kids. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, they don’t even need to ride at all. Really,” the mother pleaded with Julinha. Arlendr glared at his mother, his glare went unnoticed by both women.
“Really. You drove us and dealt with the tickets, and that’s not counting all you do for Livia.” Livia’s sister pleaded back as she jostled Livia’s head playfully.
“Well. If you insist,” the mother gave in.
Livia’s sister bought more ride tickets for the kids than their own parents would have.
Once in possession of the tickets, Arlendr led the charge away from the adults and over to the biggest, most flashing ride. It flipped and spun. Solveis had never been on a ride like that one, only the little spinning ones. A large part of her was terrified, but she didn’t see any signals of terror coming from the members of her cohort. Arlendr was determined and excited. Livia was jumpy and nervous, but more excited than anything else. She seemed more like she was hyping herself up on purpose, rather than being genuinely scared. Solveis allowed herself to be led to the line of the flashing ride. She and her two companions were placed in a booth with four seats.
The whole small booth began to spin clockwise, slowly at first, then more and more quickly until Solveis could feel tension on her tight braids. She was glad now that she had brought extra dried flowers for fixing up her hair. The booth swung slowly forward, while maintaining its clockwise spin. After a moment, it was moving and spinning so much that Solveis would have had to make an effort to figure out exactly in what way it was moving. It was wonderful. She felt herself laughing and tearing up, the wind pulling at the corners of her mouth and at her eyes.
If the crowds had been overwhelming for Solveis, then this was even more so. It transcended overwhelming, past the anxiety, to pure fun. When the ride slowed to a stop, it was too soon. All the kids wanted to stay on.
The Solveis stepping off of the spinning contraption was a different person than the one who’d approached it, excited and giddy. She held Livia’s hand and skipped (as much as faun legs can skip) back to the parents. Even Arlendr hooked his arm in Solveis’s and joined in. All the parentals were sitting on benches feeding the little ones.
“Can we go do that one?” Solveis asked them.
“Sure honey. Go have fun. We’re going to leave this area around lunch time to eat. Come back here after every ride. Ok?”
“Yes,” Solveis assured her mother.
Arlendr pulled Solveis over to a ride which was more of a walking experience than a coaster, a house of mirrors and other such wonders. This was a little less amazing than the first, but still delightful, filling her senses to capacity in all the best ways. Solveis constrained her companions to keep their promise and go back to the parentals between rides. Papi even went on couple of the rides with them. When the kids were about to run out of tickets, it happened that the parentals were desirous of moving on from that part of the festival. The three kids wordlessly came to a mutual decision to spend their last tickets to go back to the first ride. It was as amazing on repeat as it had been the first time. This time, Solveis sat next to Livia; they hooked their arms together as the world spun. Arlendr got into the full spirit of the thing and made crazy child noises. After having experienced other different rides, being now experienced in the ways of coasters and such, Solveis felt like a connoisseur tasting a well crafted luxury on this second experience. The first experience had been more like a hungry person devouring a new morsel. She gave herself fully to the experience, and soaked up every euphoric fleeting moment of spinning sky.
The three kids went back to their families excited, tired, happy, and ready for lunch.
On approaching the parentals, the three kids saw a couple adult aepsis standing with their group, talking with Solveis’s mother. Solveis’s instinct was to hide, to hope they would go away and be gone before she would be obligated to reunite with her family. Arlendr, upon seeing the intruders in his family circle, stopped in his tracks, putting his arm out in front of Solveis, causing her to bump into him and then stop. Livia, realizing a moment later that her friends hadn’t continued with her, turned back to find out about it.
“Who’s that aepsis lady?” Livia asked Solveis.
“I. don’t. know.” Solveis answered slowly, squinting at the stranger.
Arlendr stared in distrust through fiercely squinted eyes.
Solveis, feeling that it was rude, and potentially dangerous, to stand a distance away from one’s adults, returned slowly to her parents.
“So, here’s your little one,” the strange aepsis woman said to the mother. The woman ran her hand through the length of loose hair at the bottom of Solveis’s braids, causing Solveis to feel an uncomfortable tingling feeling and to freeze like a statue.
Solveis didn’t know how to respond to this very brand new lady. She froze quite still. Her father gently touched her shoulder to relax her and point out an escape option. She went and stood by him.
Solveis’s mother spotted Arlendr, pointed at him, and explained, “That’s my other one, Arlendr.”
“Little Arl, huh? Handsome little man,” the woman flattered the mother.
“Oh. I wouldn’t call him that. It’s the full name or nothing at all,” the mother commented on her son’s quirky preference.
“My two are around here somewhere. They are riding with some school friends. Getting it out of their system so the grown ups can have some fun later.”
“Nice,” the mother replied. Feeling pressed in by the increasing density of the crowd, the mother began to pack her things. “It’s been nice to catch up.”
The aepsis lady drew the mother back into her conversation, “Actually, we just moved back here, you know. I’d love to hang out with you all sometime. Help the kids make friends and all that.”
“We don’t actually live near here. We...” the mother began to explain.
The other woman cut her off. “Neither do we. We’re over an hour away, on the coast, in the suburbs. I heard you live in the area.”
“Sounds like it. We’ll have to have dinner or something.”
“You all still have that island?” the woman asked, directing her question at the father.
The mother answered, just a little possessively, “Yeah. We’re there most weekends – when the weather’s nice.”
“That’s awesome. I’d love to see it again sometime.”
At that moment, the crowd thickened around the group, shoving them closer together, too close to speak comfortably.
“We’re going to go get lunch, I think. Escape the crowd,” the mother said in a rush, eager to not be so physically pressed in.
“There’s my kids anyway. I’ve got to go,” the aepsis woman said, glancing at a boy and girl who were running toward her, knocking past other walking people.
Solveis’s group walked away, and the woman called toward them. “See you soon, I’m sure!”
Solveis’s group, the four parentals and their five charges, all left the rides area to find food. They pressed through a much thicker crowd than had been present when they’d first arrived. The kids chatted animatedly about the rides and the food they were about to eat, while being pushed hurriedly through the crowds. The commotion and noise made it so that none of them could really hear each other or have conversation. Solveis’s yellow bird left its cage to perch on her shoulder and watch the interesting crowds. Eventually, the group of nine arrived near the entrance of the grounds, where most of the food stands and pop-up tents served their goods. The two families split up to order their food, and then to meet back up at a table.