TELLING OF THE BEES FESTIVAL

[peckishmods]

the telling of the bees

what's up?

Sunny skies make an otherwise brisk late autumn day positively pleasant. The air is crisp and sweet, the smell of honey and baked goods mixing with the cold. Winter is coming, but it’s not quite here yet. Before it starts, it’s time for one last harvest hurrah as Elflock Falls celebrates its special relationship with the bees in its life. For the next three days the Telling of the Bees Festival is going on in town and Elflock Falls is decked out for the occasion. Lampposts are transfigured into bright shining beehives, large magimechanical bees bumble overhead cheerily, honeycomb patterns decorate storefronts and streets and the Riverwalk is dotted with all manner of stands, some simple, others magically enhanced, peddling snacks, handicrafts and other goods related to the autumn harvest. It’s a great time to pick up some handmade winter wear!

The Telling of the Bees Festival runs from Saturday to Monday, but the first day is by far the liveliest as it features both the meadery contest and the actual Telling of the Bees ritual. Peckenpaugh students can get discounts from food stands all weekend.

visuals!

volunteer slots!

Mr. Berzelius needs some help getting the Peckenpaugh hives ready for the celebration. Can't let the school's own bees feel left out of the celebration! He recruits 💯 [CHARACTER A] and 💯 [CHARACTER B] to do some decorating. They're tasked with decorating each hive with scarlet cloth and setting out a dessert of apple dumplings for the bees to enjoy. A good effort (a thread with 3 replies each) will earn each student 5 Points for their Houses while a damn fine job (6 replies each) will earn each student 10 Points. Good luck with those bees, guys! You have until the end of the month.

Valkyrie is just trying to be helpful when they noticed a knocked over trash can near the carousel, but they're surprised when an inordinately chubby raccoon pops out of it. The raccoon seems just as surprised to see Val, and gets tangled up on their feet trying to escape before it scampers off with just a mint tin and a paper plate, sticky with honey.

A few students make a game of trying to sneak samples during the mead contest:

• [CHARACTER D] and [CHARACTER E] can't get past the age line and wind up growing magnificent beards.
• 💯 Wyatt manages to get a sample, but their selection leaves them breathing actual fire for the next hour. It's not hard for Ms. Min to connect the dots when she spots them. They lose 5 Points for their House, but Ms. Min sends them off with a tums, too.

[CHARACTER G] spots Mr. Crockett arguing with Liquor Store Zed heatedly about ... fanfiction?

It's the last carousel ride of the night, and Lionel climbs aboard at the same time as all three Quackenbushes. The ride starts out fairly ordinary, but, predictably enough, goes downhill quick, and it starts spinning faster and faster and faster. It takes eight full minutes and four brave townsfolk to get the carousel to stop before it spins off into the stratosphere.

how this works!

⬥ The Telling of the Bees Festival is Elflock Falls’s late autumn harvest festival, the main draws of which are the traditional Telling of the Bees, various arts, handicrafts and tasty snacks being sold, and the annual meadery contest (but that’s for adults).

⬥ The Telling of the Bees Festival starts on Saturday morning and goes until Monday night. This IC/OOC focuses predominantly on Saturday, but feel free to thread multiple days by indicating which one in the subject line of your comment!

⬥ Saturday's Festival features include the actual Telling of the Bees around midday, as well as a Best Magical Mead of Elflock Falls contest. There are further county fair-styled food and craft contests throughout the weekend.

⬥ The Telling of the Bees is a tradition found throughout Europe and the United States wherein important life events are shared with the bees, who need to be included in such events or, it is said, they will despair and die or leave their hives. In Elflock Falls this tradition has taken on its own unique spin. The locals like to share how their years went, their secrets and their gossip all at once, once a year, with the magical bees of Elflock Falls.

⬥ Fill out the form under the Tell The Bees section and post it to that subheader to let us know what you told the bees. Bees are good secret keepers. :)

locations!

🍯 WHAT'S UP?: Did you get an apple dumpling with ice cream or without? Does the carousel look like a bit too much thrill for you? What’d you decide to wear when you told the bees your secrets, and did you pick up any new accessories from the local handicraft stands on the main street? Tell us all about your day!

🍯 TELL THE BEES: Around midday, the Telling of the Bees begins. Participants head off the Riverwalk path to a clearing where decorated wooden hives have been set up. It’s tradition, to tell the bees about your year, or your secrets, or any good gossip you happened to hear. They may be all abuzz, but you don’t need to worry about them spilling your secrets.

🍯 ANONBEEMOUS MESSAGING: You don't have to limit your secrets to just the bees! Want to send a nice note to a friend? Wish someone well this coming winter? Spill your secret affections to a crush? What better way to do it than by magimechanical bee?! For the magical equivalent of $1US, you can send a simple note to someone via those great big artificed bees floating around the festival area. They'll happily deliver your note to whomever you wish.

🍯 SHOPS & STALLS: The main street of Elflock Falls downtown is packed with stands and stalls. Everything is intricately decorated and welcoming, some of them are so fantastically designed that they resemble actual cottages and all of them are hoping to get your business. Stop by support local artists and craftspeople and grab any variety of sweet autumn treats. The main draw is all the bee-based products, honey-based potions in cute beehive bottles, and beeswax candles in designs running from simple to "spooky", cosmetics and soaps. There's plenty of stalls full of art, artifice and other handicrafts, too. Simple magical knick-knacks, handmade clothes and accessories, and even expensive artisan brooms and wands are being peddled. Food-wise, honey, apples, pumpkin and the local paw paw fruit feature heavily in most offered dishes, from sweet ice creams and preserves to savory and spicy dishes like pumpkin curry. There are spots to grab traditional greasy fair food, as well, if you're not up for experimenting, and plenty of places to pop a squat and people watch. There are a few different people busking: a one man magical band, a person in a bee costume on stilts, two girls juggling to violin music played by a third.

🍯 CAROUSEL, GAMES & SHOWCASE: The end of Elflock Falls's main downtown drag is a small midway with simple games like bobbing for apples and balloon popping. There're also stands showing off winning crops and crafts, including the biggest pumpkin, best honey (won this year by Mr. Berzelius and Peckenpaugh's bees) and of course best locally brewed mead. The main draw, though, is the large magical carousel that runs all day and well into the evening. This truly impressive black-and-yellow beehive-shaped merry-go-round is a triple decker ride featuring free floating single-rider worker bees, fuzzy multi-rider bumble bees and slightly more private honeycomb-shaped seating for two. The middle level moves opposite the bottom and top, and it all lights up at night, making it as entertaining to watch as it is to ride.

🍯 RIVERWALK & HAYRIDE: Down along the riverwalk where autumn colors still burn bright and beautiful, a horse-pulled trailer filled with hay trundles along the path. Wool blankets and glass jars of handheld, non-burning flames are available to help fight the cold. Early in the evening the hayride is very popular with local kids. As the night wears on and the air gets chillier, the trailer empties out and it's not a bad place to snuggle up with someone sweet.

🍯 ELSEWHERE & EVENING: This spot is for any scenes that don't take place at the festival. Did your student skip to hang out under the pitch bleachers? Want to do a late evening scene with your dormmates turning in for the night? Here's your spot!

🍯 OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

Comments

Chanel and a Candle (To Enable All Spine Threads, Open++)

[necrodanseuse]

Chanel, resolutely as always non-charmed by sugar, small bugs or their secrets, made a beeline (haha) to the first thing truly Spooky item that she sees here. She's not always swayed by the quaint stylings of Elflock Falls, but this time. Oh this time. The candle maker is a true craftsperson. She cradles a spine candle in her hand like it's her child, and coo at it accordingly. "I want to give it a little pumpkin head and take it home." She says aloud, "This is perfect."

Twinzlo and a Candle

[notpoison]

"Do they make candle limb bones?" Laszlo asks, already looking for more anatomical treasures. There are skulls, of course, but those are what the kids call "main streamed" now, and therefore not exciting. Not like the spine.

Twinzlo and a Candle

[teratophilia]

Armani surveys the collection in search of something limby for Laszlo, ducking down to see what's on the lower tier of the table display. "Ooh!"

Laying flat on its side is one long boy with a similar but much smaller boy resting beside it. Armani pulls out both bone candles and holds them side-by-side, grinning in anticipation of the bad joke he's about to make. "Jimmy's left arm stopped growing past the age of three. As sad as it was, the sight of his baby arm was rather humerus."

Twinzlo and a Candle

[necrodanseuse]

The soft snort of laughter that escapes Chanel at that is not something she'd allow anyone but the two in front of her to witness, at any point in her existence. But she plays along. Chanel likes the skull candles, unfortunately, and picks one up to place on the top of the two-arm monstrosity. Skull-Jimmy shakes his head, mournful, to object to this objectively wonderful, stupid pun.

Chanel and a Candle, Fred and a Cake

[ohwormhole]

Fred can appreciate a skull used to dramatic effect. Pirates love skulls and Fred loves writing about pirates. Who skip around time chasing shipwrecked British orphans. Spines, on the other hand, just bring up a lot of ucky wucky imagery about dead bodies and blugh how did that even get there. Halloween is over!! Fred's sooooo not surprised to find her meditation partner lovingly holding the only thing at this festival that isn't heartachingly adorable.

"Why would it have a pumpkin head," Fred asks, licking tiny bundt cake frosting off her thumb even as she tries to visualize this monstrosity.

Chanel and a Candle, Fred and a Cake

[necrodanseuse]

Chanel purposely pretends not to notice Fred's presence for a good ten seconds after she arrives, because she knows full well that will annoy her. Forced buddy meditation has, at the very least, taught her that. She spins to Fred, still cradling the spine and makes a little "oh," of surprise at her presence. As in oh, you're still here.

"Why, because he's cursed to roam the earth for eternity, and he can't find his skull again, darling, obviously. You can't expect him to go without seeing, can you?"

Chanel and a Candle, Fred and a Cake

[ohwormhole]

This is, of course, diabolically effective. Short of insisting she'd never heard of The Peculiar Perils, this is the easiest way to irritate Fred. Who takes up a lot of space and is a Local Hometown Darling and shouldn't be ignored!! Getting a meditation partner should have been getting a brand new fun chat buddy, but Chanel is absolutely the opposite of that.

Fred, who has an extremely wild imagination and is maybe possibly a tiny bit biased when it comes to all things Chanel, looks unimpressed by this explanation. "Does he float or Pogo stick around?"

Chanel and a Candle, Fred and a Cake

[necrodanseuse]

Chanel is absolutely the sort to deny that she listens to the Peculiar Perils, even though she does. Every time. Something she'll never admit, because Fred wouldn't appreciate it anyway. She'd probably just argue that Chanel had the wrong ideas about the cast, because they weren't really going to murder each other at the end.

She takes this next bit of criticism with a quiet huff, and makes a grab at just a few plain taper candles, setting them up with the spine like a very disproportionate stick figure. "I mean, he could pogo stick if he wanted, but usually it's by horseback. Of course he kept his legs."

Chanel and a Candle, Fred and a Cake

[ohwormhole]

Okay, sure, the pirates aren't looking to hug it out if their plans weren't constantly being foiled. And okay, maybe if you look critically at the way Leviathan Teethgulper died, the Pickerings are technically murderers. But it was an accident!! Sometimes things just happen when you're a time traveling shipwrecked British orphan!!

Fred takes Chanel's huff as a small win in her column. "Oh, of course he kept his legs." Compared to the spine, someone's clearly been skipping leg day. "Does he also have a pumpkin butt to keep from tipping over on the horse?"

Chanel and a Candle, Fred and a Cake

[necrodanseuse]

Chanel looks around the candle shop for butts. Which is nothing she thought she'd be doing today, but to one-up Fred seems worth it. It has to be inexplicably beautiful and also disturbing, the way the best things are. She takes her time answering, long fingers weaving delicately across the different products on display. Each seems to come up inadequate. It lands on a natural-looking loofah, which seems like a better compromise than most. She plops it among the creepy bones, looking a little offended.

"What? No. That would break in seconds. Think of his comfort."