aterat | Winter is not a season

Entry tags:

Winter is not a season

Who; Everyone (don't forget to tag in & tag around!)
What; The Winter Festival
Where; The circus complex and the park
When; Today & lasting for 1 week
Warnings; None, but if something needs a warning, please label as such!

Back in November, Ignis petitioned Halcyn for a Winter Festival. He requested snow, lots of lights, and an in ground hot tub or two or more.

Train/moogles/horses - There's also a small train to go ride around the city, and horses will again appear for sleigh rides. Moogles will be appearing/on hand to give directions to where things are if people get lost. They are also serving as sources of information in case someone doesn't know anything about a festival or activity. Just ask the moogle kupo!

Food/shopping - Ignis also learned of and requested that European style christmas markets (including Japanese ones) so all of the foods for those countries and all of the things/traditions that they are associated with will be available. Whatever country has what, feel free to learn about it, or whatever different world. Recipe books will be available for whatever place too so pick one up while you can because you might want to learn to cook it for yourself! (Sorry folks, Remy not included) Enjoy all the shopping and fooding even if you've never heard of that place, world or food before. So eat, drink and be merry!

Activities/things to do - Skiing, sledding, skating and tobogganing will be available and if you're really tough, maybe archery hunting in skis may appeal. Riding on a ski lift can be a relaxing thing to do as well. Snowboarding is available as well, but a few words of caution on that. There may be sledding moogles as you go, lots of trees to run into, balloons, and if you hit an igloo, there may be an angry moogle that throws a table at you. There are also snow chocobos and snow moogles along that path.

For those not so daring to go snowboarding, the snow moogles and snow chocobos will be around town in different spots so that they're not missed. And while they won't throw snowballs at you, your friends just might! And you can ride a horse to go see a model of a royal library. A word of caution however, as there may be monsters even if they're mostly slimecicles. There may be some Luminous Lamplings or Bongo Fandangos lurking about too.

Other activities/happenings - There will also be events and things for the Chinese New Year, such as lion dances, all sorts of traditional foods, decorations, fire works, firecrackers and kids might get red envelopes. Since it is now the Year of the Rabbit, adorable rabbit decorations of all sorts are everywhere. On the last day of this Winter event will be the Lantern Festival.

Something else to note - If you're feeling adventurous there's a place or two to get married! The Hunting Lodge is always open so you could married there too! Take a walk through some Christmas illuminations for romance, or just because they're pretty.

Other notes - People from home will appear this week too as it's a fourth wall event, so be on the lookout for them! And if all of this stuff doesn't work, feel free to choose your own wintry adventure!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Nah," he says with a laugh. "You were shy, Cloud. It's nice to see you out of your shell."

He tries to keep himself balanced on the board. "Come on, hurry up."

He shrugs, not looking over to Zack as he starts to browse the boards. He might be right, but that doesn't mean Cloud has to acknowledge it.

"I'm hurrying."

Which translated to he didn't actually have any idea what he was even looking for.

"You're slow," Zack laughs. And then he's pushing off. Because he intends to do this! No chicken here!

"Hey!" He settles quickly on one with shiny yellow flames and straps on, because there's no way he's going to let Zack get away with this.

As soon as he's moving, it's terrifying and thrilling and he's pretty sure he's going to miss all this once it's over and done. Surely it couldn't stay forever. None of them were that lucky.

See, he can inspire decisive ideas! Good right? And Zack? He's laughing in delight at the rush. This was so awesome.

"Way better than walking downhill!" he hoots.

He had to admit, it was pretty great, and controlling the descent came pretty natural to him. Maybe it was all the combat training, but the movements were pretty intuitive in regards to how you got it to turn and prompt which way you wanted to go.

He could get used to this. "You think?" And he actually laughed. "It's great!"

Of course it did. Mako-fueled reaction times made things like this pretty cool and a lot easier. Zack laughed in delight as he kept going.

"Yeah! Oh man, wish we'd had these for Icicle jobs. But there were almost always Turks for those ones, and I can't imagine Tseng having this much fun!"

Tseng. The Turk who'd taken Aerith. "I can't imagine him having fun at all."

He really had seemed to have a rod up his backside, though maybe Cloud was biased.

"Oh come on, he's not that bad when you get to know him. Beyond the orders he's followed."

So that's a whole thing. He's learned about it. Aerith had been very honest with him.

"Yeah. Orders." From the most corrupt company in the world. "So, uh...how are you and Aerith?"

Because that's a better topic than Shinra.

Zack doesn't answer because look at this little mound of snow he goes up over. It gets him some air time and he laughs in delight. Yeah, this is the best.

"Man this makes snow awesome!"

Cloud leans in to his own ascent in an attempt to catch up and laughs as he defies gravity for a moment.

"Yeah it is!" And it's better than thinking his friend is avoiding the question, right? Right.

No, it's not... It's not avoiding. He needs... This is not an easy conversation to be had when shouting. So he doesn't really touch it again until he slides to a stop at the bottom. And falls over. But give him credit for not falling until the end.

"Aerith's good. She's always good."

Cloud almost follows him, but stumbles into a tree instead at their stop, using it to catch himself before he falls. He's laughing, but it fades as Zack speaks.

He nods. "She is, isn't she?"

Oh man, Zack has to work hard not to laugh when Cloud has to grab at a tree. Fun stuff.

"She is. And while I don't know if she still wants me, I still love her."

How could he not? She's amazing.

It was hard not to. He hadn't been sure for a bit whether he was falling for her or not, but he knew, now.

And this was only going to be awkward. It wasn't his place to say it here, though, not when he hadn't even talked about it with Aerith.

"She's pretty amazing. And tenacious."

It wasn't simple, but come on, had life been simple for any of the three of them lately?

"See, she's grown on you too," he said with a grin. Zack didn't mind that at all. Everyone should be in love with Aerith in his opinion.

"But she's probably too good for me too."

"Not if you ask her." She thought she didn't deserve happiness. Cloud didn't know if he was capable of it, but he did know, if anyone deserved to be happy, it was Aerith.

"Did you know? About...the Cetra? All of it?"

Of course Aerith deserved happiness! What a silly thing to think. Her and Cloud both deserved it. Geez, Zack would have to get them both up to emotional shape.

"Before? No. There was a serious talk when I got here, so I'm caught up. It's... A lot. A lot of it was sorta implied to me over time, and I guess it explains why Tseng and them hung around a lot."

"I'll say." Now was as good a time as any, wasn't it? "Did she tell you everything that happened? He's...not gone, Zack. Sephiroth."

"I know," Zack said with a nod, a sad one. "I'm sorry I didn't spare either of you his anger."

"It's not your fault, Zack." He shook his head, busying his hands by checking on the status of his board. "It's Hojo's."

Yeah, and Zack had protected Hojo before, so he felt like it was his fault. But he couldn't have not protected the guy he supposed. That would be dishonorable.

"I still should have been ready for it. After Genesis and Angeal I... I should have seen where he could go. And I should have been suspicious to have BOTH of the firsts we had sent to your small town for such a small job."

But he'd annoyed Hojo, hadn't he?

"It's impossible to prepare for that much crazy." They were all victims of circumstance and...no. They were victims of Shinra and...whatever the bigger enemy was that was related to Sephiroth. Jenova?

Yeah, it probably was. Zack sighed and sat down to start taking his snowboard off.

"I was never ready for it. Still wish I could have kept you from more of it."

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