He had watched the last lantern festival from a distance, seeing the lights floating out over the ocean with wistful memories of the Ghost Queen's offerings he was more familiar with. When he had overheard murmurs of another festival, an official one, he had made up his mind to attend, though he'd had to trade a coney for a candle.
His lantern was embarrassingly simple compared to most of the others he saw being hung and placed on curved stakes, trees, or other devices. He stayed near the very edge of the celebration, far from others and half in the moonlit shadows of the jungle as he set the candle on the ground and pushed sand around it to hold it steady. He lit it with flint and tinder and a dry twig he had prepared for the purpose, and then he set his lantern over the top of it to let the light glimmer out from careful cuts through the green.
A broad jungle leaf had been cut and trimmed and rolled into a cylinder, sealed with sap to hold its shape. A smaller leaf had been curled into a funnel and attached to the top of the first one in the same manner, and he had used his knife to carve slits and poke holes along the veins for the light to shine through in patterns that mimicked the autumn constellations over the Grove of his home.
A lantern for his family, the dryads who had raised him, been aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins to a young halfbreed with no people of his own blood willing to raise him. He had lost members of his adoptive family over the years, to plague and age and violence, and it was for them that he sat beside his rustic little light and stared out over the sea, too fiercely homesick to partake in any of the more cheerful celebrations nearby.
His lantern was embarrassingly simple compared to most of the others he saw being hung and placed on curved stakes, trees, or other devices. He stayed near the very edge of the celebration, far from others and half in the moonlit shadows of the jungle as he set the candle on the ground and pushed sand around it to hold it steady. He lit it with flint and tinder and a dry twig he had prepared for the purpose, and then he set his lantern over the top of it to let the light glimmer out from careful cuts through the green.
A broad jungle leaf had been cut and trimmed and rolled into a cylinder, sealed with sap to hold its shape. A smaller leaf had been curled into a funnel and attached to the top of the first one in the same manner, and he had used his knife to carve slits and poke holes along the veins for the light to shine through in patterns that mimicked the autumn constellations over the Grove of his home.
A lantern for his family, the dryads who had raised him, been aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins to a young halfbreed with no people of his own blood willing to raise him. He had lost members of his adoptive family over the years, to plague and age and violence, and it was for them that he sat beside his rustic little light and stared out over the sea, too fiercely homesick to partake in any of the more cheerful celebrations nearby.
