The festival grounds had become Vesta's kingdom.
She stood in the center of what would soon be a bustling market square, her rainbow hair catching the lantern light and scattering it like fragments of stained glass. Mikasi hummed in her hands, the living instrument vibrating with the same manic energy that coursed through its player's veins. Her eyes were closed, her body swaying, her voice rising and falling in waves that pushed against the mist itself.
"~And the clouds taste like cream, and the dials catch the dream, and the sky islands call my name~!"
Behind her, a woman struggled to hang a string of lanterns, her mouth full of wooden pegs. The note Vesta hit made her jump, and three pegs tumbled into the crowd.
"For the love of—" the woman spat around the remaining pegs, yanking them from her mouth. "Oi! Singer girl! Some of us are trying to WORK here!"
Vesta did not respond. Her world had shrunk to the space between her fingers and the strings, the vibration of her voice against her teeth, the feedback loop of sound and soul that made everything else disappear.
"~The White Sea stretches wide, with nowhere left to hide, but the music finds you anyway~!"
Two men trying to erect a food stall paused, one holding a wooden beam, the other a hammer. The beam had been about to slot into its housing. It remained suspended in mid-air as they both turned to stare at the rainbow-haired woman belting her heart out to absolutely no one.
"Does she... does she know we're here?" the man with the hammer asked.
"I don't think she knows where she is."
A woman carrying a basket of flowers walked past, caught a high note, and dropped her entire load. Marigolds scattered across the stone like a golden carpet. She didn't even look down.
"Make it STOP," someone groaned from a second-story window.
It did not stop.
---
Bianca stood at the edge of the chaos, her grease-stained overalls catching the light, her expression a masterpiece of resignation. She had tried. She had really tried. For the past ten minutes, she had been attempting to catch Vesta's attention through a series of increasingly dramatic gestures—waving, jumping, at one point holding up a sign that read "LIKE, PEOPLE ARE MAD" written in charcoal on a piece of scrap wood.
Vesta had smiled at her during a instrumental break and waved back.
Then kept playing.
"Like..." Bianca gestured helplessly at the scene. "I don't even know what to do anymore."
Galit jogged up, his long neck weaving through the crowd of annoyed villagers with the sinuous grace of a sea snake. His green eyes swept the scene—the frozen workers, the dropped flowers, the woman still yelling from her window, Vesta lost in her own universe.
"What is happening?" he asked.
Bianca flipped a wrist at the chaos. "I like, told her. But she's, like, in the zone. You can't, like, interrupt the zone. The zone is like... a thing. It's real."
Galit's neck coiled into a knot of stress. "The villagers are going to riot."
"Like, yep."
"They're already yelling."
"Like, yep."
"We need to do something."
Bianca looked at him. He looked at her. They both looked at Vesta, who had just launched into an elaborate guitar solo that involved playing the strings with her teeth.
"Like, what?" Bianca asked.
Galit had no answer.
He turned to the crowd, raising his hands in what he hoped was a calming gesture. "Everyone! Please! She's... she's a musician! They're... passionate! It's a cultural thing!"
A tomato flew past his head. He wasn't sure if it was aimed at him or Vesta, but either way, the message was clear.
---
On the other side of the festival grounds, three small figures darted between stalls and through crowds with the heedless energy of children who had discovered the sacred truth that adults could not catch them if they ran in zigzags.
Sanza led the charge, his small red head visible above the crowd only in brief flashes. His miniature parka flapped behind him, and his face was split by a grin of pure, unadulterated joy—the kind of joy that eight-year-old Celestial Dragon scions were absolutely not supposed to experience.
"You can't catch me! You can't catch me! I am the SUPREME COMMANDER OF TAG!"
Jelly bounced after him, his gelatinous body leaving glittery trails on the stone with each landing. "Bloop! But I'm It now! You're supposed to let me catch you!"
"The rules are for COMMONERS!"
Eliane brought up the rear, and something remarkable had happened—she had stopped fussing. Somewhere in the last twenty minutes of dodging through crowds and leaping over obstacles and watching Sanza's aristocratic composure crumble into genuine childhood, she had forgotten to be the responsible one.
Her silver hair flew behind her, her chef's jacket was now liberally smeared with something purple, and she was laughing.
"You're going the wrong way, Supreme Commander! Jelly's behind you!"
Jelly bounced higher, reaching with morphing hands. "Bloop! Almost—got—"
Sanza cackled and veered left, directly toward a display that had been set up at the edge of the market square.
It was a replica of one of the Rokaku—the great salt elephants that guarded the island. About five feet tall, made of painted ceramic, it stood on a wooden platform surrounded by offerings of corn and flowers. The craftsmanship was remarkable: every detail, from the wrinkled skin to the glowing symbol on its forehead, had been rendered with loving care.
Sanza did not see it.
He was too busy looking over his shoulder at Jelly, too busy laughing, too busy being, for the first time in his carefully controlled life, simply a child.
His foot caught the edge of the platform.
He stumbled.
For one long, terrible moment, time stretched like taffy. Sanza's arms windmilled. His eyes went wide. Jelly's bounce faltered. Eliane's laugh cut off mid-breath.
And then Sanza crashed into the replica Rokaku.
The sound was horrific—a CRASH of ceramic on stone, a THUD of small body hitting ground, a TINKLE-TINKLE-TINKLE of fragments rolling across the festival grounds.
Sanza lay sprawled in a pile of broken ceramic, pieces of elephant ear sticking out of his hair, a painted eye staring up at him from beside his nose. He blinked.
Jelly froze mid-bounce, hovering in the air for a moment before slowly settling to the ground. His starry eyes were impossibly wide.
"Bloop..."
Eliane's hands flew to her mouth.
The ceramic pieces lay scattered like fallen stars. The replica Rokaku—days of work, someone's labor of love, a sacred symbol of the island—was now a collection of fragments.
A shadow fell over them.
They looked up.
A man stood there. He was broad-shouldered, with arms like tree trunks and a face that had gone the color of fermented chicha. His hands were clenched at his sides. His eyes—small and dark and furious—fixed on the pile of broken ceramic, then on Sanza, then on the pile again.
"WHAT," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"
Sanza's eyes bugled. Jelly's entire body trembled, sending ripples through his gelatinous form. Eliane's face went pale beneath the flour smudges.
For one frozen moment, no one moved.
Then Eliane's survival instincts, buried somewhere beneath the years of culinary training and the desire to be a good girl, roared to life.
"RUN!"
Sanza scrambled to his feet so fast that ceramic fragments flew in all directions. Jelly bounced backward, his body compacting in terror. The man's face went from furious to incandescent, and he charged.
The three of them ran.
They tore through the festival grounds like a force of nature—a small red-haired boy, a bouncing blue jellyfish, and a silver-haired chef with a flour-smeared face. Stalls whipped past. Lanterns swayed. People shouted and dove out of their way.
Behind them, the man's heavy footsteps pounded like drums of doom.
"WHERE ARE WE GOING?!" Sanza shrieked, glancing over his shoulder at the approaching apocalypse.
Eliane's head whipped around, her ears straining above the chaos. And then she heard it—a familiar melody, soaring above the noise, cutting through the mist like a lighthouse beam.
"I CAN HEAR VESTA! THAT WAY!" She pointed toward the market square. "HURRY!"
Jelly's bouncing reached desperate speeds. "Bloop! Bloop! He's gaining! He's gaining, bloop!"
Behind them, the man's voice rose in a bellow that scattered birds from rooftops: "THOSE WERE MY GRANDMOTHER'S OFFERINGS! DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG SHE WORKED ON THAT ELEPHANT?!"
Sanza's legs pumped faster than they ever had in his pampered life. "I'LL BUY YOU A NEW ONE! I HAVE MONEY! LOTS OF MONEY!"
"MONEY DOESN'T REPLACE SENTIMENT, YOU LITTLE MENACE!"
They burst into the market square at full speed, straight toward the source of the music.
Vesta stood exactly where they'd left her, still playing, still singing, still utterly oblivious to the world around her. Mikasi glowed with each chord. Her voice wrapped around the melody like silk around a gift.
"~And the mist can't hide the sound, when the music shakes the ground, and the whole world starts to sway~!"
The three children raced toward her like sailors toward a lighthouse.
The man raced after them like a tidal wave of righteous fury.
Bianca looked up from her conversation with Galit, saw the approaching disaster, and had exactly enough time to say, "Oh no."
Then the children reached Vesta.
They didn't stop. They couldn't stop. Sanza, in the lead, tried to veer—failed—and crashed directly into Vesta's legs.
Vesta stumbled. Mikasi let out a discordant TWANG. The music stopped.
For one beautiful, terrible moment, there was silence.
Then the man arrived, skidding to a halt, chest heaving, pointing one thick finger at the pile of children and musician now tangled on the ground.
"THESE THREE—" he gasped, "—DESTROYED—" gasp, "—MY GRANDMOTHER'S—" gasp, "— ROKAKU!"
Vesta, flat on her back with Sanza's elbow in her ribs and Jelly's gelatinous form oozing over her legs, blinked up at the furious man.
"That's... that's terrible," she said. "I'm so sorry. Can I play you a song about it?"
The man's face went through several colors that should not have been possible on the human spectrum.
Bianca closed her eyes.
Galit's neck tied itself into a knot.
And somewhere in the temple above, Bō-Zak—still jingling with every step—felt a strange sense of relief that for once, the chaos wasn't his fault.
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