ππ ππ ππππππ .α IN THE SUN
CLOSED EVENT STARTER FROM: SHREYA @arabesq
WHERE: STRAWBERRY FESTIVAL
the humidity had never truly felt like summer to shreya; it was less a seasonal shift and more of a physical imposition, a damp wool blanket dropped over the town. but today, the atmosphere in the crowded square possessed an entirely new layer of misery, thick as it was with the cloying, aggressively sweet aroma of macerated sugar and bruised, expiring fruit. she shifted the weight of her canvas tote bag, the strap digging into her shoulder. ironically, she had purchased the thing from one of the very vendors she was currently trying to avoid, its surface garishly patterned with fading strawberries. instinctively, her fingers drifted downward to find the cold, reassuring perimeter of her mood ring, her thumb tracing the metal band as her eyes scanned the chaotic sea of townspeople. to shreya, the annual strawberry festival was, by any reasonable metric, a public health catastrophe masquerading as community spirit. it was a minefield of tactile horrors; a varnish of sticky, syrupy fingerprints coated every single wooden picnic table, while angry yellowjackets traced high velocity orbits around the rim of overflowing trash cans. and she had already spotted at least three local toddlers sprinting aimlessly through the crowd, their faces smeared with bright red juice in a manner that looked less like a culinary indulgence and more like a poorly managed forensic crime scene.
she lifted her wrist to consult her watch. 12:14 p.m.
he was exactly four minutes late. it was an entirely minor scheduling infraction, one that any normal person would dismiss, yet it was currently serving as the catalyst for a tight, deeply familiar knot of anxiety that was beginning to coil itself into the base of her stomach. a quick glance downward confirmed that the surface of her mood ring was accurately reflecting this internal shift, its liquid crystal shifting into a stressed, dark amber. it was the exact same ring declan himself had gifted her when they were children, a cheap piece of trinket jewelry that she had sparsely removed from her finger in all the years since. then, by some strange internal compass, she turned her head toward the edge of the pavilion and spotted him.
the relief was instantaneous, a softening in her chest that she felt compelled to combat immediately. fighting back the urge to smile, she quickly crossed her arms over her chest, adopting a posture of supreme annoyance purely for the sake of giving him a bit of theatrical grief. "you're late," she announced, though her lips betrayed her, ticking upward at the corners before she could stop them.
