thespherelogs | (no subject)

Who: Everyone!
Where: Anywhere
What: May mod log!
When: The First two weeks of May.
Warnings: Use your best discretion.

May Open log

First of May, First of May

So apparently the open festive mood on the locals hasn’t stopped so May opens with a tradition that happens within it. It’s May Day, or Beltane if you’re feeling formal and it doesn’t just last for the day. Instead it lasts for two weeks, because why do in one day what you can party for multiple days over?

There are the traditional May Day things of course. There’s the May pole stretching upwards with its brightly colored ribbons welcoming people to do it either together or separately. The colors are explained of course, purple for a good year, pink for fertility, green for fiscal gain, blue for calmness. Each ribbon wrapped around the ancient poll is a wish, an old woman tells you. So you should take it seriously. But if you do is up to you.

Ringing outside of the giant circle in the recreation dome are large bonfires. People are writing down their wishes for the year and burning them into the universe. Some more… adventurous people are hopping over the fire in order to increase the effectiveness of the wishes. In case you were wondering, John is standing ready with a med kit and a judgmental look on her face.

There are small picnics set up around rather than tables, and spring foods are placed on it. Strawberries, oat cakes, chocolate, and things like real food are scattered on them, letting people pick and share the platters around them equally. Wine flows freely, of course. Wine made here in the Sphere that comes in a variety of fruited flavors.

Traditional things such as three legged races and general races are occurring, people grouping those with powers together in order to make it fair. Other games are happening. Including Max in the dunk tank for a few minutes, so you may wanna get that in.

There are of course things that are non-traditional as well. After all, this is the Sphere. A series of bouncy castles is set up, as is an inflatable obstacle course. One of the larger castles is even set aside for the adults because well, why not.

Several large ball pits are set up and people are bringing drinks to them. There’s no way that can go wrong. It’s adults only because sometimes everyone just needs a ball pit.

Fireworks happen every night. Or at least something that looks like fireworks, minus the fire and the noise. But they fill the sky above the Sphere, making it seem as if they are under a real sky.

painting the roses red.

After celebrating the spring in April, May brings with it the work of what spring actually entails. What it entails especially after the loss of the person in charge (rip Annie) is doing the sort of normal planting in the fields. There are people around to supervise and to hand out seeds and the other things that one needs to successfully plant fields and all of that.

There are other fields and vegetable patches to be weeded and harvested, because the agriculture dome tends to always be in a state of flux depending on how many people are currently living in the sphere at the time.

But it wouldn’t be a community event if food wasn’t provided, so there’s a sort of barbecue going on. It definitely smells like barbecue that’s for sure, and there are people tending long pits of things that look like meat but that definitely aren’t. Still it tastes like good old bbq and that’s really what matters isn’t it?

Of course it wouldn’t be bbq without beer, so there’s a lot of it. It’s free-flowing (a little too free-flowing actually) and some of the teenagers have gotten their hands on it. On way too much of it as a matter of fact. Which is why it seemed like a good idea to them to show up at the work picnic with squirt guns full of washable paint.

If it’s washable and non-toxic, one argues, then it’s not as if anyone can be really angry.

But honestly it’s a paint fight. Join in or be an innocent victim there are definitely squirt guns a plenty around.

Everyone loves bathtime, right?

Well, people requested baths, so the staff at the pools in the Rec dome have tried to accommodate them! While normally, the events at the pools go something like this: The largest of the three pools, and the light is constant and sunny here. The large pool is Olympic sized, and is a sparkling blue. It’s fresh water, and probably clean enough to drink. I still wouldn’t drink it. The second pool is slightly smaller and more kidney shaped with a gradual sand mound at one end of it. This pool is salt water and looks a bit more like a beach than a pool. The third pool is a kiddie pool, complete with a splash pad, that’s running. Buckets drop, it’s got one of those mushroom things, and sprinkler jets. There aren’t any kids though, so people are welcome to go nuts.

Bathing suits and towels are provided in the divided changing rooms. There’s frozen and fruity drinks flowing freely, along with finger food and snacks.

The Sphere has increased it towards bathing though, through the use of temporary means. There’s a large bamboo building near it, and inside are various sets of hot and cool pools, sauna and steam pools, a masseuse and other spa treatments and the like. There’s three options for these times. 1.Strictly bathing suits, 2, strictly mixed nudity/ bathing suits and 3. Strictly separated nudity. No one below the age of eighteen is getting naked in the baths, sorry kids.

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Letha is sight-seeing, more than anything; she's never helped with hard labor in her life and she isn't about to start now. She can make as many excuses as she likes about being there to provide backup if needed, but seeing as she can't make any risen to aid them, she's really just there to feel helpful.

Watching someone grow plants from nothing, though, that catches her attention. And if Dorian won't teach her magic, that means she's still on the hurt for learning.

"Excuse me, madam - how did you do that? Do you practice some sort of... gardening magic?"

She's sure that comes off as blunt, but she really isn't all too familiar with magic that doesn't involve death. She can't be sure how to label anything.

Persephone's response is a long, low sort of laugh as she looks to the girl standing before her. After so long spent underground, she can see when a person has a bit o'the world of death on them. With Letha it shines, but she also knows that the girl ain't divine and it ain't the acrid heat of Hadestown that clings to her skin--it ain't the specters of the dead workers either. It's a different bit of death, but the decay of it ain't something that she'd mistake for anything else.

"'Gardening magic,'" the words are echoed back with a wicked sort of grin and coupled with a slow roll of the woman's shoulder. "Goddess of the Spring, guess you could call it the same sort of thing, sister." There's a little movement of her finger, conducting a bit of a symphony as that divine magic brushes against Letha's hair, forming a black rose stripped of it's thorns into the mess of dark there, anchoring itself with that deep green stem so that it wouldn't just fall out, but not so much that it would be difficult to remove when the time came. "'m Persephone." Her name is expected to be known, because other people had known it before, and certainly everyone back home had known it, even if they'd given her other ones.

Letha regards her for a moment, mulling over this new information. The name 'Persephone' means nothing to her - it does sound like a lovely name, a Regis name. And while names like Hera and Pherenike are common in her family, the origins have been lost after decades of seclusion and xenophobia.

"That's quite a title. Are you a witch?" That's an innocent enough question, said in passing while she feels for whatever just entered her hair and blinks in surprise. "I'm Lady Letha Regis of Thornwell. I have no titles of importance, but I suppose by now everyone knows me as the girl who speaks about the dead."

Meanwhile, having been disturbed by the arrival of that rose, her crow has started cawing indignantly. Without even breaking her attention, Letha reaches up to scratch the top of the skull in her hair until he quiets down.

Persephone's response to being called a witch is easy: it's a snorted laugh and a quick retort: "I suppose that depends on who you ask and when you're doing the asking. But in general, no I ain't no witch. I'm a goddess. I bring the Spring to Earth and am the Queen of the Underworld." Duel roles for her of course, and she notices the crow and chuckles softly. "Oh be quiet, you. Ain't nothing for you to go and be all loud about." In response, Persephone repeats the gesture, creating a little crown of flowers for the crow as well, just to match it's owner.

It's cute and makes Persephone smile more.

"So, you can talk to the dead, huh?" It's clearly not a surprise to her, in the slightest, and instead Persephone just tips her head to one side, the Earth-colored eyes watching the blue ones of the girl before her. "Must be hard to do when they're ain't no dead here other than the ghost tied to the living woman."

If the crow could, it would shake the flowers off and caw. But as is, chided and immobile, it just fusses with a soft gurgle. Letha's eyes sharpen a bit when Persephone addresses her crow - even Dorian didn't seem to pay him much mind, and honestly, that raises her respect for the woman.

"It is... I've always lived among the dead, it's strange to find myself in a place where they are always laid in the ground and left there." She cocks her head curiously, "I take it that your world is different from mine - we call the land of the dead the Netherworld, and there are no gods there."

Bold of her to assume that there are none simply because she hasn't seen them.

"Yeah, most mortals seem to be forgetting me and my husband exist down there. Unless of course, things turn bad and it's their time to be doing some praying." The prayers were heard of course, it's how her husband gathered his 'children' in order to make Hadestown turn and run. Persephone heard them too, but only during the Summer could she try and do anything about it. When she weren't on Earth, all she could do was offer the Lethe, make them forget about what it was that they'd traded up on top in exchanged for the work and death that made up their existence now.

"Bodies don't matter a lick to the shades though, so it don't matter what you do with em. But the Earth likes it. Helps to make the flowers grow and the soil better. Life and death works best when it's working together." There's a moment when she just goes quiet for a second, and then she adds, "We call it Hadestown. Or Six-Feet-Under." And occasionally Persephone straight up calls it hell when she's angry at her husband, but that girl don't need to hear it.

Her eyes light up. She still doubts that Persephone is really a god, but her world seems much more familiar than anyone else's.

"There are shades in- in Hadestown, too? Or are they something different?" She's sure the shades in her world don't care about anything; they lack the capacity. "In my world, that's what we call the living spirits who got stranded in the Netherworld. Their souls rot there and turn into something... less than dead. It's quite gross, actually." Her nose wrinkles. "I prefer normal corpses - I can hear them breathing, even when their spirits aren't speaking."

"Nah, not that sort of shade. The only thing that's living in the Underworld is me and Hades. And occasionally my brother Hermes when he's ferrying the souls of the dead along the train. But the shades are the mortals who ended up selling their souls for the security that my husband can offer. Ain't no more being hungry and cold and sick and miserable if they sign." Persephone sounds miserable herself when she says it, and she looks vaguely sick before she reaches for her flask, tucked in the bodice of her dress. Unscrewing the lid,she just takes a mighty swig from the silver ring before she offers it to Letha in front of her.

"Fruit of the vine, sister? Careful, it's got a bit o'a kick inside of it. Comes from my Mama's garden back before the world began."