35 - Dolls' Festival

[godsoffortune]

Who: Everyone!
What: Visit the mortal world to celebrate Hinamatsuri.
When: March 3
Where: The banks of a Tokyo river
Summary: Join other residents of the Far Shore under the early cherry blossoms and help guide away boats carrying bad-luck dolls.






The Festival

Although most of the riverside is crowded with mortal families, this section of park seems to be mostly empty of the living. Young shinki are running and playing everywhere, and many of the old gods are present as well as the new. Amaterasu's white-robed guards are mingling with the partygoers and standing watch at the edge of the gods' section of the park, alert for any ayakashi or other threats so that the Far Shore residents here can focus on having a good time. (Gods or shinki who wish to help guard the festival grounds may encounter some small ayakashi attracted to the collection of Far Shore denizens, but nothing more serious than that.)

Food and Games

The children dashing around are flying kites, having spinning top battles, playing tag, hide-and-seek, kagome-kagome and a hundred other children's games. They'll gladly recruit any adult who expresses interest, or just stands still long enough to be dragged in. Some festival-style booths have been set up at the edge of the park, offering freshly made snacks like crepes, takoyaki, yakisoba or chocolate-dipped bananas, or festival games like catching goldfish or throwing rings over bottles to win a prize.

For those who would rather relax than play games, there are tables piled high with delicious bento, blankets spread beneath the early blooming cherries, and plenty of plum wine and expensive sake. Even the weather is perfect for a relaxing day in the park.

The Boats

At a bridge just upstream, crowds have gathered to launch model boats carrying simple paper and straw dolls downstream towards the sea, carrying away impurity and misfortune. Unfortunately, the boats seem determined to float back towards the banks. Is it the current? Or something else? They're heavy, slippery from the icy river water, and move with startling speed and force. Gods and shinki alike will have to wade in or ward them away with poles in order to make sure they carry the bad luck out to sea instead of delivering it right back to sender.

The Dolls

Many of the boats are carrying plain dolls: featureless human-shaped twists of straw or paper cutouts with no details. However, many others, as they turn to hurl themselves at the banks, prove to be carrying stranger cargo. Straw dolls are dressed and decorated in styles from all over the world, carefully bedecked with the traditional regalia of gods -- gods whose incarnations have disappeared from the Heavens. Paper dolls are painted with the features of new shinki who have disappeared. All of them are damaged in some way: scorch marks, slashes, rips or worse mar them.

The styles of the dolls will be strangely recognizable to anyone who happened to wander into the dream of a man who was making and placing dolls around a mysterious crystal.

If someone touches a doll, they will find that they can hear the voice of the disappeared person who it represents or see flashes of that person from the corner of their eye (in cases where multiple characters have represented the same god, there will be multiple damaged dolls dressed like that god, so one doll always represents one character.) Anyone who touches the doll will have the same experience, but they won't hear or see the same things; the hallucinations are personal, and will fade slowly, disappearing completely a few hours after their last contact with the doll.

In Summary:

• Attend a Hinamatsuri celebration
• Enjoy food and games
• Try to send the boats out to sea
• Hear the voices of the missing
• Have fun~