The Lantern Festival

I'd like to include an excerpt from my manuscript: The Story of the Norwegian Pirate and the Fairy Princess Maynan.

The boy looks out to the darkened sea again but this time instead of seeing nothing but darkness he sees hundreds of glowing amber orbs, floating in the night sky.

It is the lantern festival on the Isla de la Luna. The festival is an annual tradition of a small population of islanders known as Roes. Roes are small human like people with smaller than average body proportions, squinty eyes, tanned skin like leather and strong lean bodies. Roes smile a lot and are a jovial group of people. To celebrate an Isla de la Luna year of hard work and labor the Roes put on; a lavish feast, dance, tell stories of their ancestors and play music all night long. A special event is the creation of giant lanterns that, with the aid of a very old and secret incantation, will hover in the air…sending each pilot on their very own voyage through the night sky. As each of these lanterns takes off it begins to glow a soft amber color and gracefully hovers in the calm and gentle air. If any two lanterns should bump into each other they simply bounce off of one another and go in opposite directions. The lanterns stay in the air for as long as the flier wishes, but never past the rising of the sun. An interesting tidbit of information is that Roes have two eyelids; one covers the eye like an alligator or a crocodile does when they go below the water enabling them to see without having to rely on masks or goggles, the other is just like yours’ it helps keep the light out when the Roes are on land and when they go to sleep.

I made this using some oil pastels my father gave me. There are not many different colors to choose from so I used what I had and rubbed them together on the page with my finger. I'd like the pictures to have more detail and look cleaner, but for the purposes of this blog I think the colors give it a dream- like quality.