Harvest Fest Report

General Summary

It's the Jonathan T. Aspen Middle School Harvest Festival! For the next three days, hay rides, dunk tanks, and apple bobbing stations will fill the football field, the track field, the parking lots, and the woods along the back of the school. Friday - October 17 - and the day we catch up the the changelings is the day that their class is expected to man the different stages of the festival, with the other grades taking Saturday and Sunday.   George has taken on the dunk tank, while Frank helps out at one of the food stands. Hilda is supposedly manning the bumper cars, but the sidhe is obviously too cool to help out with such things. She stands by the ticket booth and gabs with her friends, barely paying any attention to those entering or exiting her attraction.   Eventually, the children's shifts end, and they meet up outside of the bumper cars. George and Frank are eager to go, but Hilda is hesitant, her pride getting the better of her. But eventually, she caves and follows them out onto the track. George, the savage redcap, is the one to win their little battle of the busted tin cars, with Frank close behind and Hilda dead last.   As they move along, Frank offers the motley "hot sauce popcorn," of his own creation. Hilda, her pride still bruised from the bumper cars, takes it and denies the offered milk before she starts to eat. Even when her mouth begins to burn and she begs for relief, she stubbornly asks for water and not milk. After recovering somewhat, she complains that she shouldn't have eaten popcorn anyways - that it ruins her diet. Both Frank and George take offense to this, as Hilda is only 13 and in their minds, shouldn't even be thinking about such things.   Still, Hilda loudly says she doesn't want to get fat - I mean, "have you seen Tiffany?" She says, gesturing at the overweight seventh grader. Tiffany , of course, overhears, and her face falls. She walks away quietly, but the motley all notice. Even Hilda feels badly, but decides to cover it up with more hurtful insults. Frank isn't happy either, but he doesn't follow Tiffany. Not without a concrete way to apologize.   As they wander amongst the festival, they pass a little seven-year-old boy, face painted to look like Spider-Man. Frank and George begin to delightedly discuss comic books and their Glamour potential, which Hilda scoffs at. She thinks that because they are so mass produced, that they have lost any wonder within their pages that they might have once had - which is true, a song will only produce Glamour the first few times it's played, but once it is on public radio it loses its sheen quickly. Frank and George heatedly argue back that there is no way that comic books could ever be banal, and Hilda nearly bursts into tears of frustration.   She finally explains that Frank is so close to losing himself to the banality, as he rejects all things of the fae and chooses the Autumn each and every time it is offered to him. It will slowly leach his power away from him, until he is nothing but a corporate drone. Even his stalwart, cavalier attitude that "it'll never happen to me" is not enough to save him. The boys are quiet for a bit, finally understanding her worry. George quietly suggests that maybe they could do more things to keep Frank connected to the Dreaming - such as the Wild Hunt - which Hilda snort-laughs at the thought of sweet Frank Reyes participating in. Frank, unaware of the nature of the Wild Hunt, asks what it is. Upon learning its true nature (a reckless and violent tear through a town, gathering all the Glamour possible with little concern for the people around), Frank admits that that doesn't sound like his cup of tea. The three agree to continue this conversation later and leave to try some other carnival games.   George suggests going back to his station: the dunk tank. Mrs. Grossman, the hated geometry teacher, volunteered to be the dunk tank participant, and George thinks that seeing her go into the drink will be therapeutic for the motley. They all agree and walk over to the dunk tank together. Both Frank and George get a solid shot in, knocking Mrs. Grossman into the water, but Hilda misses spectacularly.   Upon hitting his target, Frank does an almost flawless moonwalk across the uneven, grassy ground in his converse. It is quite impressive, all things considered.   After this, they head over to the ring toss. Frank manages to win this game, and is gifted a stuffed pink unicorn the size of his torso. He offers it to Hilda, who stiffly refuses, having once again failed to land a single ring. He decides to seek out Tiffany and offer it to her. Finding the somber middle schooler alone by the bleachers, he gives the unicorn to her by way of an apology. Tiffany accepts it eventually, giving him a small smile.   Unfortunately, Hilda was watching the whole thing and took a picture of the two together, and upon Frank's return teases him about having a crush on Tiffany. Only, she misspeaks, and teases him about having a crush on Hilda. Red-faced and embarrassed, Hilda immediately casts Protocol on Frank to stop him from interrupting her as she explains what she meant to say. Frank, mostly amused rather than angry, shrugs off the insults. George suggests that next they go on the hay ride, and Frank excitedly agrees.   As they head over to wait by the hay bales to get on the next tractor, a returning tractor and trailer pulls off. Amongst the familiar classmates and parents is a little girl and her parents. The girl - four years old at the most - is in hysterics, sobbing as her parents carry her off the hay ride. They try to calm her down, saying that she was scared by the jack o' lanterns and is just overtired, when she suddenly wails about the pumpkins moving.   Now, the adults take this as the candles inside the jack o' lanterns making strange, flickering shadows that have tricked Roxy's (the little girl) exhausted mind and childhood imagination into seeing movement where there wasn't any, but the changelings know better.   Frank runs over to reassure the little girl, and promise that the three of them will take care of it. His sidhe charm is enough to calm Roxy, and she eventually stops crying as her parents carry her back to the car.   The motley, meanwhile, climbs onto the tractor and rides out to the pumpkin patch to investigate. Upon being dropped off, it does not take long for Hilda to notice the undulating vines and creeping, flickering faces of the jack o' lantern chimera: squashlings.   Hilda immediately invokes her signature element of frost to try and Chill the plant-based chimera and damage them, but the rime that leaves her fingertips is not even enough to cool a can of soda.   George, for his part, cracks his knuckles and gets into position, ready to fight these creatures. His Burning Thew, unfortunately, has much the same effect as Hilda's Winter casting, and fizzles out before he can use it.   As the four squashlings creep closer, the children spring into action.   Frank is the first one to run forward and face the creatures head on. He begins to yell at the chimera, preparing the space to cast a cantrip, as George ducks behind one of the mundane pumpkins in the field to hide. The squashlings creep closer and closer, and Hilda takes a chance, blowing out a breath of cold air upon her weapon to try and freeze and shatter the gourds. Her second attempt at Chill works, and her yardstick-sword becomes coated in a thin lair of ice. Frank, seeing her success, tries for his own casting of Burning Thew and feels the might of the dragon surge through his veins, ready and waiting when the creatures come close enough for him to attack.   A squashling creeps up close to George's hiding spot and he takes the opportunity to swing at its gourd head, but the chimera is perhaps even more like plants than one would originally guess, and the head flops back limply - grotesquely - as George's fists swings right over the top of it.   Tendrils of vines from the "legs" of the squashlings begin to snake out at each of the children, winding around their legs and torso and arms to tie them up and hold them down. Frank is the only one even close to escaping, but another squashling that he didn't see at first gets the drop on him and Frank goes down hard, scraping his knees badly as his restrained ankles and legs cause him to lose his balance. George as well does an impressive job dodging the tendrils, but there are just too many of the fuckers and soon he finds himself similarly restrained.   Thankfully, if there's one thing redcaps are good at doing, it's eating things. Using his teeth, George rips the vines off of himself and stands up, brushing the remnants of plant matter away from his body frantically. Hilda, seeing him free, begins to swing her own sword, but the blade can't cut through the thick vines without also slicing into her own legs.   Frank feels himself lifted off the ground, face to face with the large pumpkin chimera. Its long tendrils brush against his face like tentacles, and Frank feels his body surge into action. He wraps his hands around the vines restraining him and, instead of pulling free, pulls the squashling into him. As the chimera is pitched forward, Frank's forehead smashes into it, and the head of the squashling explodes, scattering pumpkin guts everywhere! Frank blinks, wiping off the guts before turning to face his second enemy.   Hilda gives up trying to get free, and instead squares up with the squashling holding her captive. Raising her sword, she lets out a defiant cry of a ruler who refuses to kneel to their captor, and drives her sword up to the hilt into the squashling. Her opponent similarly explodes, covering her in its insides, but Hilda looks too triumphant to care.   George, similarly, takes a wild swing at the squashling, but his fist goes wide as the squashling bobs and weaves erratically. It in return attempts to restrain the two changelings menacing it (Hilda and George), but its split attention leads to neither of them being overwhelmed by its vines. The only other remaining squashling swipes out at Frank, but Frank leaps over the root that tries to broadside him nimbly.   Hilda swings her sword out again, and it neatly bisects the third squashling, which crumples into a pile of soon-to-be-rotting vegetation. Seeing their enemy defeated, George runs over to Frank and swings at the last squashling, but misses. Frank tries to sweep out the pumpkin's "legs," but unfortunately vines do not function in the same way that legs do and he is unsuccessful. The squashling, in its own turn, strikes out at both of the changelings and missess both of them spectacularly.   Hilda sees the trouble the two are having and yells out to George, tossing him her sword. George hears her call and looks over, catching the sword and swinging it in on smooth motion. It beheads the last of these creatures, and the jack o' lanthern head rolls across the ground, landing at Hilda's feet. As they all take a moment to breath, they all laugh and cheer for their first battle as a team!   The three hike back to the festival... to what awaits them, no one knows...

Character(s) interacted with

• Mrs. Grossman
• Tiffany Burroughs 
• Mr. Schultz