The Golden Feronia docks beside a pier crowded with festival-goers. Children sit on the edge and dangle their feet over the sea, most people are wearing hats or brightly colored costumes. There’s a tree strung up with lights and the trunk wrapped in streamers, and a well-lit purple tent set up around where the pier meets land. As Pavel and Vanna walk down the gangplank, a group of three festival goers, all in their own costumes and get-ups, watch Pavel go by, cringing and gasping at his costume.
At the ticket booth, Pavel holds up the two passes and beams at the admissions attendant, who clearly does not know what to do with a sea bitten boy dressed up as the god of death. Her costume is similar to a yukata or kimono in design and has blue fish and wave patterns along her purple sleeves and stars and beads tied into her hair. Vanna smiles nervously over Pavel’s shoulder.
Pavel runs, grinning, through an alley with banners of various sea creatures draped over a fence and long swathes of fabric strung overhead. Lanterns in the shape of jellyfish, sea horses, and starfish glimmer overhead. Vanna follows more sedately behind, but is also smiling, looking over the decorations with admiration.
They pass a junction of the festival, revealing rows of booths and tents with people selling wares and running games. A line seems to have started at a blue, dolphin themed booth of an older man with a tattoo sleeve. Two women chat amiably behind a table crowded with glass bottles at a turtle themed stand. In the street, there are outfits ranging from full costume with a headband equipped with crab pinchers to simple dress up accessories, like sea star barrettes and flower crowns. The jellyfish lanterns shine and seem to drift overhead, suspended among the streamers. Pavel is the only one wearing black and bright red.
