Location:Seven Peaks — MultipleDate/Time:TC1854.12.25
The lanterns went up at dawn.
Not because dawn was traditional — Shen Wuyan's pre-Cataclysm festival protocols specified dusk. But the children of Seven Peaks had decided, through the ungovernable democratic process by which children decided things, that waiting until evening was unacceptable and the lanterns should go up now, and 35,000 people had learned over the past two years that children's opinions about festival timing were more powerful than any governance framework the Charter provided.
So: dawn. The lanterns strung along the Verdant Spire's terraces, across the residential quarters' walkways, through the garden where Sylvara's canopy caught the light and scattered it into the morning like a second sunrise. Paper and formation crystal, and the particular craftsmanship of a community that had learned to make beautiful things because someone had built a world where beautiful things were possible.
