Festivals

Bird-folk celebrate plenty of festivals and rituals. The religious portion of these celebrations tends to take the form of a reenactment of myth, aided by getting wicked fucked up on holy frog poisons in order to enter the spirit realm and take on the roles of mythological and historical figures. The secular portions are often accompanied with boozing

## Seasonal Festivals

### Dry Season

#### Night of Flowers (mid-season)

> *The nights are long, and who knows what strange things may walk among us in the dark?*
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Gathering begins in the form of a late lunch-type meal; festivities commence at the golden hour as the sun begins to set, with the arrival of the Flower Clowns to chase the village children and harry the adults. As darkness falls and torches are lit, the flame drives the Flower Clowns away for a time; still they might be glimpsed in another form, flitting here and there among the party. Flower necklaces are everywhere; one gained directly from a Flower Clown is particularly strong magic, but they're all lucky if kept and dried for the following year.

The children are taken off home after the Flower Clowns are scared away; they're put to bed in a big party and entertained with spooky ghost stories by some elders. Meanwhile the youths and adults are off flirting and drinking sweet fermented fruit-booze and participating in something the Elven tourism board refers to as a "quaintly rustic local fertility festival."

There is no specific myth or ritual component to this festival; nobody does frog drugs for this one

### Rainy Season

#### Bringing Back the Rains (start of season)

> *Utanji on her nest cried out that she was thirsty, and so Hyi'i'cheji returned from his flights, bringing with him the rains which had blown away long ago at the start of the dry season.*
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As the sky turns grey before dawn, a ritual air-dance of synchronized flight is performed by a group containing any adult community member who feels they might need to leave the village at any time in the coming year, or anyone who otherwise wishes to gain Hyi'i'cheji's blessing, or anyone who feels like participating in the ritual. Children and uninitiated youths, or any other community member who for whatever reason does not know the movements of the dance but may wish to fly it in the future, are expected to get up early and go watch it. (At least one person involved in the air-dance is on frog drugs, but not everybody.)

As at any festival, there's plenty of food being eaten around midday and in fact wandering around eating food is the main attraction in general. This festival is meant to take place on the first rainy day of the season, so it is expected that it will in fact start raining at some point; another main attraction of the gathering is obtaining a new straw rain hat. Whether the rains begin to fall or not (but especially if they do), the afternoon skies are given over to competitive flight performances by amateur teams from various clans and neighboring villages.

## Other Celebrations

### Weddings

The traditional form of birdfolk marriage involves each person having two pairings: nestmates are supposed to produce eggs, secondmates are not. Secondmates can be chosen for business reasons, for personal reasons, for any combination of the two - so can nestmates but the primary "business" purpose of the nestmate marriage is reproduction, you know?

Proper pairings are governed by a series of arcane rules which few can actually list out per se. Keeping track of such things is the job of the elders who take that into their care; they serve as matchmakers. By the time a child is old enough to socialize, the elders have worked out which other kids of their generation would be non-prohibited as partners and they're sort of pushed towards each other to get to know each other from the start in hopes of naturally pairing up appropriately. Partners are also sought out amongst other neighboring clans, flocks, and settlements; preexisting marriage ties can make nearby flocks just as complicated to choose from as one's neighbors, but more distant flocks, or strangers, or outsiders, all come without such ties and thus free of those restrictions. (This leads towards a little selective pressure toward exogamy and avoiding inbreeding.)

During marriage rituals, the two celebrants and a varying number of officiants/assistants are all on frog drugs.

At the end of the high point of the marriage rites, the celebrants fly off (while on frog drugs) to a prearranged honeymoon "nest" (a platform woven into the branches of a tree and hung with especially lovely curtains, at a nice picturesque location at a nice private distance from any settlement) which they and their families will have built in the preceding days. On the day of that rite it's important for an uncle or somebody to sneak off and make sure there's plenty of food and water stocked up at the nest for their arrival.

#### "Hyi'i'cheji Courts Utanji"

The standard nestmates marriage ceremony is a reenactment of Hyi'i'cheji's courtship of Utanji. The full rite is completed over the course of a full week, with a set of three fetch-quests for the groom and three acts-of-making for the bride: Hyi'i'cheji brings Utanji food, reeds, and "something pretty," and Utanji prepares a feast and sets up a bridal nest using each gift. The celebrants aren't on frog drugs for the full week, I should point out; the frog drugs get broken out for the final rite, after the quests have been completed, when the feast and nest are finally displayed and Utanji officially accepts Hyi'i'cheji's courtship.

#### undetermined secondmates rite

I need to expand the pantheon, honestly, and the secondmates rite would be from this

#### "Human Boy Joins The Flock"

If a human, specifically, marries into the birdfolk (and this can be for nestmates or secondmates; the birdfolk are fertile with humans, although an AFAB human marrying in would be an especial novelty due to pregnancy NOT ending in an egg... I think a human mother would produce a human baby and they'd have to make the child a feather-cloak to give them wings) - anyway there's a specific ritual for this, reenacting a myth in which Human Boy marries Keraji. Again there are three feats to conclude beforehand, but it's more of an adventure:

1. Human Boy brings Keraji fine pottery to try to impress her. She can tell he didn't make it with his own hands, and sends him away.
2. Human Boy returns with a fire he kindled himself. Keraji accepts this gift but finds the fire burns too hot and bright; she still rejects his courtship.
3. He swears he will do better for her and disappears; she notices his disappearance and goes to find him. He has gotten himself into trouble; moved by his persistence and bravery in the face of this trouble, Keraji saves him and agrees to be his mate.

A "normal" version of this rite involves symbolic gifts and a symbolic rescue of the human mate from several members of the flock probably wearing the Flower Clown outfits. The participants are only on frog drugs for Step Three.