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Ryuka Navali Vice Captain
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 Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 6:41 pm
Sand Castle Contest has Started ~2:30pm Ms Kiwadoi has cleared and flattened a section of the beach for the sand castle building contest. You have an hour to build what ever kind of sand castle you want. Only sand and water is allowed to be used, along with buckets and shovels for sculpting.
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Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:32 pm
After a few hours of wandering around the beach and talking, Andrew looked down at his watch and groaned. "Hey, I've got go Labryna. I promised a friend I'd meet them in town."
"Ok," Labryna said smiling at him, "Lead the way Andrew, I'd love to meet more of your friends."
Andrew looked thoughtful for a second, but shook his head, "No, you stay here for now. It'd be best if I tell this friend about you first." He went to kiss her on the forehead again, but she pulled back slightly.
"What do you mean?"
"I'll tell you later, I've really got to go." He leaned forward quickly and finished planting a kiss on her, then he turned around and walked off toward the path to town looking back and smiling when he was farther away. She felt that smile lifting her heart and couldn't help but smile back, he seemed everything she had envisioned in the perfect man in the past, handsome, rugged, knowledgable, and a host of other things. She never questioned how exactly someone could fit all she had dreamed of, never even let it enter her mind. Back in her villiage available boys had been few and far between, and many of them were too stuck in feelings of superiority that kept Labryna from considering them in any more than passing thoughts.
Her mind full of such thoughts, intermingled with thoughts of Andrew, Labby walked back up the beach and as she rounded a bend in the beach she was surprised by a very smooth patch of ground. Like someone had swept a large sqaure of land flat it sat surrounded by various people talking animatedly about what they were going to build. Labryna was at a loss untill she noticed a sign stuck in the ground a few feet away. When people parted a bit she could read that it said "Sand Castle Competition." and below that, "Please use provided tools only. No magic." There were a few people groaning about this rule, and Labby could imagine why, thinking of the sculptures and detail she could create with her magic.
No matter, there were a few students nearby who seemed to have a very good plan, one of them even holding what looked like a blue-print for their proposed castle compete with measurements, angles, and detailed steps for completion. The one holding the blue-print seemed to be animatedly giving orders to the other two, who went to start collecting supplies.
Labryna walked over to him and said, "Hi, my name is Labryna. Do your plans have room for another set of hands?"
The boy looked her up and down as if judging if she was worthy, but nodded, "Yeah, Bill was actually sick today and I was starting to worry if we'd be able to finish on time. Have you ever built for a competition?"
"No, not like this," She said indicating the paper, which seemed to focus more on a dragon and a knight than with the castle in the background.
"Well no better time to learn. Grab a bucket and shovel, and get some sand from over there." He indicated a pile that had probably been made while clearing out the area she was standing in now. "And just call me captain for now, we'll get properly introduced in an hour when this is over."
Labby nodded and hurried off to get supplies.
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Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 5:20 pm
Austin turned around, hearing a small commotion behind himself and Mizuki in the bonfire area; People were bulding tons of sandcastles frantically. Austin stopped in place, looking in an attempt to figure out what was going on.
"Oh. The Castle-making contest. I forgot about that..."
Austin turned his head to Mizuki.
"Did you want to see about participating? I hear it's really fun. There's even supposed to be a Prize for the best one."
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Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 8:56 pm
Mizuki stopped walking and turned as well, seeing other students gather and begin to grab shovels and buckets. "Um, sure." She replied, returning her gaze to Austin. She began to make her way back to the bonfire, looking back at him. "Want to compete together? It may be more fun that way." Mizuki gave him a smile. Personally, she just wanted to have a good time and cared little for the prize.
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:08 pm
"Sounds good to me."
Austin followed Mizuki back to the registration for the contest, signing his name up on the roster next to hers. He grabbed a few buckets from the pile that had been provided, and a few shaping tools and sea-shells. He turned to Mizuki, handing her a few.
"Go pick out our spot, i'll join you in a second. We need some water."
With that said, Austin walked off towards the shoreline, scooping up a couple of buckets of wet sand and water.
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:22 pm
After taking a few of the tools from Austin she began to search for a spot. Gazing over the beach she found an area that was close to the water, but not too close, and not far from the other students, though they had enough space around them. Mizuki then began leveling out the sand in the area, realizing that she had not built a sand castle in years.
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:34 pm
Austin returned momentarily, balancing the buckets in each hand, trying not to spill their contents. He placed them on the ground, looking at the area Mizuki had cleared.
"Well. We've got the supplies and the spot...Now, what do we want to build?.."
(small post is small sorry)
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Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 11:31 am
Labryna found her first job in building the sand castle mostly consisted of running back and forth to get sand, and water to make sure the sand was maliable and usable. After a while though she slowed down conciderably because her legs got tired, and the captain shifted her job to another guy. The captain pointed to a spot next to where she'd been piling the sand and told her to sit down and work on the basic shape of the dragon.
Using the buckets of sand she'd been collecting the other guys had shifted the piles and started shaping them as they needed to. What they had so far looked like half of an egg shell, cut vertically, and laying face down on the ground. Out of the 'head' end of the egg was a thinner but no less lumpy trail of sand which curved gently back toward the body, and out of the 'tail' end another trail of sand extanded and bent also. So the pile as a whole looked like a capital American "C" whith a huge rounded middle.
Quickly looking at the blue print the captain had layed on the ground she figured that one end of the egg would lead to the neck and the head, and the other to the tail, but she couldn't make heads or tails of it yet and looked beseechingly at the capain. He sighed and motioned her over to where he was working, "Right now, we need to smooth these lumps out." He said showing Labby how he was running his hand over the pile to push off excess sand untill it looked smooth and cotinuous with the rest of the pile. "Don't smooth away too much, or we'll have to spend time patching." Then the captain got up to start working on another section, and Labby sat down to continue what he had shown her to do.
Meanwhile the other two guys were gathering more sand and piling it up on the outside of the "C". They began to shape it after a while into what Labryna could only assume was the castle in the background of the design, but again it just looked like towers of sand so far. Admitedly they were working alot faster than Labby, but when she tried to copy their pace, the captain would look over and told her she was taking to much off, or not making it a continuous whole. So Labby forced herself to slow down and really focus on getting the egg to flow gently into the tail, and the tail to slowly get smaller near the end. On the other side of the egg, the captain was now gently sculpting the head of the dragon, and adding details like nostrils, eyes, and even tiny scales on the snout.
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Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 12:17 pm
"Hmm...well..." Mizuki looked up at Austin, using her hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight. "Do you want to start with something small and built it up? Or do you want something big with other small things to accent it?" Her mind briefly went back to those days on the beach with her father, his big hands guiding her small hands in molding different shapes with the wet sand. She shook her head briefly, focusing on the present time since she didn't know if Austin wanted the prize.
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Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 12:55 pm
An idea hit Austin.
"Mizuki! What if we do a layout of your family shrine? That way I can see what it looks like, and we can do this at the same time!"
It was a pretty good idea, Austin felt, though he was unsure whether it would qualify as a sand-castle. He didn't really care, though; his only directive in this was to see what her shrine looked like. It seemed like she had a great love for it, and it made Austin curious as to what it looked like.
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Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 1:05 pm
Mizuki was surprised at Austin's suggestion, but she saw her home clearly and vividly in her mind, as if she had been just hours ago. "You do?" She asked, shifting into a kneeling position on the sand. She looked at their clearing for a moment, then nodded. "Sure, but we are going to need a lot of wet sand." She said, taking one bucket and spreading the wet sand on the leveled clearing, using a shovel to make a somewhat pyramid base. "And we only have an hour, so we're going to have to move fast." Mizuki chuckled, glad that Austin suggested building a model of her home. Just thinking about it made her feel homesick, but she felt happy that someone wanted to see her home as well. "I'm guessing we should start building a small replica of the stairs, since it is on a hill..." Taking the shovel she slowly began to build the stairs on one side of the base, now focusing on their piece.
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Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 2:42 pm
"That's why i brought this!"
Austin motioned to a bucket of water, then proceeded to splash it out across some of their sand. He then gathered it up in some more spare buckets, mixing it to the right viscosity before pouring it out next to Mizuki. He followed her example and ran off, returning a moment later with an old popsicle stick. Moving up a bit from her, he used it to make flat, near-perfect steps in the sand. He handed it to Mizuki for her to use, and ran off to gather some more supplies.
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Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 2:48 pm
"Ah..." Mizuki was about to say something before Austin ran off, but the words caught in her throat. Smiling and shaking her head she continued to work, seeing Austin's work and copying it to keep everything consistent, using the popsicle stick. Then adding another layer of sand she continued her way up until she thought the base was tall enough to represent the height of the hill. Using a shovel she leveled out the stop and began to get small amounts of sand to build the center of the shrine, where a small stand stood to receive people's wishes and such. Mizuki knew she couldn't get everything down to the minutest detail because of the time allowed, but she wanted to do her best to show Austin where she lived.
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:42 am
Austin returned after a few minutes with what appeared to be stiff-bristle paintbrushes and a box of needles.
Seeing Mizuki's questioning look, he explained himself, setting the supplies down.
"With these we can draw the more sensitive details and lining, like the tiling on top of the shrine and the floorboards and things like that. Now all we need are a couple of straight twigs for support, so the roof isn't tempted to collapse with the wind. I'll go get them."
Austin felt kinda bad, constantly leaving to go and get supplies; but they were necessary items if they expected to get the sand-shrine done right.
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Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2009 10:40 pm
After about a half hour Labryna and the team she was working with had a dragon that was easily recognizable as one, and a mass of sand in the shape of an ornate castle. "Ok, now comes the tough part," the captain was saying. "Detail and layering." He glanced over at Labryna and smiled when she looked skeptical about her place in this. "I'll show you how to do a couple scales, and you do your best to copy it. We don't have to cover the entire body in detailed scales, but we need it to be obvios that the body is covered in scales." Labryna didn't quite understand what he was getting at, but nodded and felt determined to do her best.
Leaning down the captain took his shovel and carved out a scale with a couple of strokes, then added another six around it in a hexagon pattern. onto the middle one he dug a little more out to give it more detail. "We need to repeat this pattern over the rest of the body, but add the detailing onto one randome scale of the group. Just focus on one at a time and take your time, if we don't get it completely finished in time it's ok. We've got the body done and the imagination can add what we don't finish in detail." He was right about to body. Looking over Labby saw that the head was done in amazing detail with the neck curving gently to meet the body. Which now had been carved down a ways so it was less bulky and had little legs attached to it as thought it was ready to pounce. An almost dangerously curved tail completed the dragon, which was ended by a flare of sand that could either be flame or spikes, or both. The expression on the dragons face was one of bemused entertainment, as though it found the students milling about to be amusing little snacks.
Likewise the castle was having the details added to it by the other members of the team. It served as mainly the background for the dragon, but was no less important. Graceful arches and stiff towers accented the casle giving it a grand feel. It seemed to be placed behind the dragon, as though it were some grand treasure to be guarded, and the students working on it were adding stonework and windows to detail it.
Labryna got to work on the scales like the captain had shown her. Though hers were much less symetrical and well placed then his were. She picked a random scale and added a swoosh of detail, which looked more like a Nike mark than anything else, but Labby shrugged and moved onto the next. For the next while she was busy with this, and even noticed a significant improvement in her scales as she moved across the body.
As Labryna worked and got more comfortable with the motions of making the scales her mind freed up to wander. She thought about Andrew then, and smiled remembering his handsome face and dark eyes. She couldn't remember much except for his smile, his laugh, and how he made her feel when they were together, but that didn't bother Labryna. She could get lost in his eyes for...
"Hey, Earth to new girl!" Labryna started as a voice broke into her thoughts. "Watch that glowing, or someone might think you're doing magic." Labryna looked down and found that her Prismatic Magic had released some yellow light somehow, and it was now surounding her.
"Sorry," she said as she pulled the light back into her Crystal. "One of the tricks my mom showed me. Great for unlit rooms or..."
The captain interupted again, "That's great, but not the most important thing right now. Let's finish this on time."
Labryna nodded and got back to carving the scales, now more careful to keep her mind on the work.
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