HOL Ravenclaw

Now the air bites.

You stand in a field ringed with standing stones, the moon is a sickle overhead. People wear masks to conceal themselves among the spirits who pass between worlds on this night.

It is Samhain, the Celtic new year—“SOW-win,” you hear someone correct a friend’s pronunciation—and the veil is thin.

Flames leap high from a great bonfire in the center of the clearing. Someone hands you a scrap of parchment and nods toward the fire. “Write what you’re letting go. Burn it. Step into the new cycle.”

You hesitate.

What are you ready to leave behind? What fear? What guilt? What memory?

You write, and the paper shivers in your hand before being cast into the flames.

Smoke rises. Someone screams in dread or shrieks with glee across the field, you can’t tell which. You look up to The Pumpkin Tree and a low lantern with a jagged smile flares hot, then burns low.

You keep walking.

Task:
For this task, in 100+ words, you can tell us what you let go and why OR share a favorite memory of a loved one that passed away, since the Veil is thin between Life and Death.

Alternatively, you can also draw or describe in 75+ words a carved pumpkin (or turnip) you would make.

This task is worth 10 beans, with an additional 14 bonus beans for completing all Week One tasks by end of activity. Deadline is 11:59pm (HOL time) on Friday November 21st.

While we don't celebrate Halloween, we do carve pumpkins on this day! This year, we carved something that's spooky, but was also cute, since it's what the kids wanted.

We went to the nearby farmers and chose a very large, bright orange pumpkin. First, we gave it large oval eyes with a slit pupil, like those of a cat. The eyes had small triangular cuts at the top so they looked more excited.

The pumpkin’s mouth was wide and slightly uneven, with two pointy teeth at the edges. Then, we added a couple of more rectangular teeth randomly at the top and bottom. It also had a tiny nose shaped like a teardrop.

We made three, but that one was my favourite.

I was relatively young when my brother passed, so I don't recall too many memories of him. One of the more vivid ones was on one of his birthdays, where we were setting up to celebrate and then take pictures. He was a special needs child and was utterly unable to show or vocalize his feelings, either good or bad. But I remember how much his overall demeanor would light up over certain things, like the color orange. So, in this specific memory, he was dressed in his favorite orange shirt (if I'm remembering correctly, it was an Orioles one) for his birthday, and seemed pretty pleased with the choice, especially as we sang happy birthday and blew out the candles on his cake for him (he was unable to).