Heyday

Koruscar straightened back up and looked around. He found his brother still waist-deep, just a few feet from the shore, tail raised almost theatrically high to keep it dry. "Come on!" he yowled.

"Yeah, yeah," Kirruak grumbled in lieu of answer. "Just taking my time, that's --" He suddenly bolted a few inches sideways, glaring at something under his feet.

Koruscar watched on, amused. "Don't tell me they don't teach you Irons how to swim."

The dark-furred charr rolled his eyes. "I know how to swim. I just don't like it."

The young elementalist huffed and dove underwater, heading back to shore. He surfaced back at his brother's side, which, he noted, was about an inch deeper in the waves than when he'd left it. He stood back up and shook off the excess water clinging to his mane. "It's fine," he said, shrugging. "We can just stay on the beach. Maybe there's a few leftover coins from the treasure hunt --"

Before he could finish the thought, Kirruak sighed, his face suddenly hard to read. 

Koruscar's ears fell backwards. "What?" 

"Nothing." He turned to look at his sibling for a moment, then bumped his shoulder and smacked his tail on the water with a decisive splash. His grin was a bit less easygoing than usual, but honest nonetheless. "Wanna make it a race?"

Koruscar smiled back. That was the brother he knew.

"Lets race then," the darker charr said and, taking a deep breath, jumped into the waves.

His older brother laughed and turned to follow.

Kitty hates getting wet. Kitty also has an elementalist for a sibling for whom he'd turn the world. Life's not fair, is it.

September poll results were a tough battle, but the resulting win was pretty clear, and so I present the festivalgoing charr you asked for. I didn't expect to finish it, but it turned out to be pretty close to done when the time was up, so I thought I might as well get it over with, considering it's about 2 years overdue and the festival itself ended a month ago.

Water effects, wet fur, dry fur, you guys are evil. (Lets pretend for a hot second that this whole self-torture wasn't my idea in the first place...) But I'm still glad you made me finish it.

I'm not entirely happy with how I managed to kill off the contours of the neck and chest with the mess that is the fur, but oh well. Lessons learned for future purposes.

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Context for non-Guild Wars people:

One of Tyria's annual festivals is The Festival of Four Winds, which recently made a comeback after four years of absence. (Recently in 2018, which is when this illustration was started.) It's by far the least demanding, and half of it is essentially just giving you a beach resort map to play in and do some chill events every few hours, making it pretty much the beach episode of Guild Wars patches.

I tend to have dedicated festival charr that feel the most appropriate to play/visit any given annual event, and FFW's return happened on the very year when I made my firetwins permanent/level 80, making it an ideal hunting ground for them.

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Artwork sponsored by ArenaNet.

October's poll will be up on Sunday (Patron-only) and making-ofs will follow.

Thank you all, and stay safe.