Submission (#593) Approved

This probably wasn't ideal. Nope, definitely not a great.

Kian squinted at the misshapen thing. To be fair, he had tried. There had been a good half an hour of glueing and then hoping that the entire thing didn't fall apart, and then realizing that yeah, glue didn't really work that well on grass and that perhaps the better way to go about it was tape sooooo he had gotten tape and wellllll. At least there were eye holes punched through the duct tape. Probably not great for visibility, but it would be out of the way of the other stuff he had glued/taped to the other sides of the would-be masquerade mask. 'Mask' might be pushing it. It looked more like an oddly shaped helmet with a base of tree bark and two bundles of grass taped to each side for maximum intimidation as well as to cover the two large slits where the kittom's ears would fit in.

Why a helmet? Whelp. The kittom had had the brilliant idea that just having a normal mask was not cool enough, and if he as going to make one, he wanted the full helmet experience. Worried about keeping feyfolk away? Ha! With a full helmet, he could tackle them away, all while keeping his noggin in tact. Sure, Kian had been scared of the strange feyfolk from his siblings' stories, but they had to be tackle-able, right? It wasn't like they were made out of mist or sunlight or any such things, and if they were, he was going to be dead anyway and if they weren't, they would get a face full of grass.

Kian smirked smugly and tried picking up the helmet gently. The top part of the helmet started caving in. No, not like this. He carefully set it down again and started adding more duct tape. By the time it was done, the majority looked to be duct tape and definitely not the Faerindell vibe he was going for. (His sisters had suggested adding the pink flowers that were so iconic to the region, but Kian had refused, reason being that it would not help with the attempted intimidation factor. No feyfolk would take his threat of tackling seriously if he had pink flowers glued to his helmet. Plus, so many other elnins were already adding flowers to their Faerindell inspired wear, and the kittom wanted to be different.) The duct tape helm was definitely different--Kian tried picking it up again. This time it stayed more or less in the same shape, the top half was still weighing down to make the entire thing look more squat than he had intended. At least the large rocks looked cool!

He wiggled his head into it, the slits tighter than comfort around his ears, and immediately felt the weight. Extra defense points were not cheap. He rotated his head from side to side slowly, testing the visibility. Quite limited. He could see the tree right in front of him where he chose to 'borrow' bark for his craft, but not the rolling hills and grasslands beyond. The bundles of grass he had glued to each side were starting to itch his ears. Should probably tape those elsewhere. His nose was getting itchy too. Was grass a bad choice? Kian blinked beneath his helmet. Wait, I didn't tape any grass there, specifically so it won't block my eyesight. The itching sensation continued, but it felt more like small legs were climbing up his nostrils. The kittom yelped, trying to knock his helmet off, realizing that it was pretty heavy, yelped as it landed on a paw, and stumbled, rolled, tumbled backwards down the small hill he was on. A spider went back to minding its own business and started weaving a web in its newfound home.

Sometime later:

"That's what you're going to wear to the masquerade?" His sister laughed.

Kian shrugged and led the way to the palace. The brown paper bag was light on his head and the eye holes were perfect. Simplicity was probably for the best.