Kress Chapter
The Competitors: Kress, Borgick, Midnight, Stan, Ellenell
The Assistants: Blue, Marigold, Carl, Gareth, Burgandy
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Three hours in and quite a few things had changed. The obvious one, for Kress and Blue at least, was when Thyme set up the lights. Large orbs of glowing yellow light outlined the boxes for everyone. Kress had gotten curious after the additions of the lights and found that Thyme had also shut off visibility around the other team's bubbles. No longer could he see the progress they were making… not that Kress had really bothered before, but now when he looked over the square was all fuzzy, like looking through fogged glass.
The next thing that had happened was the 'ravine' had been abandoned by Blue. After numerous failures she'd decided that it wasn't worth expending her effort on. Kress wasn't entirely sure that was true, but he let her take over the 'urban planning' aspect of things. She was responsible for marking out the roads and housing sections for Timmy. They'd been at this a while now and most of the area was filled up with various things, with Blue working on the two largest parks during that time as well.
Stepping around the houses and other obstacles was getting a little difficult, but they HAD planned for this so it was certainly still possible. It required careful stepping and lifting their knees up so as not to accidentally knock anything over… but totally possible. The parks were a bit of an issue, but they had enough 'grassy areas' and a thick coating of green sand so stepping on it wasn't too big of an issue when it was necessary.
Both Kress and Blue were a little disappointed with the roads now they were this far in. The houses were a riot of colours, the parks really popped and the unique buildings Kress had made were also a wonderful sight… but the roads? They were just normal sand. Which was fine. It was too late to fix, and finding a good colour for them would be all but impossible at this point. That didn't mean they weren't still considering changing it. Perhaps if they had more time they would.
The first thing Kress had worked on, was of course the library. For that, he had Timmy put a few colours together… but didn't really mix them per say. The sand first in, that would later become the top, was a brownish orange made to look something like old leather. It wasn't spread evenly, but piled up a bit on the sides. Under that was a thin layering of white sand with a touch of yellow spread very sparsely throughout for the 'paper' layer. The rest was filled up with a mix of the previously listed colours, and a large portion of black sand. All appropriately wet and packed down of course.
Once it was flipped over Kress got to carving. He first carved out the 'book' on the top. He made sure to keep the colours correct and even managed to carve out a few lines of 'pages' so that the roof looked like one giant book. Then he got to work on the entrance. That was a little tough, but with a few sticks from Timmy inserted at the front, he was able to carve out a small entrance with an overhang. The sand pillars were in reality wooden sticks with sand stuck to the outside, but nobody needed to know that.
The really tricky part, was once that was done Kress made it look like the door was cracked open ever so slightly. It was a massive pain to carve and had to be redone twice. Luckily Kress was able to just move the door further back into the wall, but if he'd needed to restart a third or fourth time, things would've been much harder, and likely would have required Kress to add sand back onto the structure. Luckily, that didn't happen so Kress was able to move onto the carving little windows and adding small trees around the edges of the walls.
The next building Kress was planning to build was a sort of 'mayor's house' but Blue quite rightly pointed out that they had a CASTLE for the town already. They didn't need a mayor's house at all. So with that scratched off the edge Kress instead made a coliseum. This was mostly because it was easily identified, and easy to make. Kress just designed a bucket that was shaped correctly and then had Timmy tip it over. They did add in quite bits of more colourful sand to help separate it from the library though.
Kress then took the current design and altered it a bit to get an amphitheatre instead. It wasn't hard. Kress just took off around half of the stands, and then designed a stage for everyone. There was some internal debate regarding if it was worth digging down into the ground so that there was a roof to back the stage, but Kress didn't bother in the end. Just making it a straight wall and carving some flowers on the back. Unoriginal? Perhaps but they'd done a whole lot of work on this sand city and he wasn't going to spend more time then necessary on what was a simple way of adding unique buildings.
Kress worked on the local prison after that. He was, admittedly, struggling a bit with ideas. There were simply too many buildings that were vaguely building shaped even if they were important. The only other thing he could think of at the time was doing a post office with a letter as the roof, but he'd already used that trick with the library and didn't want to repeat it so prison it was.
He picked up some wooden wire from Timmy and used it to make a prison yard. Then he used a bucket, altered once again after a visit to Thyme that gave him what was essentially a square donut. Things stalled out a bit there until Kress asked for some thin sticks. Once that was done he carefully carved out little hollows with beds in them and then added sticks to the front, both for support and to look like prison bars. The windows were perhaps, being a little cheeky but he managed those as well.
Once that was done, Kress took a bit of a break from crafting unique buildings to work on the cavern. He wanted it make his carven house perfect so that Timmy could just copy it over. He quickly realised why Blue had so much trouble. The problem was that the sand just wasn't all that compact compared to the stuff they'd been working with. Timmy had spoiled them a bit there. Kress debated for a while concerning exactly what to do with the ravine for a bit… but the answer was easy. Dig it deeper.
Timmy took a break from housing placements at this time, and Blue got to work on another park, with one was going to have a water fountain in the centre instead of a lake. Kress made sure to ask Timmy to leave 'cracks' that looked suspiciously like stairs allowing for a full sized person to climb out when the little guy was digging deeper. Kress got to work alongside Timmy, using the more compact sand as his canvas and managing fairly well. It was still a bit awkward, the sand still not as compact wet properly, but he'd just have to deal with that.
Eventually, Kress got the hang of it. He made a little carven by using a really small shovel and hollowing out the inside. Kress left in enough sand for a 'bed' and a table, even if the table was just a box. Chairs were too much of a risk once he got the hollow done so he didn't even bother. A little counter finished off the house then Kress got to work on the outside. Carving a little walkway for people to come and go.
Kress let out a long sigh when he looked at it. *It's nice. I've got a lot of little details that really add to the house and make it seem real… but you've got to get right up next to it to see any of them. Dammit. There was a reason the houses we made for the main town were all just solid sand. Too much effort for basically no gain. The outside of the house isn't even that fancy despite my efforts.*
Kress let out another long sigh. *Well… it's been three hours. We've got one hour left… but damn am I feeling it. I shouldn't be this tired but mentally? It's wearing on me as well. Getting all the little details in everything right is costing me. Hopefully we can tidy everything up before the deadline. I'll just need to get Timmy to copy this and do perhaps one more unique building. I'd go for a circus tent if we didn't have the amphitheatre and coliseum already. I'll have to think about it.*
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