Will couldn't think. One second she'd been wavering across the lawn to the bonfire, intending to wish Irma a happy birthday and then go home. Then chaos had filled the lawn in the space of sixty seconds and Will was being pushed back and forth while people screamed out for help, "What's going on?"
A pair of large hands wrapped theirselves around her and she looked down to recognise the bluey Meridian skin, but it was gone in an instant, with only an 'Ugh!' sound among the thick crowding. Or did she imagine it? Phantom pains of where the hands had squeezed her (or where she thought they had) were the only evidence she had been grabbed at all, and she could've easily imagined it..
"Ow!" Her hand went straight to her shoulder as someone barged past, but then she caught a glimpse of the flames and realized why people were running. Oranges and reds licked across the grass and fireworks seemed to be going off, far too close to the people around her. She had to get out of here.
...
He'd been so close. Cedric snarled as Vathek was pushed away from Will.
...
"No!" Taranee tried to calm the flames, her hands outstretched ahead of her, but in her current form she was too weak. "Fire!"
It was no use. And someone had to stop the fireworks; she'd be best transformed, but she could hear a siren in the distance. They would sort it. "Look, please, just stop pushi-"
"Will!" Taranee spotted the redhead trying to get out of an entrapment of several considerably larger people and Taranee knew she'd be struggling. Taranee started striding forward through the running, screaming friends and aquaintances that passed her by without forethought, but the crowd around Will quickly dissipated and Taranee could no longer move. "WILL!"
...
Caleb stepped through the portal with a smile on his face. Maybe not the ridiculous boyish grin he'd had when he left, but Caleb felt good. Calm. Aketon had been great, and he didn't doubt that the reason he'd left early was because of how the man had brought up Will. How he had said that it was okay if Caleb didn't want to talk about Julian. How he didn't have to have a family, but Aldarn was only trying to get at Caleb being welcome in theres. And Caleb thought it might be good, for a little while, to have a family. And it didn't have to be perfect. And he didn't need a mother. Will didn't have a father. Will didn't even have a brother or a sister, but she called her mother and her a whole family.
Caleb walked through the park with leisure. Something he didn't often feel that he had, but certainly something he liked. It was a beautiful night and he knew Irma's party was still going, and he knew that the brunette wanted him there, but he wished he didn't have to go. He wished, as he sat down on a park bench, that he could sit here and tell Will all about págos-gyalí and about the Mage's quarter and that he'd known all along about it being her last night and not Cornelia. He wished he could take her away from the party and admit that he actually quite liked her, and that he valued her as a friend, far more than the others..
Caleb glanced up at the portal that needed closing. Maybe he could. And maybe, she'd be glad that he'd taken her away; as far as Caleb knew, Will didn't even like parties and she'd spent most of last time with him.. Well, not really by choice, but even with Cedric, her taking care of him was by far the most merorable part of the evening, and he supposed she took care of him alot. It was a give and take and now they'd both've been dead without the other. Caleb stretched his arms up, starting to walk in a relaxed pace to Irma's house.
...
Irma Lair had just barely missed a fire-rocket, and was at the fence when she heard the scream over all others and the ambients; blue flashing close-by and if it weren't for the flames she knew she'd see red. Deep, petrified blues searched the scene for the source of Taranee's voice, and hopefully from there, to Will. "Irma!"
As Irma's father found his daughter, Irma instantly used his relieved hug as leverage to stand on the fence. Will, alone on an otherwise empty patch of land looking dazed; Irma took in the rocket just as it hit the ground behind Will.
