Well. That went over like a ton of bricks.
I heard Max yell, "Whaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!" Ignoring this, I led Jeb and Dylan through the house to the living room, where Max was standing quite tense. Really, really tense. She looked like she was going to pounce on something. I hope it's Dylan she gets.
Actually, she looked more likely to attack Jeb. Dylan just stared as Max began yelling quite, quite loudly and fiercely.
"Max, calm down," soothed Fang. Max sat down, a little ruffled, but not yelling.
Jeb, Dylan, and I stared at her with wide eyes before Jeb cleared his throat. "Okay then. Well, anyway, I heard you were having a birthday here, so I came by with Dylan."
Max responded with a glare. Jeb continued, "And I come bearing gifts." And then, after me and several other members of the flock mobbed Jeb for the presents, which happened to be outside, I unwrapped my final present. It was a book called The Lost World. The sequel to Jurassic Park, which I hadn't quite finished yet…
…But by the time we had calmed down, the sky was finally growing dark. Gazzy decided to go outside to start setting up the fireworks. Iggy followed, even though he wouldn't be lighting them. It was only then that I realized the sheer magnitudes of their pyromania.
"Uh, guys? Isn't that a lot of fireworks?" I asked worriedly. Dylan stood beside me, curious as to what they were doing. He also seemed confused and anxious.
"There's not that many…" responded Iggy as he unloaded a box. Five large boxes of fireworks were going into this presentation. I prayed that the forest wouldn't catch on fire.
Gazzy was unloading a box of sparklers at that time. He looked at them with a mischievous smile on his face. "These'll be fun," he said.
"Did you make those yourself?" asked Dylan curiously.
"Yep! Well, not all of it. We took some store-bought sparklers, and changed them up a bit so they'll be more fun."
Oh gosh. More fun? And I thought regular sparklers were dangerous…
By the time Gazzy and Iggy finished setting up the fireworks, it was dark enough to light them. Ella and Dr. Martinez managed to find some picnic blankets, and they spread them out for us to sit on. We all sat in a neat little line, oddly enough.
Ella, Dr. Martinez, and Jeb were shunned to one side. Well, not really shunned, but whatever. Nudge and Angel sat next to each other, then came Dylan, me, and Iggy. Max and Fang were on the other side. Gazzy was lighting the fireworks.
Which I wasn't sure was a good idea.
But I didn't have any choice in the matter, now did I?
But the stars were finally coming out, it was warm night, I had a bunch of new stuff, and a flock. Life was good. Dylan wasn't acting like an idiot either, which was a plus.
Then Gazzy lit the first firework. Actually, it was just one huge firework, because he had explained to me that it was based on a timing system. He simply had to light it once, and the entire show would proceed. It was still very dangerous though.
I watched the spark get closer to the actually firework system. Gazzy dashed over to a little music player thing and pressed play. He even had the show set to music. It was amazing what he and Iggy had done so quickly. Sure, Max had given them free rein of the kitchen and its fire-making materials, but still.
A single, brilliant white firework streaked up into the sky. It went considerably high before exploding into a simple star. At the same time, twin red rockets shot up and burst into a huge amount of tiny sparks. The noise rocked me. It sounded like thunder.
As more and more of the fire went up, Dylan looked wistfully at the sky. "I wonder what it'd be like to fly among that," he asked himself.
I shot him a glance before turning my attention to the sky. "Dangerous, really," I replied. Dylan looked up, surprised that I had answered him nonhostily. "That's exploding fire up there. It'd look pretty from down here, but you'd catch your wings on fire. Plus, it's really loud, like a thunderstorm up there. It's already so loud down here…"
I trailed off as Dylan nodded. "Okay. I was just wondering." Then he sighed and looked down, missing a firework of epic proportions turn into a ginormous star which turned into smaller stars of gold. Very cool.
Cocking my head to the side, I stared at him, wondering why he looked kind of sad. He eventually looked up at me and said, "Okay, I was really wondering what it'd be like to fly."
My eyes widened in shock. "You can't fly!?"
Dylan shook his head. "No. I've not learned yet."
Just then a huge, white-blue firecracker shot up quickly, followed by several more in gold. They would've drowned out what I was going to say, so I stopped talking.
By this time Dylan had turned his attention back to the fireworks, so I didn't talk. Suddenly, a single copper and ivory streak flew up and burst into sparks, shaped like a feather. Max's feather.
A blue one did the same. Fang. Then a light golden brown, a white-gray, a light brown, a white, and a gold. Nudge, Iggy, Gazzy, Angel, me. My feather wasn't black because that wouldn't show up. It was the same case for Fang.
It did it again, all at once this time instead of one after the other. This time, smaller, lower down fireworks of white-blue and gold exploded underneath it.
Everyone oohed at this. Iggy, sitting beside me, tilted his face up. I know he couldn't see it, but the sound must have been magnificent.
I turned my attention back to Dylan, who was watching Fang and Max. I twisted around to see what he was looking at, and saw that Fang had his arms around Max. Both were relaxed and watching the finale. Even as I watched, Fang pulled Max closer.
A single, giant orange and red flame burst in the sky. At this moment, Fang and Max kissed. I turned away, slightly amused, but stopped at the sight of Dylan's face. It was heartbroken, and his eyes were filled with pain.
I realized what this meant. It said that all he had been raised on, brainwashed no doubt, couldn't be real. The poor bird-kid…
A final blue, gold, and white firework went up, and exploded with a single, earth-shaking boom. And that was it. The show was over.
Gazzy then produced the sparklers. Everyone, excluding the adults, grabbed some and started using them. Dylan even joined in, albeit a bit unenthusiastically. I took three in each hand, spread them out, and acted like they were wings. The effect was very cool.
Nudge was chasing after Gazzy with a sparkler held threateningly at him. He was running away, laughing. It would've been completely fine, but Gazzy was running towards the house madly in an effort to get away from the pink sparks.
I followed quickly, thinking that this was going to be interesting. Max and Angel came too, with Ella and the adults behind. Dylan stayed behind and twirled his around. Fang was nowhere to be seen, oddly enough.
Gazzy dashed inside, and went into a fighting position with a sparkler held like a sword. Nudge stood on one side of the couch with her pink weapon, Gazzy on the other side with a green.
Leaping towards Gazzy, Nudge raised her sparkler high. Gazzy parried with a blow of his, knocking it away from him. Nudge rolled neatly away, keeping the sparkler off the ground.
However, when Gazzy had done this, it had knocked his stick out of his hand. The sparkler fell, tumbling over itself- and promptly landed on the couch, still fully lit.
The couch burst into flames.
The wave of heat washed over me. I screamed in shock, and from the sound of things Nudge and Angel had done the same.
Max practically flew towards Gazzy, throwing him out of the way of the fire. Dr. Martinez and Jeb dashed over towards where we kept towels, and Ella twisted the water on.
I, flooded with adrenaline and the kind of energy that only comes from shock, transformed into a tiger. Racing over to Gazzy, I threw him onto my back where he scrambled to get a grip but eventually held on. I grabbed Angel by her shirt and sprinted out the door to safety. Nudge sped after me.
Once safely away from the flames, I dropped Angel on the ground and panted. Gazzy slid off of me and went to his sister. Carrying both of them at once in a form that wasn't too big was hard.
I slid back to human form and sat, tired. Nudge sat down beside me, Iggy next to her. I hadn't noticed that he had come with us.
It seemed like an eternity of listening to Max, Dr. Martinez, and Jeb smacking out the fire with wet towels. However, finally, Max came out, smoke-streaked and tired, and told us it was okay to come back in.