strangetrip | [GP] Evening - Blinding you with science (and fireworks)

It had taken a good three weeks for Sora and Peter to gather enough materials and also enough nerve to put on the fireworks that Peter had felt were missing from New Year's. They'd filched, over time, a pile of steel wool pads and an embarrassing number of whisks. Why they needed those things, Sora didn't exactly know.

Once everything was gathered up, Sora and Peter met outside, a safe (probably!) distance from the Inn. Peter showed Sora how to stretch out a pad of steel wool and jam it inside a whisk, then he attached long ropes of webbing to the ends of the whisks and fastened them to the ground. While he did that, he cheerfully explained how the webbing worked and how he was sure it would stick to the ground right and everything would be fine. There was a lot of math and other things Sora did not understand at all, but he was absolutely confident that Peter was right.

Once everything was fastened properly, Peter gave the nod.

Sora called out the Keyblade, stood in the middle of the webby circle of stuffed whisks, and cast Aeroga. Swirling winds came out of nowhere to lift up the whisks and spin them in the air, held in control only by the webbing ropes. Next came Thunder - bolts of lightning to ignite the wool in the whisks as they spun. (Peter had been sure that Fire wouldn't work, it had to be Thunder. And he was so right!)

Then the boys settled, more or less, to watch their homemade fireworks spinning and throwing sparks.

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"It's a ballad about a man who lived three hundred years ago," Curnen explained, twirling once on the ball of her foot. "His father was a lord, and his mother was a gypsy woman. He became an outlaw, and no one did anything about him for years 'cause they were too afraid of pissing off his family."

"Was he punished in the end?" Lillith did not like to think he might have escaped justice. Not after having preyed on so many people. Like her sisters, who got away with murdering children because of the family's power.

Curnen nodded. "Oh yeah. Most of the actual events of the song are about the moments up until he was publicly hanged."

Lillith nodded and smiled her appreciation. "I am glad he received what was coming to him." She patted the seat beside her. "And to have heard you singing again."

That was an interesting thing to focus on with James MacPherson since most people just got swept up in the romance of it all, but Curnen let it go and plopped down unceremoniously next to her. "Nobody 'round here sings 'less you get 'em drunk first. It's weird."

"Where I am from, singing is for bards. Many of us do not learn." She tilted her head to study her companion. Dear Kashaw had said very little about the reasons Curnen wished to fly, but Lillith believed it had to do with her home. "I learned only to stay out of sight of my sisters, to love colors because I had none, and to do magic. What of you?"

"Where I come from, everybody sings," Curnen mused. "Or plays something. I learned most songs on Momma's knee. My big sister Bliss taught me guitar. Daddy taught me some fiddle, too." Her face softened. "He could coax light and shadow out of that violin. I never learned it that well, though. I can play it okay. Bliss sounds like a dying cat. It was our baby cousin Page got that talent."

Lillith had so many questions, but she had called Curnen to her for a reason, and if she agreed, they could talk while they flew. "My sisters cannot make magic on their own. They must make pacts with more powerful entities, but my magic is my own. Music, it seems to be magic to you, like bards. Is it music that lets you fly?"

"It's supposed to," Curnen agreed with a slow nod. "But right now... I can't. Something's still missing." She still had not fully come back to herself.

"Kash told me that you missed flying," Lillith confided simply. Of course, she did not know all the things about that that she did not know, but it mattered not at all. "I know a spell. It will only last ten minutes before I have to cast it again, but we could fly."

"Ten minutes..." There were nights that she had danced in the wind until almost dawn. But if that was what was allotted, she'd make do. "I ain't flown under someone else's power since I was real small." Held by her mother, or her daddy, or Bliss. Until she'd managed to find her own wings.

"Please," she said finally. "Yes, please."

"I will cast it until I cannot. An hour, total. Today, but I can cast it other times, too."

Lillith stood and held out her hand to Curnen. "I will have to drop my veil, though. Come walk into shadow with me."

"I can keep us hidden," Curnen offered. It was the least she could do in return.

"Oh! That would be nice. I can concentrate on only one spell at a time," Lillith explained. "How close will I need to be for you to hide me?"

Curnen lifted her left hand to the sky and performed a quick but complicated gesture. "Closer is better, but long as you're in sight of me, we should be good."

Lillith watched the hand movement with open curiosity. When Curnen had finished, she dropped her veil and reached out with clawed fingers to lay her hand against Curnen's shoulder. With the other, she performed an entirely different but no less complicated gesture, then focused and spoke a few arcane phrases.

They rose slowly as the spell began to take hold, and as they reached the level of the treetops, Lillith released her again. "You may fly as you wish now, but return to me before ten minutes have ended so I can cast again before you fall. Kash would not be pleased if I let you be hurt."

Curnen could not resist the urge to look down. Down at the nothing between her and the ground. It felt wrong. Wrong to be in the air without the working of wings at her back. Wrong to be flying without her people around her. But this was the closest she had come to feeling like herself in years upon years.

She threw her head back and laughed in a way that was just shy of becoming a sob or a howl.

Then she shot off, her body riding the currents of air like she'd been born to it.

[GP] Evening - Blinding you with science (and fireworks)

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