Rivane
Faces in the firelight
Everything happens at once. She isn't really sure how to describe the events, the words spilling over her back as @Kassandra trembles, white-eyed, and jerks strangely. The quarreling stallions are forgotten almost immediately, instead the twilight-cloaked mare shifts, turning with concern while the roan at her side loses herself to...
To what?
Red eyes flicker - can fire look worried? She does not see the disgust that twists the piebald stallion's face into something horrible, but she does see Oculos dart off behind the bar. Splintering wood behind them is her first clue, she's already finding a clear path from the bar, reaching out with bright teeth at silvery mane in an attempt to pull her back - and missing.
Her teeth snap together with a bright clack! The sound of it is lost in the noise of the canopy supports crashing down on top of the bar, to the shouts of surprise and panic, to the shattering glass and the soft foomph! of tiki torches lighting spilled drinks on fire. The bar's varnished top crackles under the flames, chaos erupts around them with Kassandra at its heart. In the midst of it all, she spies Beech, tucked safely under the foot of the bar, his paws resting protectively on the faceted sides of a shining sapphire, watching delightedly as the party falls to pieces around their ears.
There will be time to kill him later, she thinks to herself, turning back to Kassandra and the stallion, just in time to catch sight of a waterfall of brown erupting out of the other mare's mouth.
"Oh shit!"
The brawlers' faces contort and time freezes. She remembers other parties, other bars, and fights that have gone oh-so-differently, scars that lay hidden by the ghostly spots across her skin. But she'd been alone for those fights, in a place where everybody knew who she was and wanted her gone. Ears, he had called her. It wasn't the worst name she had ever been given, and it had lacked the vehemence of prejudice. Nobody here knows who she is.
They are going to ask us to leave now.
Yes, but not, for once, because of her.
The breathy chortling sound of Oculos's laughter reaches her ears and she turns to him, the grin that cracks his long narrow muzzle infectious. She laughs.
"Well. Yes, I don't suppose there's much reason to stay, unless you fancy getting burned?" She pauses, unsure how they are going to leave with Kassandra's weight leaning heavily on her shoulder, "That was the craziest thing I have ever seen, are you always this wild at parties?"
Beech's return is slow, weighed down by the stolen gemstone, and when he finally drops into the bag at her hip it drops heavily on Barley and Breadnut who squeak in protest. She has no doubt that it's the same that caused the argument in the first place.
"I can't believe nobody invites you to these?" Friendly sarcasm lacing the question as her red eyes fall briefly on Kassandra's stained face then skip away. There's a guard coming.
"We have to go now -- Yes, we're leaving, thank you, no I got her, we're fine! -- Can you walk on your own? I can't drag you out of here."
She steps towards what remains of the exit. Some of the strung pennants are still smoldering.
"Oculos, home. Where is it?"
