Moonlark Turned Evil

Inktober Special: Sparkles

It's summer in Australia and I'm missing the fireworks in Japannnnn

They literally sell them by the packet at like the Family Mart down the road lmao

It's so fun to light them

December's almost over- I can't believe it-

2024 just sounds WEIRD

I feel old i was born before we got into the 20-tens💀

"So . . . what do we do again?"

Fintan picked up a senkou firework, dangling it between two fingers as he examined it curiously. It was strange to think, sometimes, that he'd lived for more than a thousand years, and there were still things about the world that he was unaware of. Immortality was a subject Sophie had sat on for a long time, weighing the pros and cons carefully. It would've been foolish to do so if she didn't have the option of living forever—but she did. A little bit of philosophy never hurt anyone.

Sophie tore open the plastic, tossing sparklers across the table to join the rest of the fireworks. They were cheap, jumbled together by mixing the contents of the packets you could buy in the convenience store in Japan for less than two thousand yen each.

"You light them on fire," she said. "Humans use lighters and matches, but since a few of us are Pyrokinetics, we don't need any of those things."

"Lighters?" Fayn repeated, looking curious.

"That can be explained later," Fintan said. He was holding the senkou in front of Gethen now, just about his head, and the Telepath was batting at the bottom of the long stick, his mannerisms not unlike a cat.

Blaze lifted an ordinary sparkler, backing away from them a few steps before he snapped his fingers and lit it ablaze. Like sparkles against the backdrop of the night sky, blue fire flickered to life. The edges looked like snowflakes as the fire burned its way slowly up the length of the sparkler, towards Blaze's fingers.

"That's not Everblaze, so it can burn you," Sophie reminded him.

Blaze dropped the sparkler into the bucket of water they'd prepared when it had burned close enough for discomfort.

"So basically, we just light them on fire, and they'll burn out like that one did?" Elen asked.

"They have different ways of burning. That's why they're so fun. For example . . ." Sophie fished out a thicker stick from the middle of the pile, and flicked a finger.

The end caught ablaze, shooting out green light and sparks. It fizzled with much more power than the soft sparkler Blaze had lit.

"Woah," Glimmer breathed.

"You know, for all the Intelligent Species scorn humans, they really do create some amazing things," Serena said. Her blonde hair was done up in a high ponytail instead of hanging loose, for once, since she'd been warned that it could be burned by the fireworks. She picked out one of the senkou that Fintan had been playing with earlier. "What does this one do?"

"Senkou are for the more patient people," Sophie said. "You usually light your senkou at the same time as a few other people, and then you all crouch on the ground and see whose fire drops to the ground last. It's slow burning, and has even less power and heat than the sparkler, but it's pretty."

Rayli picked up another senkou, glancing at Serena to issue a wordless challenge. Elen immediately jumped in as well, grabbing her own firework. Fayn and Blaze joined the girls after a moment, and Blaze snapped his fingers to light all of their senkou simultaneously.