[color=f7941d][h2][center]Sidney Malcolm[/center][/h2][/color] They never did get to eat anything. Sidney was hungry, the grilled meat smelled [i]good[/i], and the fried dough was delicious if it was the same kind she had eaten last year; but she was also discerning and if she was treating Audrey too then she wanted to make sure she picked something good. They walked around the festival grounds for a few minutes while she decided, but her indecision cost her as she was still looking when the gong rang and Audrey sped off by herself. Sidney hurried to follow her, almost losing her in the crowds before she found the other girl climbing on top of a trash can to get a better view of the lake. There wasn’t enough room up there for the both of them so she contented herself with just standing nearby, though she shuffled far away enough that she wasn’t standing [i]right[/i] next to the trash. The rows of people in front of her meant that she couldn’t see the lake itself, nor the raft that carried Freyja across the water, but that was fine; she’d seen the dance before and the part she was interested in watching would take place above the lake anyway. She could see the sky just fine from here. After a little while of staring at the back of people hears, Sidney heard Stoat Bilica shout out to begin the best part of the night and slam his cane against the ground. Soon after, hundreds of light lantern floated into the air above the water in a display that had always struck Sidney as being pure [i]magic[/i]. The rest of the ceremony continued out of sight, the important people of the town performing the same routine they did every year, handing the old bell off to Freyja before she was pushed out into the lake to dance as the drums beat. Sidney couldn’t see any of that, but she knew it was happening; instead, she just watched the lanterns. If she’d been thinking ahead, or if she arrived early enough to remember, she would have found a good spot to stand so she could record all this. Or at least take a few pictures. Something she could use later as a reference so she could draw something using the lanterns as inspiration; you’d think after so many years on seeing this she would have run out of ideas, but, nope. Every time she saw those lanterns rise into the sky and their mirrored reflection on the lake it still managed to spark a little bit of creativity in her. Maybe seeing it as a child was even the reason she became an artist in the first place? Who could say? It was so long ago. Oh well, someone was bound to be recording this. She could just grab it off their socials later, then start drawing. Every year she drew something after the festival; it was like her own tradition. When the final gong of the bell rippled out across the lake, it took Sidney a moment to realise things were off. She couldn’t see the lake from her position, nor the strangeness of a water’s surface that no longer reflected reality. The people around her had already been still and even the lanterns hanging frozen in the air didn’t strike her as odd immediately. It was only the scream, Freyja’s scream, which clued her in to something being wrong. Water surges upwards, high enough to be seen over people’s heads. Audrey rushes forward and it spurs Sidney to action as well, slowly, walking forward and pushing her way past an unnaturally still and silent crowd as she makes her way towards the water and begins to hear it. The song. Sidney slows as she hears the words, confused. She looks around, trying to find a source, but the music seems to be coming from everywhere, nowhere, as if whispered directly into her ears. At first the lyrics make no sense but then, they make all the sense in the world. The words lead her forward again, speeding up as she approaches the lake with less confusion than before. The water, rising up from the surface in unnatural ways, looks more beautiful than anything she had ever seen before. She bumps into someone, her shoulder jostling theirs but she pays it and them no mind. [color=f7941d]“Can you hear that?”[/color] Within the pillar lights shone in every colour and beyond those, something else. A city? Sidney can see what look like buildings, tall ones, with lit windows, but it’s hard to make anything out when the water is moving a splitting as it is. she reaches the edge of the water, her shoes and ankles and calves getting soaked immediately as she pays it no mind. [color=f7941d]“Can you [i]see[/i] that?”[/color] A tendril reaches for her and she doesn’t retreat. It grabs her and she does not struggle. The water closes over her head and she closes her eyes. ---- Sidney opens her eyes and sucks in a breath of the freshest air she’s ever tasted. She immediately starts to cough. Sitting up so she can bend over double, she brings a hand to her mouth so she cough up nothing as she chokes on a sudden inhale of too much air. Her soaking wet hair hang lank on either side of her face, more so on the right than the left. Her clothing is wet too; the jacket she wore heavy across her shoulders with all the sodden weight it now held. Colours swam in front of her eyes, like she’d been staring at a bright light for hours. She blinks to clear it away, but it goes nowhere until she moves the hand from in front of her face. As her hand splashes down into a pool of water, she realises she’s sitting waist deep in a pool and begins to stand. Or tries to, at least. As she places a hand on her knee to push herself up the colours start to swim in front of her eyes again, a dizzying array on them. Her [i]hand[/i] is a swirling mass of colours, the skin shifting between greens and reds and yellows and blues as she looks; yellow becomes the dominant colour the longer she stares. Sidney shoots to her feet, her other hand coming up to roll the sleeve up to her elbow. Her forearm is the same; the skin a bright, vibrant yellow with occasional patches of other colours that bubble to the surface before the yellow overtakes them again. The only spot that doesn’t shift being the butterfly that she had drawn on herself in washable marker the day before; [i]that[/i] remains unchanged, though it looks a lot more permanent now than it did before. A voice calls out nearby and she is shaken from her daze. She jumps and splashes the water around her ankles and sees Odaya standing nearby. A [i]feathery[/i] Odaya. Past her she can see Freyja… with horns. There are others too, other voices calling out, other people or other things that used to be people; she’s not sure what to call them. But she sees and hears none of this. Sidney follows Odaya’s finger to where she’s pointing and she sees [i]it[/i]. [color=f7941d]“Oh. That’s a dragon.”[/color]