Calypso exhaled, relieved. Drugs terrified her, even magical ones. It wasn’t the actual high that she feared, though- it was getting caught. So she was thankful that Dakota had listened to her protestations before going out into the woods and doing it anyways. She wouldn’t want Dakota to be caught either- covering for her would be a nightmare. At Dakota’s compliment, she grinned sheepishly and giggled. ”No, you.” She shoved Dakota lightly with one hand and laughed at her (not that funny) joke. Then, her face grew wistful. She had something to say. “But seriously, I agree. This summer should be awesome. We kind of all grew apart in our teen years- maybe this’ll give us all a chance to connect again as a group. We’re stuck together for the rest of our lives, after all.”

Calypso lifted her head when she heard a voice nearby that she quickly identified as Maggie’s. “Hey… mind if I join you two? Kate and Isolde are telling ghost stories, which isn’t exactly my scene,”Maggie said. Calypso’s face lit up with another full smile, and she waved Maggie over, patting the ground next to her. “‘Course we don’t mind! Come on, sit down right here, I don’t think we were planning on telling any ghost stories anyways. But we’re still having fun! Yeah, ooh, like that bracelet, mhm. Astro is such a good boy.” Calypso booped the ferret’s nose and laughed.

But then, a very unwelcome voice, unlike Maggie’s, sounded from nearby. Calypso’s eyes, too, snapped to Summer, who was yelling about… the bracelet? Summer’s fury was obvious. The way she insulted Dakota almost made Calypso furious, too- Dakota wasn’t a thief!- but she managed to take a breath, planning to speak somewhat calmly and rationally to her, but Dakota spoke first. Calypso sighed. As much as she loved her friend, she was not very… diplomatic. “Dakota,” she hissed. “You’re not hel-” Before she could finish her sentence, though, Summer had rushed towards them in a fit of fury, shoving Dakota roughly into the ground. “HEY!” she yelled, her own temper mounting. She looked up at Summer, lips pressed together in a hard line and eyebrows furrowed in concentration. She would’ve cast something (a forcefield or a binding spell, she was thinking, nothing violent), but before she could… a weight disappeared out of her arms. Calypso glanced down, startled. But that startle turned to horror. Astro was gone. She looked up, frantically glancing around for her tiny charge. She found him quickly, but not in the way she wanted to. Her heart dropped like a stone. Summer had somehow snatched Astro- Dakota’s familiar- from her arms, and held his tiny body in the air, taunting Dakota with it.

Calypso jumped up from the ground, preparing some very not-nice words for Summer. But then, Dakota went into action. Dakota disappeared and turned into a blurred figure for less than a second, feather-stepping up to Summer. Calypso watched, half awestruck and half horrified, as Dakota roundhouse punched Summer in the face. What she wanted to do was stop the fight- like Charlie and Jeremy were trying to do, bless their hearts- but… she saw Summer let go of the ferret. Shit! Calypso cast a spell in a split second, choosing the first one she could think of- Magic Hands. It was a fairly common spell among witches, uncomplicated, but hard to keep up for long. Shimmery, transparent yellow arms shot from directly under Calypso’s real arms. They extended the entire way in a flash, catching Astro just before he hit the ground. They came back in much the same way, shrinking back into Calypso’s torso until Astro was neatly deposited into her own hands. After the spell was over, she gasped for breath, holding the squirmy ferret tight in her hands. But the energy she gave up was much less than it usually was. Plus, her magic had felt… different. A tinge of something foreign that had not always been there.

Nevermind that. Calypso glanced to Charlie and Jeremy, giving the both of them a thumbs-up but subtly shaking her head. They had the wrong approach. “Dakota!” she yelled, stopping for a second to breathe afterwards. “Astro’s fine- come on, you know Summer’s not about to stop being a bitch! It’s probably not hers, yeah, but it’s probably just a little piece of costume jewelry or something! We can get one just like it for five dollars at Claire’s or something, it’s practically worthless. Not worth fighting her over!” Calypso yelled at her friend, trying to get her to see reason. She held up the ferret. Hopefully that would put some sense in her.

@Hitman@KaijuBaragon@Danvers@Rabidporcupine@Melissa

Punching Summer square in the jaw admittedly felt incredible, almost liberating in a way. The look on her face was absolutely priceless. But as the rest of the newly-inducted witchlings flocked around them, with Jeremy and Charlie trying to break up the fight, and some of the others commenting about her absolute stupidity from the outskirts, Dakota realized that she had probably made a mistake. She panted deeply, her anger levels lowering slowly as she saw Calypso holding Astro safely in her arms. Astro was safe. "I..." Dakota started, her normally bravado-layered tone weaker than usual. Dakota had a habit of acting impulsively, a habit that often got her into trouble- once, in middle school, Billy Jenkins had cut her in the lunch line and told her off when she tried to take her spot back. Billy Jenkins would be found screaming later that day hanging from the monkey bars by his shoelaces (Dakota ended up buying him a McFlurry, and all was forgiven). Dakota looked around her, her quick breaths slowing as she regained her cool. "You're right, Cal...not worth it..." Dakota muttered, deep in thought, but her words were quiet, hard to hear, certainly if the witches weren't paying attention.

All hope of the situation being resolved peacefully, though, was dashed as Summer walked over, her confidence soaring. Dakota instinctively shifted her weight to her back leg, readying for what she thought was a punch as Summer told her off. Dakota, in truth, did not want to continue this fight. She was ruining everybody's night, and letting her drama ooze over everybody else. Maybe she would confront Summer some other time, and Dakota certainly did not regret her decision in the slightest, but as for right now, she wanted it to end. "If you shut your mouth for one second, I-" Dakota began, but didn't finish as Summer tapped her on the forehead and cast a spell. "What the-" Dakota tried to say, but she quickly realized what Summer had done to her. She couldn't see anything. She was blind.

Dakota was not the type of person to be easily shaken or easily afraid- she had, after all, suggested minutes earlier that the girls do drugs in the forest at midnight- but this was a different level, and she started to panic as she staggered clumsily, her footing clearly uncertain as she stumbled across the forest ground frantically. She quickly discovered that her ability to walk was not very solid when she had no vision, and so she soon toppled over, hitting the ground roughly. The fall hurt, and she could feel that she had definitely scraped her hands and knees, but that was much, much less critical than the other major issue she was grappling with. Her panic rose as she fully came to grip with what was happening, and she began to call out, her head twitching back and forth like a rabbit that had just heard a snapping twig. "Callie!" Dakota cried out to her friend, her voice no longer the same as it was just minutes earlier. She was frantic now.

Her words came out disjointed and overwrought. "Summer...my eyes...gone....blind..." Dakota said in a near-moan, each word followed by a sharp gasp, and though she couldn't see, she could feel water rim around her eyes. This was not good. Dakota Lawson was not a crier. She never cried. She had sat stone-faced through broken bones and bad bleeding- she was not going to let this rattle her. She would figure it out- maybe there was some magic that would get her vision back, or something, or maybe she'd figure out how to echolocate or something, turn into a real-life bat. That would be cool! Her own positive thoughts seemed to betray her very negative experience, though, as she was still on the floor and still, despite her best efforts, crying somewhat. She wasn't sobbing or anything close to it, but for anybody that knew Dakota, it was a highly unusual occurrence.

Thankfully for Dakota, her vision came back, though the manner it did was quite annoying- just as Dakota was getting to her feet, her vision came back with a jolt, so suddenly that it sent her back down to the ground again. This time, though, Dakota was much quicker to recover, wiping her eyes as she staggered to her face, a thin smile of relief on her face as she regained her bearings. Her knees and the bottoms of her wrists were scraped up a bit, but this didn't bother Dakota in the slightest as she gave the group a melancholy smile."Sorry for the hysterics," she said weakly as she removed the bracelet from her wrist, chucking it as far as her arm could throw, before smiling a little wider. "Feeling better."

---

---

The dark-skinned youth watched silently as the altercation quickly devolved. It all happened so suddenly- Summer pushed Dakota, Dakota got up, Summer stole the ferret, Dakota punched Summer, Calypso grabbed the ferret, Summer hexed Dakota, Dakota fell like a wounded animal, Summer ran off into the woods, Dakota got back up, pretending nothing had ever been wrong and disposed of the bracelet with some flair. It was quite entertaining to watch, but Jean-Luc couldn't help but feel just a little bad for the two of them. It was clear that Summer valued the bracelet, and Dakota, like most, valued her vision. Despite the obvious entertainment value of the conflict, the girls were quite beat up about it. Jean-Luc's eyes followed the arcing path of the bracelet, which landed in a tall patch of grass a way's away from the campfire. Dakota had a good arm, if anything.

Sighing to himself as he rose, Jean-Luc's hunched and eerie figure made its way past the group, walking through the campfire in the direction where Summer had fled to, like the Phantom of the Opera retreating from the scene after dropping a chandelier. Smiling to himself at his reference, Jean-Luc held out his right hand towards the patch of grass where Dakota had thrown the bracelet and cast a spell, enjoying the feeling of the sudden reservoirs of magic that he had inside himself now. His Magic Hands- a shadowy, translucent purple-black gnarled hand, like one would expect of a storybook witch, snaked from underneath Jean-Luc's right arm, slinking towards the grass and gingerly snapping up the bracelet. It then retracted, depositing the bracelet into Jean-Luc's hand before vanishing. Jean-Luc continued to walk, following Summer into the woods, stepping carefully over branches and brambles, sticks and stones, as he made his way through the forest. He was grateful that he had chosen the nice, comfortable flannels over something thinner, as the cold was quite nippy, surprising for a Virginia summer day.

He moved swiftly, knowing he had ground to catch up on, and eventually he called out, "hey!" into the forest, his deep voice resonating between the trees as it echoed through the area, bounding into the darkness. "I have a bracelet...I have your bracelet," he added, staring into Summer's general direction and into the dark forest. Silently waving his hand, he snapped his fingers and let what felt like endless amounts of magic flow again, and opened his palm, a small glowing sphere of golden light emanating from within. A simple spell for illumination, one that Jean-Luc had used countless times to read while in the dark. "If you want your bracelet, come and get it. It's cold here," Jean-Luc yelled out, his voice layered with irritation as it stood on a large, smooth rock.

"And just to let you know..." Jean-Luc added on, his voice now adopting a cool, unsympathetic overtone to it, "I am doing this for you not out of the kindness of my heart..." Those last words were spoken with near mocking, his lips taught as he stared into the night. "...but out of pity. Now take it." He carelessly dropped the silver bracelet underneath the glowing sphere of light, giving the mobile candle enough energy to last a few moments longer, before turning on heel and walking back towards the campfire, eyes as stony as they always were. He promised himself that would be the last act of charity for the night, for sure.

Speaks to: N/A

Mentions: Summer @Danvers, Jean-Luc, Cal, Kota, Kate, Jeremy.

For a moment, Cal thought they might be able to figure it out. Both girls stopped hitting each other and stared each other down, glaring. Summer approached and Calypso tensed up, preparing to dash in between the two of them and break it up. But instead of punching… she touched Dakota’s head? Like a boop? Surprisingly playful for Summer, Calypso thought, until she stopped being an idiot and remembered magic. Oh. Oh no. Whatever spell she had just cast could not have been good. Calypso watched in horror, still cradling Astro in her arms as she watched it take hold. Dakota started panicking in seconds, stumbling and falling. Calypso ran forward, looking confused and rather distraught herself.

"Callie!"

Calypso dropped to the ground with Dakota, concern showing on her face. Dakota always kept her cool- something was wrong. “I’m right here, Kota, everything’s fine! What’s wrong?” She listened as Dakota spoke, horror dawning on her face. Summer could blind people? Was it permanent? If it was, maybe Summer would be kicked out… hm... Calypso hugged her close, rubbing her back until her sight came back. “It’ll be okay. Promise,” she reassured Dakota, although she wasn’t quite sure of that herself.

When her sight came back, Calypso let out a sigh of relief. She offered a hand to help Dakota up, but her friend refused it and stood up by herself. She rolled her eyes playfully. It relieved her to see that Dakota was fine, even if she was clearly still shaken up. “You are not fine. Look at you! It’s time for some TLC. Stat. C’mere.” Not waiting for Dakota to say yes, Calypso yanked her friend back to their sleeping bags, gesturing for her to sit down. “Stay here. I’m getting us s’mores, then we talk.” With that, Calypso turned around and went to the fire, searching for Hana’s s’more stuff.

She found it fairly quickly and pulled out the marshmallows from the bag, finding two sticks that she hoped were sterile and stabbing them with it. She put them both over the fire in one hand and prepped the graham crackers and chocolate with the other. Not wanting to take long, Calypso pulled them out while they were freshly golden brown and pressed them into the s’mores. If she was being perfectly honest, she had never really made s’mores before, so she just kind of put them together like she thought they might go together and went back to Dakota in record time, holding up both s’mores triumphantly.

“Here. Eat. Being upset takes energy!” Calypso shoved the s’more into Dakota’s hands and plopped onto the ground next to her. “How are you feeling? Do you need some water? Another hug? God, I’m gonna kill that bitch… do your eyes hurt? No, it was probably just an illusion… you’re okay now, though! Do you want me to punch her for you?” Calypso munched on her s’more, miming punching the air. “Seriously, I will. I’m not very good at it, though. But I can do it! Whatever makes you feel better.”

@Hitman