When Luna heard the explosion, she abandoned her ambling tour of the market and skipped rapidly in the direction of the sound. It was both simple and difficult to get to the source of the chaos rapidly spreading through the impromptu marketplace: people ran in every direction, often shoving Luna off-balance and away from her path, but the epicenter of the disarray was easy to pinpoint and for once Luna was too interested in investigating the source to be distracted by tangents along the way.
All in all, it didn’t take her very long to weave her way through the crowd – everyone seemed to have more important things to worry about than one wide-eyed woman with dirty blonde hair and an eager smile – and so the place was still in mass confusion when Luna arrived at the source of the blast. She wasn’t sure if the damage she saw around her – not enough to justify the level of panic engulfing the crowd, if Luna was going to judge, which she wasn’t – was all a direct result of the bomb itself, or if the frantic and fleeing people had not been a major contributing factor in the mess. Certainly they were causing more straight-up mayhem than the little blast itself had engendered – but it was such interesting mayhem that Luna wasn’t at all disappointed.
She stood for a moment in a small eddy of calm between two stalls, watching the mass of panicking people – non-magical and wix alike, at least if the lack of stars meant anything in a place like this, which Luna supposed perhaps it didn’t – a small smile on her face, her protuberant eyes glittering with delight. Of course, straight-up chaos like this did not offer the sort of long-term fascination that more investigative curiosity garnered, but it certainly wasn’t boring and for the moment, Luna was transfixed.
Her stillness ended when her ears picked-up a cry of distinct words amidst the tumult and shrieks and screams and hexes: “Help! Help me!” The source was a person quite close to Lavender, their face cut and bleeding and their lower-half trapped beneath the fallen wreckage of what had once been a stall. Luna wondered what it had been selling, before it collapsed. Everything was too disheveled for her to tell; there was no indication of whether the scattered cared-stone jewelry had come from its shattered wooden counter, or whether it had been the source of the multi-colored beads rolling underfoot, or perhaps of the odd-looking colorful sugar-candies that fluttered and flailed about weakly on the ground until they were trampled into bright, glittering rainbow dust underfoot.
Luna skipped over to the fallen wix and the fallen stall on top of them – hopping nimbly and absently over a barrel that was leaking something foamy and buttery-smelling on the way – and smiled at the hapless victim. “Hello,” she said, drawing her wand and holding it loosely by her thigh while she raked her eyes across the scene. “I hope you weren’t calling for somebody specific to come and help you? I would hate to be rude and interrupt if you were, although I can always go away again if you’d rather wait for someone else…” She trailed-off hopefully, eager to participate in current events, and maybe to find someone new who would be willing to talk to her and tell stories and secrets of their life in exchange for her assistance; it seemed a fair deal, in Luna’s eyes…
“Let’s see,” she continued, as much to herself as to the wix on the ground, “I think probably a Levitation Charm to lift that up, move it over there were it won’t be in your way…that should be first, probably, and then if you want I can heal your cuts afterward? You might be injured underneath there,” she added, waving at the rubble, “so it would make more sense to do all the healing at once…wouldn’t it?” Luna shrugged, semi-apologetically but smiling all the while. “I am not always the best at determining sensible courses of action, I’m afraid – or so people tell me, anyway…” She thought about it, shrugged again, and finished brightly, “I am quite good at healing spells, though. I mean, I’m not a professional, but I do a lot of healing magic in my job, so I’m pretty good.”
She grinned and raised her wand expectantly, hoping to be granted permission to act. It would be terribly rude to rescue someone who didn’t want her help, after all, and Luna would hate to be rude no matter how intrigued she was.
The longer Lavender lay in the dirt the more they tried to asses their surroundings. The scent of butter beer and blood filled their nose, dust covered their arms, and their wand was holstered to their thigh; Lavender could only hope it hadn’t been crushed by the falling stall. It had only been a few minutes, perhaps less even, since the explosion, but the pain in their legs was coming on quickly, and Lavender could only hope someone noticed them soon.
Lavender lay back in the dirt, breathing deeply, trying to focus on the tip of their nose rather than the throbbing in their legs.
A voice overhead brought Lavender back to the world before them. Large blue orbs, and smiling pink lips looked down at the enby, the woman above appeared upside down from where Lavender lay. Upside-down or right-side-up, it did not matter to Lavender, a rescue had arrived, soon they would be free from the rubble. Lavender tried not to dwell on what might happen next. They tried to squash the bubbling up of questions like: would they be able to dance tomorrow night? would there be scars? would they loose tips?
The lips above Lavender were moving -- had been moving -- words flowing from them like a wild river and Lavender had not been listening. Lavender forced themself to focus, to try and make sense of of it all. Talk of levitation charms, confirmed this was another wix who had come to Lavender’s aid, and healing spells, perhaps hope was not entirely lost after all.
Lavender nodded in agreement before finding the breath for words.
“Yes.” They breathed out, “Please help me.” The words were a plea, gasped out before propping themself up on their elbows to watch. The other wix waved her wand about, shifting the wooden beams of the stall off of Lavender’s lower extremities. Blood rushed back to their legs, and Lavender gave a groan, clutching their left leg.
“Thank you.” Lavender gave a whispered thanks, eyes closed, head hanging down as they allowed themself to adjust to the tingling sensations up their legs. “Oh thank you so much.”
With great caution Lavender lifted the hem of their dress, inspecting their legs. Small cuts and large bruises already beginning to bloom dark purple, littered the length of their thighs. “Oh no.” Lavender moaned. “No, no, no.” Dark fingers gently moved along their legs, as though they could feel for any possible fractures.
“You said you were a heal-errrr... doctor?” Lavender asked, looking back up at their rescuer, their memory foggy as to the woman’s previously stated occupation. “It think they’re just bruised, can you tell?” Their eyes pleading.
