Burning Bright [OPEN]

Sparks and flames leapt from the smoke, whistling, snapping, popping, bursting into the air in explosions of color or hitting the ground with violent crackles. The stones along the shore were littered with plastic and burnt cardboard, traces of the party-goers silhouetted in the haze. Jane laughed, slipping a Zippo lighter out of her pocket with one hand and producing a sparkler with the other. It'd been too long, disgracefully long, downright shamefully long since she'd last done this. She breathed in deep, twirling near the shallows. The air itself was singed, and it stung at her eyes and tickled her nose, and her ears were ringing from the barrage of artillery shells shot over the treeline, but that was all part of the experience.

Jane flipped the lighter open and held it up to the tip of her sparkler, watching it fizzle, and then flare to life with a red sputter of light. She waved it through the air with looping strokes, painting shapes and letters into the dusk canvas, imprinted with a golden afterglow.