control flow

"Ahoy over there! Have you two geezers seen Fiona?"

"Seen 'er? How could we lose 'er, she's wavin' a flag!"

Eunie let that sit for a moment.

"So's everyone else, brainiac. And she's a little short, if you haven't noticed?"

Minoth cast the winged girl a look down from his considerable height. "She's short?"

"Fine. She's short-er. Which makes it all the more your job not to lose us! Freaks..."

The surging buzz of the surrounding circle of crowd hushed, momentarily, at the sound of someone railing against queer folk gathered in joy. Once Eunie used tiptoes and a flattened palm to demonstrate the altitude differential, however, they smiled again and went about their celebratory business. Covered as she was in temporary tattoos and glitter, it didn't seem all that likely that she'd really be incensed at her chaperones for that reason.

Before long, a flag making more erratic darting motions emerged above the rest. "Cap'n! Over here!"

Fiona had hardly reached her friends when Triton bent, scooped her up, and settled her to sit on his shoulders. "There we are, darlin'. Now there's no way we can lose ya! Hope ye don't mind..."

After catching her breath, Fiona reassured them all that this was far preferable to getting lost for a second or third time.

"Well, my friends, where to next?" Minoth adjusted the fringe hanging from his forearms as he rattled off possibilities: "Overpriced water, overpriced water ice, overloud DJ, undersized t-shirts, underdramatic drag queens-"

"What, like you could do better?" Eunie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, the whole thing's a bit corpo, but how else would they get this many people together this fast? Fiona, love, would you ever have found us without a whole crowd of folks to ask where we were?"

Once again, Fiona had no time to react, because an unfamiliar voice cut in, "If not for this crowd, I doubt she'd have gotten lost at all. But you're a lucky birdie, Eunie - I can find you anywhere."

And now it was Eunie, yelping, hoisted skyward, perched on Ashera's shoulder.