Children Of The Crucible

Return to Earth

James's PoV

I watched as Gwen fell to the ground and held Stevie's lifeless body in her arms, the tears running from her warm cheeks onto Stevie's ice cold ones.

I looked around the rest of the group through my blurry eyes and saw they were all crying as well.

None of us could comprehend it.

The silence lasted a long while as we all struggled to take in her lifeless form. It wasn't broken until Tommy asked the question that had been resting in the back of all of our minds.

"What should we do?" His voice was barely a whisper.

We all shook our heads, incapable of speaking.

"Guys!" We all turned our attention to Gwen, still kneeling on the floor, now looking with confusion at Stevie's face.

Everyone crowded round and watched as Stevie's eyelashes began to flutter and the colour slowly return to her face.

"No way." said Olivia in complete disbelief.

Gwen carefully laid Stevie back on the floor as she slowly opened her eyes.

Cries of delight went around the group as she sat up and looked around us. She was quickly engulfed by a hug from Gwen as the rest of us bombarded her with concerned questions.

"What happened?"

"Are you ok?"

"How did you survive?"

She laughed lightly as she finally managed to wriggle free from Gwen's tight grasp.

"Woah guys. One at a time."

Olivia went first."What happened to you? We thought you were dead."

"I tripped over something during all the excitement and had the breath knocked out of me when I hit the floor. By the time I got my breath back and yelled out for you it was too late, and you were too far away to hear me."

Gwen burst out into fresh tears upon hearing this. "I'm so sorry, if only we had noticed", she said between sobs.

I put my arm around her to comfort her.

"Hey it wasn't just your fault, we are all to blame."

Blair was next to quiz Stevie as Gwen's sobs began to quieten.

"How did you come back to us?"

Stevie smiled for some reason. "Well, it's a long story."

All of us gathered in even closer as she began to tell us the exciting tale. By the time she had finished we all sat for a moment, trying to take it all in.

"Wow!"

We all chuckled at Sami's remark.

"Well I'm not a fan of this ferryman guy, he doesn't seem very friendly."

"He's not that bad, I guess you can't blame him since he's literally been there since the very beginning taking souls across the river."

"Fair enough."

Silence fell over us for a few moments before I remembered the other body in the room.

"Guys, what should we do about Mr Walters?"

The others has also clearly forgotten about the corpse that remained in the room.

"I think we should all just leave and let someone else find the body, they will think his death is the result of a failed experiment or something."

Everyone seemed happy with this solution, probably because they couldn't think of anything else to do about it.

"Yeah, let's get out of here."

We decided to leave through the back door just in case anyone saw us coming out the front door.

We walked around the side of the house, and checked to see if anyone was around before exiting the garden.

Silence feel between us once more and we walked along the street, heading back towards our houses.

"What will happen when they find his body?"

Sami turned back to face Tommy.

"No idea. Don't really want to know, to be honest."

"Neither. Hey do you reckon they will find his notebook and find out about the powers and everything?"

"You don't need to worry about that Olivia."

Our attention turned to Blair who had the famous notebook in his hand.

"I swiped it before we left, I thought it would be safest if no one else knew about it."

I smiled as a wave of relief washed over me. We had the notebook.

"I think you're right, and well done for remembering it."

He blushed slightly and adjusted his glasses on his nose. For some reason he had still carried his glasses around after he got the powers, meaning he had them with him when his power disappeared. Thank goodness he did because he is practically blind without them.

"What shall we do now?" Olivia asked it so calmly, as though fighting a murderer was a regular activity that she had gotten bored of.

"I don't know" came Gwen's voice. "To be honest I kinda just want to go home, put a face mask on and completely relax and unwind."

"Yeah I want to go home too, it's been one heck of a day and I'm super tired."

Words of agreement with Sami's response went around the group.

"Same here, plus I've got French homework to do."

Gwen nudged Stevie playfully.

"For once, can you focus on something that isn't homework. I mean you literally died earlier and you're thinking about school."

Stevie chuckled in response.

"Yeah you're probably right."

A few minutes passed before Sami suddenly yelled out in triumph.

"Yesss!!! Guys this means there's no more chemistry tuition!!"

Everyone burst out laughing at her exclamation.

"What?"

"Nothing." Olivia said between fits of laughter. "Just that it took you so long to work that out, and the look of sheer excitement in your face."

"Oh shut up. I'm just glad we don't need to waste our Monday nights anymore."

Everyone continued laughing as we walked back to our houses in the setting sun.

Author's Note

Hi everyone, wanted to say a huge thanks for 3000+ reads!! Also we have an art book now so if you wanna check it out that would be cool!
As always, thanks for reading, commenting and voting, it really means a lot!