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────017, second chance miracles.
CLEO BENNETT WAS ONE TO BELIEVE IN MIRACLES.
She had always been a whimsical child, looking out to the world in rose-coloured hues and a kaleidoscope view, trained by her patient mother and her graceful grandmother that the love you give out into the world will surely find its way back to you, no matter what. Before her accident, she had believed such words with every fibre of her being, though a little naive and innocent as she thought it simply meant stepping over an ant on the ground, or picking wildflowers instead of the flowers in her mother's garden to braid into the copper tresses of her hair, or befriending those that others overlooked. After her accident, Cleo could not go anywhere without her and her brother being called "miracles" in the same breath as being called "tragedies" and she wondered how the two could ever possibly coincide.
Because what was a miracle if she had lost the only woman she ever truly loved? What was a miracle if she was alone in an unforgiving world? But what was so tragic about getting to live to see another day? What was so tragic about a second chance?
For months and months, she slept with the guilt of these two warring sides brawling within her until, one day, she woke up and realized that she would have no choice but to continue to live on if not for herself, then for her mother. Because while, yes, it was a terrible tragedy that happened to the Bennett family, it was undeniably a stroke of luck from fate and a kiss of a miracle. And if it meant Cleo would make a promise to herself from then on to forever see the love and light in the world to better appreciate her second chance, and to hope for never risking it again, then she would do just that, spending her days away from Kildare and up until now and forevermore into the proceeding future with the same airy magic she had perceived the world in when she was younger.
Which is why she likes to think that perhaps this was another stroke of luck, another miracle so close to having been a tragedy.
John B is okay.
Somehow, impossibly, remarkably, he's okay.
It had been a blurring of events and a riptide of emotions, from the Hawk's Nest to the arrival of the ambulance to JJ driving the entire group towards St. Olive's Hospital amongst Figure Eight where they were all forced to await news on the boy. The single hour that they wait seems to stretch on for eternity, until the doctor that took John B lets them know that he's being treated for a concussion and a broken wrist━━a fate much less severe than anticipated, and a lucky one at that━━at which point Cleo and her friends' parents begin to arrive. Lorelei and Wesley are one of the first to hurry into the hospital, both still adorned magnificently in their attire from Midsummers, and both terrified that the call they had received from the hospital had been about Cleo. She was also one of the first from her friends to be pulled away from the hospital and from John B, instead ushered home by a cautious Lorelei who didn't truly know what to say to comfort her granddaughter as Wesley returned to his home on the Mariposa.
