Had Elfreda had known what would happen that day, she wouldn't have let Ethan convince her to go out. His argument about wanting to show off his beautiful fiance had won her over quite easily, however; the whole idea that he loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her had put her in an exceptionally good mood. She was fairly certain that she hadn't stopped smiling since he had proposed six days earlier, which was a little disconcerting and totally ruined her reputation as a generally grouchy and temperamental person. He even had the gall to tease her about.
It was a good thing she loved him so much.
Lunch at the Leakey was as far as she could concede to go (and she was still half-heartedly grumbling that they could have ordered in or something, and stayed in bed, because that was much better than being out during the lunch rush), and the waiter had just dropped off their drinks when the entire world seemed to be thrown into chaos. Loud, explosive, painful chaos. There was a split second between the moment she was laughing with Ethan and the room went painfully sideways, then things went red, then blank, the rumbling and screams fading into nothing.
When she came to, it was with her nerves screaming at her that something was wrong; she wasn't supposed to hurt this much. She squinted, her head pounding, unable to fully focus on the rubble scattered around her. Everything smelled burned and bloody, and Elfreda couldn't quite understand it. She could hear voices, the noise seeming way too faint for her liking. Something about searching for survivors. Survivors? She called to the boots that had crossed her line of vision, though it came out more as a croaky cough than anything coherent.
"I found one!" Boots shouted, which seemed to cause a stir, and footsteps crunched their way over. Bright robes caught her attention, and she made another attempt to ask just what the hell was going on when Boots shushed her and began to rattle off a list of injuries -- and now she was assuming that he was a healer, or at least she hoped so, and hoped he had some damn good painkillers with him, because fuck she hurt -- to Lime Green Robes.