Two young friends linking arms as they walked out of the Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena were 'blown apart' from each other in the bomb blast, the public inquiry into the atrocity was told.
Millie Tomlinson and Lucy Jarvis had 'grown up watching Ariana on the TV' and went to the gig together.
Millie, now 21, said they were hugely excited to attend - and told how they listened to the US star's songs at home as they got ready and enjoyed a McDonald's as the concert was 'a big thing'.
She told the inquiry fans were wearing 'glow in the dark ears' and knew every word of every song.
Giving evidence on Tuesday Millie, who was 17 at the time, said they left the Arena as the encore ended and walked to the City Room, where Salman Abedi detonated the bomb at around 10.31pm on May 22, 2017.
She said: "As we came through the foyer, I remember I had my phone because I was going to call my mum to tell her I was done with the concert.
"All of a sudden I felt like...this warm gush of air hit me.
"I remember that it just felt really warm and like, when you jump in a pool and you feel water in your ears.
"I remember just going in a ball because I didn't know what to do.
"I felt my body get thrown about."
Millie said she had her eyes closed and couldn't initially see her friend, Lucy.
"I opened my eyes and I could see that there was lots of smoke and victims on the ground," she said.
"I could see that Lucy and me had been blown apart in the blast. We were linking and had unlinked in the blast from the bomb.
"We both just looked at each other. We knew something really bad had happened. We managed to get back up and run back through the doors to the Arena.
"In my mind I remember thinking that, if there had been a bomb, maybe there would be another bomb.
"I remember feeling like I couldn't run, but I didn't know why."
The inquiry was told a bolt went through Millie's shoe and hit her foot. She also suffered serious injuries to three of her fingers.
Millie said she realised Lucy was seriously injured, and said her friend couldn't walk.
"Lucy had fallen down because of her injuries. She couldn't really walk," she added.
"We only went five or six steps.
"At this point Lucy had sat down on some steps. She said that she couldn't walk and that she was going to die. I could tell that she was losing a lot of blood.
"I knew that I had to call someone."
Millie said she took her jacket off and tied it around Lucy's leg, but that didn't work because there was a lot of blood.
The friends were subsequently taken out of the Arena by first aiders.
Millie was driven to hospital.
The public inquiry into the 2017 bombing has started to hear evidence from people who were at the Arena and in the City Room foyer area on the night and survived.
Evidence was continuing today - Tuesday.
The bomb attack killed 22 people including children, the youngest of whom was eight.
More than 260 people were physically injured, with 160 requiring hospital treatment.
