fandomhigh | Multicultural Fair! [The Gym

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!event: multi-cultural fair

Multicultural Fair! [The Gym - After Classes]

The benefit of doing something like this for the second time meant that Joan and Turtle had a much easier time of setting things up since they knew what worked and what didn't.

Turtle had, once again, provided decorations from Turtle & Canary. There was the requisite refreshment table, though it was primarily there to provide beverages, since most of the booths featured culturally appropriate food.

After set up was complete, Joan and Turtle sat down to catch up while they waited for the fair to begin.

[~~wait for the ocd or Turtle will kick you in the shin~~ OCD up! No shins were harmed in the making of this post!]

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Karla winced. Now that the words were out, her brain was reminding her exactly why she wasn't supposed to say things like that.

"Can I start again and hopefully try not to be an ass this time around?" she asked, giving Didi an apologetic look. "I'm Karla and I can read people's psychic scents. Yours is very different from anything I've ever come across before, which raised my curiosity. At the expense of my manners, apparently." She sighed. "That was both a rude question and a ruder way to ask it. And I had no right to either."

Didi smiled ruefully at the reaction. It wasn't nice to go all cryptic, however tempting it was. "See, now you made me feel like I was the rude one. Tell me what a psychic scent is to you and what I smell like, and I'll answer the question?"

She was curious.

"Oh, no, not at all!" Karla assured her. "You were very nice. Didn't even once tell me I was being an ass, even though I very much was."

"You wanna come in and sit down?" she offered, gesturing to the chairs around the web. "It may take a minute, since I'm going to have to muddle through the explanation and there's no reason to keep you standing while I do. Have a pastry."

Karla thought for a moment, trying to figure out the least confusing way to explain psychic scents. "It isn't actually a scent," she started off, "though it can be. Strong emotions can give off odors I can smell. Fear's the worst."

Okay. So far, the explanation was not going well. Karla tried again. "So, a psychic scent is just the general reading that I can get from people. It includes emotions, genders, powers, even species, to an extent. They're highly individualized, and can linger on far past the time the person has left. Mine, for example, would tell that: I'm female, I'm past menarche, I wear a Dark Jewel, which castes I belong to, and that I'm both nervous and excited. That's right now, anyway. It can change, of course."

"Yours," she continued, "is very interesting. Part of it is saying that you're a normal human girl. A landen. No real powers at all. The other part," and here Karla frowned, "is much older than that. And very, very powerful. Non-human. Benevolent. Deadly."

Part of Karla really just wanted to sit down and do a Black Widow reading there and then.

"I've heard worse," Didi commented to the first remark, and took a seat to listen. A pastry, too, but that stayed uneaten in her hand.

She found herself startled at how precise the girl's reading was. "Then you pretty much know what there is to know except the exact words," she said, picking at a loose thread on her jeans. "Benevolent, huh? I appreciate that one."

"Being less of an ass than some doesn't actually make me not an ass," Karla said with a wry grin. "I'm supposed to be working on that bit."

Karla grabbed her own pastry and nibbled it. "There's no sense of malice in you. Not in either part," she said, probing just a bit deeper. "There's duty and joy, but the joy doesn't feel like it comes at the expense of others. I would know the exact words, though, if you'll tell me."

"I'm Death," Didi explained, and gestured in a rolling-wrist gesture to show there was more. "Mortal incarnation of the anthropomorphic personification of it for my universe, anyhow. Just saying 'I'm Death' sounds cooler, doesn't it?"

"It does," Karla agreed with a laugh. It was the kind of laugh one gave when they suddenly realized that the floor had bottomed out, but damned if they were going to acknowledge that. "Much quicker to say, too." She took a bite of the pastry to give herself time to think before speaking again.

"Death. But just for your own universe?" she asked. It wasn't her only question, but the first she thought she could ask without babbling like an idiot.

Oh, way to pick the sore spot, Karla. Not that it showed with anything except the slightest flicker across Didi's face.

"In theory, no," Didi said. "But ... seems like my theories don't work here. I shouldn't get stuck, either. I can whine or I can just go with it, y'know? I'm going with it."

Karla had a gift. It was the unconscious ability to read people, but only to discover the worst possible thing to say.

"Get stuck?" she asked. "Is that why you're here? And wearing the flesh of a mortal girl? And so you wouldn't know anything about deaths in my world, huh?"

Karla sagged a little. She had been half-hoping that Didi could tell her whether or not her parents had made the transition to demon-dead.

"Mmm. It's supposed to be one day a century as a mortal. Clearly it ... isn't this time," Didi said, a little vaguely. "Physically I'm sixteen, so ... high school."

"And deaths in your world? No. At least, I don't think so."

"A day as a mortal once every century?" Karla asked, intrigued. "That sounds pretty cool. A way to keep Death grounded, I suppose. But something just...happened? You didn't just go back to being Death?"

Karla nibbled on her pastry again. "You'd probably be run ragged if you were in my universe. Or would you only count the first death, not the second? Or maybe only when people fade completely into the Darkness. Huh. I wonder."

Give Karla a minute. Eventually she'll realize that most of what she said was incomprehensible.

"Mmmm. Well, I'm only an aspect, I still exist back there to do my job," Didi said. She was an Endless; these things were insanely important to them. "but yes, that's the idea. I have to know what being mortal is so I don't get -- cold."

She looked rueful. "Nothing particularly 'happened.' We're still trying to figure out why I didn't go back the way I normally do." She looked at Karla. "I can't tell you what happens on the other side."

Karla smiled at Didi. "My world doesn't view death--little D--the same way this world does. For the Blood, death doesn't necessarily mean the end of existence," she explained. "With enough psychic strength, the self lives on, even once the body has died. They become the demon-dead and live in in Hell until their strength fades and they become one with the Darkness."

"I've heard ideas like that." It was a little elaborate in the specifics, but nothing humans in Didi's dimension hadn't come up with in terms of the general tone.

"My art teacher back home is demon-dead," Karla said. "Dujae. He's done his most amazing work after his death. Descent into Darkness is so beautiful." She grinned. "Most demons stay in Hell, of course, but I live with the High Lord when I'm back in Kaeleer, and Uncle Satan's Hall retains enough dark power that demons can be comfortable there, even in daylight."

Karla was just going to chatter on, assuming Didi understood everything she was talking about. Which made for a nice change, really.

It ... halfway made sense, really. There wasn't much you could say about the afterlife to Didi that would surprise her, and the particulars of it in her own universe weren't for the living to know about.

There was one surprise, though. "... Uncle Satan?"

~~It always said Saetan. I swear!~~

"He's the High Lord of Hell," Karla said. "He has been for the last fifty thousand years, the first living human to ever take up the mantle. Oh, he's a Guardian now, of course, but he still rules. He's my best friend's adopted father and we all just sort of adopted him in turn. He lives in Dhemlan, Kaeleer, now, though he returns to Hell about once a week to make certain all is well. I think Mephis--his son, who died a few centuries after Uncle Saetan became the High Lord, I think-- is acting as Warlord Prince of Hell in his absence."

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Multicultural Fair! [The Gym - After Classes]

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