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 flushed. "Thanks," she said. "Just, you know, my Widow's Weeds. For when I do special Black Widow-y things. Plus it's culturally relevant, so I figured why not?" She gave a small shrug and a helpless smile.

"Good reasons. So, I know things are kinda hectic right now, but would you be able to do that web thing tomorrow or Friday?"

"Tomorrow evening," Karla said immediately. "I'm so sorry. I knew we'd said today, but I'd forgotten all about the fair. Tomorrow should work, though, okay?"

"That's super, Cooper." Leda smiled. "I understand, I missed magic reserves cause I was getting my booth stuff set up too. And speaking of booths, what have you got here?"

"You missed a food fight," Karla told her with a grin. "It was fun. But it made me even later, since I had to run home and shower. Fortunately, my booth doesn't require much set-up."

Chairs, pastries, a giant web. Pretty easy, actually.

"This time," Karla continued, guiding Leda to a chair, "we're going to fly."

"Seriously?" Leda gasped, elated.

"Would I lie about something like that?" Karla asked. Since Leda had done this before, Karla skipped right over the introduction. Her hand was cut and the web activated practically before Leda had getting comfortable.

"The Blood Run," Karla said proudly, gesturing at the walls of ice that shot up hundreds of feet in the air. Though they were surrounded by towering ice on either side, the air was warm around them.

Completely awed, Leda just stood, staring. As Just Ron would say, Transcendent.

Karla shook her head, grinning over the vista. "People have been trying to understand why it's so warm for millennia. The ice is frozen solid, but the air currents are well above freezing. Most males who fly the Run do so bare-chested. They get a bit chilly, but that's about it. We think the warmth comes from the Winds--the currents of magic that cross through the Runs."

"I was about to suggest it might be magic. It's such a wonderful explanation for things that otherwise don't make sense."

"My whole world is magic," Karla said, laughing. "Usually, we're hoping for a more descriptive answer than that. In fact, the three Realms of my world are completely separate entities. Tereille, the Realm of Light, is here," she drew a line in the dirt with the toe of her shoe. "Kaeleer, the Shadow Realm, is here," another line, this one below the first, "and then Hell, the Dark Realm, is below them both." A third line. "Hell is the darkest Realm, therefore the most powerful. The Runs are the only natural occuring element to exist in all three Realms, though they aren't identical--though they're all dangerous."

"So the Realm of Light is the weakest? Maybe it's warm here because it exists in all three realms? Like, there's magical energy from three places that keep it warm?"

"Well, the Winds are the psychic roadways throught the Darkness," Karla explained ~~not-so~~ helpfully. "The current thought is that since the Runs are where they converge, the extra energy is released at heat. The Blood Run had the light Winds: White through Opal, and the Khaldheron has the dark: Opal through Black."

Leda wasn't sure that was going to stay straight in her head, but that was okay. "So, what do we do?"

"You trust me, right?" Karla asked, unable to keep a wicked grin from her face.

[By that, I mean okay to mod a tiny bit?]

"I trust you." Weird how that wicked grin was encouraging.

[Go for it.]

"Then we do...this," Karla said, grabbing Leda's hand and diving into the canyon.

Free fall. Hawk fall. They seemed almost to drift for a moment on the wind, before gravity sent then plummeting downward. She reveled in the speed, the adrenaline pumping through her veins. Ice walls sped up to meet them until Karla opened her wings, caught the White thread and took off down the Blood Run. Leda, her body caught by the memory, did the same, taking to the air as if she'd been born to it.

The initial scream was one of slight terror, if not surprise. But it quickly turned into one of exhilaration as she remembered that she was not going to die.

"Waaaaaaaaaaahoooooooooooooo!"

Edited 2009-09-14 04:41 (UTC)

They danced on the Winds, twirlung, spinning, dropping from one Wind and catching another. Karla lead the dance, probing ahead to untangle the Winds and choose the threads that would keep them relatively safe in the center of the canyon. Leda could probably feel when they switch Winds--the very air itself would change, sudden currents would buffet them, causing then to gain or lose altitude, or skim across the surface of the ice walls, so close their breaths turned to mist. And the darker the Wind, the more wild the power, the harder to tame the air and stay aloft.

The greater the exhilaration, too.

Now Leda was laughing, and holding tightly to her frien's hand. She couldn't tell every time they changed winds, but she got a sense of it many times. "I never knew you could fly!"

"You've never seen me at school?" Karla asked, laughing giddily. "I have wings of my own in my dorm!"

They swooped through another quarter mile of the Run; darting around large protrusions of ice, diving down almost to the bottom just to catch an air current and get flung upwards again. Leda seemed to becoming acclimated to the experience, which meant that it was time for Karla to change things up again.

"You're turn!" she shouted, letting go of Leda's hand. "This Wind goes steady for a bit. You lead!" She pointed in the distance, where a large ice wall thrust up out of the ground to meet them. "Till there. Go!"

"Wha-I don't have wings! Do I have wings?"

"Oh, didn't I mention?" Karla giggled, pointing towards Leda's back. "You didn't think I was carrying you through this whole thing, did you? You've been flying since we jumped!"

Leda craned her neck to see, which may have been a mistake. ~~What kind of wings are we talking? Bird wings? Insect wings? Cause the latter would be really funny for an Elf to have.~~

Unlike the wings Karla had back in Fandom, constructed from metal and fabric and Craft, these were real wings of bone and muscle and sinew. These were large, black, and membranous, like bat-wings. "These are the wings of an Eyrien warrior," Karla explained. "They're a race of people here in Kaeleer. They make their home in the mountains of Askavi."

[sorry!]

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