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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Mat took the pastry and looked a little uncomfortable. "Does this use the Power?" he asked, hand going up toward the foxhead medallion around his neck.

"It uses Craft," Karla said. "I'm not sure how it relates to the Power you're used to, though." She'd found that magic was completely different to almost every world. It was kind of annoying that way.

"Women can't bloody weave the Power around me," he said, eyes getting a little wide. "Their threads just disappear. I don't want to break whatever you've made."

"Really?" Karla said, looking intrigued. "But it doesn't affect males who try to weave Power around you? That's interesting. Now, is it only Craft that affects you or just anything within a certain vicinity? You must be a frustrating male to know," she added with a grin. "No wonder you're charming. It's a safety measure."

"Men don't weave the Power," Mat replied with a shudder. "They go mad and die when they do."

Poor Rand. Mat was finding more and more reasons to stay here and never bloody go home.

"It's just me," Mat said. "Well, specifically, my medallion." He looked conflicted. Pretty woman he wanted to see smile against feeling protected against magic... "I could take it off if you ask nicely," he said with a tiny smile.

His first comment earned him a horrified look from Karla. "They can't? At all? Those poor males! How is such a thing possible?" Talk about uneven power dynamics. And people around here thought Kaeleer was bad! "Is that why you wear the medallion? To keep yourself from accidentally using the Power?"

If she was told she had to stop using Craft, Karla would most definitely need a magical item to enforce that, threat of insanity or not. Though, if she were forbidden to use Craft, she might as well just walk into the Twisted Kingdom. It would save time.

Normally, the 'ask nicely' would have gotten an eyebrow raise and an acerbic comment or two. But she was still feeling awful about what he'd told her, so she decided she could play along.

"Please, sir," she said, with a trace of wryness no amount of sympathy would be able be able to extinguish, "I'd be incredibly honored if you'd take off the medallion so I can show you my home?"

And if her request didn't have the subtle promise it would have if, say, Emma were the one making it, at least Karla didn't try anything stupid like batting her eyes. Or giggling.

Mat sputtered a bit--all right, a lot--at the first part of her statement. "I can't use the bloody Power!" he said vehemently. "I'm not one of those poor bastards doomed to die."

He fingered at the medallion ~~not dirty~~, deep in thought. "For just a moment," he finally decided, pulling it over his head.

Ahh, Karla always knew just what to say.

She blinked a bit at his vehemence. "I'm...glad?" she offered. "That you aren't doomed to die, I mean."

Dammit, she'd already offered him a pastry. And explained the web. Either of those would have been an easy way to change the topic immediately.

"Why don't I just bring you to Kaeleer," Karla suggested quickly. "And if at any time you feel like it's too much, we'll come right back."

"Three thousand years ago, the last group of men to channel," before Rand and his bloody insane amnesty, "broke the world. They moved mountains and shifted rivers and changed bloody landscapes. The Dark One has doomed each man to go insane if they touch the bloody stuff. It's just a matter of time for each of them."

Mat blew out a breath. "Well, that was bloody depressing. Let's go to your home."

Karla couldn't really disagree. Rather than speakig further, she activated the web. Before Mat had time to blink even, he found himself in a different world.

"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.

"Burn me," Mat gaped, looking around. "I'm not bloody stuck here, right? The last woman who moved someplace dropped me in the woods on the island."

Karla laughed. "At any time, you can wake up back to your own body," she promised. "It's only an illusion and not one meant to trap."

She glanced over him, giving Mat an approving glance. "You look good with wings," she said.

Surprise?

Mat grinned at her. "It's my first time in wings," he said.

"You wear them well," she said, giving him a quick grin.

Unlike the wings she had back in Fandom, constructed from metal and fabric and Craft, these were real wings of bone and muscle and sinew. They belonged to the body Mat 'wore,' even though he saw it al his own. "You could almost pass for an Eyrien," Karla said. "Prothvar is an Eyrien warror who gave me this memory. He'd be pleased to know that they didn't go to waste."

"What's an Eyrien?" Mat asked. "Besides a handsome man with wings, of course?"

"No, that's basically what Eyriens are," Karla said, eyes dancing. "A handsome male--or female--with wings. They're fierce warriors from the Territory of Askavi. They're one of the three long-lived races. I do hope you're not too displeased with the comparison."

"Not at all," Mat assured her, preening. "How does this work, then?"

"Well, I was thinking...this," Karla said, grabbing Mat'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. Mat, his body caught by the memory, did the same, taking to the air as if he'd been born to it.

"Blood and ashes," he gasped, holding on tightly to her hand. "This is the bloody craziest thing I've ever done, and I've done some bloody stupid things."

"Relax," Karla chided. "I won't let you fall. You'll like it, I promise. Just let yourself get swept up in the sensation."

They danced on the Winds, twirling, 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. Mat 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.

Mat's eyes were as wide as they could go: he didn't want to miss a moment of this experience. "This is so much faster than horses."

"We should go riding some time," Karla said, beaming at Mat. "I haven't found anyone to go riding with here. But yes, much, much faster than horses. More dangerous, too." The 'also, more fun' was implied.

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. Mat 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 Mat'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!"

Mat burst out laughing. "You might regret this," he warned, then spun them both through the Run, drifting onto the lower air currents when he could catch them.

"It's just a memory," Karla reminded him, flying at his side. "If we crash, we'll just wake back up. Besides, are you going to be beaten by a little bit of flying and some ice? That's not very Eyrien."

She veered to the left in order to avoid an ice spike, then did a few lazy backflips in the air. "You can do this, easy."

"I'm no gleeman, to be flipping around like that," he warned.

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