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Around the World in 15 Weeks [Monday, Period Three]

The Danger Shop opened onto a busy street, the sun shining warmly down onto the class.

"Welcome to Antananarivo," Bond began. "Capital of Madagascar." Which was quite high on the list of places someone wasn't allowed back to any time soon after that little embassy incident.

He was about to launch into a far too detailed discussion on the history of Malagasy culture...when someone sneezed.

"SHUT! DOWN! EVERYTHING!"

Within moments the streets were deserted, windows and doors closed tightly.

Bond blinked, caught off guard for once. "That doesn't usually happen."

[ooc: ~~wait for~~ ocd up]

[Class Roster|Class Rules]

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Sure they're empty, but that just adds character?

Bod wasn't sure what to make of these empty streets especially after what had just happened. He didn't feel like sneezing but now he was extra alert and thinking about sneezing.

He didn't want to be hauled off to some foreign jail for sneezing.

This had Tara more than a little nervous. She found a bench to sit on and sat, waiting for something else to go wrong.

Karla was happy to sit down, too, taking a long drink from a thermos. "Well, this is nice and ominous, huh?" she asked.

"Seriously," Tara agreed, glancing over with a small, quick smile. "I k-keep waiting for the monsters to come out of that alley over there."

Karla groaned. "I don't even want to think about that," she said. "Anything more strenuous than sitting here until class is over is a little beyond me right now, thanks."

Tara gave her a concerned look. "Still getting over -- stuff with Sookie, huh?" she asked. "Are you going to be okay?"

[OOC: Sorry. Sleep gremlins stole me after dinner last night.]

"Moontime," Karla explained, grimacing as she shook her head. "More because I was stupid in Agio than because of anything that happened with Sookie. It'll still probably hurt tomorrow--" the darker Jewel a witch wore, the worse her moontime was, save for Jaenelle somehow which just wasn't even fair "--but I'll at least have Craft again."

She shot Tara a smile. "If something nasty does lurch out of that alley, mind if I hide behind you till the end of class?"

[NP! I was kidnapped by a fanfic!]

"Ugh, it's bad enough w-without that," Tara sympathized.

She darted a quick, nervous smile at Karla. "I'll do my best. Maybe we should make a back-up plan, though. Think we could both fit under the bench?"

Karla gave a small, wheezing kind of laugh. "Maybe if we scrunch up close," she agreed. "And if we stay very still, maybe they won't notice us and will go away."

Because two teenage girls hiding under a park bench were easy to overlook!

"I could try doing that thing where I made everybody invisible," Tara offered, happy to see Karla laugh. "Only on purpose, and without the running away."

Time had taken most of the sting out of that memory.

"Invisible would be good!" Karla said, glad that Tara could joke about it. "And so would not running away. Mostly because I wouldn't be able to catch you."

Actually, that reminded her about her promise to Elphaba. "Hey, Tara, could I ask you a few questions about magic? I was talking to someone a few days ago, and their magic seems a lot closer to yours than mine. At least, I think it is?" She shrugged a bit. "But there are a lot of questions that I don't have answers to, and I was thinking you might--or would at least know where to look for them."

"Anything to make me quit worrying about what's going to go wrong next," Tara decided. "What's going on?"

"The person I was talking to," Karla said, careful to not even give gender away, "has a kind of little, uh, quirk? One that can make things happen. But it only seems to surface when they're mad or upset or something. They can't consciously call on it or control it when it does show up and I...I have no idea how to deal with something like that. It's not how my Craft works at all. But I was thinking maybe you know a little more about nurturing such a quirk and learning to control it better?"

"Well, power is tied to emotions," Tara said thoughtfully. "Are they comfortable with it? Because if they are, they should be able to focus and pull it out when hey aren't, um, spazzing. If they aren't comfortable with it ... maybe they're just in denial about it."

"I don't think they are," Karla said, shaking her head. "They were taught that this was a thing to be hidden and not spoken of. Something shameful."

After her talk with Warren last Thursday, the notion of yet another parent telling their children they were wrong and must be hidden away made her queasy. Wait, no, that was her moontime. The notion just pissed her off.

"I know that emotion can power magic--it works like that for Craft, too--but they can't access that power at all without those emotions. And then when it shows up, I don't think they have any control over what happens. It's just suddenly there, making things happen."

And that was dangerous.

"... yeah, that's not good," Tara said unsteadily as she bit her lower lip. "I th-think the best thing for them to do would be to study the kind of magic like mine, that anyone can learn? That way they'd have something to kind of ground them. But I don't really know. Witches at home don't make things happen that way. I mean, sometimes a spell gets away from you, but that's not the same."

Karla nodded. "That might work," she mused. "Get some experience focusing the will and stuff, understand how things work, and maybe that'll give enough grounding to understand the innate power. I was also thinking meditation, maybe? I know that's what Raven does to help make sure her power stays in check."

"Meditation can be great," Tara agreed. "I'm lazy about it, but I know it can do amazing things if you let it. It's another way to focus."

"I meditate for specific reasons," Karla said. "Like if I need to figure out what's wrong with someone, I kind of...trance down and focus on the Craft?" That was kind of an awkward way to put it, but she hoped Tara would follow. "I don't just meditate to pass the time or something."

Tara nodded, following her. "See, I don't think of that as meditation?" she said. "That's ... using your magic. To me, meditation is where you're not supposed to think about anything, just focus on stillness."

Karla wrinkled her nose. "I can get to a point of calm? But just sitting there thinking of nothing? That's not anything I'm good at."

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Around the World in 15 Weeks [Monday, Period Three]

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