fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part III

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part III

The food? Still there. The school? Still standing. Students? Still mingling.

Ahhhh. What fun this weekend was for us all. WHAT FUN. And this time it was actually the good weather for shirt removing!

[~~Please wait for~~ OCD is up! This is the SECOND post for general mingling. Use this post if your browser can't handle the comment load of the first mingling post. Roommates, fake siblings and teachers are here.]

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"Which is fine with me, as I haven't used Protocol in years!" Surreal, don't sound so cheerful about that fact. You weren't using it because there is no Protocol for guttersnipes.

"Surreal, who has no idea where Territory Glacia is."

Karla gave her a slightly confused look. "You don't? But--"

Everyone in Kaeleer knew where--oh.

"Territory Glacia in Realm Kaeleer," Karla said softly, giving Surreal a searching look. "The Shadow Realm."

Surreal laughed. "Try another one, Sister," she urged. "I may not be a well-tutored aristo, but I'm not stupid."

Yep. That confirmed Karla's suspicions. Surreal was from Terreille. That might make things...tricksy.

She was just going to sigh a little and raise an eyebrow. "You're going to a school in a whole other world, filled with people who have never even heard of the Blood, but you balk about the Shadow Realm?" She hadn't even brought up the unicorns yet!

"They haven't heard of the Blood???" Surreal could deal with not-Blood magic, she was good at adjusting to strange situations, but this was out of the realm of her understanding. Pun not intended. "How do they explain Winsol, then? Or do they not celebrate it at all?"

"They have several other midwinter holidays," Karla said, with a slight sniff. Even as fun as Christmas was, it was inferior to the thirteen days of Winsol. Just saying. "They celebrate the birth of a baby boy born a few thousand years ago. Which is a very long time for them. I think their oldest civilization is maybe...six thousand or so years old."

Based on Surreal's coloring, the witch was a Hayllian or a Dhemlan. Darkness, she probably wore handmedowns that were older than that.

Surreal groaned. "What kind of backwards Territory did he send me to?" she asked. "I was to get an 'unusual education,' not end up in some backwater!"

"This isn't a Territory," Karla said. "This is another world entirely. Fandom is a dimensional nexus point, a place where many worlds touch. You aren't in Dhemlan anymore."

Or Hayll. But Dhemlan worked better with the quote.

Karla found her eyes drawn down to Surreal's Jewel. A Green, just one rank below her own Sapphire, but that wasn't what caught her notice. There was a crest on it, one that nagged at her memory. She knew she'd seen that before.

"Never been to Dhemlan," she replied breezily, covering up her confusion.

A beat. "Though Darkness knows where that last place Sadi took me was. It could have been Dhemlan for all I know." She hooked her hair behind her ears absently, forgetting to cover them. "He's not exactly a forthcoming bastard when he's in a Mood."

Her eye caught by the movement, Karla glanced up at Surreal's delicately-pointed ears. And her breath caught as she remembered exactly where she'd seen that crest before.

On Jewels, much like Surreal's. Jewels that happened to belong to Chaosti and Gabrielle. It was a sign of their clan.

A sign of the Dea al Mon.

"Hell's fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness be merciful," she breathed.

"What?" Surreal spun about in case something was behind her, a stiletto already called to her hand. "What is it?"

Karla was still staring at Surreal's ears. "You're Dea al Mon..." she breathed.

Not pure-blooded, of course. Not with that skin and hair. But the ears? That crest? That terrifying speed with a knife?

Yeah. Somewhere in Surreal's bloodline, there was a member of the Children of the Wood.

Annoyed at the lack of threat, Surreal vanished the blade and turned back to the blonde. "No, Surreal," she replied, annoyed. "Not Dea or whatever."

Still, she gave the other witch a closer look, no longer sure that she didn't dance in the Twisted Kingdom. Even Tersa had moments of lucidity.

Karla pointed at the crest on her Jewel, since even she realized that pointing at Surreal's ears would be incredibly rude. "Then why do you wear their symbol?" she asked.

Surreal's face shuttered and a sight-shield enveloped her Green. Titian's Green.

"Didn't your Craft tutors ever teach you it's rude to point at someone's Jewel?" she asked nastily, resisting the urge to call in her blade again and threaten this nosy little witch. "Stay away from me."

Karla just watched her, eyebrow slightly raised--though her shields did go up around her without even a shimmer to betray their presence.

"Maybeso," she said blandly. "But then, you just said you were never one for Protocol. But, what, exactly, are you trying to accomplish by shielding it? I'm not about to touch it. Mother Night, I may be rude, but I'm not stupid."

"There's Protocol, and then there's common courtesy," Surreal snapped. "But it's mine, and I don't like it when people stare at it."

It was Titian's, and Surreal didn't want anyone trying to take it away. Surreal didn't exactly have easy relationships with people who wore darker Jewels to start with - Sadi - and where she was from, if you were a girl too young to make the Offering and people started noticing your darker Jewel, you tended to go missing.

It was enough to make a girl a little bit paranoid around strange witches who seemed to think they knew something about you.

If Karla knew some of that, she would be horrified. Both for Surreal and for how quickly Glacia was coming to resemble Terreille.

"Fine!" Karla said, throwing her hands up in the air. "Darkness forbid I notice you're wearing a Jewel!"

If Surreal wanted to pretend to be a full-blooded Hayllian, then fine. She could hide her Dea al Mon crest, pretend to be ignorant, and keep her hair over her ears. Best of luck hiding those eyes of hers, but what did Karla care? She could enjoy that charade as long as she wanted.

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Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part III

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