fandomhigh | History of Poisons, Thursday Per 2

To say that Karla was distracted today would be an understatement. She'd already been overtired when she got to Fandom. Add that to feeling whatever was wrong with the island and discovering that Kayla could feel it, too, would be enough to shatter even the steadiest of nerves.

"Okay, what the Hell is going on?" she demanded, running a hand through hair already gone messy from the same gesture. "What's been going on with the land over the past week?! You lot live here--someone should be able to tell me something, right?"

She looked at her assembled students, waiting for someone to volunteer an answer. Anyone?

"Right. Class. You're here for class." You know, the class that had been absolutely forgotten about, yes. "I'm going out to figure out what the ffff--the Hell is wrong with the island. You can come along if you'd like. Otherwise....I don't care. Go research something poisonous. Come back next week with a new fact you learned about a poisonous plant. Whatever. Class dismissed."

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A scenic trip, complete with dead foliage and rabid teal deer.

THIS WILL BE FUN, SURE.

Karla put her hand on the trunk of a tree, feeling it dying by inches beneath her palm. "I don't understand," she whispered, looking around. "How did so much happen so quickly?"

The earth felt lifeless beneath her feet, the brown grass crumbling where she stepped. Even now, with the island caught in the last dregs of winter, there should still be signs of life here. New growth on the trees. Early spring crocuses and daffodils poking up tender shoots. Animals puttering about in the underbrush.

Instead, everything felt eerily silent and still, like someone had sucked all the potential out of the preserve with a straw.

"Okay, so have there been any reports of rocks falling from the sky? I'm asking for reasons."

Kaylin shook her head. "Not that I've heard of."

"Well...fuck," Karla said, flinging a branch into the dying underbrush. "Sorry. That's not particularly responsible of me to say. But I suppose that at least we won't have to be fighting off our friends who've turned into alien monsters. That's a good thing, at least."

"Has that happened before?" Kaylin asked. She was rubbing at her arms absently and trying not to notice how bad everything smelled.

"Yeah," Karla said with a sigh. "My...junior year, I think? An alien rock fell out of the sky and landed in a pool. It poisoned the flora and fauna around it, spread to the people around the island. They went mad, started turning gray and scaly, began attacking their friends. I ended up having to gut Warren to stay alive."

Not for the first time.

"He got better. Everyone did. But before that, the forest died just the way this one did."

"Well, I suppose in a way that is hopeful," Kaylin said. "I mean that something like this has happened before and people got through it and fixed it. Says it can probably be fixed too somehow."

Stupid arms. They hadn't stopped itching and hurting since all this had started - some kind of magic behind it obviously.

"That's the magic of Fandom," Karla said with a bitter smile. "Everything is fixable. All of reality ended once and we brought it back by remembering. Fandom prepares you for a lot of things, but it doesn't prepare you for failure."

She brushed her hair away from her face. "But the important thing is that this is Fandom, so, yes. It's almost certainly fixable."

Kaylin made a face. "Makes it better than a real world place." Yes, she totally thought of Fandom as not quite a real place. "Most places you don't have that pretty much certainty that it can be fixed."

"Just don't get used to it," Karla said shortly. "Because that's not how the rest the of the multiverse operates. And anyone who loses sight of that has a harsh wakeup call when they get back to the real world."

So, don't worry, Kaylin. Karla didn't think of it as real, either.

"Don't worry," Kaylin said with a snort. "I grew up in the fiefs. I don't think the world is all sweetness and light."

Karina had come along mostly because she'd be curious. Now she was sorta wishing that she hadn't been so curious and stood with her arms crossed over her chest defensively as she watched Karla... do her thing.

Karla doing her thing kinda made Karina uncomfortable but, really, that might've been the preserve itself too.

It was pretty spooky right now. It could go back to normal at any point, thanks.

"Thoughts?" Karla asked. "Ideas? Anything? When did this start happening?"

Um.

"Um." Karina kicked at the ground and frowned. "It started maybe a week or so ago? I don't think anything weird happened around that time though."

Probably because the weird had started more than a week ago and she'd just never noticed. Oh well.

"Hell's fire, Mother Night, and may the Darkness have mercy," Karla said, pushing herself up. "It doesn't matter what I do here. It's just sucking the power from me like a sponge."

History of Poisons, Thursday Per 2

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