Priest-De Ulloa Residence, London, 12/14

[bitten_notshy]

Enough word had handwavily filtered back from Fandom that Jack was dimly aware everything had worked out once again. He still wanted the whole story, but for the moment he'd settle for knowing everything was all right.

Besides, he'd been a tiny bit distracted with matters on the homefront. He hadn't been around long enough to do any organizing, but it was always a good time to watch, listen, and figure out who people were and what they wanted.

He hadn't precisely forgotten that today was his nineteenth birthday. But he'd never made much of a fuss over them, save the one in Fandom that marked his passage into adulthood. When the man you lived with was in his second millenium, the details of anything in the human lifespan seemed a bit silly.

He made himself some tea and a sandwich and settled in to work on a final paper.

[OOC: Open for calls, texts, surprise guests, etc.]

Comments

[glacial_queen]

"For as long as we stayed in his throne room," Karla said. "Then he just used magic to make us want to stay. Three of us decided we wanted to leave the party early, and then we were tossed into an oubliette and forgotten. Or were meant to be, but he hadn't counted on our friends from Fandom finding us, I guess."

Not that she was going to talk much about the oubliette. Especially not on Jack's birthday.

"So your school is giving less and demanding more, huh? That's a big surprise. What are the students doing to make their opinion known?"

[bitten_notshy]

"Protests, mostly," Jack said casually. He was still chewing on the 'oubliette' notion, and would respond to it later. "Chanting, marching, the odd riot when people get too excited. Do they have civil disobedience in your world?"

[glacial_queen]

"Not much," Karla said with a shake of her head Jack couldn't see. "Though I'm not entirely sure what 'civil disobedience' is." Though going from his examples, she could guess, a little. "Usually if someone is upset with something people in authority are doing, they take it up to the next level. If a village or District Queen is getting too greedy, they'll probably take their grievance to the Province Queen instead. But there have been times when people will refuse to take in their crops as a way to protest an increase in tithes or something. Does that count?"

[bitten_notshy]

"That's the idea," Jack answered. "It must be much easier in your home for people to talk to their rulers than it is here. Sometimes you have to shout in the streets to be heard."

Besides -- shouting in the streets was fun, but Jack didn't expect Karla to understand that.

"And," he added, "I wasn't ignoring you about the oubliette. Just the name sounds ominous."

[glacial_queen]

Damn you, Jack, and your tricksy ways. Letting Karla think she'd gotten away with it.

"It's a place of forgetting," she said in that ultra-casual way of hers that Jack probably knew better than to buy by now. "It was just, you know, a big hole in the ground. It's so weird that your people can't just talk to your leaders. You elect them, don't you?"

Subtle topic changes for the win!

[bitten_notshy]

"Mmm, too many of us," Jack said lightly, considering a few books on representative democracy and revolution as a winter holiday gift for Karla. If nothing else, her reaction would be amusing. "If they met directly with all the people, they'd do nothing else."

That was the most concise explanation he could come up with.

"And I am genuinely sorry for that happened to you. Thank God everyone got out."

[glacial_queen]

She would read them and pester him with questions, fair warning.

"Funny you should put it that way," Karla said. "'Dite was the one who rescued me. After spending an utterly ridiculous amount of time trying to convince me to go. No matter what mind games he was playing with you, Jareth made sure you didn't want to leave." At least with this, she could sound more annoyed than broken up about it.

"Sometimes I'm baffled by the sheer size of this world," she added. "Glacia has about the same number of people as Emma's New York. A Territory versus a single city. It boggles me."

[bitten_notshy]

"I can't imagine anything smaller," Jack said. "The island's the smallest place I ever spent any time. I'm suited to cities."

"And hooray for Dite, then." He sounded dubious about that. He still didn't trust her, but if she'd saved Karla...

[glacial_queen]

"I don't know how much you'll enjoy visiting Glacia then," Karla said, hoping that Jack would indeed visit her some day--and needing to visit him, too. "Even our capitol city has maybe a hundred thousand people in it."

[bitten_notshy]

"I could stand the capitol," Jack decided, and managed not to add anything about hoping there wouldn't be another massacre. He'd behave himself that much, considering what Karla had been through.

He idly considered the prospect of Karla in London. "You know, Emma's offered to come out for day or two sometime over break. Do you have plans yet?"

[glacial_queen]

"A few," Karla said, "but not for the whole break. Is that an invitation?" Glee!

She'd even be on her best behavior! Really!

[bitten_notshy]

Jack nodded even though she couldn't see him. "Talk to Emma and see when she was thinking about coming, and we can work it out from there," he said, pleased to have the plan. (Besides, Karla clearly wasn't British, so whatever she did could be excused that way.) "I don't know how much Sebastien will be around."

Which meant Sebastien would absent himself if he caught a whiff that he was making either girl uncomfortable.

[glacial_queen]

"I won't be in the way?" she asked, a touch anxiously. She didn't know the current status of their relationship, but she wouldn't be surprised if it involved wanting some alone time.

[bitten_notshy]

"There's space," Jack assured her. As for the status of his relationship with Emma, well ... Jack wasn't sure himself. "If she wants to come a day before you, though, maybe that would be best. I'm just happy to have guests."

[glacial_queen]

"That might be good," Karla said, sighing slightly in relief. "Or maybe she could stay a day later. Something like that. Jack, I'd love to visit. I've never been to London before. I'll speak the language, right?"

This was the problem of being friends with Brits. They always referred to it as 'Britain,' not 'England.'

[bitten_notshy]

"You seem to speak it perfectly well as far as I can tell," Jack answered. The nuances of U.K. slang were hardly going to be a problem in a day or two. "... what do you call it, anyhow? English wouldn't make sense."

[glacial_queen]

"We don't call it anything really. I guess maybe the common tongue? Or Kaeleeran? While there are some other languages, this is the one everyone speaks, regardless of race, Territory, or even Realm."

Karla's world was weird.

[bitten_notshy]

"Hmmm." Jack figured 'your world is weird' was not a helpful comment. "I suppose there's no need to name it, if everyone speaks it anyhow."

[glacial_queen]

"Even the Ancient tongue is just called the Ancient tongue," Karla said. She almost sounded embarrassed about not being able to give the languages proper names. "But the Eyriens speak Eyrien and the Dea al Mon have their own language, too."