The Estate, After Lunch, (Morning Fandom Time)

[glacial_queen]

When Mallory had been asked by Queen Ilyse and Prince Audric to come tutor their young daughter, he had been honored and delighted. Several months later, the shiny had been rubbed off both the honor and delight, but he had become fond of enough Karla to continue to teach her for years, up until the tragic accident that had claimed her parents' lives and gotten her shipped off to live with the local Hourglass coven her aunt Kay had been a part of. When Hobart had announced Karla's 'death,' Mallory had spent a week mourning the spoiled, yes, but also sweet, imaginative, and precocious child he had taught.

In the years she'd been gone, time and nostalgia had blunted the worst of her childhood antics, helping him forget that classes were just as often characterized by biting, kicking, crying, and arguing as they were learning, studying, and behaving (Darkness bless behaving.) All that had come rushing back to him over the past four days, dealing with her much-younger self--and her much-younger friends. Even being the Steward to the headstrong and still impetuous Queen and her entire Court was easier than this.

Mallory couldn't help but reflect on these facts as he pulled Karla down the hall by her ear. He'd caught her in his office a few moments earlier "playing" some kind of game that had involved a jam sandwich and a great deal of ink all over his desk, his chair, and the floor. Coincidentally enough, those were the same places he could see much of his paperwork, also under the ink. Any last ideals he'd had about respecting the Queenly dignity she was due as an adult when flying out the window (possibly with more of his papers) as he'd grabbed her ear and began dragging Karla towards her room, a bath, and the tender mercies of anyone who was not him.

What neither of them had been expecting, however, was for the filthy, shrieking child was to suddenly return to being an equally-filthy-but-less-inclined-to-shriek adult halfway towards their destination. It was Mallory who ended up yelping when the ear he was pinching shot up two feet in the air.

"Karla!" he said, half-surprised and half-thrilled. "You're back!" Before she could respond, however, he was grasping her shoulders with a hissed, "Don't you move or I will throttle you," and running off to find Julian, Morton, and anyone else he could find. Their Queen was an adult again. They were going to get this bloody coronation over with before something else could happen, come Hell or high water.

[NFB, open for folks what are here, SP is gonna be a thing, pls to be waiting for OCD]

Comments

And all around the estate came chaos...

[glacial_queen]

For the changing back from weetinies to adults!

(Don't worry, your clothes change with you, but may be a little worse for wear!)

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[wwiii]

Warren probably wouldn't have immediately noticed his change back from small to much larger, if not for the fact that he had tuckered himself out earlier in the day attempting to actually gain some altitude with his stubby little wings (Lucivar was one Hell of an enabler), and he'd been curled up and napping in his father's lap.

Which had been weird, even for Warren at age seven. His father had never really been the particularly tender sort, especially after his wings had come in, but for the past couple of days he'd been really, really... something. Nice? Fond, maybe.

When his father yelped and jumped in reaction to a small Warren suddenly being a much larger Warren, the appropriate reaction was, from there, to flail and yelp in turn, right?

Or was that just the reaction that was most likely to lead to a tangle of wings and other assorted limbs being dumped from an armchair that was too small for two adults down to the floor?

... Probably that second one.

"Ow."

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

Was it wrong that, for just a single moment, Jr was saddened that the magic had ended? His relationship with this younger version of his son was much more simple and uncomplicated.

Warren napping in his arms had both awakened and fulfilled an obscure pang in his chest. Thwarted fatherhood, perhaps.

"Are you okay, my boy?" he asked, standing up and holding out his hand for Warren to take to pull himself up off the floor. "Well, I mean, of course you're okay, your healing factor has already taken care of any contusions, but...what I meants was..."

Oh good. Babbling. Just the skill every businessman wanted to cultivate.

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[trigons_child]

Raven woke up in her room, but she wasn't alone in her bed.

There were dozens of horse figurines tucked all around her.

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[glacial_queen]

Karla had finally shaken Morton off--he seemed convinced that if he let her out of his sight for more than a few seconds, she'd turn into something else horrible, purely for spite.

Of course, if she could do such a thing, it was entirely possible she would, so he probably wasn't wrong to hover.

Now, however, she'd managed to shoo him off on an errand, which meant she could bang on Raven's door in peace. If she was getting gussied up for this thing, everyone was.

BANG BANG BANG

"Rise and shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!" she yelled through the door.

The narration will be nice and assume that Karla just hadn't shaken off the last vestiges of being six again.

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal couldn't find anyone he could understand, Cook had shooed him out of the kitchen, and he wasn't tired, so he was wandering the gardens trying to find some fruit to pick.

And then the trees were a whole lot closer.

After a moment of dizziness, he blinked and shook his head. That had certainly been...interesting? He set most of it aside to compartmentalize later and went to find out what exactly it had been.

One thing was certain - he owed Jono Starsmore a very nice dinner.

And he needed to polish his shoes.

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

One minute wee Dinah was climbing the outside of the manor again... and the next minute normal-sized Dinah swung herself to the top, laughing.

"Okay, that was awesome."

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[furnaceface]

Jono had actually been on the phone when the change back had happened, talking with Rosalind who was still back in Fandom, so he knew to expect that special sort of insanity that generally happened the morning after a strange weekend to strike at any moment.

First thing was first. After hanging up, he was going to try to hide his phone. There was enough blackmail material on there after this weekend to last him a lifetime.

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[sharp_as_knives]

One advantage to speaking a language other people knew: Hannibal could now ask for directions.

And since he both owed Jono thanks and expected he'd have a good chance of knowing what the last few days had been about, Hannibal was knocking on his door.

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[heromaniac]

Sure it was late but Momoko was Momoko. And while her futon back home was comfortable, there was something about snuggling under heavy blankets in a giant bed in a fire-warmed room...

Re: And all around the estate came chaos...

[icecoldfrost]

The blinking of minds going from immature to, well, less-immature?, didn't go unnoticed, and Emma practically sighed with relief. She wasn't sure the supply of paint would last much longer, and then she might have to actually think about how to keep the destructive talents of her tiny-peers contained.

The Coronation

[glacial_queen]

As much as Mallory would have liked it, they weren't able to hold the coronation within ten minutes of Karla returning to her proper age. If nothing else, she was far too sticky to be sworn in as anything.

A much-needed bath, a meal that involved vegetables, and a headache brew later (how could any small human ingest that much sugar?!?), Karla was officially crowned. Unlike the giant spectacle that had been planned, it was a very short and simple ceremony. The thirteen Province Queens were there, but rather than the ranking Priestess in Sidra (who was busy presiding over an aristo wedding ceremony), the formal swearing was done by the young White-Jeweled Priestess who cared for the altar attached to the estate. And instead of the cream of Glacian society, the only people to bear witness to the event were Karla's Court and her friends, along with several of the upper servants.

The entire ceremony took fifteen minutes. In short, it was pretty much the kind of coronation Karla would have asked for if she could.

[For observers, comments, folks signing new contracts, whatever!]

Re: The Coronation

[furnaceface]

"So, five years this time." Jono was still looking a little like he'd been run over by a herd of wild horses by the time he stepped up to sign his contract. "I won't be writing my name down in wax crayon, will I?"

If he couldn't tease Karla after a weekend spent washing honey off of her and trying to get her to eat her vegetables, he never could.

Re: The Coronation

[glacial_queen]

Right. Because he waited for special occasions to tease.

"Of course not," Karla sniffed. "We still have some of the finger paints Emma found the other day. We're using those."

Re: The Coronation

[heromaniac]

Momoko was sad they weren't having the big whole fancy formal total awesome ceremony she'd been described... but this was actually just as beautiful.

Especially since she still got to wear her new dress!

She was totally sneaking pictures of EVERYTHING when she thought she could get away with it.

Re: The Coronation

[trigons_child]

Raven was working on dispelling a sugar-induced headache of her own. She wasn't sure just how much candy she'd eaten in the past few days. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

She was dressed in a red and black gown as she waited for her turn to sign her contract.

Re: The Coronation

[bitten_notshy]

Jack made it back just before the ceremony, fresh from a portal and dressed in a faded t-shirt he'd yanked on for work. (For some strange reason, his laundry hadn't gotten done that weekend.)

He still wasn't ready to sign anything. But he was immensely proud just to be there -- and much preferred this coronation to the horror Karla had described on Friday.

Re: The Coronation

[wwiii]

Warren wasn't really going to make a big deal of it, at least not until the ceremony was over and he could curl up with Karla alone and talk about it and the last four days, but this was really the sort of coronation that he would have wanted if he'd had any say in the matter, too.

He stayed by her side through the ceremony for every moment that he possibly could, his head held high and the slightest of smiles toying at the corners of his mouth.

He had a contract to renew today, himself. And he wasn't going to be signing it on a piece of paper.

Re: The Coronation

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal was a little disappointed to miss the pomp and circumstance of a full-blown ceremony, but he could appreciate the understatedness of this one. He was dressed in a tuxedo and looking very elegant.

If you could ignore the minute flecks of red paint he'd been unable to quite get out of his bangs.

Re: The Coronation

[blondecanary.livejournal.com]

Dinah (http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/15/53/ab/1553ab47393e37ea5ff9f53e6fb48b9c.jpg) had had a very enjoyable weekend, but... yeah. This was the happy ending she'd been waiting for, for over a year. And looong before that.

Re: The Coronation

[hells-highlord.livejournal.com]

Saetan had enjoyed the past few days, seeing the children as children, with very little on their minds beyond when they could get their next cookie and who they had to terrorize to get it. Even his own children had gotten involved with it; Jaenelle telling stories and participating in snowball fights, Lucivar giving every small child on the estate a chance to fly (or, at least, so it had seemed to Saetan.)

It did his heart good to see them all, so carefree and happy. It was rare he'd ever gotten to see any of them look that way.

Today, he was not here as the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan or even as the High Lord or Hell or the High Priest of the Hourglass. He was a proud and happy uncle watching one of his many, many adopted nieces take her rightful place as Queen of her Territory. It was more than enough to make up for the slight headache that being awake under the high sun induced, though a glass of warmed yarbarah helped take the edge off of that, too.

Re: The Coronation

[momslilassassin]

Ben and Ender came in a little late (for some reason, the Portalocity gnomes had been frownily against a pair of boys under ten traveling alone to Kaeleer), and caught the very tail end of the ceremony.

"I wish Jedi ceremonies were that to the point," Ben observed quietly.

Re: The Coronation

[icecoldfrost]

<<Booooooooooooooooooooring,>> Emma shared silently with her friends as she inspected her nails. <<There isn't even anyone here to torment, or be appalled at their terrible taste in shoes.>>

Emma's shoes were fabulous, as always, although she had allowed herself to be outfitted in a (lovely) Kaeleeran dress of Glacian blues and whites, in deference to the fact that she probably shouldn't be showing too much leg at an official coronation. That was for the after-party.

<<I was promised a party.>>

Re: The Coronation

[warren-jr.livejournal.com]

Junior stood on the sidelines, watching the coronation. After a lifetime of being a brilliant businessman, a person of influence, it felt weird to be shunted off to the background now.

He found himself there more and more often these days, especially in regards to his son's life. It was all very disconcerting.

OOC

[glacial_queen]

How I adore weetiny weekend! Thanks to everyone who played!