Room 222, Saturday Morning

[glacial_queen]

Karla was snuggled up against one of her pillows. Except she was starting to think it was ripped or something, because there were feathers sticking out of it and poking her in the face. "Stop it, pillow," she muttered, shoving it roughly. "'M sleeping!"

Because that would show it. Totally.

[For her weetiny!pillow, please]

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[wwiii]

"Hey!" He was being pushed. Pushed right into the realm of awake, which was way less awesome than that sleeping place that he was in had been, because when Warren was asleep, he didn't have stuff to worry about. "I'm not a pillow!"

He was, however, kind of chilly. His brain took a moment to pull a complete turnaround from wondering why there was a little girl pushing him, to him practically flinging himself back against the wall, trying to grab all the bedsheets ever to cover himself with. People weren't supposed to see him!

"Turn around! Don't look!"

[glacial_queen]

And now someone was yelling. Why did everything hate her today? And now she was chilly, since someone was stealing all her covers.

If it were Morton, he was going to get SUCH A PINCH, she decided as she cracked an eye open to glare at the noisy thief.

But it wasn't Morton. It was a strange little boy Karla didn't know. And he was flailing at her and looking like she was about to...eat him, or something.

"Why?" was her ever logical question. "You got pants on. I can't see your male parts."

[wwiii]

"Doesn't matter," Warren insisted, pulling the blanket up around his shoulders and then looking around desperately for... for his harness, or a shirt, or something. "Don't look anyhow."

Oh please, please let her not have seen. Nobody was supposed to see. They weren't there. They weren't there, and he was perfectly normal, and always had been, and always would be...

[glacial_queen]

"You can't tell me what to do," Karla said with a sniff and now was most definitely looking at him, just because he was so adamant she shouldn't. "You're not the boss of me."

That was one of her favorite phrases.

"You're very upset," she noted. "Your psychic scent is all snarly. Are you about to cry?"

[wwiii]

"No!" Absolutely not! Except for how he really, really was. "I'm not going to cry! I don't cry because of little girls!"

Little wings? Yes, he'd cry over those. They were weird and terrifying and his entire life was over because of them and he'd been grounded for like a year when his dad found out that they were there and he was sorry.

... He was so crying. It started as a hiccup, and broke into a sob, and then he was just pulling the bedsheet up over his head too, so that he could at least be a big baby without being stared at.

[glacial_queen]

"Hey!" Karla protested. "I'm not a little girl! You're just as little as me!"

Okay, maybe he was a little bit bigger, but that didn't make her little.

She leaned over to poke him when she realized he really was crying. "Are you a crybaby?" she asked, her voice gentle. "Or are you really sad?"

It was a valid question!

Trying to tug the sheet off of him was hard. He had a good grip for maybe-a-crybaby. "Hey. Don't cry. I'm not scary. I'm Karla."

[wwiii]

"I'm nobody," Warren decided. Because not giving her his name was totally going to be effective. "I'm not even here and you never saw me."

The bedsheet lump that totally wasn't there was now scooting down toward the foot of the bed, still sniffling.

"And I'm not a crybaby."

[glacial_queen]

"Then whatcha sad about?" Karla asked, putting a shield over the end of the bed so he couldn't get away that way. "And, yeah-huh you're here. Why are you here? Why were you sleepin' with me?"

And then she vanished the blankets for good measure. She wanted to talk to this strange boy! Why was he so sniffly?

[wwiii]

The blanket-lump had run into the shield and had come to a very confused stop, once he'd reached the end of the bed. There hadn't been a wall there before! What was going on, here?

And then the blanket-lump was reduced to just Warren, blinking around as he realized that his one bit of cover was completely gone, and that he had his back to the nosy girl. There were not words for the way the panic hit him, right about there.

"I don't know! I don't know I don't know I don't know please don't tell don't tell don't tell I didn't mean to..." Okay. Maybe he was a bit of a crybaby. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

[glacial_queen]

There were wings. Crybaby had wings! "Oooh," she said, reaching out to touch one. They looked soft. "Are you Eyrien?" She knew Eyriens had wings, but she'd never seen one before. "Your wings are so pretty!"

But...now what he was crying for?!

"Whatcha sorry for?" she asked. "I'm not mad at you. The bed is big enough for both of us. You can have a whole half to yourself if you want one."

Yup. Totally not getting it.

[wwiii]

"They're not pretty!" Warren, please don't shriek like that. "They're not even supposed to be there!"

But she was trying to touch them. Trying to touch those things that had just grown there, like they weren't something hideous and wrong, and next she would go and tell everybody that she met a real live mutant and then... and then, he didn't know. They'd take him away, or something, like they did with mutants. Because of those.

His feathers prickled along his back, he couldn't help it, and it just got him all the more worked up.

"I don't want any of the bed! I just want the blanket back!" So that he could hide under it and never come out again. Of course.

[glacial_queen]

"Stop screeching!" Karla demanded, showing a stunning level of empathy. "Why shouldn't they be there? They're wings."

She gasped. "Can you fly? That's so neat!"

Why was he being all yelly and cry-y about a blanket, when he could fly?

[wwiii]

"No, I can't," Warren said stubbornly, demonstrating just how much practice he'd had when it came to flattening his wings against his back before scrambling off the side of the bed and digging around for a shirt to pull on. "I can't fly. I don't even want to."

Because people didn't fly. That wasn't how it was supposed to work.

[glacial_queen]

"Why wouldn't you want to fly?" Karla asked, crawling out of the bed and following him. Her nightgown fluttered to her ankles. "That's just stupid. I would fly if I had wings. I bet it would be super-fun! All I can do is airwalk. My best friend Jaenelle taught me. Do you know Jaenelle?" Lots of people knew Jaenelle. She was friends with people in lots of places around Kaeleer. "Are you a Eyrien?"

[wwiii]

"I don't know what that is," Warren replied, working his way to a bit of a sulk as he found his harness and started to fit himself into it. "I'm just a person, just like everybody else, and people don't fly. And no, I don't know your friend. I don't know anybody."

So there.

"... What's airwalking?"

See the curiosity shove the panic down for a moment.

[glacial_queen]

"I'm Karla," Karla said, solving that little dilemma. "So now you know me. What's your name?" She gave him a look. "I know it's not Nobody. That's just stupid."

Sorry, Bod.

"Eyriens are people with wings," she explained, because he clearly didn't know anything, poor kid. "They're long-lived, like Hayllians and Dhemlans. Not like Glacians, though. We don't have wings or live for thousands of years." Which would be sad if Karla didn't think that twenty years was an excessively long time.

"As for airwalking--" Karla scrunched up her face, concentrating. A small patch of air in front of her shimmered blue for a moment before fading back to invisible. She smiled and stepped on it, standing about three inches above the ground. "It just means walking on air, silly!"

[wwiii]

Warren's jaw was now hanging open. Funny how seeing a little girl walking on air could do that to a guy.

A moment of mental clarity meant that he'd realized that the bedsheet was completely missing, too.

"Are you a mutant, too?" That seemed like an important question to ask, here. "It's okay if you are. I won't tell. They get angry and poke you with needles to take blood and things if they find out, so it's better if you don't let everyone see." See, he was being helpful! "... I'm Warren."

[glacial_queen]

"I'm not a mutant, I'm a witch!" Karla said, looking very pleased with herself. "An' a Queen, an' a Healer, an' my Auntie Kay says I'm prolly a natural Black Widow, too!"

Be impressed, Warren. It means she's special.

"What's a mutant?" She asked a moment later. "I dun want no one poking me with needles. I poke back!"

[wwiii]

"I believe you," Warren mumbled before wiping his nose on his arm with a sniffle. She'd given him a good shove to wake him up already, after all. "And mutants are..."

He fidgeted, and then shook his head.

"Mutants aren't anything."

[glacial_queen]

"That's not true," Karla said, plopping down on her patch of air and looking at Cryba--at Warren. "They'se gots to be something. Or else you wouldn't be so scared an' sad. An' you asked if I was a mutant too."

Sorry, Warren. Even at six, Karla could show amazing flashes of insight. Right before getting distracted by something shiny.

[wwiii]

Warren watched her for a moment. Stupid littler kids being right about things. That wasn't even fair. He even pouted a bit, just to show the world at large (Karla, mostly) how completely unfair it was, before he finished strapping his wings in tightly and cast about for a shirt.

"Mutants are people who aren't made right. So they have to hide or else bad stuff will happen to them."

Somehow worse than harnesses and needles all the time. Warren had gathered that much.

[glacial_queen]

Get used to it, Warren. Karla being right would probably be plaguing you for a good long time.

Though right now she was ignoring his pout to make faces at his harness. "I dun see why you should have to hide," she said. "Eyriens dun have to hide their wings an' nobody tries to poke them. You look fine to me. How are you wrong?"

She really wasn't getting the wings are bad connection.

[wwiii]

"I'm wrong 'cause I'm not an Ereyy... an... A thingie. I'm a human, and humans don't just get wings."

He was trying very calmly to explain why he was a freak, between sniffles.

[glacial_queen]

"Eyriens are humans," Karla said, her logic relentless. "They're not kindred like the wolves or the dragons an' stuff."

Duh. Keep up, Warren.

"How does having wings make you not a human. You look human to me. Do you have a tail, too? Or hooves?" Karla was eying him with real curiosity now. The wings were cool, but how much cooler would it be if he had wings and a tail and hooves!

[wwiii]

"No! And I don't want those!" His dad would be so mad at him if he got a tail, next. "I don't want wings, either! And dragons aren't even real, are they?"

Warren was so wrong on that count.

[glacial_queen]

"Yes they are!" Karla said, upping the volume a little. No one got to sass the existence of dragons. Jaenelle had promised they were real and Jaenelle didn't lie. "You dun know anything! You're just a stupid boy who dun even 'ppreciate having pretty wings!"

[wwiii]

"Because they're bad!" This was so going to turn into a little kid screaming match, wasn't it? "Because I got them and I got in trouble because of them and I don't want to have stupid wings anyhow, I just want to be like everyone else again!"

[glacial_queen]

It might not have if Karla hadn't decided that the loudest person usually won arguments. And she was very shrill.

"Getting trouble for havin' wings is just stupid!" Karla yelled back. "There's nothin' wrong with havin' them an' anyone who says there is is just as stupid as you!"

Take that!

[wwiii]

Owww. That had Warren's little feathers prickling behind him, much to his chagrin. That was uncomfortable, with the harness there pinning them down.

"My Dad is not stupid! You take that back!"

Careful, Karla. He'd start crying again.

[glacial_queen]

Yet another reason Karla thought he was being stupid. That harness was awful.

"IS TOO!" Karla shouted. "No daddy is s'posed to say stuff like that to his kids! It's not nice! It's mean an' rotten an' STUPID!"

[wwiii]

Oh yeah. There he went, again with the waterworks.

"Is not!" Oh, the blubbering. The blubbering. "It's not stupid 'cause it's true and if they knew about me they'd take me away and he's gonna make me better!"

[glacial_queen]

"Crybaby."

What? It wasn't mean, it was true! Never mind how Karla would react if someone was calling her Daddy stupid. She would start biting before she started crying.

"No one's gonna come an' take you away!" Karla said. "I won't let 'em! I'm a Queen an' so is my Mommy! She's the Queen of the whole Territory! An' no one's allowed to come take away little kids an' poke them with needles!"

[wwiii]

"America doesn't even have a queen," Warren mumbled, wiping his nose on his arm again and finding himself a little corner to sit in, pulling his knees up to his chest and trying not to cry even more. "And I'm not even crying that much."

[glacial_queen]

"What's America?" Karla asked, easily distracted from her ranting. "Yeah-huh you are."

[This notif JUST ARRIVED. WHUT THE HELL.]