Room 218, Friday Afternoon

[glacial_queen]

Karla was puzzling over the letter she'd gotten from Jaenelle. Okay, puzzling might not be the best word for it. She was downright confused and that confusion hadn't lessened any on this, her fourth time reading it.

...Dujae? Banard? Lady Ash? Mistral? Rainier? Karla, who are these people you asked about and why do you assume I would know them? Is this some kind of silly Fandom thing, like the time you thought you were Prince Skywalker's adopted sister? One of these days, I hope that strangeness strikes while you're here and we all get to see!

Anyway, we missed you at Winsol. Tersa came, as did Lady Sylvia and her boys. She shared Uncle Saetan's cup, much to the raised eyebrows and poorly hidden smirks of all of us...

Her letter continued, filled with pages and pages of gossip and news, but Karla's mind kept whirling. How did Jaenelle not know who Dujae was? She'd been a fan of his work since she was tiny and now he gave them art lessons at the Hall! And Ranier was their dance instructor! Lady Ash was Smoke's mate and Mistral was Kaetian's colt, likely to be the next Warlord Prince of Sceval! And Banard had been making jewelry for the SaDiablos for years.

What in Hell was going on?

[Open for visitors and phone calls and the like]

Comments

[glacial_queen]

"No, no, dump away," Karla said, gesturing for Tara to take a seat. "I know I hadn't heard from Kennedy since...what, Homecoming? But I thought she was just busy."

But if it was more than that...

"It's not just you. Or me, even. Ender came by and said he's going through the same thing. People are just...vanishing. Without a trace."

[life_inshadow]

"Vanishing?" Tara said. She wasn't really in touch with anyone from home on a regular basis, so she'd missed that part of the weirdness. "Just ... poof, gone?"

She shook her head. "Kennedy sent a text saying she was going to the Hellmouth a couple weeks ago and since then ... nothing. Her phone's dead."

[glacial_queen]

"Vanishing with no trace they ever existed in the first place," Karla confirmed. "People don't know them, remember them, even things they once made are gone. Like Dujae's painting and Lady Ash's pups."

Karla had gotten Kennedy's text, but hadn't really noticed the lack of follow-up. Which was especially weird considering... "Doesn't time pass a lot faster for her than us?" she said. "So, if it's been over a month for us..."

Yeah. Kennedy should have sent something by now.

[life_inshadow]

"Yeah, it should be two months for her," Tara agreed sadly. "At least."

She let that hang in the air for a minute, knowing the next thing she had to say wasn't any happier.

"My world and your world have magic. Ender's doesn't, right?" She frowned. "That scares me. If it's happening there, we know it's not ... evil sorcerers or demons or something."

She knew how to fight evil sorcerers and demons, damn it.

[glacial_queen]

Karla shivered. "Craft can't do anything like this," she said. "But, yes. Yours, mine, Ender's...maybe Kennedy's, too. I don't know. I can't think of any kind of link. It's just happening."

[life_inshadow]

"Magic could, but it'd take so much power it would be unreal," Tara said, with a little shudder. "There are memory spells, but doing one on everyone ... it's what you said. This is just happening."

[glacial_queen]

"So thoroughly that nothing remains..."

She paused, thinking of Kaeleer's history.

"That's not actually true, what I said about Craft not being able to do this," she said softly. "There's an old story, about a place called Zuul that once existed. But the Queens there were corrupt and wrong and the Darkness rose up and swallowed the island whole, erasing every hint it ever existed--people, books, art--everything. Only the memories of it remained. Maybe...maybe it's something like that?"

But why would it start attacking people like Banard and Dujae, who honored the Darkness and the Old Ways? And how was it going to other worlds?

[life_inshadow]

"Maybe," Tara said, eyes downcast. "I hope not. If it's some really big weird memory spell, there's some tiny chance the missing people are out there. Somewhere. We just have to -- undo the spells and then we can get them back from wherever they've been sent."

So, easy-peasy, right?

She ran a palm over her face, suddenly exhausted.

"That doesn't explain the portals."

[glacial_queen]

"You think they're connected?" Karla asked, mulling that over in her mind. "And not just some stupid and annoying coincidence?"

She didn't really know what was worse. Them being connected, or the idea that everything was failing at once.

[life_inshadow]

"I stopped by the library before I came here and talked to Wesley" Tara said, nodding and frowning, like she didn't like what she was saying. "And ... that's kind of what we think. It's just too weird if it's all happening at once."

[glacial_queen]

"But is there anything connecting the two other than timing?" Karla asked. She didn't think they were wrong necessarily, but she didn't want to get trapped into one way of thinking without stronger proof.

Blame that on all the time she spent in the room of emo repression.

"I can't think of how one could affect the other like that. How could portals just make people forget things? Or people forgetting things affect portals?"

[life_inshadow]

Tara's bottom lip trembled as she thought.

"I don't know either," she finally said, defeated. "I just ... really, really want everything to be okay. Maybe I just want to believe there's only one problem."

[glacial_queen]

Karla leaned over to give Tara a hug if she'd allow it. "I know," she said quietly. "It would be so much easier that way. But, hey. For all we know, maybe the portal thing is just Portalocity messing up repeatedly."

It could be! But Karla didn't really think so. Not down in her bones. Her Black Widow instincts remained wholly unconvinced.

[life_inshadow]

"And even with the missing people, maybe Kennedy's thing is just -- there's a lot going on and she lost track of her phone," Tara suggested into Karla's shoulder. (She'd accepted that hug eagerly.)

"And she'll be back at Christmas and say, 'hey, got a funny story.' And your friends and Ender's will show up again too."

And maybe magical sparkling ponies would come and do Tara's homework -- oh wait, no, that was comparably likely.

[glacial_queen]

"She'll come and brag about how many beasties she killed and how badass she was and make sure we're all suitably impressed with her skills," Karla agreed easily, clinging to that hope. "And Sookie will make something delicious and not let me help."

She didn't sound sulky about that at all. Really.

"And then she'll find out we were all worried about her and get that expression--you know the one I mean, right? The one that's half-abashed and at the same time kinda proud, because we cared enough to worry?"

[life_inshadow]

"I always thought it was sexy," Tara piped up as she stepped out of the hug, and went pink. "Sorry, I sometimes overshare. But yeah, it has to be just some kind of ... temporary confusion. Right?"

[glacial_queen]

"It is kind of sexy," Karla said, giving Tara a smile. "That's not oversharing, that's just stating a fact."

Kennedy was hot. No real question there. And she could rock a suit like nobody's business. In fact, Karla--ahem.

Never mind.

"It could just be a bunch of crazy things all happening at once. The holidays are a really frenetic time of year. Even if Kennedy is in some kind of trouble--" there was no way to try and convince anyone she wasn't, not with that text message "--it's not necessarily connected to anything else. But she's been training and preparing for trouble her whole life, so we've just got to trust that she's doing okay until she remembers to call one of us back. And then we can pass the phone around and yell at her until we're hoarse. Deal?"

[life_inshadow]

"Absolutely," Tara said solemnly. "As long as we can give her huge hugs after that. And maybe hit her a little after the hugging."

She gave Karla half a smile. "We'll get through ... whatever it is. We always do, right?"

[glacial_queen]

"Just a little worse for wear and with another story to add to my 'Things Never to Tell Lucivar' list," Karla said. "Maybe after dealing with a certain number of giant crazy adventures, we get a toaster or something."

[life_inshadow]

"I am so far past due for a toaster it's not even funny," Tara said. "I'm holding out for, um, a year's supply of Turtle Wax."

Not that she even knew what Turtle Wax was.

[glacial_queen]

"There should be some kind of catalogue," Karla decided. "Where you could spend all of your trauma and worry points. That's why so many alumni come back to teach. They're saving up for the really big-ticket items in the back, like the Twinkie deep-fryer and the ten pound gummi dinosaur."