Tales of the Ice Harpy from Glacia

A lot of things had happened in Faerie since the weekend, when Leda, Karla, Blossom, and James had taken down the tyrant. A surrender had been negotiated. An ally had been buried. The rebuilding had begun.

Karla hadn't seen any of it. Immediately after her plea for clemency had been delivered, Blossom had taken her aside and proceeded to bully and browbeat her within an inch of her life. She'd been terrible. ( Blossom fights dirty, y'all. )

Yeah. So, that had happened. Even now that she was back to her normal size, Karla was not best pleased with Momoko for shriveling her. It was so...so...so stupid! She would have been even more upset if she didn't agree that her own behaviour had been equally stupid. Not then, she hadn't, of course. But time and distance (and food and rest and reflection) had done an excellent job of reminding her that she was a compulsive (and impulsive!) idiot.

Oh, and Warren had helped. Oh yes, he had made his feelings on the matter VERY CLEAR, pretty much from the moment that Blossom had shown up in Sunnydale.

( Special Delivery! )

As Karla had started to stutter out another excuse, Warren had come to a decision of his own. He had calmly dropped her in his candyless shirt pocket, calmly proceeded to book a portal to Kaeleer, and calmly called the Hall to let Lucivar know that they would be arriving shortly--he'd needed to be somewhere he could hit things and not have to worry about pretending to be normal. Karla was pretty sure he'd also needed to be somewhere he could throttle her and not get arrested for it. They'd both known that when he finally dropped this illusion of calm, things were going to get violent.

And now, almost a full Kaeleeran week later, Karla still hadn't seen Warren since he'd handed a tiny her to Saetan. He'd been sleeping in the Consort suite with the door firmly locked between then and had risen each morning with the sun to go out to the grounds to work through his temper. For a week. Now Karla had a portal booked back to Fandom and she wasn't entirely sure she'd be seeing him before she left.

[Preplayed & co-written with heromaniac and not_a_parakeet who are rock stars, yo, and continued in comments with mega SP. Another post will go up (tomorrow?) for other folks who wish to yell.]

It had been a rough few weeks--make even rougher by Raven's surprise appearance at Fast Eddie's last night. Karla was still unsure of what to make of that, and had spent all of the time since then ensconced in the library, trying to find something, anything about what could have explained Raven's sudden appearance and disappearance from their midst.

Which was why Warren had stepped in and very politely, but firmly, informed her that they were going to spend the evening together and relaxing for a few hours. Karla had protested, futilely, but Warren was implacable in his own soft-spoken way and eventually Karla had agreed that a few hours not fretting about Raven wouldn't be the end of the world.

Now, the remains of room service on a tray by the hotel door and Warren's hands massaging away some of the tension in her neck and shoulders, ( Karla was surprised to find herself feeling better than she had in weeks. )

( And then Karla made a phone call.... )

[ooc: Preplayed with not_a_parakeet, blondecanary, and trigons_child. Open for a specific phone call, but otherwise, NFI.]

It had been a long day, even though she'd slept through half of it. Karla was exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and wanted little more than to just curl up and fall asleep again. Though that 'little more' encompassed a lot. She wanted to go home to Fandom and curl up with Warren--at least, if he wasn't too angry or upset with her. How soon until the portal arrived? Karla needed some time away.
( Warren wasn't angry. )

[Part one of two. Alphabet soup goes here.]

Karla had spent most of the past day sleeping. She had vague recollections of briefly swimming to consciousness to eat or be gently bathed, but it wasn't until midafternoon on the second day after they'd left Agio behind that she truly awoke.

She had never been to glad to wake up in her room at the Hall in her life.

At the same time? She had never wanted to leave Kaeleer quite so much. Just...get away. Away from people who would try to control a witch by dosing her with safframate and forcing her to sign a marriage contract. Away from psychic witch storms and attacks on landen villages. Away from spirals and the abyss and six thousand dead in seconds...

She loved Jaenelle, she truly did, but she'd gotten a glimpse of the combined power of thirteen Black Jewels. Karla needed a little while to put that all into prospective, to slot this newfound information into how she already saw Jaenelle until she had a better handle on it.

Sadly, running wasn't an option. Neither was hiding. She still had people to face after this most stupid of plans, and even watching Jaenelle annihilate thousands of Jhinka didn't change that.

After her bath and a meal that consisted of something more solid than soup, Karla was feeling a little more herself. Helene had left her ensconced in a comfortable chair in the front room of her suite, dressed in a thick, woolly sweater, a long skirt, and wrapped in a spell-warmed blanket. Hopefully, these would not only keep her warm--even with a fire, Karla was deuced cold--but help hide just how much weight she'd lost.

Now that she was awake and up, it meant that it was time to face the music. Too bad 'music' in this case, translated out to 'a bunch of people who had every right to be very, very mad at her.'

( Somehow she felt like enforced fussing was going to be the least of her worries right now. )

[NFI, NFB, OOC is love. Last day of plot and we have completely left canonical events behind. Post master list is here.]

While the action went on inside, ( a different discussion went on just outside the compound. )

[Preplayed with the awesome endsthegame. NFB, but continued in the comments!]