fandomtownies | The Park, Saturday Morning

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The Park, Saturday Morning

It was still pretty cold, but still Dolf was slogging through the remains of the powdered-sugar snow again, to the park: this time to check out if there was thick ice on the pond yet, even if he wasn't able to afford skates at the moment. He clomped around the park on his Jason-granted shoes, staring at the ground.

Which kept him from noticing the danger from above.

The first cookie struck him firmly across the back of his head, and he spun around madly. "Wat--?" he exclaimed, and then a second one hit him in the shoulder. He spun over again, but there was nothing.

By the time the third hit him, he was crouching on the ground looking for the object. He picked it up and held it up for himself, a little wary now for oncoming violence from above. But he knew this one. Knew this quite well, in fact.

He smiled. Then he grinned. Then he started stuffing his pockets. He'd have to get some plastic bags and fill them before this came to an end; he'd be able to share them with Cally tomorrow night, at Saint Nicholas Eve. This was brilliant.

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"Oooh, cookies!"

Karla wasn't an early riser if she could help it, but apparently the universe had decided to reward her this morning with a rainfall of cookies. They were funny-looking--at first she'd thought they almost looked like bread until one had landed in her mulled apple cider.

Of course she'd have to try it! Sometimes delicious things fell from the sky here at Fandom.

Noting Dolf, she jogged over with a grin. "Now you've got the right idea," she said approvingly.

"Pepernoten!" Dolf exclaimed, sounding more than a little ecstatic. Maybe he was going a little overboard, but they were helping combat his homesickness (and not just by causing minor brain damage when they fell on his head). "From the sky!"

Edited 2010-12-04 06:59 (UTC)

"Good health--" Karla said automatically, then realized that Dolf wasn't sneezing. "Pepper--what are these?"

See, Sookie! Karla knew that you could use pepper in your baking!

"They're Saint Nicholas Day candy," Dolf said, fishing one of each variety from his pocket. "We eat them around this time of year back home." Another one thunked on his head, but he ignored it. "This type is made of anijs, and this one," he held up the harder, smaller rounded one, "Spices. They're good!"

"Who's Saint Nicholas?" Karla asked, mentally chalking up yet another midwinter holiday. "And when's his day?"

She caught the one that bounced off Dolf's head and compared it to the two he'd taken from his pockets. "This one looks like a spicy one," she said, taking a bite.

What? Dolf's hair looked clean!

"Tomorrow is his day," Dolf explained hastily; he'd already half turned to catch a few more that were coming down. "He is the saint of children and sailors. We celebrate him every year with candy and presents and rhymes. In the story, he takes his white horse across the rooftops on the night of December 5th and delivers gifts with his helpers."

"Oh, like Jesus-Santa and his reindeer!" Karla said delightedly. "Just really early. But why would the saint of children and sailors want to deliver presents all night? Why do children and sailors have a saint anyway? And the same one at that?"

Try to breathe between questions, Karla.

"Not like Santa!" said Dolf, who was going to go for the one bit of that he could reply to with pure modern-day Dutch fervour instead of the religious attachment he had to the saint himself. "Santa is the wannabe Saint Nicholas. Coca-Cola invented him for commercials and stole some things from the story. But Saint Nicholas was a real man."

A pause.

"Giving secret gifts was one of the things he did when he was alive," he said. "And everyone needs a saint sometimes." He certainly had, and even being back in the modern world hadn't quite dissuaded him from the thought that Saint Nicholas really had helped him.

"What kind of secret gifts?" Karla asked, trying to process this information in with what she knew about Christmas. How could Coca-Cola have made up Santa if he was also Jesus?

Religion was so confusing. Especially this world's. Karla was just happy to be from Kaeleer, where things made sense.

"Coins and candies and other things," Dolf said, with a little shrug. "We still do that, but we give bigger gifts too."

Karla took a bite from another pepper-knocker she caught. Mmm, tasted like licorice. "Does that mean you don't celebrate Christmas?" she asked.

"It's the day Jesus was born," Dolf observed, shrugging. "Or some of us believe it. Mostly we just meet with family and fry meat. Nothing like the Americans."

"Ooooh, is fried meat a Christmas tradition?" Karla asked. "I didn't know that before." But she approved. A lot. "It's so odd, here. I've been through one Christmas and I thought that was how the whole world celebrates it. Winsol is Winsol every Realm over back home."

"It is a Christmas tradition in Holland?" Dolf tried. He was perfectly willing to offer Karla temporary citizenship to indulge in it, too. "It was just never that important because we already have Saint Nicholas for presents, I think. Every country has its ways."

Karla would take it! She was attached to Fandom, not the idea of America in general, and any country with a tradition of fried meat got an okay in her book. "That's just so odd to me," she said, shaking her head slightly. "Sure, Winsol in Glacia will involve a lot more snow activities than Nharkhava, and Nharkhava will have spicier food to offer than Dhemlan, but, for the most part, we all celebrate the same way. I think this world likes making everything complicated."

"Don't your people all have different histories?" Dolf asked, frowning. "That's why we are all so different. Our histories are shared, but also very different. A lot of wars. A lot of people trying to find something that makes them feel like they belong with each other."

"We do, but not like your people do, I think," Karla said. "We're all connected by something much deeper than Territories or borders or even species, and that...anchors us, I guess. Like Winsol, our holiday coming up. We might have slightly different ways to celebrate it, but it happens at the same time in all the Realms and we mostly all do the same things."

He nodded thoughtfully. "Many of us have Christmas, but do different things," he said. "It is a Christian thing, and they say that is when Jesus was born years ago. But Santa is an American thing, and lots of people give presents at Christmas, but we don't. We have Saint Nicholas. And then the Jews don't think Jesus is that important, so they have Chanukah, and then there are lots of other religions that don't have anything to do with Christmas at all. I think Islamic Ramadan ended about a month ago."

"We all just have Winsol," Karla said, reminding herself later to go look up the other holidays Dolf had mentioned. "It's not exactly a religious thing--" except for how it so completely was "--just...a part of who we all are. Winsol is the celebration of Witch. Every year, we gather together for thirteen nights to dance for her glory and in her name."

Nope, not religious at all.

"We don't really have a religion," she added. "Just the Darkness." And Priestesses.

Dolf frowned at her. "...Who is Witch?" he asked.

It sounded pretty religious to him.

"The Living Myth and Dreams made Flesh," Karla replied promptly, not doing a damn thing to help her 'not a religion' party line. "She is a Black-Jeweled Queen and rules the Blood from Ebon Askavi. The previous Witch was a female nammed Cassandra, who ruled fifty thousand years ago. Now Witch is actually my best friend, heh."

Not. Helping.

Dolf had absolutely no idea what half of those words even began to imply, but he did get one thing out of it. "So she is an important person on who you base everything you believe in and she comes to life every fifty thousand years?"

This was really going to help Karla's case. "No, it's not that regular," she said, shaking her head. "When enough people dream of a Queen worth following, a Queen strong enough to protect them and rule Ebon Askavi, the current Weave of Dreams will start to spin a tangled web. She'll anchor the strongest, truest dreams into a spirit and somewhere in the world, a baby girl will be born with that spirit. Dreams made flesh. And she'll wear the Black and after her Offering, she'll become Queen of Ebon Askavi and rule the Blood."

Beat.

"But we don't worship her," Karla said, because that made all the difference. "We revere her and respect her; she's our Queen, not a god."

Really. Ignore Jaenelle's stupid-amounts of power and the way she was adored by everyone.

"But you have faith in her," Dolf felt the need to point out, "And you said, she's made of myth? That can be religion. When you can just put your faith in something like that, no matter what, even if it isn't something touchable."

Karla paused; she hadn't considered it that way. "I have faith in her," she said a moment later. "It's hard for me to separate my faith in Witch from my faith in Jaenelle. I've known her longer than I've truly understood just why we dance for her glory at Winsol."

"But other people believe in her, don't they? Without ever meeting her." He shrugged a little bit. "The children would say they followed Nicholas because he said he'd spoken to angels, and they had faith he would split the sea. Many of them never talked to him, but they still believed he had been touched by God."

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The Park, Saturday Morning

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