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Dite's Decadent Delights, Monday Afternoon

After setting up Mini-Morton at the cash register to help anyone who came in, Karla went into the back room, her Craft supplies at hand. There hadn't been much in the way of useful information at the library that she could find--and Jono kind of had that avenue covered--and so Karla had decided to find out information the best way she knew how: a tangled web.

She didn't often spin prophecy webs, trusting more to her random tangled dreams instead, but desperate times and all that. Sitting down in the back, spider silk flew through her hands, creating an elaborate web in the wooden frame she'd brought with her. Closing her eyes, she let three drops of blood fall onto the web to awaken the power within.

Smoke. Tears. Screaming. Blood, so much blood. And a mad laugh that echoed and bounced off the walls. Raven, swimming through a pool of blood as it clung to her, staining her skin. Two flashes of golden light, gone too quickly to be certain what they were. Collars and chains made of shadows, encircling the throats of Raven's friends. Fear. Agony. Flocks of carrion birds screaming Raven's name over and over again in Warren's voice. Cruel, mocking laughter that started out at Raven's, turned into Sebastian's, and then ended as Karla's own...

She was abruptly thrown out of her vision as a surge of power flowed into the web and set it on fire. Before Karla could even react, the web was incinerated, leaving only charred remains of silk to float to the ground. Shuddering and unsure where that power had come from--it hadn't been hers--Karla vanished the wooden frame and headed back for the front room.

It would take awhile for her to tease out a coherent vision from the images she'd seen, but between those and the fire, Karla was going to be pretty damn shaken for the rest of her shift.

[OCD up. The images of the web are NFB, everything else is fine.]

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While Karla is busy in the back.

She's just going to be clutching at her cocoa like a lifeline, thanks.

"Karla?" Ender asked, popping his head in after his class had finished; it wasn't much of a detour. "Hey."

"Huh? Ow!"

Taken by surprise at Ender's entrance, Karla's arm jerked, spilling hot cocoa all over her hand. It was a good thing the plain brown bags they sometimes used (as opposed to the bright pink plastic ones emblazoned with Dite's across both sides) doubled well as napkins. Karla was able to sop up her spilled drink while giving Ender a sheepish grin.

"Kiss kiss?"

Ender winced a little in sympathy. "Sorry?" he said, sounding genuinely apologetic, and halted. "I can go, if it's an inconvenient time."

"No, no, it's fine," Karla said, waving him over. "Just--lost in thought. Not your fault."

Ender could move almost silently when he wanted to, but Karla shouldn't have missed the jingle of the door when it opened. Wouldn't have, if she'd been paying any attention to her surroundings, instead of trying to figure out what her vision had meant.

Besides, you know, bad.

"Very lost in thought," Ender observed, making his way down to the counter. "I'm going to forego the obvious crack and just ask what's on your mind."

"Spun a web," Karla said quietly. "A prophecy web. I didn't get much in the way of useful imagery before it burst into flames. That's not something that's ever happened before."

"Have there ever been any stories about it?" Ender asked, leaning on the counter. There was concern written on his face. "Not that I don't doubt that's a pretty bad omen."

Karla shook her head. "I'm going to write a letter to Jaenelle later and see if she's ever heard anything like this. But...and this could have just been something in the web itself...but right before it caught, I thought I felt a surge of power. But I can't be sure."

Honestly, she wasn't sure if she wanted to be sure. Because the idea was terrifying.

Well, that wasn't... worrying or anything. "You think something might be interfering with your caste Craft?" he asked. "What did you see?"

"Darkness I hope not," Karla mumbled, playing with her hair. "It's hard to say for sure. Everything was all jumbled up, like a dream. Nothing good, though. Blood, carrion birds, tears, mad laughter. Stuff like that. Nothing concrete,, either."

"Sounds almost Biblical," he couldn't resist saying, though he looked thoughtful. "How are you coping?"

"Coping?" Forgive the blank look. Karla hadn't gotten that far yet. "I'm still trying to figure out what those images meant."

That was an answer to his question in some form, though. "Was there anything about them you recognised?" Ender said, watching her expression closely. (Someone else would do the hugging at some point, he was sure.)

Unlike some people, Karla didn't count 'burying herself in work' as 'coping.'

"Bits and pieces," she said. "Some voices. Some people. I was laughing maniacally at the end. That's always comforting. It's a Fandom thing, not a Kaeleer thing, I know that much."

Of course, she'd gone into the web pretty sure of that, but details.

But 'burying yourself in work' was so multi-purpose! You could, theoretically, keep doing it for twenty-five odd years and only wind up a little unhinged!

... Not that Future Ender would know anything about that.

"So it's no one you made an enemy of back home," he mused. "I don't suppose you've made any big ones back here recently?"

Karla fidgeted a bit. "Not recently," she said, trying to figure out how to best define recently anyway. "And not me specifically. I was looking into something on behalf of a friend."

Ender could probably guess who due to radio, but that didn't matter. Karla wasn't going to name names.

"Though if current theories are right, it's someone I've...tangled with in the past." Oh, if only that meant Trigon saw her as an enemy and not a potential baby-mama.

"So whoever it is could already be looking out for you," he said, "Or just put a general APB on anyone trying to use some kind of truthtelling to get to them."

Which meant potential danger up ahead. (Nevermind not naming names; she should feel lucky he wasn't Ben, and not prone to hurling himself at danger like a deranged fiend if the word as much as came up.)

Edited 2011-01-10 18:14 (UTC)

"Probably," Karla conceded. "I just wish I could tell whether that was an active or a passive defense I tripped." She grimaced. "And how he could tell I was up to something."

Was he there, locked away in the pocket dimension with Arella, keeping an eye on all of Raven's friends? Just her? Could he feel when someone was spying on him magically? Karla didn't know.

[Fleeing for reals now! Really! I am! Any minute now!]

"Did you feel anything that even vaguely swayed one way or the other?" Ender asked. He was fairly out of his depth as far as precognitive magic went; the best he could do was try and help her find her own answer, but he doubted he knew enough to do even that.

He should go and have a look through the journals and books he'd gotten from her as a present as soon as possible, too.

[[ suuure I believe you. ]]

"I have no idea one way or another," Karla admitted. "One minute I was sifting through images, the next there was this burst of power and my web was on fire. I don't even know what to look for to tell either way."

Ender pursed his lips, then shook his head. "Best you can do is prepare for the worst," he said, "But you figured that out anyway. And maybe you need to stop staring yourself blind on it and give yourself a while to recharge before you try to make more sense of it."

"I don't know how much time I have to unravel it," Karla said. "I feel like I'm trying to grasp water whenever I think about everything. Things are getting worse."

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OOC