anarchist_queen | OOC- Recovered from the archives 6

April 16 2016

Rain had been dropped onto an island that didn't seem to have any adults related to her, so she was going to have to do long distance traumatizing.

So she propped her mirror on one of the troll statues and started making calls.

Ring ring Karla!

Karla was cuddling a sleeping Nommy when Rain called, so it was a very dubious Queen who answered her phone. "Hello?" she said, frowning at the girl's unfamiliar face. "How did you get this number?"

Rain had been all set to be cute and say something like "Hi! Guess who's kid I am!"

But to be honest she'd always been slightly intimidated by her Aunt Karla, so when the frown came she abandoned that plan.

She signed very formally, the voice coming from her gloves matching the tone. "Hello Aunt Majesty," (okay she could still be a little silly. Karla could blame Rain's cousins for that nickname.) "I am Leda's daughter from the future."

"Oh?" Karla asked. "Oh!"

And immediately the frown vanished and Karla was all smiles again. "Hello, darling! Is it prom already? Have you called your mother and broke her brain yet?"

Yay smiles! "Is that what does it?" Her shoulders shook with silent laughter. "I have noticed there are a lot of kids around. Uhm, no I have not yet called her." They'd been fighting when she'd met the portal. She wasn't quite ready to deal with that yet. "I thought I would practice on you and Aunt Momoko first."

"Momoko's always good for a squeal," Karla said. "And--Aunt Majesty, huh? I could get behind that. So, I know the drill. What's your name, who's your other parent, and what delightful things should I know to use against your mother in the future?"

"It's what many of my cousins call Mom." Rain signed, nodding. Anyway, I'm Rain Danan, my dad is handwave because mun never did decide, and..." She considered trying to pre-emptively win Karla over to her side about her conflict with her Mom (her boyfriend) but thought that might backfire.

Now let's see, what to tell Karla about? The whole Crisis in Infinite Bordertowns? Leda's second bout as a Muppet? Rain had pictures of that.

Or;

"Well at some point, dunno how far into the future, Mom's actually gonna bring reality TV to Faerie." That wasn't quite it, but that's what everyone who teased Leda about it said.

"Hello, Rain," Karla said. "Nice to meet you. This is your cousin Collin." She held up the sleeping infant in her arms. "But we all call him Nommy because look at these cheeks of his!"

They did look particularly biteable, didn't they?

"And why would your mother do that? Faerie has enough problems without going Real Housewives of Bordertown."

Rain waved enthusiastically to her older cousin. "Hi Collin! I'm your baby cousin Rain! And I am totally calling you Nommy from now on!" She wondered if he'd get why? She suspected there were nicknames she'd had as a baby that she'd never heard about.

"It wasn't actually reality TV. Mom let some folks follow her around for a while for a documentary, all part of making Faerie more accessible to other realms. It was sort of like those documentary series that the humans used to do like the Office and the one about the Parks department in that town.

And we took the out-takes and made our own version that...kinda made everyone look silly. A lot of Elves don't like looking silly." Or Dragons, Dwarves, Mers or Sasquatch. Though the Nunnehi and surprisingly, the Goblins didn't mind.

Oh, the nickname would linger well beyond when he wished it would end. So much beyond. Like 'he had facial hair and was still getting harassed by the name.'

Karla made Nommy wave back, then tucked him up against her shoulder while he snoozled on. "Question, darling," she asked dryly. "How did these other people see that version?"

Elven deadpan didn't work so well when you blushed. This was supposed to be a funny story about her mother for Dana's sake!

"Well it...kinda went viral? See at first only friends and family saw it. Which is when mom got teased for the whole reality tv thing. But...thenmeandsomecousinsmayhaveshowedourfriendswhospreadtheword."

"And there you have your first lesson in politics," Karla said sagely. "Everything eventually gets out, so be careful who you trust and always, alwayscontrol the flow of information."

That was just sound advice, okay?

"More important question: did I get a copy?"

"Yes ma'am." Rain nodded. That had been almost word for word what Aunt Karla had said when it happened. "Oh yeah you were one of the first ones. A lot of people's favorite parts seemed to be when Mom was teasing Sai cause she's taller than her, and then tripping on the carpet and managing to make a huge mess while not falling over.

"It went something like 'I'm taller than Sai, I'm taller than Sai-aack!' Crash, tinkle, pop, and in the same tone 'I'm not as graceful as Sai, I'm not as graceful as Sai.'"

Karla laughed hard enough that Nommy woke up a little, fussed, and then went back to sleep. "I can absolutely see your mom doing something like that," she said. "I'm pretty sure I once asked her if she really was an elf, because all the Earth stories I ever read about them implied they were graceful."

"Hee! We're also all supposed to be tall too. Or teeny-tiny depending on who you ask.

"Oh, and then there was the bit where we were watching some comedy shows from Earth, and the documentary people got up close on Uncle Leander because he was the only one not laughing. And he just looked right the camera thing and said, completely seriously; 'This is, without a doubt, the funniest thing I have ever seen. Quite hilarious.'"

Karla laughed again, though made sure to keep it down for the baby's sake. "So tell me about you," she said. "I need to know all about my future niece so I can be prepared when I meet you for real. About how far in the future are you, darling?"

Rain shifted her attention to the baby for a moment, as she was using him as a reference. How old was he in her time? It was hard to tell honestly, Leda may have a human's sense of time, her daughter had been living among Elves all her life.

"Uh, I want to say...twenty years? give or take?" barring the mun deciding to go ahead and bring her in for real "Nommy's an adult, or maybe just under adult?

"Anyway, about me...as you may have guessed," she stepped back from the mirror to give Karla a better view of her hands, "I'm deaf and mute. It's been kind of rough sometimes because Elves are still not quite used to accepting 'flaws' like that." It helped that she was the Queen's daughter. She'd become quite an advocate for "her kind".

"Never the less, I love music, and I'm also super into climbing."

"Why do all of my friends have to be so slow about having babies?" Karla whined. "Your mother is dooming my children to a childhood of aristo playmates. If they turn out wrong because of that, I'm blaming her. You tell her I said so."

She peered with interest at Rain's hands. "So, I recognize sign language when I see it, even if I don't understand it. Your gloves are translating for me?"

"I think you told her that once before. Or, will tell her in the future, or...something." Gah, time travel was even more confusing than the differences between dimensions! "But I know I've got a lot of older cousins who are not much older than your kids, and remember, Mom lives at an orphanage."

"Yes! It's an ingenious invention that I don't know how it works. I'm just glad it does." Of course it meant she couldn't engage in any conversation when she was climbing anything. "Also I know how to lip read which comes in handy."

"And Raven's pretty much turned all the rooms in her hallway into an orphanage as well, so I suppose I don't have to be too worried about that," Karla said. "Those gloves are ingenious. I wonder if something similar can be done with Craft."

"Well these are magical." Rain mused. "So probably. I was told once that humans came up with a similar device that these were based on. Of course the technological ones were somewhat bulky."

"I'd love to get my hands on them," Karla said. "Well, not yours obviously. But to see if they can be reverse-engineered, hmm."

"If you haven't already gotten a pair by the time I'm from, I'm sure something could be arranged. Oooh, I wonder if I'm creating one of those pre-destination paradoxes! I don't actually know the specifics of where Mom got these! What if you made them because you found out about them now?"

I just saw a link on facebook to a vid of actual, not that bulky gloves that do this. And here I was thinking of the ones in Congo which probably weren't real.

"Then I'd sell them to Worthington Labs and make another fortune," Karla said cheerfully. "But it wouldn't affect your world any!"

"Egad! A capitalist!" She giggled. "Mostly what I meant was, if you managed to make these having gotten the idea from seeing me, and then in the future, Mom got them from you."

Rain had heard many stories of time travel, and found the whole pre-destination paradox thing fascinating. Wasn't sure why some people called it a bootstrap paradox though.

"I'm a Queen, darling," Karla said airily. "Before anything else, I'm a monarchist."

Rain scratched her head, which caused the gloves to emit an odd, creepy groaning like the ghost in the Grudge. She felt the vibration, and smacked them against her hips. They bleeped.

"Sorry," she signed. "Sometimes I think these things have a sense of humor. Anyway, I don't know a lot about different political systems, but from what I understand, your version of a monarchist isn't quite the same thing as what it is where I'm from."

Which was her way of saying 'don't worry, I won't hold it against you'.