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Feb. 25th, 2013
The Fae World: Rose: Finding the School
Feb. 25th, 2013 08:35 pmRose stepped through the bush and found herself in the one place she knew she really didn’t want to be. Ever since she’d begun seeing things before they happened she knew she was part fae, but that didn’t mean she wanted to go to the fae school. On the outside she’d met enough people who’d tried to deal with the bigots before deciding that nothing, not even learning how to use their abilities from someone who understood them, was worth all the suffering. The worst part was knowing that she’d have to leave behind the group she’d slowly started gathering together in order teach those who’d never managed to find the school.
There had been a second, if Rose had been quick enough, when she could have left without anyone seeing her. She knew that. She’d seen it before and was hoping that having the knowledge of what was going to happen would be enough to stop it from happening. Unfortunately seeing something was entirely different to living it. Stepping through into the fae school right then had caught her off guard, giving the first nosey fae a chance to come over to gawk at the new human. Breathing a deep sigh she did her best to look excited rather than disgruntled, even though she didn’t think it was working, waiting for the fae woman, Petunia, to come over to her.
“Go back to whatever you were doing,” a female voice called and Rose looked over for her first glance of Petunia.
It was the moment when Rose’s eyes met Petunia’s that she realised why she hadn’t been able to run the way she’d wanted. Whenever Rose saw something it was because something important was about to happen and this time Rose found herself staring into eyes that she knew better than she knew her own. Petunia smiled, her eyes showing much more than her face was.
“If you’d follow me please,” Petunia said, “I’ll take you to my office so we can begin planning your time at the school.”
Nodding, Rose did as Petunia asked, even though part of her still wanted to run. As they made their way through the corridors Rose found that the only thing she could see was the colour purple, which she’d found out years before was her way of viewing fae magic, although she’d never see so much purple in one place. It was overwhelming. The only thing she could do was keep her eyes on Petunia’s back, hoping that it wouldn’t take much longer for them to get to the office. When she heard a door open and Petunia walked into a room free of purple Rose felt relieved.
“Hey, Rose.” Petunia made her way over to her chair behind the desk. “How did you end up here?”
“I stepped through the wards.” Rose smiled. “The plan was to avoid this, but I’m glad I didn’t. How are you doing?”
“I’m good. Grandfather will want to know that you’re here, so I’ll contact him as soon as possible, but right now we need to work out what you want to do.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
There’s a knock on the door. Richard has asked to hold this conversation on Earth, rather than in the afterlife, because he thinks it would be esaier here. I get why he thinks that. Personally I’m not sure if I’m ready to go wandering around the afterlife either, especially as the map is still fuzzy.That’s something I want to ask him about. With a lot of the worlds I write in I seem to get told what I need to know when I need to know it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the afterlife is the same.
“Come in,” I call, turning in my desk chair to smile at him.
Richard enters the room, his smile a little more tentative, and it’s obvious to me that he’s unsure of his welcome. He is Death after all. Without even really thinking about it I stand, walk over to the door, and wrap my arms around him.
“That’s from both Elizabeth and me.”
For a few seconds Richard is still. He’s taller than me, which isn’t unusual. When he finally relaxes I can feel it and after another few seconds he wraps his arms around me, sighing as he does so, his breath ruffling my hair slightly.
“Elizabeth is a reader of the stories you write?”
I nod. “It’s thanks to her that I’m in contact with you at all. During my first prompt session she left me a prompt to do with Death and that led to me writing about your first meeting with Caitlyn.”
Richard steps back. This time his smile is much more secure and I’m glad to see that. “Yes, I remember that day. She wasn’t scared of me either.”
“You’re a psychopomp, Richard. Guiding spirits to the afterlife is your job. Being scared of you, even though you keep saying you personify death, seems a little silly really.”
“Even though you’re scared of death.”
I bite my lip. “I’m a control freak. Of course I’m scared of it right now. I can’t control death and, even though I have more contact with it than normal people, the afterlife feels tenuous.”
“That will change in time. The longer you spend writing stories about is the stronger your connection with the afterlife will be. I can’t say your need to control things will change though.” Richard reaches out and gently touches my shoulder. “I know it hasn’t been easy. I want to say you’ve got through the worst of it, but I don’t know what your future will bring. Sam might, if you want me to ask him.”
I shake my head. “I think I’m happier not knowing.”
“Don’t you have a connection with Persephone too?”
“I’m not asking her either. Even if I haven’t dealt with all the bad yet I don’t want to know what comes next.”
“Are you sure?” Richard runs a hand through his hair. “Then again I think I would have been the same.”
“Anyway…”
His attention is caught by something on my desk. “What’s that?” he asks.
I turn. “What’s what?”
“The little black machine.”
“It’s my netbook. I use it to write on and connect to the Internet.”
Richard nods. “What’s the Internet?”
How do I explain the Internet, I wonder, and how did this turn into Richard asking all the questions?
“It’s a way of connecting with the rest of the world,” I say finally, going for the simplest explanation.
“How do you use it?”
Shaking my head I turn once again to look at Richard. “Do you want me to show you?”
He nods and I guide him over to my desk. It’s not a large desk and James is using it for his laptop, so it’s cluttered with notebooks, my spare pair of glasses, my MP3 player and a load of other random stuff. I motion for him to sit on my desk chair as I use the touchpad to wiggle the mouse and wake the screen up.
“The window I have up here, which is shown in the blue lines, is what’s called Firefox. It’s my preferred browser. Within the window is everything you need to use the Internet. At the bottom I have my weather forecast bar; at the top is firstly the menu bar, then the address bar, then my groups bar, and finally the tab bar. The menu bar allows you to do a number of things within the browser that we can go into another day. The address bar is where you type in the address of places you want to go. The groups bar is something I added myself, which allows me to have a work group and a play group. The tab bar shows you which website you’re on and what other websites you have connected to.”
Richard looks at me. “So basically the two bits I need if I want to start browsing are the address bar at the top and the tabs bar.”
“Yes, that’s about it.”
“What website are you connected to at the moment?”
“My website. Once I have this conversation posted I’ll load up some other sites.” I smile. “This was supposed to be me asking you questions, especially some I’ve had from Elizabeth ever since I had your character spotlight, but instead it’s turned into me explaining to you how to use the Internet.”
“There will be other times.” Richard looks at me. “Would you mind if I played with the Internet sometime?”
“Of course I wouldn’t mind.” I narrow my eyes. “Does that mean I’m likely to see Samael here too?”
“Yes, but he’s much better with all this technology stuff than I am. He already knows how to use the Internet.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“He did offer to teach me, but I didn’t have a reason to until now.” Richard smiles. “Now I have people reading about me I feel like I should be connecting with at least some of them.”
“I don’t have a huge readership.”
“That doesn’t matter, Kayleigh. We can build on that with the stories you write and hopefully I can help.”
“How do you plan on helping?”
“Sam mentioned this thing called Twitter to me.” I do my best to keep my sigh to myself, because I think I know what’s coming next. “I thought I might create an account myself, although I’d need help with the Tweeting part.”
“Give me a couple of days,” I reply, “and then we can create you an account.”
“Then I’ll answer all your questions.” Richard pats my hand. “Thank you for being so patient with me.”
“You’re welcome.”
Richard stands and for the first time I see his sword. “It stays hidden when I don’t need it, but I have a couple of jobs to do tonight.” He smiles at me one last time and surprises me with a kiss on the cheek. “I promise I’ll come back soon.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.