2nd Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

[glacial_queen]

Karla was feeling Crafty today--though, admittedly, this was not exactly news. Karla was often in that kind of mood, regardless of whether the 'C' was capitalized or not. After the Magical Reserves meeting today, she'd decided it was a good day to stock up on some items for the Support Reserves. Magical potions unfortunately lost efficacy after a few hours, but a few simple Healing webs could be activated without her being around with only a few drops of blood, and could heal most minor to middling injuries. Calming potions would be useful in an emergency, as would sleeping draughts. Which reminded her that a few energy powders might be wise, too. Cooling or warming unguents, too, depending on when they'd be fighting. Plus the everyday, non-magical potions for things like bee-stings, sunburn (Karla, being very fair-skinned, made a lot of that), chafes, various aches and pains...

There were also some potions brewing that were for her own use, or to be shared with others, like her moon-time tea and the contraceptive brew, since it seemed like something to have handy for people.

And since she'd promised magical help to several people over the past few days, the common room seemed an easy enough place to find her. Plus, it had more counterspace, a sink, and a stove she was going to avoid until someone came in and taught her to use it properly. A few tongues of witchfire were enough to heat anything, anyway.

Anyone coming in would see Karla singing softly to herself, as she consulted a few large, leather bound books, fiddling around with various pots filled with herbal-scented liquids, or weaving webs in small, wooden looms.

[Common room is open! SP warning for me this evening.]

Comments

[endsthegame]

He took a pen from his pocket and wrote down Ben's number - it'd taken him a while to get used to writing on paper like this again, and so his handwriting was actually a little clumsy; he didn't hold the pen quite right. "Then you've either been throwing them around a lot," Ender said, offering her the paper, "Or I'm going to be inspired to pick your brain about what you've learned."

[glacial_queen]

"Shh, don't tell," she whispered, leaning in. "Mostly I just use them for target practice. But it makes them look impressive, right?"

Karla straightened and laughed, then added a tongue of witchfire to the bowl she was stirring. It was the right consistency for the heat. "Anything specific you want to know?"

[endsthegame]

"It'd be hard to pick a place to start on a discipline I have no knowledge of," Ender pointed out, amused. He tapped the piece of paper with the back of his pen. "That's his room number, too."

[glacial_queen]

"Thanks," she said. Karla was about to vanish it when she reconsidered. "Though, if you wouldn't mind, you could add yours, too. I just bought a cell phone. So I could give you mine, too, if you wanted."

"Well, most people ask about something that interests them. Are you interested in learning only to be learning? Or is there somewhere you'd like to start? Any potions I'm brewing that you find excessively fascinating?"

[endsthegame]

"I don't usually use my phone a great deal." It was pretty archaic, and he'd made sure to keep his number of friends manageable. Still, that didn't keep Ender from writing down his own number (and room number) while he was at it. "I'm in high school for a reason," he said, although this didn't actually tell her which reason. "Learning is part of that."

He gave it some thought, though, and added, "What would you say is the most complicated one you know?"

[glacial_queen]

Karla paused for a moment, thinking. "Three questions before I answer that: of the ones I'm making now, or of all the ones I know; ones that require magic, or ones that anyone can make, and are you counting poisons?"

[endsthegame]

"All the ones you know," he said, "That covers all of your questions; my interest on this one is utterly academic. It'll just give me a starting point."

[glacial_queen]

"I guess it does at that," she said, thinking aloud. "Could you watch this, make sure it doesn't burn, while I check my books really quickly?"

Assuming Ender says yes, Karla walked over to her books and started flipping through them, muttering to herself.

[endsthegame]

'Could you watch this, make sure it doesn't burn' was actually a pretty novel request to pose to Ender, who didn't know much about cooking. "Sure," he said, anyway, and looked down at it.

He could figure that one out.

[glacial_queen]

After a moment or two, she came back, carring one of the texts. "Found it!" she announced. "There's a brew here that Black Widows use sometimes, when we're dealing with a particularly difficult case, usually something to do with trauma. It first calms the patient, making him more able to speak of such things, without negative emotions clouding anything. It allows the construction of a landscape in his mind, one he can actually interact with. And, it creates a link, so the attending Black Widow can also see and interact the patient's mindscape."

[endsthegame]

Like the mindgame, some part of his mind offered up, and his stance shifted slightly as he poked at the broth to keep it from boiling. "Healing mental damage," he surmised. "That is pretty good. The landscape's purely positive, I take it."

He wasn't thinking overly much of dead giants anymore.

[glacial_queen]

"Usually," Karla said, "though it's impossible to discount people using good tools for bad ends. However, sometimes the individual needs to go back and face the trauma, so she can deal with it. Those mindscapes can be pretty bad. But it gives closure to people, sometimes. But it's very rare that we need to do such a thing."

Karla was unaware of the sudden gender change in her explanation.

[endsthegame]

Ender didn't; he also remembered some of the specifics of her world pretty clearly. "So is it usually just the witches who need such treatment?" he asked, taking a stab in the dark.

[glacial_queen]

Karla looked startled. "Up until a few years ago, yes. Rape and other such acts weren't usual, but they weren't common, either. And abuse comes in many forms. But recently, in Glacia anyway, some males have started needing such treatment, too. They just rarely come to us. Black Widows are all female, and stories are rising that we need to be feared. And those males have enough reason to fear anyway."

"I'm actually trying to decide if I hate my uncle more for starting a program geared to break young witches, or for reintroducing slavery into Glacia. I think the answer is 'Yes.'" She kept her tone light and cheerful, but her eyes were very hard.

[endsthegame]

He processed all of that information, and made a mental note that he'd been right. It made him wonder about Karla's gender-divided world, and how blurry the lines got, if they ever did. "I think both of them are fairly capital offenses," Ender said, neutrally, "And usually found most often in times of war, or oncoming war."

[glacial_queen]

"Yes," she agreed quietly. The temperature of the room dropped several degrees, and frost spiderwebbed the page. "Mother Night!" she swore, snatching up a dishtowel and blotting at the page. "Aww, Hell!" she added when she saw that the witchfire over the pot had gone out, too. The temperature rose again.

[endsthegame]

The circumstances had changed rather rapidly, and Ender blinked once before he stepped towards her. "Is everything all right?"

[glacial_queen]

"Yeah," she muttered, glaring at the pot until another tongue of witchfire formed. "The Blood have two types of anger: hot and cold. Hot anger is the evry day anger, when you get mad at your friends or your family, or normal circumstances. It can even be a towering rage, where you give serious consideration to murdering everything in range. Cold anger...that's when you'd actually do it. Cold-anger is Jewel-anger, we say." She slanted a look sideways. "You weren't in any danger," she said. "It wasn't...focused at you."

[endsthegame]

"Sure."

But Ender filed that information away in deep, among with all the other information had about people, people who could hurt him, people who were all people, who he'd have to be careful about.

He smiled reassuringly. "That's got to be frightening," he said, "Losing control."

[glacial_queen]

"I didn't lose control," Karla said. "Which is why I could say, honestly, that you were in no danger. Sure, the temperature drop and frost were outward manifestations, but when you're in a cold rage, you always know exactly what you're doing. Things just matter less, so long as your ultimate goal is achieved. Focusing on other things, though, helps break through."