The Garden, Saturday Afternoon

[glacial_queen]

Karla wasn't surprised when she woke up and couldn't find her Mommy or Daddy. They were often gone for hours and hours and hours, doing important Court stuff. What was weird was that she didn't recognize anyone in the castle, and there didn't seem to be any servants around to feed her.

So, rather than stay in the room she'd woken up in (also not her room--had they caught the Winds after she'd fallen asleep?) Karla had decided to go looking for people. Someone had to be taking care of her, right?

Her search had lasted right until she'd gone outside and found the garden. It was a good garden, filled with lots of healthy looking plants and deep, rich soil.

The perfect kind of soil for mud. Specifically, mud pies.

Karla forgot all about trying to find someone. Instead, she was sitting in the center of the garden, spattered with mud, patting the mud into rough pie shapes and decorating them with pretty rocks and leaves.

[Open! Come and get dirty!]

Comments

[bitten_notshy]

Oh, Jack knew that greeting -- and by now, he knew it did not mean to kiss her hand. He responded in kind. "My name is Jack," he said. "The castle is a school, it's not really anybody's. I'm not part of the kind of court you mean."

He considered the girl a moment longer. "Is your mother's name Karla?"

[glacial_queen]

Karla began giggling. "Oh, no, silly!" she said with glee. "I'm Karla!"

Silly male!

[bitten_notshy]

...

Blink. Blink. Blink.

"Of course," Jack said, as if he hadn't wasted any time boggling at all. "I thought you looked familiar."

[glacial_queen]

"I don't know you," Karla said, putting her hands on her hips. "You aren't familiar to me."

Not that this was going to stop her from eating his eggs and rolls, mind.

[bitten_notshy]

"I'm not?" Jack affected his most perplexed look. "Maybe I'm confused. Maybe I want to get breakfast for some other little girl named Karla."

[glacial_queen]

Oooh, Jack. That's meeeeeean.

Also? Effective!

"No! No! You want to get this Karla breakfast! You do, you do! I've veeeery hungry," she added, giving Jack a most pathetic expression. "I bet we'll be friends an' familiar then."

[bitten_notshy]

Not laughing at Karla over that was one of the hardest things ever. She should be proud of Jack.

"We can certainly be friends," he said agreeably as he started leading the muddy little girl back toward the dorms. "Do you know how you got here, by chance?"

[glacial_queen]

She would be grateful for his forbearance later, when she was grown up again.

"The Winds," Karla said, nodding. "I woke up inna funny little room that wasn't my room, so Mommy an' Daddy must've gotten called to this Province an' taken me with them." Karla sounded very happy about that. "Usually they leave me home an' come back after days an' days an' days."

[bitten_notshy]

"They must know you're getting to be a big girl," Jack hazarded, because what did you say when your schoolmates were a decade younger? You didn't disturb them by pointing out what was wrong.

"You'll rule when you're older, won't you?" he continued. "So they must want you to get used to different customs now."

[glacial_queen]

"I bet that's it!" Karla cried happily, enthusiastically going to wrap her mud-bespattered arms around his waist for figuring out such an important fact. "You're so smart! I bet you're a Steward or someone, even though you're only a little bit old, 'stead of being really really old!"