Sadiablo Hall, Dhemlan, Kaeleer, Saturday Afternoon (Fandom Time)
Karla went flying into Saetan’s study, tears in her eyes. Intellectually, she knew she was being silly, knew that this was just another sign that she was still healing from the other Fandom, knew that she was probably just going to get the boyos up in arms over nothing again, but she couldn’t help it. Knowing all that didn’t stop her from hurting over his words. It was like being in Glacia again: the silent judgment; the telegraphed ideas that she didn’t, couldn’t measure up; the repeated mantra of “ladies don’t do this and ladies don’t do that,” never mind that Karla wasn’t a lady, she was a witch!
Sniffling, Karla exploded into the room. "That overbearing, overdressed, overscented sewer rat says my drawing is deficient!" Her eyes filled with fresh tears as she flung a sketch pad onto Saetan's desk. She was dimly aware that she had interrupted Saetan in a conference with another male, but she didn’t care. All she could do is stand in front of Saetan and plead with her eyes that he understand. "He's a grubby-minded prick," she wailed. "This isn't my life's work, this isn't my road. This is supposed to be fun!"
Uncle Saetan surged out of his chair, clearly concerned. He was wise to be. Karla might have been the first one reduced to tears, but curious mixture of unctuousness and supercilious disdain was probably shredding Kalush and Morghann, to say nothing of Jaenelle. She still hadn’t fully registered the other male’s presence until he reached for the sketch pad.
"No!" Karla dove for the pad, too upset to remember she could vanish it before he grabbed it. Instead, her forehead hit the strange male's arm. She stumbled backward into Saetan, who wrapped his arms around her. She heard Saetan grinding his teeth, probably sensing the anguish pouring out of her.
She took a moment to study the male even as he was flipping through her sketch book. He was a Warlord, easily a head taller than Saetan, twice as wide, and solid muscle. His hands were big enough to engulf a man's skull and strong enough to crush one. He looked like a rough man who would wrench what he wanted from the land or from other people. But Karla only sensed gentleness from his psychic scent, mixed with a soul-deep despair, and a longing to create.
And she knew he was demon-dead.
Karla instantly understood why the demon had come and felt guilty for having interrupted. Hell was a cold, cruel, blasted Realm, but it had its measure of kindness. It was a place where the Blood could make peace with their lives, a suspended time to take care of unfinished business. Some did nothing with that last gift, enduring weeks or years or centuries of tedium before finally fading into the Darkness. Others embraced that time to nurture talents they'd ignored while living or chosen to forsake in order to follow another road. Others, cut off before they were finished, continued as they had lived.
But sometimes the desire to continue faded before the psychic strength. People tired and wearied of their continued existence, and wished for release from the dead flesh that housed them. It was the High Lord’s right and ability to grant a swift release to those that asked. He could consume the last of the demon’s psychic strength, to allow him or her to fade away to a whisper in the Darkness. Saetan held an audience twice a month in Hell to hear the petitions of the demons. For one to brave his wrath and the discomfort of a living Realm to beg for release meant that this demon was truly drowning in despair. Karla’s heart went out to him.
It didn’t last long, however.
The demon studied the sketch. He shook his head slowly. "This is terrible," he rumbled, flipping the pages back to earlier sketches. "Obscene," he roared. He shook the sketch pad at Karla. "You call him sewer rat? You are too kind, Lady. He's a-"
"Dujae," Saetan warned, probably to prevent Dujae from possibly teaching Karla a pithy phrase she didn't already know. He was fussy like that.
Dujae looked at Saetan and took a deep breath. "He is not a good instructor," he finished lamely.
She sniffled. "You don't think my drawings are good either." This was Dujae, one of the greatest artists the Blood had ever seen and he was also criticizing her ability to draw. Unfair!
Dujae flipped to the last sketch. "What is this?" he demanded, stabbing the paper with his finger.
Karla pulled her shoulders back and narrowed her eyes. Behind her, Uncle Saetan stifled a groan and held onto her more tightly.
"It's a vase," she said coolly.
"Vase. Bah!" Dujae ripped the page from the pad, crumpled it, and threw it over his shoulder. He pointed at Karla, clearly not realizing how close his fingers were to her teeth. Karla had no problem showing him his error there.
But he swept on with his tirade, moving his finger away in the nick of time. "You are a Queen, yes?" Dujae continued to roar. "You do this for fun when you are finished with the hard lessons of your Craft, yes? You do this because Ladies must learn many things to be good Queens, yes? You do not make polite, itsy-bitsy drawings." He scrunched up his shoulders, scrunched up his face, tucked his wrist under his chin, and made tiny scratching motions. "Bah!"
He pulled Karla out of Saetan's arms, spun her around, engulfed her hand in his own, and began making large, circular motions. "There is fire in your heart, yes? That fire needs charcoal and a large pad to express itself. Then when you want to draw a vase, you draw a vase."
"B-but-" Karla stammered, watching her hand sweep round and round.
"That vase you try to draw, that is someone else's vase. Use it as a model. Models are good. Then you draw your vase, the one that reveals the fire, the one that says I am a" witch, I am a Queen, I am-" Dujae finally hesitated.
"Karla," she said meekly, a little confused. She’d gone from hurt to sad to angry to engulfed in a very short time and Dujae was a lot to take in.
"Karla!" Dujae roared.
"What's going on?" Jaenelle asked from the doorway. Gabrielle stood beside her.
Saetan settled on the corner of his desk and crossed his arms, looking resigned to whatever the little darlings were about to do.
Seeing the other girls, Dujae released Karla and stepped back.
"Do we have any charcoal?" Karla asked the girls, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"We have some, but Lord Stuffy says charcoal is messy and not the proper medium for Ladies," Gabrielle said tartly. Karla noticed Saetan staring in horror at Gabrielle. His expression suggested he was wondering what sort of idiot he'd hired as an art instructor. Then he got a funny look on his face, like he’d been walking in a garden and suddenly got a face full of rake or something. She didn’t have time to ask what was wrong, because Jaenelle and Gabrielle were tugging at her hands so they could all fetch the charcoal she had asked for.
It didn’t take them long to find the supplies Dujae had asked for and to let Lord Stuffy know that his services were no longer required by the High Lord. Lord Stuffy, clutching the shin that Karla had kicked before flying downstairs, had no problems leaving. Beale, who had been industriously polishing a mirror in the hallway across from the study, was kind enough to call him a Coach to send Lord Stuffy on his way
In a matter of minutes, three blond heads appeared at the study door. "Hey," Karla said. "We've got the charcoal and large sketch pads. Aren't you coming?"
Dujae stood, awkwardly twisting his blue cap. "I cannot, Ladies."
"Why not?" Jaenelle asked, as the three of them entered the study.
Dujae looked beseechingly at Saetan, who refused to look at anything but the point of his shoe.
"I-I am Dujae, Lady."
Jaenelle looked pleased. "You painted Descent into Hell"
Dujae's eyes widened.
"Why can't you give us drawing lessons?" Gabrielle said.
"I am a demon."
Silence.
Never one to let a good silence last too long, Karla cocked a hip and crossed her arms. "What, there's some rule that says drawing has to be taught in the daytime? Besides, the sun's up now and you're here."
"That's because the Hall retains enough dark power so that sunlight doesn't bother the demon-dead when they're inside," Jaenelle said.
"So that's not a problem," Karla said.
"And if you don't want to be here during the daylight hours, candle-lights or balls of witch light would make a room bright enough to work in," Gabrielle said.
Dujae looked helplessly at Saetan. Saetan studied his other shoe.
"Is your ego so puffed up that it's beneath you to teach a few little witches how to draw?" Karla asked with sweet malevolence.
"Puffed up? No, no, Ladies, I would be honored but-"
"But?" Jaenelle asked softly in her midnight voice.
Dujae shuddered. Saetan shivered.
"I am a demon."
Silence.
Finally Karla snorted. "If you don't want to teach us, just say so, but stop using a paltry excuse to weasel out of it."
They left, closing the study door behind them. Not all the way, of course. They huddled in the hallway, close to the tiny crack between the door and the frame. They ignored Beale, who was still polishing that same mirror. He ignored them as well, attention entirely focused on the mirror. Really.
Uncle Saetan was the first one to break the silence after Karla and the others had left. "Dujae," he said quietly, "it takes a strong but sensitive personality to deal with these young Ladies, not to mention talent. If you decide to become their art instructor, I can either provide you with wages which, I admit, aren't much use in the Dark Realm, or you can add whatever you want for your own projects to the list of supplies you'll provide me for them. However, if you decide to decline"-he looked Dujae in the eye-"you can go out there and try to explain it to them."
There was panic in Dujae's eyes. There was also only one door out of the study. Karla, Jaenelle, and Gabrielle exchanged feral grins. Beale coughed, though it sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
"But, High Lord, I am a demon."
"Didn't impress them, did it?"
"No." Dujae was silent for a moment, but when he spoke again, he sounded thoughtful. "It has been a long time since I have done portraits, and they have interesting faces, yes? And too much fire to be wasted on polite, itsy-bitsy drawings."
***
Half an hour later, peace reigned in the art room. The girls were sitting on the floor in a circle, busily sketching a still life of vase, apple, and trinket box.
Dujae squatted next to Kalush, explaining something in a rumbling murmur before turning to Morghann, who had a stick of charcoal poised above her sketch pad. Katrine was flitting about her pad, which was perched on Astor’s withers. Zylona teased Sabrina by twitching away the towel that they shared anytime that Sabrina reached for it, but stopped once Sabrina decided to wipe her fingers on the satyr-girl’s pelt. The room was charged with an interested, amused creative energy, vastly different than the simmering anger and hurt under Lord Stuffy.
"Why didn't you tell him?" Karla asked Jaenelle as they sketched. Her vase still wasn’t particularly good, but she was having much more fun with it, as both her grin and the charcoal handprints on Jaenelle’s shirt suggested.
Jaenelle shrugged. "We hadn't gotten around to telling him that the music instructor and the dancing instructor already bolted this week. You know Papa feels guilty when we’ve run off another one."
Karla let out a chuckling sigh. "The new dance instructor seems to be working out okay. Ranier, wasn’t it?” Jaenelle nodded and sketched, aware that this was Karla slowly circling around a point.
Karla being Karla, the circling didn’t last long. "Dujae came here because he wanted to be released."
"Not really. He just needed something to spark his interest again."
Karla watched Dujae move around the circle, gesturing, rumbling encouragement, frowning as he studied Katrine's sketch before saying something that made her laugh. There was no despair in Dujae's eyes now, no hint of the pain that had driven him to seek out the High Lord. "We aren't puppet masters, Jaenelle," Karla murmured. "We're very powerful, but we must be careful about pulling strings to make other people dance."
"Depends on why the strings are being pulled, don't you think?" She looked at Karla with those ancient sapphire eyes and smiled. "Besides, we just overrode a silly excuse. If it was his time, he would have gone."
Karla paused. She hadn’t thought of it like that. “You love being right all the time, don’t you?” she said, pulling a face.
Jaenelle just smiled. “I want you to remember you said that in the next few days. You’re going to have to trust me.”
Karla instantly sobered. “The Dark Council?” she asked.
The haunted look in Jaenelle’s eyes answered that question most effectively. "Tomorrow," she said. "They'll be here tomorrow."
[Text adapted from Heir to the Shadows by Anne Bishop. NFI, NBI, OOC = lovings.]
Sniffling, Karla exploded into the room. "That overbearing, overdressed, overscented sewer rat says my drawing is deficient!" Her eyes filled with fresh tears as she flung a sketch pad onto Saetan's desk. She was dimly aware that she had interrupted Saetan in a conference with another male, but she didn’t care. All she could do is stand in front of Saetan and plead with her eyes that he understand. "He's a grubby-minded prick," she wailed. "This isn't my life's work, this isn't my road. This is supposed to be fun!"
Uncle Saetan surged out of his chair, clearly concerned. He was wise to be. Karla might have been the first one reduced to tears, but curious mixture of unctuousness and supercilious disdain was probably shredding Kalush and Morghann, to say nothing of Jaenelle. She still hadn’t fully registered the other male’s presence until he reached for the sketch pad.
"No!" Karla dove for the pad, too upset to remember she could vanish it before he grabbed it. Instead, her forehead hit the strange male's arm. She stumbled backward into Saetan, who wrapped his arms around her. She heard Saetan grinding his teeth, probably sensing the anguish pouring out of her.
She took a moment to study the male even as he was flipping through her sketch book. He was a Warlord, easily a head taller than Saetan, twice as wide, and solid muscle. His hands were big enough to engulf a man's skull and strong enough to crush one. He looked like a rough man who would wrench what he wanted from the land or from other people. But Karla only sensed gentleness from his psychic scent, mixed with a soul-deep despair, and a longing to create.
And she knew he was demon-dead.
Karla instantly understood why the demon had come and felt guilty for having interrupted. Hell was a cold, cruel, blasted Realm, but it had its measure of kindness. It was a place where the Blood could make peace with their lives, a suspended time to take care of unfinished business. Some did nothing with that last gift, enduring weeks or years or centuries of tedium before finally fading into the Darkness. Others embraced that time to nurture talents they'd ignored while living or chosen to forsake in order to follow another road. Others, cut off before they were finished, continued as they had lived.
But sometimes the desire to continue faded before the psychic strength. People tired and wearied of their continued existence, and wished for release from the dead flesh that housed them. It was the High Lord’s right and ability to grant a swift release to those that asked. He could consume the last of the demon’s psychic strength, to allow him or her to fade away to a whisper in the Darkness. Saetan held an audience twice a month in Hell to hear the petitions of the demons. For one to brave his wrath and the discomfort of a living Realm to beg for release meant that this demon was truly drowning in despair. Karla’s heart went out to him.
It didn’t last long, however.
The demon studied the sketch. He shook his head slowly. "This is terrible," he rumbled, flipping the pages back to earlier sketches. "Obscene," he roared. He shook the sketch pad at Karla. "You call him sewer rat? You are too kind, Lady. He's a-"
"Dujae," Saetan warned, probably to prevent Dujae from possibly teaching Karla a pithy phrase she didn't already know. He was fussy like that.
Dujae looked at Saetan and took a deep breath. "He is not a good instructor," he finished lamely.
She sniffled. "You don't think my drawings are good either." This was Dujae, one of the greatest artists the Blood had ever seen and he was also criticizing her ability to draw. Unfair!
Dujae flipped to the last sketch. "What is this?" he demanded, stabbing the paper with his finger.
Karla pulled her shoulders back and narrowed her eyes. Behind her, Uncle Saetan stifled a groan and held onto her more tightly.
"It's a vase," she said coolly.
"Vase. Bah!" Dujae ripped the page from the pad, crumpled it, and threw it over his shoulder. He pointed at Karla, clearly not realizing how close his fingers were to her teeth. Karla had no problem showing him his error there.
But he swept on with his tirade, moving his finger away in the nick of time. "You are a Queen, yes?" Dujae continued to roar. "You do this for fun when you are finished with the hard lessons of your Craft, yes? You do this because Ladies must learn many things to be good Queens, yes? You do not make polite, itsy-bitsy drawings." He scrunched up his shoulders, scrunched up his face, tucked his wrist under his chin, and made tiny scratching motions. "Bah!"
He pulled Karla out of Saetan's arms, spun her around, engulfed her hand in his own, and began making large, circular motions. "There is fire in your heart, yes? That fire needs charcoal and a large pad to express itself. Then when you want to draw a vase, you draw a vase."
"B-but-" Karla stammered, watching her hand sweep round and round.
"That vase you try to draw, that is someone else's vase. Use it as a model. Models are good. Then you draw your vase, the one that reveals the fire, the one that says I am a" witch, I am a Queen, I am-" Dujae finally hesitated.
"Karla," she said meekly, a little confused. She’d gone from hurt to sad to angry to engulfed in a very short time and Dujae was a lot to take in.
"Karla!" Dujae roared.
"What's going on?" Jaenelle asked from the doorway. Gabrielle stood beside her.
Saetan settled on the corner of his desk and crossed his arms, looking resigned to whatever the little darlings were about to do.
Seeing the other girls, Dujae released Karla and stepped back.
"Do we have any charcoal?" Karla asked the girls, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"We have some, but Lord Stuffy says charcoal is messy and not the proper medium for Ladies," Gabrielle said tartly. Karla noticed Saetan staring in horror at Gabrielle. His expression suggested he was wondering what sort of idiot he'd hired as an art instructor. Then he got a funny look on his face, like he’d been walking in a garden and suddenly got a face full of rake or something. She didn’t have time to ask what was wrong, because Jaenelle and Gabrielle were tugging at her hands so they could all fetch the charcoal she had asked for.
It didn’t take them long to find the supplies Dujae had asked for and to let Lord Stuffy know that his services were no longer required by the High Lord. Lord Stuffy, clutching the shin that Karla had kicked before flying downstairs, had no problems leaving. Beale, who had been industriously polishing a mirror in the hallway across from the study, was kind enough to call him a Coach to send Lord Stuffy on his way
In a matter of minutes, three blond heads appeared at the study door. "Hey," Karla said. "We've got the charcoal and large sketch pads. Aren't you coming?"
Dujae stood, awkwardly twisting his blue cap. "I cannot, Ladies."
"Why not?" Jaenelle asked, as the three of them entered the study.
Dujae looked beseechingly at Saetan, who refused to look at anything but the point of his shoe.
"I-I am Dujae, Lady."
Jaenelle looked pleased. "You painted Descent into Hell"
Dujae's eyes widened.
"Why can't you give us drawing lessons?" Gabrielle said.
"I am a demon."
Silence.
Never one to let a good silence last too long, Karla cocked a hip and crossed her arms. "What, there's some rule that says drawing has to be taught in the daytime? Besides, the sun's up now and you're here."
"That's because the Hall retains enough dark power so that sunlight doesn't bother the demon-dead when they're inside," Jaenelle said.
"So that's not a problem," Karla said.
"And if you don't want to be here during the daylight hours, candle-lights or balls of witch light would make a room bright enough to work in," Gabrielle said.
Dujae looked helplessly at Saetan. Saetan studied his other shoe.
"Is your ego so puffed up that it's beneath you to teach a few little witches how to draw?" Karla asked with sweet malevolence.
"Puffed up? No, no, Ladies, I would be honored but-"
"But?" Jaenelle asked softly in her midnight voice.
Dujae shuddered. Saetan shivered.
"I am a demon."
Silence.
Finally Karla snorted. "If you don't want to teach us, just say so, but stop using a paltry excuse to weasel out of it."
They left, closing the study door behind them. Not all the way, of course. They huddled in the hallway, close to the tiny crack between the door and the frame. They ignored Beale, who was still polishing that same mirror. He ignored them as well, attention entirely focused on the mirror. Really.
Uncle Saetan was the first one to break the silence after Karla and the others had left. "Dujae," he said quietly, "it takes a strong but sensitive personality to deal with these young Ladies, not to mention talent. If you decide to become their art instructor, I can either provide you with wages which, I admit, aren't much use in the Dark Realm, or you can add whatever you want for your own projects to the list of supplies you'll provide me for them. However, if you decide to decline"-he looked Dujae in the eye-"you can go out there and try to explain it to them."
There was panic in Dujae's eyes. There was also only one door out of the study. Karla, Jaenelle, and Gabrielle exchanged feral grins. Beale coughed, though it sounded suspiciously like a laugh.
"But, High Lord, I am a demon."
"Didn't impress them, did it?"
"No." Dujae was silent for a moment, but when he spoke again, he sounded thoughtful. "It has been a long time since I have done portraits, and they have interesting faces, yes? And too much fire to be wasted on polite, itsy-bitsy drawings."
***
Half an hour later, peace reigned in the art room. The girls were sitting on the floor in a circle, busily sketching a still life of vase, apple, and trinket box.
Dujae squatted next to Kalush, explaining something in a rumbling murmur before turning to Morghann, who had a stick of charcoal poised above her sketch pad. Katrine was flitting about her pad, which was perched on Astor’s withers. Zylona teased Sabrina by twitching away the towel that they shared anytime that Sabrina reached for it, but stopped once Sabrina decided to wipe her fingers on the satyr-girl’s pelt. The room was charged with an interested, amused creative energy, vastly different than the simmering anger and hurt under Lord Stuffy.
"Why didn't you tell him?" Karla asked Jaenelle as they sketched. Her vase still wasn’t particularly good, but she was having much more fun with it, as both her grin and the charcoal handprints on Jaenelle’s shirt suggested.
Jaenelle shrugged. "We hadn't gotten around to telling him that the music instructor and the dancing instructor already bolted this week. You know Papa feels guilty when we’ve run off another one."
Karla let out a chuckling sigh. "The new dance instructor seems to be working out okay. Ranier, wasn’t it?” Jaenelle nodded and sketched, aware that this was Karla slowly circling around a point.
Karla being Karla, the circling didn’t last long. "Dujae came here because he wanted to be released."
"Not really. He just needed something to spark his interest again."
Karla watched Dujae move around the circle, gesturing, rumbling encouragement, frowning as he studied Katrine's sketch before saying something that made her laugh. There was no despair in Dujae's eyes now, no hint of the pain that had driven him to seek out the High Lord. "We aren't puppet masters, Jaenelle," Karla murmured. "We're very powerful, but we must be careful about pulling strings to make other people dance."
"Depends on why the strings are being pulled, don't you think?" She looked at Karla with those ancient sapphire eyes and smiled. "Besides, we just overrode a silly excuse. If it was his time, he would have gone."
Karla paused. She hadn’t thought of it like that. “You love being right all the time, don’t you?” she said, pulling a face.
Jaenelle just smiled. “I want you to remember you said that in the next few days. You’re going to have to trust me.”
Karla instantly sobered. “The Dark Council?” she asked.
The haunted look in Jaenelle’s eyes answered that question most effectively. "Tomorrow," she said. "They'll be here tomorrow."
[Text adapted from Heir to the Shadows by Anne Bishop. NFI, NBI, OOC = lovings.]