Selkie Peak, Saturday Morning

[wwiii]

Last night, Warren and Karla hadn't bothered to go back to the hotel room that he'd booked so that he could visit her for the weekend, no. They'd had their hot coffee and their cider and their blankets, and cold November night or not, they'd fallen asleep together, curled up in feathered wings and warming spells. It had been an excellent way to end an evening, thank you very much. And being on Fandom Island, it really stood to reason that this morning wasn't going to go near as smoothly.

It was Fandom, after all.

Warren was the first to stir today, troubled by the cool air and a sort of heaviness in his joints that left him feeling as though he was made of lead. And normally, he'd just wrap his wings more tightly around Karla and cuddle up to her even more closely, but today...

He sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes shot open, and he stared up at the sky above from the flat of his back.

"Oh no," he murmured. "No no no no no."

[For that girl!]

Comments

[wwiii]

"I'm calming down," Warren confirmed, nuzzling back. "If this is just Fandom... it's awful, but it won't last forever."

A pause. There had been something about the way she'd finished that sentence.

"... Are you okay?"

[glacial_queen]

"You had been panicking earlier, right?" Karla asked, sounding puzzled. "Like, full-on emotional distress?"

[wwiii]

"I was having a bit of a breakdown until you woke up and started rapping," Warren confirmed, blinking at her. "You couldn't tell?"

He'd been on the verge of crying. That had been difficult to miss. Right?

[glacial_queen]

"Of course I could!" Karla protested. "...But only when I was looking at you. Or listening to you talk. When I closed my eyes..."

A long pause. A very long pause.

"...It was like you weren't even there."

Had Warren lost something else?! Besides his wings? Some kind of...emotional resonance?

[wwiii]

Excuse you! Warren was resonating just fine!

"I'm... right here," he noted, tilting his head at her. He didn't like the sound of that at all. "Most of me is, anyway."

[glacial_queen]

"Except it feels like you aren't," Karla said. Because that's just what this day needed. More weird.

"Here, let me show you." She closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears, then spun around in a few circles. "Okay," she said, over-loudly and slightly staggering. "If you were normal, I'd be able to point to you. No matter what direction I'm facing, you should be like a beacon."

Her brow furrowed. "But you're not. I can't--I can't tell when you are." Her breath caught a little on that. She wasn't sure what was going on with Warren, but she didn't like it.

[wwiii]

Warren wasn't much liking the sound of this, either, pulling himself up to his feet, an effort that felt like he was carrying three people as he did it, and then reaching to wrap his arms around her.

"More Fandom being weird, maybe?"

[glacial_queen]

"But I don't understand it!" Karla said, opening her eyes and turning around to cling to him back. "Your wings and your psychic presence? That doesn't make any sense!"

"Yo, this day is wack / Like monster attack / Cause you see in fact / I want you back / To the way you were / And not a bit other / Cause you're my man / My sweet man-lover."

Where were these words coming from? Where?

"Today is wack / I'm catchin' flack / And I feel the lack / Of your sweet wing pack!"

No, seriously, the fuck?

[Since I can't rap for shit, I've decided that all Karla's raps will be as bad as I can make them. You're welcome.]

[wwiii]

Oh, god, Karla.

Karla.

...

Wing pack?

"I... um."

Well. That had definitely been...

Yeah.

[glacial_queen]

It had been surprisingly awesome, was that what you were going to say? Because that's what it had been. Awesome because the power writeup said so.

"I hate everything." Karla said. "Forever."

[wwiii]

"I feel like maybe now would be a good time to start walking back to the hotel," Warren decided, with a nice, diplomatic clearing of his throat. "So that all future rapping can be done... behind closed doors."

Where the rest of the island would be safe from it!

[glacial_queen]

Was that a come on? To try and cheer him up a bit, Karla tried to send him an image of various ways he could keep her mouth too occupied to rap.

Tried being the operative word.

"Ow," she said, pausing to put a hand on her temple. "Hell's fire, that hurt."

[wwiii]

"... Hurt?" Warren blinked at her, biting his lip. "Sorry, your rapping wasn't that bad."

How was he to know that she'd been trying to send him sexy images, huh?

[glacial_queen]

"No, no," Karla said, waving that away. Also, shut up, Warren, her rapping was awesome. "You're like...completely shut off from me. I just tried to send you a link and it was like running facefirst into a boulder only with my brain!"

[wwiii]

Oh. Well, that wasn't what Warren had been thinking at all.

"That doesn't sound like anything good. Maybe we should steer away from that for a while, then," he suggested, crouching down to start gathering their blankets from the ground. "At least until we actually know what's going on...? Are you okay?"

[glacial_queen]

"I feel all shut off from you," Karla admitted in a little voice. She didn't want to bitch too much, since he clearly cared more about losing his wings than he did about losing whatever psychic connection they shared, but it was really starting to bother her. "I don't like not being able to feel you in the back of my mind."

[wwiii]

It was possible that it was just difficult for him to grasp quite how much a lost psychic link actually hit her. After all, for all that he could feel her nudging from time to time, the link generally ran one-way. His mutations were all physical.

Warren wasn't a telepath by any stretch of the imagination.

"... It's just... gone? Completely?" He stood again, the blankets bundled in his arms, and glanced her way with his bottom lip between his teeth.

[glacial_queen]

"I can't feel anything," Karla said, unconsciously mimicking him and biting her own lower lip. "I feel lost. Cut off from the world. Cut off from you. It's like I've lost an entire sense, with it just being us up here. I don't like it."

[wwiii]

When she put it that way, Warren didn't care much for it, either. He chewed his lip for a moment more, and then stepped up to her, reaching to take her hand as he stuck the blankets under one arm.

"Maybe it won't seem so bad back in town," he offered softly. "Around other people?"

[glacial_queen]

"I wish I knew what had happened to you that would take that away, too," Karla fretted. She reached for him and pulled him into a hug, burying her face in his neck. It felt weird that the only thing she could smell was his skin.

There was no hint of cornchip smell, either. Everything was just wrong.

"But I will feel better once we're near people again. Even if I can't feel you, at least it won't be so echoingly silent."

[wwiii]

"Then let's get going," Warren murmured, wrapping the arm that wasn't holding blankets around her waist. "And I'll stay close to you as we go, so that you know I'm right here."

An arm around her was going to have to make up for the fact that he couldn't drape a wing around her to show the same. Even if holding his arm out to the side like that was already making it get a little tired.

This sucked.

[glacial_queen]

It did suck. In fact, the entire trek back to town sucked. Warren did his best to keep his complaining to a minimum, but Karla was more bothered by the fact that if she hadn't known him as well as she did, she wouldn't have known that anything was wrong.

That just felt incredibly, incredibly wrong. And that feeling was impossible to shake.

It didn't get any better when they got into town. In fact, it got a lot worse. Because no one had psychic scents. No one.

[wwiii]

And unlike Karla, Warren had no psychic senses to fall back on, so he could tell easily enough when they got into town that things... hadn't really improved.

"... Not just me...?"

He was all but carrying her, now, both blankets wrapped around her shoulders and both arms wrapped around her waist. They weren't his wings, but they were the bes the had.

[glacial_queen]

Karla shook her head. Not just him.

It was her. Darkness have mercy, it was her.

"I can't--there's nothing--I can't--" She bit down on her lips to keep herself from crying. Warren had lost his wings. Surely she could handle losing her psychic senses.

Just until Monday, right?

[wwiii]

Warren frowned and hugged on to her even more tightly. Which... wasn't very tightly at all, compared to his usual, and was far less thorough. He would have preferred to be the one with the block up, instead of this.

"Come on," he murmured, "let's get up to the hotel room and... digest this for a bit. We can raid the mini-bar until Caritas opens."

That was the healthy approach!