Voice Mail

[bitten_notshy]

"Hello, this is Jack. I can't reach my phone right now. Leave a message and I'll return it soon. Good day."

In creating this journal, the author has assumed the identity of a fictional person for use in the role-playing game fandomhigh, for the sole purpose of entertainment, without intending to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud either the person

Comments

[glacial_witch]

Fine. If she wanted to be like that, it was just fine. Karla was going to see if Jack was as effective at fussing over long distances as Morton was.

"Jack, you call her up and you tell her right now that she's being a hard-headed idiot and that if she keeps pushing herself just because she can, she's going to end up damaging something permanently!"

Pssht! As if names were necessary! Jack was a detective, he could figure that part out.

"And if she does, I'm just going to stand there and say 'I told you so' and drink good alcohol and not offer to share! While wearing a hemline to my ankles!" At least Karla sounded aggravated and grumpy, just not genuinely furious or frightened. That's...like a comfort, right?

[bitten_notshy]

Jack dialed back in an instant.

"Karla," he half-ordered. "Speak English. Slowly. What did Emma do and what does it have to do with how long your skirts are?"

He was, it turned out, rather good at long-distance fussing.

[glacial_witch]

"Nothing," Karla said, sounding surprised. "It's just an effective threat, since she seems determined to get me into skirts that could double as a length of gauze bandage."

Look, it made sense to her.

"Hello, Jack," she said, as she realized that she hadn't actually greeted him either time. "I miss you, how's school, and Emma is being an idiot."

There. That took care of things nicely.

[bitten_notshy]

"Hello Karla," Jack returned, tone going calmer now that Karla had convinced him Emma wasn't about to drop dead. (At least, if she was and Karla was still wasting time on pleasantries, they'd have to have a serious talk about setting priorities.) "I miss you too. I'm not in classes yet, but London is fine. What did Emma do?"

[glacial_witch]

Karla spilled out the entire story, or, at least, as much as she'd gleaned from the participants: Emma's injury, the swap, the hunt, the time in the psychic plane. While she didn't linger over the danger or the difficulty overmuch--she didn't want to worry him too much over the phone--she didn't downplay any of it, either.

"Don't get me wrong, I did Heal her concussion, of course," Karla bitched into the receiver, "but not so she could jump up and pretend that everything was fine! She still needs a little time to rest and recover. Something like that is traumatic and while she may like to push people away with her 'everything is fine, darling, so stop pushing' attitude, that doesn't mean she can just ignore what's really going on!"

[bitten_notshy]

"They made me stay in the clinic overnight with my concussion," Jack said. "It was awful. I couldn't think, couldn't keep my languages straight ... I was lucky I didn't have classes to worry about."

"And" -- he added -- "I am damn near certain she made me rest. And I'll do the same for her."

As an afterthought, he added, "Is Bobby all right?"

[glacial_witch]

"He's fine," Karla said, waving her hand as if he could see it. "I checked on him this morning. Nothing more rest and extra food couldn't cure."

She paused and added in a little voice, "Jack...while you're fussing over Emma, could you maybe check on one other thing for me?"

[bitten_notshy]

"Anything," Jack said, in a guarded way that suggested he meant almost anything. "What is it?"

[glacial_witch]

Karla sighed heavily. "This weekend...a lot of people got visitors. Uhh, dead visitors. Not in a scary, horrifying way, but...there was this power. It whispered in everyone's dreams, 'if you dream them they would come,' and after a few days of dreaming about my parents, they just showed up. On the island. They knew they were dead and had been for years, but they were there anyway. No one showed up for Emma, and she had a big barbed-wire fence of 'I'm fine' up all weekend."

She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "I know, for me anyway, her family is one of the topics we don't talk about and I'm fine with that. I just want to know that she's okay."

[bitten_notshy]

"Oh." Jack wondered, in a distracted way, whether his own parents would have come. Probably not; even after spending time with Rivka he didn't remember them enough to dream.

Not that there was much there to miss.

"I have an idea what Emma's fence was about," he said, guardedly. The few scraps he knew about Emma's family were all things she'd said off-guard, and he'd gotten the distinct sense they were for his ears only (and not even really for those). "But I'll ask her. Don't worry about it. Was it nice, seeing your parents?"

[glacial_witch]

"It was," Karla said immediately. Followed by a short pause and she reluctantly added, "It was a bittersweet nice, though. Don't get me wrong, it was wonderful to see them, say a proper goodbye. But...it was hard relating to one another, a bit. I think they were still expecting me to be the nine year old girl they had left. I wasn't. It was awkward."

[bitten_notshy]

"I can imagine," Jack said sympathetically. "My sister isn't dead, but the way she remembered things about my family and the way I remembered them -- it was like night and day, sometimes. And I did sometimes think she saw a four-year-old when she looked at me."

[glacial_witch]

"Yes, exactly!" Karla said, relieved that Jack understood. "And they kept being surprised by things. Like that I have friends. My mother kept cooing over how I had so many when she'd only met six. It was the same way you tell a child you're proud because they've eaten their vegetables."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack winced a bit. "I take it you weren't exactly swarming in playdates as a child," he said. "Still, they didn't need to act startled by the change."

[glacial_witch]

"Before coming to Fandom, I had two friends. One was Morton and the other was Jaenelle, who I hadn't seen since we were twelve," Karla admitted. "I'm not the easiest person to get along with, it's true. But--you said it exactly right. She just kept sounding surprised. And pleased that I'd changed enough to become popular."

That had hurt, a bit. Or more than a bit. And her mother hadn't really noticed.

"But, other than that, it was a good visit," she added quickly, as if Jack was about to accuse her of being ungrateful.

[bitten_notshy]

"Other than that," Jack echoed, amused. "And nothing you could have expected. It might take some time to -- settle in your head."