open post: further up and further in

[magicianking]

Eliot hasn't been depressed, per se, because it's sort of impossible to be depressed in Fillory. There's too much to do, these days: rebuilding Castle Whitespire, helping Josh and Poppy with the baby, and generally trying to run a post-apocalyptic-but-now-pretty-much-fine magical kingdom. Being High King of Fillory is, not to be totally cliche, Eliot's calling, and he's found a peace that he never had before. But it still sucks absolute balls that both Quentin and Janet are gone.

When Janet had first disappeared, Eliot had devoted all of his kingly resources to trying to find her. None of their world-jumping buttons had been missing, so he'd promised a knighthood and a castle to anyone in Fillory who found the missing Queen Janet.

"She won't love being treated like a damsel in distress like this," Poppy had told him.

"Well, if you have a better idea," he'd snapped, and that had been that, until a letter had arrived in the gazing pool. It had been frustratingly contextless, but obviously from Janet.

"Where is she?" Josh asked at the next meeting of the monarchs.

"I don't know. She's trapped, but she seems more annoyed than in danger."

"So she's in another universe? Since she had to use your telegram thing?" Poppy asked.

"Seems likely."

All of them had lapsed into silence.

"Should we call off the Queen hunt? Some of them are getting a little Don Quixote out there," said Poppy.

"No," Eliot had decided. "Just in case." Damsel in distress, Janet was not; but hell if he would ever be the one to give up on finding her.

--

Eliot's on his way to check on the progress of Castle Whitespire, wandering up the path from the comfortable townhouse he's been staying in, when the ground changes abruptly beneath his feet. He stumbles, and when he looks up--Dorothy, he is not in magical Kansas any more. Not in Oz any more? Whatever. The energy of wherever he is is totally different. He doesn't think it's Earth, either, despite the fact that he's in front of a huge Earth-style mansion.

"What the fuck," he mutters, and opens the door.

Comments

[magicianking]

"Oh, I see!" Eliot says. Trust Janet to pull probably the hottest British lady in this weird bubble dimension. He looks at Susan with new eyes. She sort of seems too uptight for Janet, but she hadn't blinked at the fetish thing, so Eliot guesses you can't always judge a book by its cover. Susan's cover, he suspects, would be leather-bound and embellished. "Are you a magician too?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, not in the slightest." Susan finds that it's easier than usual for her to give a little laugh - she really is tremendously glad that Janet shall get some time with her dearest friend. "I find the precision of it all thoroughly appealing and the idea of Welters in particular fascinating - Janet's trying to sort that out here, as I'm sure you might imagine - but I've not got the inclination. I'm a scientist."

[magicianking]

"God, Welters. I haven't thought about that in so long," Eliot says. Janet must be bored beyond belief if she's trying to organize it here. "Scientist-queen is pretty damn cool, though. You would've fit right in at Brakebills."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Would I!"

[magicianking]

"Oh, yeah. We're all complete geeks, as much as we pretend to be cool. Overachievers, and all that." Eliot smiles.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I'm no geek!" exclaims Susan, horrified at the implication behind the word as she understands it. "My goodness!"

[magicianking]

"Okay, I get the sense that doesn't mean to you what it means to me," Eliot says. "Unless you're very offended by being called, like, obsessively interested in niche topics. In which case I apologize and promise I'm not going to shove you in a locker."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Certainly not," says Susan, her feathers still mostly ruffled. "I haven't got any deformities and from what I understand from Janet, you're not the sort to mind sexual nonconformity."

[magicianking]

"Oh, definitely not," Eliot says. "Nothing wrong with deformities, either. What's with the misunderstanding, though? I thought this place had a crazy good translation spell."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You're speaking English, aren't you?" Susan asks, a tone of reproach still gilding her words.

[magicianking]

"Right. I guess I'm just wondering about the differences. The g-word doesn't mean anything bad on Earth or in Fillory."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"It most certainly does!" says Susan, and then realizes what the problem must be. "Ah. It does when I come from, at least."

[magicianking]

"Oh, shit. So there's a time travel element? What year are you from?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose you might say that. I'm from 1950."

[magicianking]

"Wow! Respect." It's not great for queers in Eliot's time, so he can only imagine how it must be for them in the fifties. "Well, sorry if I say I bunch of stuff that offends you by accident. I'm an American from the future. I'm not sorry if I offend you on purpose, though." He grins.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I would expect nothing less from Janet's best friend," Susan allows.

[magicianking]

"She's calling me that out loud, huh?" Eliot says. "Give it to me straight, is she doing okay? You must know she's not exactly free with sincere affection under typical circumstances. I mean, of course it helps her to say that when I'm not there, but the point stands."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan tilts her head. "She's worked out the Circumstances for this world, despite the abysmal lack of Pleiades," she says. "If that tells you anything. She misses Fillory dreadfully - and you. I don't believe she's fully resigned herself to staying here."

[magicianking]

"Of course not," Eliot says, his voice softening. "God. I wish I knew how to get her out. But that's encouraging, in its own way. After we left Brakebills we both sort of gave up on things, and for a while after we left Fillory for the first time, too. Janet's stubborn, but she's also not really used to using that stubbornness to hold onto happiness."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan takes this and files it neatly away to consider later. "No," she agrees. "Though she does take a certain pride in the fruits of her stubbornness. She does so love to show off Sorrow and Sorrow."

[magicianking]

"So she told you how she got them," Eliot says. "I think we're the only two people on Ea--well, the only two people in the multiverse who know." Thinking about the story makes his heart ache for Janet. In Eliot's opinion, she's gone through too much.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes," says Susan. "We were comparing notes on making men cry when she told me."

[magicianking]

"I've been known to make a man cry myself," Eliot says, smiling, but he fades back to seriousness. "Fuck those horrible desert guys. They got what they deserved."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes," fiercely.

[magicianking]

"I'm glad you get it. I know many wouldn't."