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

[sorrowandsorrow]

"What do you think I am, an amateur?" Janet holds up both hands and wiggles her fingers demonstratively. "It was a pain in my ass, too. This world's even smaller than your dick."

[magicianking]

"Oh, so the size of your tits," Eliot says amiably. "Pretty damn small. How long do I have here? A day? We should get started on a portal, then."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Obviously, Janet's already tried a portal. Roughly a thousand times. But two magicians are better than one, and two magicians where one of them is Eliot Waugh is better than pretty much anything. "A day, yep. Your Spidey-Sense tell you anything about where we should try?"

[magicianking]

"Hmm," Eliot says, to cover for the fact that he's getting absolutely no Spidey-Sense tingles whatsoever. "Why don't we try to find a grandfather clock, or something? Could bring out the Fillory-ness of it all."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Sure, why not. Come on, this place'll spit one up eventually if we go looking. It's, like, semi-sentient." Janet loops her arm through Eliot's and tugs him away from the welcome table toward the giant fuckoff stairs to the second floor.

[magicianking]

Eliot takes the house in as they go looking. It really isn't anywhere he'd picture Janet living. It's so... dorm-y. There are clear signs of a bunch of people living here--laundry in the laundry room, half-finished food in the kitchen.

"Does it like you?" he asks. "The house?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"It must like me okay." Janet pulls a little face at having to acknowledge it. "I wanted a Jacuzzi, and then I found one about a day later. I don't think it existed before that." When two queens of fantasy kingdoms want to have a sexy hot-tub experience together very, very badly...

[magicianking]

"Hmm. You don't want to look a gift jacuzzi in the jets, and yet..."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Listen, I know. I made myself crazy in the library for weeks after I got here trying to get out or at least flip a giant middle finger to whatever master magician tossed us into his fish bowl."

[magicianking]

Eliot squeezes her arm against him, briefly. "Fuck that guy," he agrees.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Without lube." She snorts a little laugh. "So, yeah, I took the Jacuzzi. I had a hot date."

[magicianking]

"Oh yeah? There's decent options around here?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

"You could have a field day," Janet says dryly. "I don't think there's a single heterosexual man to be found."

[magicianking]

"Really?" Eliot stares at her. "That just seems, like, statistically improbable. Do we think the master magician here is, like, a homophobe putting queers in magic jail? Or is it the opposite... they love us, and want to keep us in a magical zoo?"

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet pulls a face. "Magical zoo. I think. A zoo is like a really big, nice jail cell, right?"

[magicianking]

"Yeah, with enrichment and stuff for all the animals."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Yep. That's this place." Casually, Janet adds, "How's the Castle rebuilding effort?"

[magicianking]

"Going fine. We still can't live there yet, but we're close. Poppy got all worried about babyproofing it and I was like, we can't babyproof a full castle."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Fuck," Janet says, as the babyproofing thing hits her. Eliot said he'd been babysitting, but she'd been so distracted by, you know, High King Eliot of Fillory that she didn't really parse it. "They had the baby."

[magicianking]

"Yeah," Eliot says, trying to keep his voice casual and even. "It's a girl. A princess. She's loud as fuck. You're honestly lucky not to have to deal with any of it. By the time you come back she'll be closer to being a person and not just a shit machine."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Sure, just in time to teach her to really keep you on your toes," Janet says easily. Well, sort of easily. "What'd they end up naming her?"

[magicianking]

"Jacqueline, Jackie for short. It's after Poppy's mom. I told them they should do something more princessy, but it's their baby, I guess."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Princess Jackie." Janet barks out a laugh. "That sounds like something from a British tabloid."

[magicianking]

"Oh, god, it really does. I don't know if I want them to invent Fillorian tabloids or if I really, really don't."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"You do," Janet says confidently, the confidence of someone who's spent years living in someone else's back pocket. "You'd love reading about yourself."