A second ago she was at work in the temple of Erastil in Sothis, which was actually going pretty okay, all things considered. Now she's in a grassy field with a couple fruit trees and a table and chairs and some notebooks and pens.
This is unexpected and requires a ton of power and is therefore sort of inherently terrifying. And she's alone, and defenseless, and she doesn't know where Verita is.
She mills around in steadily increasing amounts of distress until Hagan appears, just as suddenly.
"I'm worried it'll be weird, having him here. In Osirion people aren't allowed to look at him. Or stand in his presence, or directly address him."
"Weird. My brother is, like, seventy percent civic duty by vol - am I allowed to say that if I'm obviously joking."
"I think Karen'll need human advisors quite a lot but she's only got us now. - you need to understand, she was sixteen and raising two children with a ghost while waiting until it was legal for her to drop out of school so she could pay for them to keep a roof over their heads, and she got a slave from a species she didn't understand and terrifying magical powers.
And she figured out how they worked and went for healing, everyone anywhere in reach of her, and then for things that'd let her explore the universe. And she found versions of the person she trusted most and now she's not sure they don't hate her for being presumptuous."
"I don't hate her! I really hope she's not overestimating herself, with respect to the killing Asmodeus thing, and that my brother can arrange for Cheliax to crumble onto a softer surface than - ow - that was a metaphor!"
"Sure, I can be like, hey tiny Karen, this was neat, thanks for thinking of me -"
"Might work. Or when your brother arrives you can just - sound excited about everything, instead of detached and cynical and definitely not possessed of a single romantic bone in your body."
"The negation! Also the use of the phrase "sound X, instead of sounding as if Y", constructions like that are fine. - I think you being excited about being here matters a lot."
"Can't actually say I'm all the way to 'excited'. Also when my brother gets here I'll be smelling the grass and waiting to see if he sees fit to address me."
"I don't think anyone else here is planning to do that and most of them aren't very persuadable."
"I know it is."
Matthew nods slightly.
"And - I want her to be okay, I really do. I - it's more complicated than you think it is? No one's going to see why we don't just drop it and stop awkwardly inconveniencing everyone, and we'll probably pretty much have to, but - man, it's not that I think all planes should have protocol. The gods in Elysium aren't like this, and that's where I'm hoping for.
But - Osirion is the way it is, for reasons, good ones and bad ones and hard ones and - but all of them human reasons, right, all of them shaped the way they are because of things that are holy to people, and we don't actually have to change because everyone else judges us for it or gods there'd be a mess. I'm not saying you should do anything but I kneel for the pharaoh. I can talk to him after that, if it's important. Karen hasn't even been here when the last couple people arrived, maybe we can get our obligations of the way before she's even here."
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