Wishful thinking on Library

Morgaine Carey

May 06, 2009 11:50 PM

Wishful thinking by Morgaine Carey

A few dozen of the million of knots in Morgaine's shoulders began to relax as soon as the smell of books hit her in the face. Unfortunately, it just seemed to make the pains going up her neck and throbbing behind her left eye even worse. A few dozen feet in, once she was sure she was completely out of eyeshot of the circulation desk, Morgaine fumbled in her left pocket for her everyday headache potion.

A week in, and she already hated being a seventh year.

Flinching involuntarily at the taste of the medicine, she put out her free hand and braced herself against the tall bookshelf. Her bag slipped off her shoulder and slid down toward her elbow, making her hand slide a few inches down the bookshelf before she caught it. Her mouth still tight with distaste, she screwed the cap back on the bottle and put it back in the pocket where it belonged.

With her eyes still a little blurred from the headache and the potion - did all painkillers really need to taste that vile? - she made her way over to her usual table among the medical books, put her bag on top of it, and sat down. Her first priority, even before starting to study for the quiz she suspected was soon to come in Potions, was to find her little box of peppermints. The potion she took for tension headaches always worked, but it also always left the exact flavor of rotten spinach in her mouth. With a quick glance around to make sure the librarian wasn't about to show up, Morgaine removed the little metal container from the front of her bulging bag and popped it open.

Sucking absently on two candies at once, she took her huge Potions text out of the bag and began flipping through its pages without interest. She knew she needed to study - she would, if this week was any indication, go under very fast if she didn't - but it was no time at all before she zoned out completely, staring off into space with one hand still holding a page of her book while the other one propped her chin up.

Over the summer, the incredible had happened: she had been, for no apparent reason, given permission to go to college a year from now and study Healing. Part of her wanted to just accept it and be glad that she had somehow gotten the thing she had most wanted since she was twelve, but her brain was sure there had to be a hook hidden somewhere in the deal. A Carey girl being given permission to step so far out of her place as to study a man's subject? Yeah, right.

She had been puzzling over it since she'd received the news of her good luck, but the catch was eluding her. Maybe they just thought she'd take one look at all the work she had to do and excel in for her RATS year to manage it and cave. It was certainly proving daunting enough; between classes, her homework, and worrying about when her brother would wake up and figure out that she wasn't half as admirable as he made her out to be, she had started considering sleeping potions at night. So far, all that was stopping her was thinking of the satisfaction it would give her sister.

Morgaine sat up - when had she laid her head down on the inside crook of her right arm? - with a frustrated groan she immediately stifled with her hands. No racket in the library; it was why she came. She was not thinking about Gwen and all her dysfunction, nor was she feeling guilty about that...scene at Andrew's third wedding. She'd been wrong, she knew, to call Gwen what she had, but Gwen had been - wrong-er to waltz off to Monte Carlo for a month and not tell anyone. Her issues she needed to work out did not hold a candle to the issues Morgaine had had with thinking her only sister was dead in an alley. Gwen was -

Okay. If her mind was going there when she was supposed to be studying Potions, her potion was working even less than she thought it was working. She must not have taken enough for it to be effective. Made sense, given how wobbly she'd been and how awful the stuff tasted. The meds she took for them were definitely one of the worst parts of her tension headaches. With a grimace of distaste, she took the bottle back out.

She'd only just finished replacing the cap and slipping it back into her pocket when she saw another student start to come down the aisle. Just what she wanted, another Healing geek or overachieving Potions student coming around as she waited for her meds to kick in and tried to study. Why had she picked an aisle with only one table in it as a firstie and stuck with it all these years? Trying hard not to make a production of it and draw attention to herself, Morgaine lowered her head to put her eyes closer to the random page her book was open to and rested her forehead on one hand. She could figure out which chapter she was actually in and which one she was supposed to be in once the other student got whatever he or she needed and, intimidated by the mere sight of Morgaine Carey, hightailed it.

0 Morgaine Carey Wishful thinking 81 Morgaine Carey 1 5

Holly Greer

May 08, 2009 10:49 AM

It's the only kind of thinking I do by Holly Greer

Holly entered the aisle of potions books with the taste of her own potion still on her tongue. The calming draughts Professor Flatt had gotten her hooked on tasted vaguely like horse sweat, but she had drunken so many of the vials by now that she barely noticed it anymore, and she did her very best not to ever think about what the concoction could be made of, so she was able to put the taste out of her mind with the ease of well-practiced denial.

Her fingers traced over the spines of the books, looking for the supplementary volume that had been recommended for further research. As much as Holly hated potions with a burning passion, she hated poor grades worse. Her dad would ask about it in his disappointed voice if they slipped below perfect As, and she would do far worse than crack library books to avoid the disappointed voice.

She actually attended lessons, didn't she?

Besides, background research and homework essays were the easy part of potions. Her calming draught was just a precautionary matter, and she'd only taken a half dose, more to bolster her courage to read up on the subject than because she thought she actually might run into something disgusting or frightening. Most potion book illustrations weren't particularly graphic.

Finding the book she needed, she turned to the table, and stopped short when she noticed for the first time that it was already occupied. She recognized her co-lead from last year's Pecari concert act, and smiled. Holly had decided over the course of the rehearsals that Morgaine was probably the only other Pecari in the school, besides Raoul, that was worth her time. This decision came largely from the fact that the 'typical' Pecaris seemed to give her a wide berth.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked, nodded toward one of the empty chairs at Morgaine's table. She was somewhat less sure if Morgaine thought Holly was worth her time. Morgaine was three years older than her, after all.\r\n\r\n

1 Holly Greer It's the only kind of thinking I do 123 Holly Greer 0 5

Morgaine

May 09, 2009 8:26 PM

How's that working for you? by Morgaine

"Mind if I join you?"

Well, that was certainly a deviation from the norm. News of her failure to take Saul's head off for asking her to be in the Concert must have spread further than she had thought. Morgaine looked up from her book to find - of all people - Holly from the Concert.

For Morgaine, the Concert had been a straightforward affair of image rehabilitation, and she had not formed friendships in the process. There had been no issues, but she'd figured this was mostly because the younger students were afraid of her. Since Holly was also part of that brain-dead gaggle of fourth years Morgaine, in good company with all other half-sensible Sonorans, avoided like plague, Morgaine thought it was quite normal for her to find the requestee as, or maybe even more, surprising than the request itself.

"Ah - go ahead," she said, inching her book a little closer to her. No more insulting people; on that point, the family had been perfectly clear. What did she want?

She rubbed the back of her neck as cool fingers seemed to fan along it and press into her shoulders, proof that the potion was starting to work. That was, as far as Morgaine could tell, the only thing besides a House she could have in common with Holly; the younger girl hadn't done a very good job of keeping her liberal use of anti-anxiety drugs out of common knowledge. Morgaine had been careful not to let the same thing happen to her headache potions.

She hoped. Because that kind of information floating around would do things to her image, and not things that she or the family - which was very interested in changing both its and her image - would approve of.

Glancing over the book Holly held, she found herself in for another surprise: she recognized it. Perhaps Holly had some semblance of a brain after all. "Working on a project?" she asked.

0 Morgaine How's that working for you? 0 Morgaine 0 5

Holly

May 10, 2009 1:10 AM

It's actually going better than you might expect. by Holly

Holly smiled, pleased that she wouldn't need to go find another table elsewhere. She took one of the empty seats and put her book down in front of her before going through her backpack to find her quill, ink, and parchment. She glanced up and over at Morgaine at the older girl's question.

"Not a project, exactly," she qualified. "I'm just reading the supplemental material and getting ready to start the homework assignment. I find it's easier to write an essay that's a whole foot long when I have more information than the regular text has."

She shrugged. "That, and I need to do really well on the tests and homeworks, because I don't think any of the potions professors have liked me very much." She grimaced slightly in embarrassment and her cheeks tinged pink. "I think it has something to do with turning green and running out of the classroom at least twice a month."

Not that it was entirely her fault. It wasn't like she wanted to get violently ill every time she saw a sliced up catepillar, but she could see how the potions professors might find it annoying, too. "If just looking at the ingredients didn't make me sick, I'd like the class a lot better. Why do all potions use such gross stuff anyway? Who said only the disgusting things have magical properties?" She scowled down on the library book as if it were personally at fault. After a moment, she gave a heavy sigh and flipped open the chapter on wit-sharpening potions.

1 Holly It's actually going better than you might expect. 123 Holly 0 5

Morgaine

May 12, 2009 4:01 PM

Good for you, then. by Morgaine

"Textbook-only never does work for decent essays," Morgaine agreed, deciding not to touch on how relatively short a one-foot essay was compared to some upper-level assignments. It was her policy, when she had anything to do with any of the younger students, not to spoil the surprises of the school. No one had told her what to expect from the Academy, and she thought she had done pretty darn well for herself.

Of course, Holly did have ulterior motives for her attempts at overachieving. Morgaine couldn't help being half-amused. She was so matter-of-fact about it, though how anyone could get through life with that weak of a stomach was a mystery. The whole dead-things aspect of the subject could be a tiny bit off-putting, especially when one contemplated ingesting the various brews resulting from the dead things, but there was nothing particularly gory in the lab most of the time.

"Nature," Morgaine said bluntly to the rhetorical question about ingredients. There were, she thought, a few strictly plant-based potions, but in general... "So if I was you, I might consider investing in anti-nausea draughts." Finally glancing down at her own text, she found she had opened it two chapters ahead of where she was actually studying from for the quiz. She flipped back quickly and started to scan the section headings for the beginning of her material.

0 Morgaine Good for you, then. 0 Morgaine 0 5