Group Ten Concert Meeting on Labyrinth Gardens

Aria Yale

December 19, 2013 9:34 PM

Group Ten Concert Meeting by Aria Yale

Aria’s holiday break home had been wonderful. She had spent a lot of time with her parents working on various projects with them as well as her friends. She had been most especially excited to be with Luna, a girl with whom Aria had befriended over the summer and fallen in love with as they spent more time together. Luna was a year older and in an open relationship with Eades, someone Aria found to be a really fun guy to be around. Eades was like an older brother to Aria while Luna became something more for her. The older girl gave her confidence and made her feel wanted and beautiful. Aria had a place with them and that meant the world to her. Especially since she felt herself drifting further away from the people at Sonora.

She had no idea if she and Jay were still friends. She didn’t seem to talk to him much anymore, but she still sent him a gift for his holiday. She and her father created a Hawk bird book ends from clay. Her father helped her work out the details, fired them, and painted them with her. It had been a fun project and one that they had started over the summer. She really hoped that Jay enjoyed them even if he didn’t necessarily enjoy that they were from her. She had thought perhaps Rupert could have been a friend to her, but after the pool party, he basically disappeared from her life. Maybe he had gotten all he wanted from her and had moved on? That’s how it seemed anyway, she saw him often around Wendy now days. Sometimes Aria thought to tell her of his fickle mind, that he seemed to only want to question a person and make them feel wrong for their ways before throwing them aside and forgetting about them. But Aria was not one to speak ill of another and she refused to allow hate into her and so, anything that flared up in her, she meditated it right out of her. Cleansed herself of those dark thoughts. Being negative helped no one and she was tired of feeling down on herself while at Sonora.

Aria did seem to be handling thing better with females at the school. She was comfortable with Jade and learning to be more open with Wendy. She felt that was a pretty good place to be all things considered. Plus, they were both a part of her concert group and that was definitely going to make things easier on her in the long run. Her group also consisted of two of her three roommates and her male year/house mate. Three other people she was sort of comfortable with. The only two she was unsure of were Julian and Bella. Julian she could recognize from her house and from Intermediate lessons, but she had no idea about Bella. Still, she hoped all of them enjoyed the grass doll she had made them for their holidays.

Today though, she would be meeting with her group to discuss what they wanted to do with their act. Aria wanted it to be a total group effort and did not feel that it was necessary for her to control it. She had sent owls to her group the first night back advising that she would like to see them that Saturday to go over any ideas people had. Now that she sat in the gardens waiting on everyone, she hoped that they could all enjoy this process and come up with something entertaining for the audience. “Hello everyone.” Aria greeted with a smile, her hair still white-blonde, above her shoulders, and a mess of curls mixed with small braids. Her eyes still done in heavy black, making her blue eyes stand out. She opted to wear ripped jeans and a loose midriff top. It was a comfortable look for her. “I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. For those who do not know me, I am Aria. I appreciate everyone who signed up to work with me and to anyone who didn’t have a choice, I hope to make that up to you.” Aria commented to them with sincerity. “If everyone could go around and introduce yourselves just in case everyone doesn’t know one another, we can start discussing any ideas that you all might have.” Aria turned to the person to her left to continue with the introductions and the ideas.

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Jade Owen

December 21, 2013 4:18 PM

Present! by Jade Owen

The whole compulsory participation aspect of the end of year concert had initially caused jade some little grief, but then she considered that if everyone had to take part then at least nobody was worse off than anyone else, and the people who wouldn't have signed up otherwise (such as herself) could at least consolidate that they were all in it together. The upside, she supposed, was that they had at least been able to decide on who they worked with... more or less. Jade had been torn; of the names listed, she had instantly identified two as potentials, and dismissed all the other from her mind. However, deciding between Aria and Waverly had been a much harder decision, especially when other people has started to add their names to the list, too.

Jade liked Waverly - her friend, roommate, Horse Club attendee and Baking Club president - but so did lots of other people, and that wasn't necessarily a good thing for groupwork. Aria was likely to draw a quieter, younger, and generally less obnoxious crowd; Waverly's little sister, Wendy (or Little W as Jade tended to call her)was just as pleasant as her sibling, and as she'd signed up for Aria's group, Jade's decision would have been instantaneous, had she not then noticed that Jorge (arguably her best friend, not matter how much Jade would vociferously deny it) had joined Waverly's team. It was a nightmare.

Eventually, Aria had won out, and so Jade found herself amongst an interesting mix of students, most of them in Teppenpaw, and all of them younger than her. She wondered whether she might be able to exert some sort of seniority when it came to deciding her own, specific role in their performance, and decided that she probably wouldn't care. Aria had been hugely supportive of the Horse Club's fundraising efforts last year, and Jade was prepared to do everything she could (or all she could be bothered to, let's be honest) to make Aria's concert group a success.

Arriving on time to the meeting in the gardens, Jade strolled over in her loose, flared jeans - a little too long for her, despite her long legs, so their hems were scuffed along the floor - and a fitted black t-shirt with a faded rainbow motif on its front, with her dark, shoulder-length curls left to their own devices in the gentle breeze while she was away from a classroom or Quidditch practice. She took up a seat by Aria (one of only two of the group's members Jade really knew, though she was familiar with most, for one reason or another), and listened to their leader's short introduction before offering her own. "Hey, I'm Jade," she said casually, moving her hand horizontally in a half-hearted attempt at a wave. Then, although it hadn't specifically been required of the introductions, she decided to add, "I'm up for just about anything, really. Concert-wise. Open to suggestions." She could sing, but didn't tend to, and while she didn't play any musical instruments she wouldn't mind learning percussion for the occasion. She couldn't dance, but again she was happy to join in, and just about every other potential type of performance she had thought of when considering their options didn't fill her with any sort of dread. Then again, fear or anxiety were not really sentiments Jade particularly understood.

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Marcus Crosby

January 03, 2014 11:54 PM

Me too! by Marcus Crosby

Despite a night of poor quality sleep, hours wasted struggling to find comfort, Marcus was his typical happy self as he bounded off to the Labyrinth Gardens. He had briefly wondered earlier if maybe he should see about meeting up with Melanie to walk down together, but he had not had the time to arrange it with her. But either way, he would see her down there, and maybe he could ask her to lunch afterward.

He was pretty sure he was early, and his suspicion was proved correct as he found a nearly empty garden. The fifth year hardly minded his earliness, however, because he knew Aria would be there already; he had seen her leave their shared Common Room. Aria was not someone he knew terribly well, but they were in the same year and House, and maybe this talent show thing would allow them to become real friends. Really, he felt badly that he did not know her better; Lucille he also did not know terribly well, but Aubrielle he knew from Quidditch and Melanie was, well, Melanie. Actually, now that he thought about it, maybe he needed to make an effort with Lucille as well. That was a mission for another day, though. "Hi Aria," he greeted cheerfully. "Was your break nice?"

Soon enough, it seemed like their whole group was present, and Aria began. She introduced herself in case anyone did not know her, and then suggested they all do the same, which Jade was the first to follow. She was a little older than Marcus and not in his House, but he knew who she was from shared classes. And she played Quidditch too, which he did not anymore, but he still held the memories of games spent on opposing sides.

"Hi, I'm Marcus," he grinned when it was his turn to speak, connecting in momentarily eye contact with each member of the group as he spoke. "And I think we should find something unusual to do for the show. Does anybody happen to have any special talents they could teach the rest of us?" Juggling came immediately to his mind, but he was sure there were even better talents out there and had every confident that his groupmates possessed them.

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Julian Umland

January 10, 2014 1:34 PM

Me three! by Julian Umland

Even as she made her way out to the Gardens, Julian was unsure about her group choice, though she knew that was silly, given how little there was to do about it now. She had picked this one because the prefect was the new Teppenpaw one and Charlie’s group’s collective exuberance had frankly intimidated her, but she didn’t really know anyone in it, just that she had assumed, given the high number of Teppenpaws, that it would probably be a reasonably calm, harmonious collection of people. But it was occurring to her now that she didn’t really know that, and it was making her nervous about meeting them.

She smiled at the girl she recognized as Aria when she arrived, blinked at the apology which implied some people had been forced into membership, and looked around at others as they began introducing themselves, first Jade, who she recognized as the Pecari Seeker, and then Marcus, who she recognized as from her House.

“I don’t, really,” she admitted to his suggestion for unusual talents, as she was the next in order. “I’m Julian. Um, my brothers like acting, so I can turn things into props okay, I think.” Usually, her part in the dramas was as the princess in the tower, or something else non-interactive, since she didn’t enjoy it as much as the boys did and only went along because she felt she had to be at least as good a sport as Stephen and Paul were about playing along with the stuff John and Joe still liked. “And if we need anything that looks medieval at all, I’ll steal it from them when I go home for Easter,” she added. John was very good at putting together that sort of thing, though the last time he’d written, he’d gone Norse for some reason and was trying to make a longboat to scale. That was about all she’d gotten from his last letter, honestly, as the rest of it had been a lot of very technical and, to her, very dull stuff about his other latest enthusiasms, which included trains and birds.

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