Sammy Meeks
March 25, 2015 12:01 AM
I'm a-mazed by Sammy Meeks
As a devote tomboy, the general inside-y ness of Sonora kinda drove Sammy a little nuts. She missed jumping in mud puddles she would later claim she hadn’t noticed, finding little pitter marks of mud on her clothes later, each one a trophy even when they just made Mama more mad. Even if she got in trouble, Mom would usually get her out of it later anyway. She took a certain pride in skirting between her mothers, especially when it meant she could get back outside again faster.The Quidditch Pitch was outside, but it was all pretty and well-kept, so the Pecari didn’t really want to risk being the one to tear up the turf or anything. Fields were sacred grounds where no man, woman, or child was to tread without proper reason and the utmost care. The Labyrinth Gardens, on the other hand, while well-kept, provided a place where she could roam and play without as much sacrilege. Sometimes she liked to run up and down the maze paths until she got too tired and fell down. Other times she took legitimate deliberacy in her maze course and would try to plod farther than she had been before.
Today, she had found a statue of particular interest. It was a bust of a man Sammy didn’t recognize but assumed was some powerful magic dude from the Long Ago times of Sonora’s infancy. (Or it could’ve just been sculpted after a model, but that was way less exciting.) He had fat jowls and like seven chins that drooped to cover his neck, the layers by his mouth twisting into a grumpy frown. His half-open eyes were angry, too, Sammy noticed, weaving left and right at his level to see if they followed her. Much to her disappointment, they didn’t. Sometimes magic sure was a… bust!
Excellent puns aside, this guy was lame. Like, super lame. Not even a guy, technically. Just a statue. But with all of her attention focused on Lamey McBlubberFace, she didn’t notice the person coming up from the other direction of the maze behind her. The person must have stepped on a twig or something, because Sammy heard a noise and turned around. Finding another person surprised her enough to inspire a tiny jump and a squeaked, “Ah!” Her hand shot dramatically to her chest to clutch her heart. When logic poked adrenaline on the shoulder and politely encouraged it to step aside (actually fisticuffs), Sammy realized her guest was just another person and felt silly. “Jeez, sorry about that,” she grinned. “You snuck up on me!”
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Sammy Meeks
I'm a-mazed
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John Umland
April 14, 2015 12:53 AM
Re: I'm a-mazed by John Umland
He had always had set topics he had to cover whether he wanted to or not, but John's mother had always encouraged him to follow up on whatever caught his interest in his spare time. As a result, he spent a lot of that time reading. There were few subjects he'd encountered which had yet to have at least one sub-topic become the focus of one of his tangents, which could last for days or weeks. In the end, though, he always came back to his favorites: medieval and espionage stories for recreation, Transfiguration theory and biology for study, and the outdoors for some combination of the two.The last time he had been at home, he had stumbled across the existence of citizen science projects where people reported their bird sightings to help a laboratory track populations and was now curious to see how Sonora’s compared to the rest of Arizona and how the area around the school compared to nearby areas if he could figure it out. Having a pretty large piece of property with a radically different climate just dropped into the middle of the desert seemed like it should have some effect on the whole desert and maybe even what lay beyond it, though he hadn’t been able to find much about how magical structures impacted the surrounding systems at all yet. It was more likely that it was just a dead-end subject than that he was the first person to think to look into it, but he wouldn’t know until he made his observations and compared them to the data other enthusiasts had collected. When he had spare time he didn’t feel like reading in, then, he headed out into the Gardens with supplies in a bag on his shoulder, his comfortable shoes on his feet, and his old camera and even older binoculars at the ready to observe with.
Walking as lightly as he could, he got a good view of a small bird, mostly pale brown but with lines of brilliant blue on the wings, and took a photograph. He felt his hands shake a little as he slowly lifted the camera, though, so he tried to steady them and take another, the camera clicking as he did. The bird took flight and he snapped a few pictures of it in motion, too, backing away to keep it in his sights and walking into a shrub in the process.
This drew attention. John jumped, too, as surprised as the girl already occupying the clearing behind him to find he had company. He clutched his camera in front of him with both hands as though it were a shield for a second before remembering it was not and lowering it.
He recognized the girl’s face from classes but hadn’t worked with her before, which meant she was probably a first year and definitely not in Aladren. He knew the other Aladrens, or at least was acquainted with Jack and Aislinn and knew Barnaby Pye through a combination of elimination and his memorable name. “Er – sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. I was photographing a bird.” He waved in the direction it had flown away, then looked around to see if he could still see it. It was gone. Did everything live in this bubble, or did things come and go? That was the question. “I apologize if I scared away whatever you were observing,” he added, assuming that someone who could be sneaked up on must have been concentrating on something.
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John Umland
Re: I'm a-mazed
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