Anonymous
June 27, 2015 1:01 AM
A secret revealed by Anonymous
The first secret had been fun. It had worked well, setting all kinds of murmurings and worry in motion. It didn’t matter - hadn’t even registered - that it was an unusual thing for a boy to keep secret. All that mattered was that he’d been carrying it round, close to his chest, not wanting to tell. And there had been more - more like him, though their thoughts ran to a particular person. One of those had been spoilt though, and it wasn’t fair! It just wasn’t. That juicy gossip had been worked for, hard won… And then that boy, who had been so… ripe, so full of hidden intent had gone and told the girl how he felt when it wasn’t his place to. Still, there were plenty more like him… All staring, moony-eyed at each other, feeling but not telling.At first glance, it seemed like a secret place. A tree out in the gardens - such a common place for that kind of thing. But it was strangely close to the school, strangely prominent for anyone who’d been trying to hide what they were doing. Almost everyone who passed that way was bound to see it.
A small heart enclosed two initials. A ‘G’ and an ‘A.’
Subthreads: Curiosity is piqued. by Scarlett Brockert with John Umland
To the attention of G & A by Nathan Xavier, Protector and Restorer of Trees with Laila Kennedy
Beware of Dog. by Jax Donovan with Joella Curtis
I am not blushing. by Adam Spencer with Lena Westley, Aladren
Not amused. by Dustin Newell
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Anonymous
A secret revealed
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Anonymous
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Nathan Xavier, Protector and Restorer of Trees
July 01, 2015 7:03 PM
To the attention of G & A by Nathan Xavier, Protector and Restorer of Trees
Nathan Xavier found the initials carved into the tree a couple days after they appeared. He’d been tending to other parts of gardens and had taken short cuts through lesser known entrances to the labyrinth, which meant he hadn’t passed by this particular spot prior to now. Currently, though, he was here and so he’d seen the oddly prominent bit of graffiti carved into one of his trees. Teenagers, he thought with an irritated huff. Worse, teenagers in love.He used the same spell he’d used a week or so before to clear the initials off the tree - in such a well-transversed clearing it just didn’t look good to have initials carved into the proud trees of his garden - and wondered if the two events were related. He made a note to tell the Headmaster that someone with the initials G or A had used a similar style of carving to the words drawn into the Cascade Hall doors. But then, most students had knives of about the same size for their standard potion ingredient slicing and dicing, so maybe that was the only connection between the two. It was circumstantial evidence at best anyway and by no means conclusive. Or maybe the lovebirds had only thought of carving their initials into the tree because somebody else had very publically made another carving recently. There was no easy way to tell.
In any event, he restored the tree to its unblemished state and gave the clearing back its dignity. He summoned up a piece of parchment and a quill, wrote out a quick admonishment to the semi-anonymous couple, and used a sticking charm to attach it to where the heart enclosed initials had been previously displayed. It read:
To the attention of G & A and anyone else inclined to carve their everlasting devotion into the hardwood of my garden:
Please don’t.
I will need to remove the graffiti and how symbolically eternal would that be if your declaration of everlasting love was removed as though it had never been there?
Also, if I or one of my elves catch you at it, you will receive a detention. And the elves will be watching now.
Yours,
Nathan Xavier, Protector and Restorer of Trees
Looking it over one more time to make sure it got his point across and didn’t look too much worse than the carving itself, he nodded to himself and made a mental note to take it down after a few days, once he felt the offenders would have had enough time to come back to revel in their illicit deed and found the note instead.
He was about to head off and inform the elves he’d like to put a watch on at least this clearing, and maybe a few others that looked cozy and romantic, to defend his territory against knife-wielding lovebirds, when he realized he wasn’t alone anymore. “Oh, uh,” he stammered, not quite embarrassed to be caught writing up vaguely threatening warnings against students. “There was more graffiti,” he explained, in case his new companion hadn’t seen it before he’d mended the tree.
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Nathan Xavier, Protector and Restorer of Trees
To the attention of G & A
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Nathan Xavier, Protector and Restorer of Trees
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Laila Kennedy
July 02, 2015 2:02 AM
I wonder if the snow loves the trees as much as you do. by Laila Kennedy
Laila walked up to the tree. This was supposedly the spot in which two names had been carved into it inside a heart. Though her mother said that gossip was a tool of the Devil, Laila had always been intrigued by romantic whisperings. Growing up, she’d hated the gossipy nature of the town when it came to things like families or who was fighting with who, but when it came to something as light and fluffy like the Macnulty’s daughter and the delivery boy from Lauren Aven’s florist, then Laila was all ears. So, even though she likely didn’t know the lovers who had put their names on the tree, she did feel it was somewhat necessary to go find ground zero and inspect. The note that the grounds keeper was hanging was enough for Laila to confirm that there had indeed been a carving and it wasn’t just the rumor mill at splendid, splendid work.Over the past couple of days she had heard everything from the two initials in the heart as being star-crossed lovers, to it being some sort of unrequited love. She personally preferred tragic love stories as those always made her giddy—she especially liked the idea of it being being two students in love but both thinking it was unrequited because one was in a forced relationship on account of their parents being very important and trying to make connections. It was a silly girl’s fantasy, and it was one that Laila knew likely had no basis, especially since she didn’t know who was who in the upper years just yet and on top of that didn’t really know if anyone was dating anyone.
Another couple rumors had gone around that the carver of the hearts had also carved the message about liking girls into the doors of Cascade Hall, but Laila didn’t really buy too much into that theory as it didn’t make any sense for someone to say “someone” when they really meant themselves and on top of that it just wasn’t nearly as romantic a notion than two people in love writing their names on a tree. Laila nodded as Mr. Xavier explained what he was doing and peered around him in order to read the note, her brown hair falling into her face as she did so. “Oh,” she responded as she tucked the hair that had fallen out of her pony tail away behind her ear and looked back to the note, her cheeks lightly flushed at having been caught involving herself in gossip. Although she was miles away from her straight-laced mother, Laila still often felt the pull to obey.
“I didn’t realize wizards did this kind of thing too,” Laila said instead of pushing forward with the romantic idea as she had figured out from his note that Mr. Xavier likely didn’t care about that sort of thing. “You see it all the time at Muggle parks, but I guess I thought this was something too plain for wizards to do.” Over the past couple weeks it had seemed as though wizards loved to do flamboyant things. Everything from the wand-lighting spell she had learned in defense class to the transfiguration and bright charms seemed to serve an unnecessary purpose other than to say ‘hey, I have abilities that are condemned by other people, let me show you how awesome I am at them.’ To carve a name into a tree with a heart around it seemed so…ordinary that the idea of it had cheered Laila up to think that perhaps, just perhaps, wizards were much more easy to relate to than she had originally thought.
OOC: subject credit = adaptation of an Alice in Wonderland Quote.
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Laila Kennedy
I wonder if the snow loves the trees as much as you do.
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Nathan Xavier
July 02, 2015 9:54 AM
Would it blanket the branches so nicely if it didn't? by Nathan Xavier
Nathan smiled as he recognized the girl as one of the first years from his orientation. She hadn't been one of the three that got sorted into Teppenpaw, so he wasn't entirely sure of her name, but despite her interest in the tree and his note, he was going to go ahead and assume she was not the G or A who had defaced his tree."Oh, yes," he agreed good-naturedly in response to her surprise that some things remained exactly the same on either side of the magical divide. "Wizards can clear up graffiti easier than muggles can, especially when it's carved out of trees, but that doesn't stop it from happening in the first place." He gave a sigh a bit heavier than what might be entirely appropriate when conversing with an eleven year old, but it was heartfelt and he didn't believe in patronizing the younger students. "Some things are just universal, unfortunately."
He smiled at her again, making an effort to not be a downer. "I take it it you're a muggleborn then?" he guessed. "I'm a halfblood myself, so I knew magic existed when I was growing up, but I didn't actually see much of it until I went to school. It's a lot to get used to, isn't it?" he asked in sympathetic understanding.
"It gets easier," he promised. "It might take a few years, but eventually you figure out the important things are pretty constant everywhere." He made a gesture deeper into the gardens and suggested, "If things get overwhelming, I always found a quiet nature hike helped settle things back into perspective. Birds sound like birds everywhere."
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Nathan Xavier
Would it blanket the branches so nicely if it didn't?
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Nathan Xavier
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Laila
July 08, 2015 11:55 PM
There is some merit in that, I guess. by Laila
Laila nodded. She supposed that made sense and besides that, after having found out she was a wizard, Arne had invited her over more times than one to see how magic worked. For the most part she had declined the invitations, preferring to keep to what she knew which was playing with her brother and Dusty. However, she had briefly stopped by to his brother’s birthday and occasionally had found herself coming across their secluded compound while taking the family’s golden retriever for a walk and had seen some magic in action, namely brooms that swept for themselves and rags that washed windows without the aid of a person’s arm. She had passed by the Reinhard’s house many times before but had never noticed these animated household objects until after having received her Sonora letter. While he bothered her at dinner one day, Laila had taken the opportunity to ask Arne about the shift in things she had begun to notice. ‘Disillusionment Charm,’ he had replied rather nonchalantly. ‘Are you going to finish that?’ and before she had the chance to reply he had swiped the rest of her dinner roll.“Yes,” she replied. “There’s a lot of stuff going on I don’t always understand but…” she shrugged. “The Reinhardts are generally pretty good at explaining things to me.” If I press Arne enough, she thought in an uncharacteristically bitter manner. Tobi was always willing to offer a suggestion, but Laila had rarely approached with questions as Arne tended to get rather irritated if she ever started a sentence with Tobi said or when I asked Tobi. “We’re from the same town, Tobi, Arne, and I,” she explained. “We went to elementary school together.” She wasn’t sure how much of everyone’s background Mr. Xavier knew, but if he could tell she was a Muggleborn this far into the conversation she was certain he knew that Tobi and Arne were purebloods and Liac was a halfblood, seeing as he was Tobi and Liac’s head of house.
Mr. Xavier was nice, she decided as she took into consideration his suggestion. It was true that somethings obviously had to stay the same across the two worlds—like the sound of birds, but even those were different. In care of magical creatures Laila ad studied all sorts of things that she hadn’t even thought could be possible to exist, had received confirmation that other things existed, things that she had been reassured time and time again by her father didn’t exist like vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. “I guess,” she replied, her forehead scrunching as she looked down the long windy path of the garden imagining all the soul sucking creatures that could be lurking behind corners, things she had never really been afraid of nor concerned with before she came to Sonora and found out they were real.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any monster repellent?” she joked, only half-serious. “Something that could ward off the Randall’s of the wizarding world?” She wasn’t really sure if the groundskeeper would get the reference to the purple lizard-monster with chameleon like abilities that she had seen in a movie once, but she made it anyway, unsure as how to otherwise phrase the sentence for fear of accidentally insulting Mr. Xavier who, for all she knew, had a relative who was part vampire or something like that.
OOC: Randall is, of course, from Monster's Inc of which I own no part.
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Laila
There is some merit in that, I guess.
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Nathan Xavier
July 10, 2015 4:16 PM
Keeping Trees and Students safe since SA20ish by Nathan Xavier
Nathan nodded in pleased approval as the girl said she was from the same town as some of the Reinhardts and they were helping her out. "That's great, they're good kids," he said, basing the assessment on the two Reinhardts he had in his House sonce he didn't really know the youngest one. He was mildly surprised that Tobi had gone to muggle school as Nathan had thought he was the pureblood one, but maybe he had that mixed up."Having someone to explain things helps a lot, I'm glad you have someone like that." He'd been working up to an offer to provide the same service if her own Head of House was too busy (he felt not having classes helped him be a bit more proactive in his Head of House duties), but it seemed she didn't need it.
He blinked in bafflement at her final request, wondering what in the world she was talking about before the penny dropped and he remembered the movie his nephew (well, the son of his cousin, but he had always been Uncle Nathan to the boy) had obsessed over for a few years. "Oh," he said, feeling somewhat surprised that he gotten the reference at all. "Um, well, here," he fumbled both verbally and physically as he tried to find something in one of his robe pockets that might double as 'monster repellant' for the girl.
He eventually found and offered her a small unlabeled canister of Safe-Gro potion that he used in his vegetable garden to keep away varmints that might try eating his tomatoes. There was only about a quarter of it left so it wouldn't go very far on his garden before he needed to open a new one, but it should last a while for her. "Just dab a bit of that on the tips of your shoes before heading out, and you should be fine," he assured her. "You don't need much at all for it to work."
He had a standing order for the elves to keep an eye on wandering students to make sure they didn't run into anything nasty, so he wasn't really lying in his reassurance. "But it only works during the day," he added warningly, because most of the elves turned in at curfew like everybody else did, and it wouldn't do to encourage a first year to wander about the labyrinth after dark.
As an afterthought, he added, "It stinks a bit, like all repellants do, so I'd advise you to apply it after you get outside."
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Nathan Xavier
Keeping Trees and Students safe since SA20ish
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Nathan Xavier
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Laila
July 10, 2015 7:59 PM
You should have a placard. by Laila
Or, In which Laila continues to be rather clueless.Laila wasn’t sure if Mr. Xavier had ever met Arne if he was calling him a good kid or lumping him in with Tobi or Liac, but it wasn’t her position to tattle to Mr. Xavier on all the horrible things Arne did back home and if he had a different reputation at school than back in Turner’s Point then who was Laila to ruin Arne’s chance at redemption, so she just smiled politely and agreed with him that it was nice to have people help her out. In truth, it really was nice, but she wondered what it would be like when they all returned home. Would they still talk? Or would it return to normal? The Reinhardts keeping to themselves for the most part, Laila getting reinvolved with all her church activities, helping out with socials. Would Arne do summer ball again? If he did, would Laila cheer for him since they had started up a sort of friendship? Or would they pretend like they didn’t know each other?
The thoughts ran through her head until Laila felt almost dizzy. And on top of it all, did God hate her for involving herself with witchcraft? She supposed it wasn’t really all as bad as her mother had originally thought when the school official had originally arrived to their door because as it turned out it Sonora was in the wizarding world. Wizards had nothing to do with witches, so likely it didn’t mean anything, all this magic stuff (though her mom had pulled out some abstract rule from the depths of the Bible that said something about not idolizing objects and how wands were included in this idolization). But after having been at Sonora for a couple months now Laila had realized that wizards didn’t idolize wands so much as just use them, so that was probably fine too, right?
At any rate, it wasn’t as though wizards were these horrible people as her mom had made out at the beginning of it all. This one, in particular, had taken her joke seriously and offered her some monster repellent. When Laila had been younger, her mother had given her a bottle of holy water, telling her that this was all the monster repellent one would need and Laila had accepted it, fully believing in the powers of holy water and it’s ability to protect, but she hadn’t really believed that the Labyrinth Garden has anything to be afraid of, just that it appeared scary as many things often did on the surface. However, she accepted the offering with a smile.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She looked down at the bottle again, her smile uncontainable. She likely wouldn’t write home to her mother about the specifics of the encounter lest her mother go on about the dangers of accepting things from strangers and being led astray by temping offers that would cause her to loose faith. However, she would write home and say that the Groundskeeper was a very nice, helpful person with a generous soul. Did lying by omission count, Laila wondered, even if it was a white lie to preserve the sanity of her mother? This was something she wasn’t sure about. Then a though occurred to her. She probably ought to pay Mr. Xavier back.
“Do you, er, do you need any help with anything?” she asked. Up-keeping the grounds probably was a lot of work and though she had been made to understand that the prairie elves helped around the school, she thought Mr. Xavier might want some human company while gardening. The elves she had met so far had been oddly skittish when she’d offered them some chips.
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Laila
You should have a placard.
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Laila
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Nathan Xavier
July 16, 2015 1:47 PM
Something like "I speak for the trees"? by Nathan Xavier
Nathan tried not to look too pleased with himself when the girl accepted his gift and looked quite happy with it. Any grudge he'd felt towards the students at large for the damage to his tree was destroyed by her open joy and innocence. Without an actual perpetrator to blame, there was no sense in holding the crime against the whole school, the vast majority of whom were equally as innocent as this child, at least in regards to damaging his gardens.He was taken aback when she offered in turn to help him. Even the kindest of students didn't often do that. He was a staff member. He was doing his job and getting paid for his efforts. (Granted, the pay was not enough that he could dream of ever becoming rich, but it was enough that he'd be able to retire comfortably someday ... maybe when he was eighty or so... but eventually he could retire.) Students weren't expected to offer help.
"I have plenty of elves helping me out," he assured her, "we've got everything well in hand, thank you." He didn't stop there though, knowing some people - himself included - genuinely liked working outdoors. "That said, if you'd actually enjoy helping to keep the gardens in top condition, I can make arrangements for you to have that opportunity. It's entirely up to you, no obligation." It wouldn't be anything as formal as an Independent Study - at least, not until third year, when she could begin learning Herbology if she so choose - but he could talk to her Head of House about it and get her some kind of credit for her assistance, even if it was nothing more than a teacher's note of 'Provided volunteer service to the school commmunity' on her report card. Parents liked seeing that kind of thing.
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Nathan Xavier
Something like "I speak for the trees"?
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Nathan Xavier
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Laila
July 17, 2015 10:52 PM
For the trees have no tongue? by Laila
Mr. Xavier’s reassurance that he didn’t need help seeing as he had elves only slightly placated Laila. She was used to living in a house where it wasn’t questioned whether one helped out or not. If Mamma was cooking then Laila and Gabriel were setting the table or assisting food preperation. If Mamma felt the house was too messy, then Laila and Gabriel were picking up after themselves. If Mamma needed the garden weeded, well then Laila and Gabriel were out there right along side her and sometimes Daddy making sure Mamma’s tomatoes and basils weren’t being overrun. It was just how things worked. And even though Mr. Xavier said ‘no obligation,’ that wasn’t really what Laila heard and so she only nodded shyly.She felt a little bad because it wasn’t a completely selfless act—not only was she was exchanging goods for services, but she was also assuaging a little bit of homesickness. “I think it could be fun,” she said in case her nod wasn’t clear enough. She wasn’t sure if she ought to tell Mr. Xavier her name or not—they had never gotten around to introducing themselves as she knew who he was and hadn’t thought to ask if he knew hers, but now realized that since he likely had a whole school full of people to remember and she was only a first year her name probably wasn’t one that he knew.
When he did get around to asking her, in a slightly awkward fashion, Laila provided it readily. “Laila Kennedy,” she said sticking out her hand to shake like she’d been taught by her father to do when meeting new people, especially adults.
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Laila
For the trees have no tongue?
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