Makenzie, Dustin, Florence, and Brett Newell
June 24, 2017 1:38 AM
A family picnic by Makenzie, Dustin, Florence, and Brett Newell
“Brett, would you please pass me the potato salad?”The youngest Newell at Sonora nodded and obliged, passing the bowl to his cousin, Makenzie. They, along with Dustin and Florence, sat on a square picnic blanket, each occupying a corner with several food items in the center. Having found seasonable weather and combining Brett and Flo’s love of the Gardens with the desire to gather and the delightfulness of a picnic, the Newell children had concocted a fairly comfortable way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
“Thank you,” Makenzie smiled, accepting the potato salad and scooping a serving onto her personal plate. She then sat the bowl back in the middle. “So, how are you liking Sonora?” she posed before taking a bite.
“It’s fun!” Brett grinned, his mouth half-full.
“Don’t talk with food in your mouth, Brett,” Dustin chided. “And,Makenzie, maybe don’t ask him questions while he’s eating. You know he never learns.”
“He’s learned a lot, actually,” interjected Flo. “I can happily report that his grades are looking wonderful so far this term.”
Dustin glared at his sister. “It doesn’t count if you’re doing his homework, Florence.”
“I’m not doing his homework,” Florence insisted. “I’m just helping him! He’s doing all the work himself. Writing everything down-”
“Writing down what you tell him,” Dustin interrupted.
“Hey!” Makenzie’s voice was firm and authoritative, in what Brett could only assume was her Prefect Voice. “No bickering.”
Dustin and Florence, in synchronized disgruntlement, bit into egg salad sandwiches, quietly murmuring their discontentment into their mouthfuls. Brett took a heaping bite of an apple, a crisp crunch echoing through the Garden’s clearing. For a while, they ate in relative silence, until the lack of conversation (and the symphony of chewing sounds) began grating on Makenzie’s nerves. “Okay,” she conceded. “You can bicker a little if you have to. It’s better than this!”
“Dustin’s mean, pretentious, and snooty!” Brett exploded.
“Wow, Brett,” Dustin countered concedingly, “‘Pretentious’! I see you’ve learned a new word. Too bad you don’t know how to use it properly. It’s completely redundant to say ‘pretentious’ and ‘snooty’.”
“I can’t win,” Makenzie sighed. Flo placed her hand on her cousin’s leg in sympathy, and the oldest Newell gave a weak smile.
Brett opened his mouth to shoot back his best retort - which, admittedly, would not have been very clever - when he noticed the moment the girls were having. “Hey, I’m sorry, Makenzie. Sorry, Flo,” he offered with a weak smile.
“What about me?!” cried Dustin. Brett gave a casual shrug, and his brother reeled in horror.
However, before anyone could say anything else, Florence noticed someone approaching them and, being a friendly person, waved to them. “Hi there!” she smiled. “Would you like to join us? I promise my brothers will behave.” The concluding sentence she aimed back at Dustin and Brett, the former of whom nodded with a mortified expression while the latter offered another shrug.
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Makenzie, Dustin, Florence, and Brett Newell
A family picnic
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Cleo James
August 06, 2017 1:46 PM
Intruding by Cleo James
Cleo was wandering back through the gardens feeling tired and dirty but happy. She had spent the morning weeding the vegetable patch and gathering any ripe produce she saw, leaving it in a basket for the elves to collect. As usual, she had her little red wireless with her, and she'd been listening to a programme that played the hits of her daddy's youth. They always listened to it, and the bands and some of the songs were more familiar to Cleo than the music of her own generation. She swung the little set and hummed to herself as she walked back through the gardens.The peace and quiet of her walk was interrupted by the sounds of bickering. She wondered about changing her route to avoid crossing paths with whoever was arguing but she wasn't sure of another way back to the school. The voices seemed to subside a little, and she headed around the corner, quite surprised to find a group picnicking. It included Florence and Brett Newell, who she knew from classes, and Makenzie Newell, who she knew as she was a Crotalus prefect, all of whom she supposed were related. That made the arguing make some sense. She'd heard that that was a thing siblings did, though she didn't know from personal experience.
She was slightly surprised when Florence asked if she wanted to join them, seeing as it seemed to be a family occasion, but she was very glad of the invitation.
"I'd love to," she smiled, before remembering where she'd just been and the state she must be in. "Although I'm not sure I'm quite clean enough to be joining a picnic..." she added, holding out her earth stained hands. She was also dressed rather sloppily in a large t-shirt and leggings which were starting to lose their elastic and were getting baggy at the knee. Previous experience suggested that she also had at least one smudge of dirt on her face. "Perhaps you can help?" she asked Makenzie, seeing as she was the oldest and therefore most likely to be good at cleaning charms, although they were on the simpler end of things and it was probable that most of the picnickers could have helped.
"I don't normally look so awful," she explained, "But I was gardening. I was going to wash up when I got back inside.
"Would you care for some music with your picnic?" she asked, feeling it would be nice to offer something in return. She held the little red wireless out to Florence, as she'd been the one to ask Cleo to join, and because she felt the girls exuded an air of calmness and authority. To the boys, she offered a warm smile. Cleo had a very nice smile, one that tended to make people feel they wanted to get to know her better. She hadn't quite yet started having a devastating effect on boys with this, but it probably wasn't far off.
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Intruding
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