A Disappearing Charm? [Tag Heinrich] on Labyrinth Gardens

Evelyn Stones

July 26, 2019 1:45 PM

A Disappearing Charm? [Tag Heinrich] by Evelyn Stones

So far as Evelyn knew, there was no way to temporarily disappear. She wasn't too keen on the idea of any of the more permanent solutions - another topic her social worker seemed worried about, which did make Evelyn feel sad and a bit guilty - but temporary measures would have been nice sometimes. The theory behind apparation intrigued her, and she wondered whether someone could disapparate whether apparating elsewhere right away. It probably would mean death, as there would be no way to apparate again if one had disappeared themselves.

Charms and things didn't abolish material, although they could put illusions over it. Evelyn wasn't so much worried about others seeing her, but about existence as a whole. It was exhausting. Even on lovely days, existence was exhausting.

The closest thing she had found was when the physical senses were taking precedence over whatever internal feelers she had. Over the summer, this had occasionally meant sneaking into crowded concert venues for which she was at least seven years too young, and letting the pushing of bodies and music make her forget who she was for a little while. Other times, it had meant sitting at the edge of the ocean, like a zipper between the horizon and the ocean, the heavens and the everyone else.

Sonora offered neither of those options, but a friendly, familiar knoll in the Gardens, not too far from the Common Room, did just fine most days. She liked to lay down here with her eyes closed and let the smell of grass fill her nose, the feeling of sunshine warm her skin, and the gentle rise and fall of the universe breathing through the plantlife around her soothe her ears. Sometimes she opened her eyes to be filled with the glory of a bright blue sky, but today, she kept them closed.

She'd become much more comfortable with this sort of vulnerability in recent months, although she was certainly not as weak as she was when she was asleep. When she was awake on this particular knoll, she was more aware of everything because she wasn't paying attention to her insides anymore. Just the world existed and if it had forgotten about Evelyn then that was all the better.

When the sound of someone approaching drifted across her senses, Evelyn let her grey eyes open slowly; the person didn't sound like they were running, and there was no need to jump and give away the small advantages in life. She was surprised, however, to find Heinrich standing there, like a ghostly facade of the memories she had of this place. Either she'd gone crazy, or she hadn't, and that was precisely why existence was so exhausting.

22 Evelyn Stones A Disappearing Charm? [Tag Heinrich] 1422 Evelyn Stones 1 5

Heinrich

July 26, 2019 2:46 PM

We need to stop meeting like this by Heinrich

Heinrich liked the gardens. Sometimes he did some running through their paths when he got tired of just doing laps around the pitch. Sometimes he went there in search of Hilda (who had accidentally told him once that the entrance to the Pecari common room was out there someplace). Sometimes he just went out to enjoy the green of it.

It was nothing like their home in Germany. That had been the darker greens of an old forest encroaching on a town. He could get that sometimes, in MARS, if he focused more on their old duckpond out back rather than the great forest, but that wasn’t what he was looking for today. He wanted the lighter greens of the hedges, the brighter fragrances of the (mostly non-poisonous) flowers that grew out here. He wanted the bright sun overhead. He wanted quiet and fresh air and a chance to just not think for a little bit.

He’d started noticing some of his thoughts were in English now, and he wasn’t entirely sure he approved of that.

Of course, Heinrich was very bad at Not Thinking, and it didn’t take him long to think of Evelyn and wonder how she was doing. They hadn’t caught up again yet since the summer, and that was probably overdue. He fiddled with her wolf symbol and found his feet had turned toward the spot where it had been made.

Having no reason to override the impulse, he allowed himself to keep going that way, reflecting along the way how they might manage to run into one another again in someplace other than class or the Cascade Hall, or if he ought to to just give up on chance and make it happen by sending her an owl and inviting her to meet him somewhere.

Of course, the problem with that was he was a guy, and she was a girl, and formally inviting her to be alone with him in a unpopulated location sounded either creepy or like he was asking her on a date, or maybe both.

Probably both. He didn’t want to send her a creepy date owl. That would be weird. And creepy.

And being creepy was for bad wolves not good wolves.

He turned a corned and was surprise to find Evelyn herself right there, lying on the ground. He walked closer until he realized her eyes were closed. Oh no, he’d found her asleep again. He really had to stop doing that or she really was going to start thinking he was creepy.

Her eyes opened and she sat up. Heinrich sagged a little in relief, “Oh good, you are awake,” he said. He wasn’t sure if she would appreciate him voicing the dilemma between watching her sleep like a creeper and leaving her defenseless like an honorless toad that he’d just been rescued from, so he didn’t. “I did hope to find you and talk not in class.” He paused, grimacing slightly at the grammar of that sentence, not sure if it was right or not, but not sure how to fix it, so he let it be. “How was your summer?”

There had been letters of course, but letters were easy to leave things out of. Things you didn’t want to put down on paper where just anyone could see it. He certainly hadn’t shared everything.

By his letters, Evelyn would easily be forgiven for thinking he’d had a quiet boring summer with not much to report except English lessons and a brief couple of days when he’d been left alone in Utah while Hilda visited some friends and Karl went to chaperone.

Which, by some measures, was exactly what it had been.

But not by every measure.

1 Heinrich We need to stop meeting like this 1414 Heinrich 0 5

Evelyn Stones

July 26, 2019 3:04 PM

But how else? by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn nodded, aware that she was awake and not sure how she felt about it. Oh good was maybe a stretch, but it wasn't all bad either. She would've been more upset to know that she'd missed the chance to talk with Heinrich. Probably. Maybe.

But then he said he'd been wanting to talk to her and Evelyn felt worse. Yet again, she was either crazy or she wasn't. Those were tough odds.

"You did?" she confirmed, trying not to be hopeful. "I wasn't sure if you wanted to be friends," she added by way of admissions. It hurt to say out loud, but it wasn't all bad.

Heinrich looked good. He looked like he'd maybe been running but was definitely out to enjoy the day and that made Evelyn soften up a bit. He deserved all the happiness that comes with a nice day, and she hoped she wasn't spoiling that by existing in a space that he had as much claim to as she did, if not more. He was older, after all, and had been at Sonora longer.

"My summer was . . ." she was going to say it was fine, or okay, or boring, but this was Heinrich. That would be like lying to Ness. That in itself was odd, because she certainly knew Ness better. But Heinrich had an innocence about him that made Evelyn trust him by nature. She hoped to whatever deity happened to be listening that that wasn't going to turn out to be a terrible mistake. She ended with a shrug instead. "It's good to be back."

Her letters over the summer had not really been very descriptive, but that wasn't surprising. Her father didn't tend to read her letters, in part because owl post was usually pretty direct in finding the intended recipient of a letter, but she couldn't be sure. Besides, putting it in writing felt a bit like making it real, and the last time she'd received a letter with that sort of news, she'd burned it into ashes.

Instead, her letters said the most by what was absent. There were no happy announcements of her mother's return, there were no notes about having spent time with her father, and there was hardly any mention of what she did with her free time. In the case of the latter, it was because she wasn't sure whether it was Good Wolf or Bad Wolf stuff, and wasn't ready to share. In the case of the former two, it was because they hadn't happened.

Today, I read a book about the patron saint of travel.
Today, I learned ten more words in German. Today, I found a seashell that was orange and white. Who would've known about everything else?

"How was yours?" she returned, sitting up and pulling her things pointedly out of the space beside her. She wasn't sure whether he'd be weirded out if she asked him to sit down, but wanted to make sure there was space for him if he'd like to.

22 Evelyn Stones But how else? 1422 Evelyn Stones 0 5

Heinrich

September 04, 2019 12:31 PM

I don’t know. This seems to be our thing. by Heinrich

Heinrich blinked as Evelyn voiced her uncertainty about his desire to be friends. “I communicate badly,” he apologized immediately, assuming he must have said something very wrong somewhere in his second language. English could get very fiddly if you put a word in the wrong place. “I want us friends. I am sorry. I was not clear before. Friends, yes. I want friends.” Was that too general? Had that been his mistake before, that he hadn’t been specific enough? Had his attempts to use short simple sentences that couldn’t be misconstrued ironically caused the misunderstanding because he had left out too many details? “I want you my friend. Clear now, I hope?” The grammar wasn’t perfect- he was talking too quickly to think through his translations that carefully- but he thought he was getting his points across.

Once he was certain they were both on the same page about being friends at all, he allowed the conversation to return to the topic of their summers. Evelyn seemed keen on not talking about hers, as ‘glad to be back’ did not leave very much to discuss except in its implication that escape had been welcome.

But the question was returned to him before he could try to do that, and it seemed only fair to be the first to share, as he’d been the one to raise the topic.

“My summer was middle. Not good or bad,” he added, being unsure if ‘middle’ was the right word to describe the neutrality of his summer. “Utah still does not feel like my home,” he admitted. “Uncle Karl is nice, but he does not feel like my parent. Hans growed so much, I am not knowing him anymore. Hilda is only home left. She visited Johana Leonie in Germany. I stayed. I wanted not to go. I think it was bad wolf,” he admitted aloud for the first time. “I was too scared. Hilda had to see home was gone without me.” There was guilt and regret in his voice, but he was pretty sure he would make the same decision even if it were somehow possible to change it.

He suppressed the inclination to kick the dirt and instead squeezed Evelyn’s wolf symbol. Which reminded him. He pulled it out and showed it to her. “Samwise broke this summer,” he told her, guiltily, feeling like he had somehow failed her as he showed her his repairs to the grass ring. The ring she had made for him wasn’t nearly as fine as it had been before spending half a year in his pocket being twiddled with and squeezed whenever he was upset. “I tried to fix it, but it is your wolf. Did you want to fix it more? Make it yours again?”

He should probably learn a charm to protect it from such wear and tear, and he made a mental note not to mess with Samwise once she made the symbol her own again until after he had done so and protected it properly.

1 Heinrich I don’t know. This seems to be our thing. 1414 Heinrich 0 5

Evelyn Stones

September 04, 2019 3:45 PM

We could meet up on purpose some time. by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn felt gross and dirty when Heinrich backtracked to reassure her of their friendship. He blamed himself and she wondered whether she was manipulative for requiring that of him. It seemed so grossly unfair of her. At the same time, she really had wondered, and he seemed keen to make sure she understood that he really did want to be friends. Each time he said it was like a balm to her heart, and she smiled softly by the time he was done.

"Clear," she agreed. "I want to be friends, too." She kept her previous conversation with Ness firmly locked away, and found that it wasn't too hard to do. She did want to be friends with Heinrich. Whatever else her fuddled stomach and brain weren't sure about, she was definitely sure that she wanted to be friends with him.

"Mediocre?" Evelyn supplied, not sure whether he was searching for a different word or whether he'd chosen that one on purpose. She nodded, understanding exactly the feeling of a middle type of summer. He seemed so dejected as he spoke about home and the wolves and Evelyn was torn between being glad that he'd kept up with that thought as well, and being heartbroken that everything else seemed to be wrong for him. "I won't really get to know my little brother either," Evelyn agreed, hoping he knew she was trying to relate and not to one up him. Her throat was thick as she thought about losing a family and a home in such a severe way as Heinrich had, and she clamped her mouth shut. "I don't think it was bad wolf. You had to take care of yourself, and you had to let Hilda take care of herself. That seems like good wolf. Or middle wolf," she added the last with a small smile. "It's good of you to recognize it, too."

He took a seat and showed her his ring, and Evelyn wriggled. She felt so much less alone than she had in a long time. "I have yours, too," she said, retrieving the Quaffle-colored stone from her pocket. She wondered whether it was notably smoother from all the time she spent polishing it with her nervous fingers. "Not broken. Worn. That means it's helping, right?" she smiled.

Accepting the ring from his palm, she turned it over in her fingers and added only a few small repairs from the grass they sat in. Then she passed it back to him. "It is perfect as is. Now it's not just me, but both of us. Your good wolf too."

She frowned down at the grass then, shy of looking at Heinrich with guilty eyes. "I think I fed my bad wolf this summer," she admitted in a quiet voice, thinking of all the times she'd snuck in someplace she wasn't supposed to be, lied about her age or her intentions, stolen Pop-Tarts and other small items. She thought of the disappointment on her social worker's face and the feeling that the woman knew exactly what she was getting up to and closed her eyes. "I don't know how to feed the good wolf sometimes."

OOC - Heinrich sitting god mod approved by Heinrich's author.

22 Evelyn Stones We could meet up on purpose some time. 1422 Evelyn Stones 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

September 05, 2019 9:56 AM

People do that? by Heinrich Hexenmeister

Heinrich smiled tentatively as Evelyn also made it clear that she wanted to be friends, too. Heinrich was a very serious sort of person, however, and not prone to smiling without good cause, so it faded quickly back into his normal expression.

“Mediocre,” he repeated, nodding, and tucked the word into his memory, taking her suggestion of it to mean that ‘middle’ in that context had not been a correct English usage, as he had suspected. He kind of hated that he was still making mistakes, but at the same time, he was feeling pretty proud of himself that he was doing as well as he was, and was familiar enough with the language to know when he was saying something wrong, even if he didn’t know the right way to say it.

He nodded in commiseration that Evelyn shared the problem of having a stranger as a sibling. Heinrich was luckier, he thought, in that he had bonded with Hans when he was little, and they still had that foundation between them, even if they were growing apart now. Evelyn never had that. Though it did mean that Heinrich was more aware of what was missing, and so probably mourned it more.

It took him a minute to figure out what she meant by him recognizing that he had to let Hilda take care of herself. That hadn’t been what he had meant. He had recognized no such thing. He had abandoned her in her time of need. But he had used English wrong again and Evelyn thought he had just been giving her space.

Though, now that she said it that way, maybe Hilda had needed to see that for herself. It might have been easier for her if he’d been on hand, and he still felt like he’d burrowed himself in a hole instead of being there for her, but maybe it was good for Hilda to face these things herself. He had tried to warn her, but reason wasn’t the same as seeing. Heinrich hadn’t needed to see to know, but Hilda had. And having seen, she was doing better this year already, he could tell. She was actually trying to learn English now, and trying to connect to the non-Germans.

She’d needed to see Germany again for herself, and realize that Germany wasn’t the thing that mattered, wasn’t the thing that was missing now. Uncle Karl had been adamant that they would go nowhere near Zauberstadt, and if they couldn’t go there, Germany was just a place, a big place that had little concern for quartet of emigrants, and Heinrich wanted just as little to do with the country that had - however justifiably - shattered his trust in the world, his parents, and himself.

He returned another brief and tiny smile in response to Evelyn’s attempt to reassure him. He wasn’t sure there was a middle wolf - two wolves per person was quite enough wolves in the world, especially if some people were feeding both of them - but he appreciated the sentiment. He hadn’t done good by hiding in Utah, which he could agree with, but neither had it necessarily been bad either. It just was what it was. He’d kept himself safe after doing all he could to convince Hilda not to go.

He was glad Evelyn wasn’t upset that he’d broken Samwise (and the ring had definitely been broken, not worn, before he did his best to fix it) or, worse, read too much into it and blamed him for why she’d been feeding her bad wolf instead of her good one. That was, she claimed she’d done that. She didn’t say what she done exactly.

She didn’t say a lot of things, he’d noticed. He still didn’t know exactly what her situation was, just that there were some well fed bad wolves involved and one particularly scarring incident included the intentional absence of medical services. Heinrich’s parents were literally Dark Wizards, but he couldn’t imagine a parent doing that to their own kid.

Somehow, even if he were willing to tell Evelyn the charge that got his parents imprisoned, which he wasn’t, Heinrich didn’t think she would appreciate learning that the sort of bad guys that DADA existed to help people against were nicer parents than hers.

Of course, that was Heinrich’s whole problem. They had been good parents. They also got paid to murder people using dark magic. Heinrich’s brain simply could not cope with both of those statements being true. And since a court of law proved the second, the first had to be false. He just didn’t remember anything bad, so now he distrusted everything he remembered, certain there must be bad in there. If there’d just been a little neglect, if they’d kept themselves aloof, shown a propensity for violence or cruel words, or really done anything he could have held against them, he could have written them off as bad people and been done with it. But he’d looked up to them, loved them, and apparently missed every indication that they were actually evil.

Likewise, despite her own admission to feeding bad wolves, he saw no evil in Evelyn either. So obviously he was blind and broken in that regard, just as he’d thought he was. He looked down at Samwise, now back in his possession, their shared good wolf, and wished the metaphorical ones were so easily identified and distinguished. For both of them. Evelyn had said she wasn’t sure that it was the bad one she’d been feeding, so she must have trouble telling them apart, too.

He slid the ring onto his finger, thinking that might be a safer conveyance for it until he found that unbreakable enchantment for it.

Verbally, he wasn’t sure how to respond, and he was starting to hit the point where his delay couldn’t be forgiven as the extra time needed by a foreign speaker.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he eventually came out with, after discarding a dozen other options as too permissive or too accusatory. “I will not judge,” he promised. “My parents did worse.” He hesitated, struggling not with the English, but simply with sharing his feelings, because this wasn’t just surface level concerns. This was the root of all his self doubt. “And I still love them.”

Because only monsters would love monsters after they knew they were monsters and monsters could only love monsters, so since he still loved his parents and his parents had shown every sign of loving him, he must therefore be a monster, too.

He kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, in part to give Evelyn space and privacy, but equally to grant the same to himself. He hoped she wouldn’t wonder at his certainty that his parents had done worse things than whatever her undisclosed faults had been. Or, if she did, she would assume that since she wasn’t in jail, and she knew they were, if not on what charge, that he was assuming she hadn’t committed actual crimes.

He wasn’t making that assumption.

“Your secrets are safe with me,” he added, in case she worried he might turn her in. Unless she murdered someone. He might have to tell on her if she murdered someone.

But he’d try to convince her to confess willingly first.

But he didn’t think she’d murdered anyone. But he’d thought that about Mutter and Vater, too, so what did he know?

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister People do that? 1414 Heinrich Hexenmeister 0 5

Evelyn Stones

September 05, 2019 4:13 PM

I'm pretty sure they do sometimes. by Evelyn Stones

Heinrich's small smiles were very nice. Evelyn wondered whether many people got to saw them; she always felt honored when she got to herself. She'd been voted friendliest or something like that first year, so she suspected that she was more prone to smile than he was. Still, she felt like she understood to some extent. She didn't have parents in jail, but she thought that maybe being alone - being abandoned - felt the same, no matter what the reason. It was a little different if they were in jail for something they'd done to Heinrich or his siblings, but Evelyn didn't want to push him to talk about that if he didn't want to.

In fact, she didn't want to push him to talk about anything if he didn't want to. When he lapsed into silence, his face displaying signs of thoughts running behind his eyes, Evelyn sat quietly, content with companionable silence. When he did speak again, it was to offer an ear.

Evelyn opened her mouth, prepared to reject the offer, and then closed it again. Why shouldn't she share? There was, of course, the chance that he would hate her. While his parents had obviously done something jail-worthy, it may have been a mistake, and Heinrich didn't seem to be involved, whereas now Evelyn was making her own mistakes. Heinrich was good, and Evelyn was bad. If she told him everything, would it be worth it? It would probably feel good, but what if she lost him?

She thought again of something Ness had said about trust, and wondered what that meant. Did she have to be able to trust people to like her no matter what? To want to be her friend no matter what? She didn't think even Ness would want to be her friend if Evelyn explained everything, and that's why she hadn't told anybody. At the same time, Heinrich seemed like he understood the need to protect yourself, take care of yourself, and just let go sometimes. Maybe he'd even want to sneak into a concert with her sometime. She tried to imagine him at a muggle rave and almost laughed at the thought. Almost.

"I'm not worried you'd tell anybody," Evelyn decided finally, peeking at him under her eyelashes as she looked down at the ground between them and absently picked a few more pieces of grass. "I'm more worried what you'd think of me." Her voice trailed off and she realized she'd said too much not to explain now.

Silently berating herself for that, she sighed and sat forward, crossing her legs more comfortably and settling in to her probable doom. "I just sort of wanted to feel like I had control over anything right now. My mom . . . well it's just CJ and my dad at home. And then me over the summer. I wanted to think I could be my own person. Like I'm not just his daughter or his disappointment or his leftovers from my mom. Or his sister. I want to be more than my family.

But I was stupid. I stole a box of Pop-Tarts from a grocery store. I gave them to a homeless person, so maybe it wasn't all bad, but I knew I shouldn't have stolen them. And I snuck into some concerts. I was stupid. I know I'm so stupid."

She sighed again, blinking back tears. "So what's the verdict? Do you hate me now?"

22 Evelyn Stones I'm pretty sure they do sometimes. 1422 Evelyn Stones 0 5

Heinrich

September 06, 2019 2:28 PM

That seems almost too easy by Heinrich

Initially, Heinrich wasn’t entirely sure how he felt that Evelyn wasn’t worried about him telling somebody what she said. Was that because she trusted him? They didn’t know each other all that well, honestly, so he wasn’t sure that could be it, though it was far and away the best option. Or was it because she’d noticed he didn’t have any other friends so who would he tell? There was Hilda, of course, but Hilda talked to even fewer people than he did, and much less understandably. Or, worst case, was it because he seemed like the sort to be a co-conspirator in bad wolfing?

But then she was worried what he’d think of her, and he realized her worry about tattling was mostly just subsumed by the greater worry and consequently not really much considered at all. So that was good, he guessed. Though that still left her worried about telling him what she’d done, and he really wouldn’t have been surprised if she left him to speculate and worry on that without providing any actual facts to direct that speculation.

But she was talking. And he listened. He did not know what a pop-tart was, but he guessed from context it was some kind of food. The rest he followed well enough to gather that theft and trespassing were the major offenses.

“I do not,” he told her. Truthfully, he was mostly just relieved she hadn’t murdered anyone, but he was sure she wouldn’t want to hear that he had considered it a possibility.

“You hurt no one,” he pointed out, deciding to use a strict definition of physical hurting rather than economic. “It is good wolf to feed homeless man. It is bad wolf to take without pay. You might have middle wolf, too. If you want, you could send money to the store, that is more food for the good wolf.”

The concerts were trickier. Like not being there for Hilda, that trespass could not be undone. He supposed she could pay the admission cost, but that would likely be more than the box of food and Evelyn might not have that.

Besides, it wasn’t the concerts or the stealing that were the real issue. That was just how it manifested.

Heinrich hadn’t been able to stand the thought of going to Germany. Evelyn needed independence from her family.

There was obvious resentment there, definitely for her father and also for her brother. And her mother was gone. He didn’t know if she died or if Evelyn’s parents were just divorced and she didn’t have custody, though if Evelyn had reported her dad for whatever he’d done, that seemed like a bad choice by the courts if courts were involved, so maybe she declined custody by choice? In any case, it seemed she wasn’t around now any more than Heinrich’s parents were. Though CJ was young enough that the separation had to be recent, and he kind of recalled parents being pluralized when they first connected in MARS last year. Maybe the ‘family stuff’ she’d been losing sleep over back then was the divorce. From the lack of grief, he was guessing she hadn’t been lost to death, so it probably had been divorce.

And maybe she blamed her dad. She obviously didn’t like being associated with him, and he completely understood that part. He’d written ‘Karl Hexenmeister’ under ‘Father’ on more than one school form and had felt no need at all to clarify that for the administration.

“Do you want that we brainstorm,” brainstorm was a recent acquisition to his vocabulary that he was particularly pleased about, “a good wolf way to be you and not his?”

1 Heinrich That seems almost too easy 1414 Heinrich 0 5

Evelyn Stones

September 06, 2019 3:51 PM

And still somehow very hard. by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn didn't realize she expected Heinrich to either actually hate her, or to laugh at her for even asking - a dichotomy that was almost equally bad on either side - until he did neither of those things. The sheer fact that he answered her question sincerely made her think that he was already all the way good. She also realized how badly she'd needed to hear it, and to be validated. He didn't say 'of course not' or one of the equally glib and untrue statements that might have made her feel bad for even asking. Instead, he confirmed that he did not hate her, despite Exhibits A, B, and C, as it were. Gratitude warmed her chest and she relaxed some, leaning into the feeling.

"Middle wolf," Evelyn repeated, realizing now how bitter that must have tasted for Heinrich when she'd said it earlier. It made sense, and she supposed it wasn't a bad way of framing the issue, but it did little to assuage the fact that she had indeed not been feeding her good wolf. Better than feeding the bad one, yes, but not good. Perhaps she'd merely been starving them both. Her gnawing, anxious stomach made that seem reasonable.

He suggested that she might send money to the store, which was very sweet but she doubted it worked that way. In any case, she didn't have any money of her own, and stealing from her father or asking him to send the money on her behalf was hardly better. She might write a note, though, if for no other reason than to absolve any fault that had been assigned to the employees who had unknowingly allowed her to steal from the store. She wondered idly whether Jake had gotten in any trouble for that, or if they'd reviewed the security cameras and seen him almost stop her. It must have looked like he'd let her get away with it.

"I hope I didn't hurt anyone," she agreed glumly, torn between wanting to go write the store right now, and wanting to hide her shame for fear of it coming back to her. Perhaps she could write to her social worker. If nothing else, the woman would appreciate feeling in the loop about Evelyn's degradation. Truth be told, Evelyn's social worker was probably her best hope at really getting through all this relatively unscathed, even if she did smell sort of like old cookies and sweaters left in cupboards too long.

Heinrich suggested brainstorming and Evelyn found herself nodding in agreement even before she'd really thought about it too much. "What is the word for 'brainstorming' in German?" Evelyn chuckled, imagining that it had to be very long. "I think that would be nice. Heinrich, why do you want to help me? I'm glad you do and I'm glad we're friends - " She smiled at the word. " - but why do you want to help me?"

22 Evelyn Stones And still somehow very hard. 1422 Evelyn Stones 0 5

Heinrich

September 06, 2019 10:45 PM

It does require communication and cooperation by Heinrich

OOC: Interestingly, it seems German actually borrowed the English word Brainstorming, so Heinrich would have known it well before now. Oops. 'Wir müssen ein Brainstorming durchführen' (literally 'we must a brainstorming carry out') is what Google Translate gives you when you enter 'We need to brainstorm'. So I am retroactively striking out his thought that it was new vocabulary. BIC:

Heinrich nodded in agreement to her hope that she hadn't hurt anyone. He hoped that, too. He hoped it for Evelyn's sake, and for the potential people who might have been affected because getting hurt stank, and he hoped it for himself because he didn't want to be a liar.

He was taken aback slightly by the sidetracking into discussing languages right now, but brainstorming was such a good word in English that German had stolen it, and he appreciated her wanting to know how he would have said it naively. He couldn't help but smile a little at the irony. "Brainstorming," he told her a bit wryly. "German does some theft, too." So he wasn't giving her an entirely disappointing answer, though, he added, "We use Geistesblitz sometimes, too."

Then she asked why he was helping her, and he was a bit baffled by that. Why wouldn't he help her? He couldn't imagine not helping with this. "You are my friend," he said simply. "Friends help friends." Though that wasn't all of it. She was his friend, and he would help her just for that reason for a lot of things, but this particular help was more than that. "And I promised. We help each other with the good wolves. That is why we have these." He held up the hand wearing the grass ring and pushed it around his finger a quarter turn to make sure her attention was drawn to it.

But even if it wasn't Evelyn. Even if they hadn't exchanged wolf symbols. He would still help with this. It was important. It was maybe the most important thing he could do to feed his own good wolf. It was perhaps the most critical way possible to prove he was not his parents. "There are too much bad wolves in the world," he told her seriously. "If I can help shrink one, I will."

1 Heinrich It does require communication and cooperation 1414 Heinrich 0 5