Librarian DiAnna Diaz
June 27, 2011 4:41 PM
First years' library orientation by Librarian DiAnna Diaz
Considering quite how frequently younger students tended to get lost in the numerous and winding library shelves in the first portion of term, it seemed like a logical idea to arrange an orientation. So instead of attending class following breakfast one morning during the second week of term, the first year students were required to meet in the library, at DiAnna's desk near the entrance from the main school (the entrance to the Aladren commons was also concealed within the library, but that would be one landmark she would keep quiet from the rest of the students).DiAnna herself was waiting to meet the students. Some of them - most notably the Aladrens - had probably seen her around already. Those who hadn't might not be prepared to discover their school librarian was a young woman of twenty-four years, who was perhaps the Muggle fairytale pictoral representation of a witch (minus the warts, of cause). DiAnna's long hair was dyed black, she always wore dark eye make-up, and further whitened her already pale skin. Her wardrobe was composed almost entirely of black, with occasional flashes of purple and red, and was largely made of velvet and lace. Her feet were encased in high-heeled boots, that helped to put her above the height of the younger students (though several of the older kids were still taller).
"Okay, everyone," DiAnna called attention to herself. She'd gotten a lot more confident with addressing large groups of people since she'd accidentally become divinations professor. "For those of you who don't know me, I'm Miss Diaz, the librarian. This morning we're just going to have a look round the library, because it can be quite daunting when you don't know what you're doing. Before we start, you can take out as many books as you like from the library, as long as you're being sensible. They need renewing after a week or they've been charmed to find their way back to the library." how they did this had never been very clear to DiAnna, but they somehow all ended up on her desk without the students' involvement. "Obviously, if you keep having overdue books, you'll be allowed to borrow fewer at one time than someone who returns books promptly, which could get you into trouble at the end of the year when you need to study for exams. That said, you can stay and study in the librry until ten minutes before curfew, and use any of the books without borrowing them. When you want to check a book out, just find me or one of the library monitors." That was something else she needed to explain.
"The library monitors are student volunteers - the sign-up sheet is just over here," she pointed to the noticeboard, "and first years are welcome to sign up, too, as monitors or assistants." That was the basics covered; now for the books. "Okay, so if you could all stay together for the tour, that would be great." Walking round with the first years, DiAnna showed them where they could find all their subject-relevant textbooks and some age-appropriate fiction. She also pointed out the restricted section, and made it very clear that students were not allowed to enter without staff permission. At the end of the tour, she addressed the group once more. "Okay, now you're free to have a look round properly, and if you want to come and check some books out, or if you have any questions, I'll be at my desk."
(OOC: Remember to stick to site rules when you post. You will earn House points for posting here, just as you would in a class.)
Subthreads: Books, lots of books by Jhonice Trevear with Cherry Bosko
*Yawn* Been there, done that. by David Kim [Aladren] with Kitty McLevy, David Kim
Lost in L-Space! Lost in L-Space! by Mellie Goodwin, Pecari with Michael Grosvenor
Disoriented. (Tag Miss Diaz) by Valerie Lennox, Crotalus with Miss Diaz, Renée Errant
Getting oriented by Paul Bennett, Crotalus with Linus Macaulay, Paul
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Librarian DiAnna Diaz
First years' library orientation
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Librarian DiAnna Diaz
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Mellie Goodwin, Pecari
June 30, 2011 2:48 PM
Lost in L-Space! Lost in L-Space! by Mellie Goodwin, Pecari
Mellie liked books – it was kind of a survival tactic, really, since she was surrounded at home by so many people who loved books; even her parents had two full shelves in the living room, and her old teacher had kept them stacked on more or less every available surface – but for some reason, like it being humongous and intimidating, she hadn’t found herself spending much, by which she meant any, time in the Sonora library. Hearing, therefore, that she was expected to skip a class to learn her way around it inspired feelings of both relief and dread – relief that maybe it would be enterable after today, and dread of doing something that she’d been putting off.The first thing she noticed upon entering was not, however, the vast expanse of shelves she’d noticed the last time she’d stuck her nose through the door. Instead, it was who was running the show. She had seen the lady in the dramatic, old-fashioned-sorta clothes around school, and at the top table, but had thought she was the Divination professor, not the librarian. Librarians were people who looked a bit like Russell’s father but older, or maybe ladies like Mrs. Ballard. This lady…didn’t look like that.
The speech was short, though – which was in itself helpful; the longer someone talked, the more trouble Mellie had with following anything they were saying. She hated people who gave more than one example as part of a longer monologue intended to explain something with a passion, since by the end of the second example, she had no idea what the principle the little story was trying to illustrate had been – and didn’t end with any announcements of a practical joke, so apparently, young people who didn’t even dress like standard-issue old people could be librarians. Mellie decided she was okay with that. It was good when people could do what they wanted to, so long as what they wanted to do wasn’t designed to hurt someone else.
Now, though, they were to explore. She took a few tentative steps out into the stacks, her hands clasped in front of her chest, looking up. Some of the books were so high up that she couldn’t reach them, she’d have to use magic to float them down or else climb the shelves. She hoped they learned to make objects fly before she needed any of the books that were high up, because she didn’t think that even a young librarian would like finding her climbing around on the stacks. Plus, she didn’t want to fall and break her head open or anything. She didn’t have enough brains as it was.
She noticed that someone was with her, or at least in close proximity. “What do you think’s the most of all these – “ she made an expansive gesture, hoping to take in the whole library – “that one person’s ever read, like, in all seven years?” she asked.
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Mellie Goodwin, Pecari
Lost in L-Space! Lost in L-Space!
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Michael Grosvenor
June 30, 2011 5:17 PM
G is for Good Grief, Girl (A)Gain! (WotW) by Michael Grosvenor
Having grown up with computer catalogues, Michael was quite glad that someone was taking the time to explain to him how to find his way without one. He wasn't stupid and he could probably have figured it out but being saved that time was a bonus, in his eyes.His attempts to extrapolate some meaning from the librarian's attire were largely inconclusive. His first thought was that she looked like a witch. But, given that he was surrounded by a range of eleven year old girls who were also witches, he supposed there wasn't really anything a witch typically looked like. She looked, he revised his idea, like a typical Muggle portrayal of a witch. Perhaps she came from one of those old families where everyone was magical and this was some traditional attire that her heritage gave her a right to wear. But he hadn't seen any other people here dressed like her. Even if it was only adults from the magical families who were allowed to dress that way, he was sure some of the other staff had to come from those too. So, at the other extreme, perhaps she was like him but had really got into the magic thing, in a very muggly way. He'd seen a kid in his year wearing a big pointy hat, and the kid had braces which might make him a Muggleborn... But he couldn't be sure. Perhaps she just liked dressing kinda scary. She seemed friendly enough though, and whether she was nice or not was more important to Michael than whatever weird clothes she was wearing, so he decided to brush the issue aside.
He followed her around the library, trying to take mental notes of where everything was. He wasn't sure one tour was going to cement in his memory forever but it was a good start. And it beat being in class. Not that he didn't like class but it could be pretty hectic. The library would probably be one of his favourite places purely on the grounds of being nice and quiet.
Once the tour had finished, he hung about near where they'd stopped. He wasn't uninterested in what the library had to offer but nor was he actively interested enough to go and get a book. He tried to look kind of like he was looking at what was in front of him, in case the librarian got annoyed with him for not doing anything but tried not to look like he was too into it, in case anyone thought he was a geek. He turned at the sound of someone next to him speaking.
“Dunno,” he shrugged. It wasn't a particularly helpful or interesting answer but it was the only reasonable response that sprung to his mind regarding her question. “I don't think I'll be breaking the record, whatever it is, though,” he added.
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Michael Grosvenor
G is for Good Grief, Girl (A)Gain! (WotW)
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Mellie
July 07, 2011 9:40 AM
Re: G is for Good Grief, Girl (A)Gain! (WotW) by Mellie
Mellie laughed when the other first year expressed doubt about his chances of breaking the record. “Yeah, me, either,” she said. “I read but not, you know, like crazy.” She couldn’t usually focus that long, or else she got really into it and so on tenterhooks that she had to get up and move around for a while because of the action on the page. Either way, it wasn’t conducive to getting in huge page counts, even when she wasn’t dealing with very hard stuff. Since this was a library and the seventh years used it, too, she was pretty sure the majority of the stuff in here was not written completely at the easy level.“I’m Mellie, by the way,” she said, realizing she didn’t think she and Teppenpaw Guy had met yet and feeling a little awkward about talking to someone without telling them a name to call her other than Pecari Girl. She didn’t mind if they called her that, but knew that some people might mind calling her that themselves, since she wasn’t too crazy about calling him just Teppenpaw Guy. There weren’t a lot of Teppenpaw guys, but there were enough that it was pretty non-indicative and not much use as a name, not to mention implying that some of them weren’t interesting enough to bother distinguishing from each other.
And that just wasn’t true. It had been a little overwhelming at first, but she’d decided that she liked getting to meet a lot of new people, because most people were interesting. Everyone had some kind of background not quite like hers, something she wasn’t familiar with, and it was fun to learn about that kind of thing. When it had originally been said, she hadn’t really understood what Dad meant about how easy it would be to lose the balance and start thinking school was more about meeting people and having friends than it was about learning, but it hadn’t taken her too long at Sonora to start to get it, at least a little. The variety of both at school was so much bigger than it was at home, it was hard to decide what to look at next most of the time.
She felt like she should say something else, but wasn't sure what, or even if she was right about it being the right thing to do. That was the bad thing about there being so many different people and stuff. She didn't have the familiar old beacons of habit to guide her anymore and let her know she was starting to annoy people in one way or another. She really hoped she mastered the Sonora version of the trick soon.
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Mellie
Re: G is for Good Grief, Girl (A)Gain! (WotW)
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Michael
July 12, 2011 2:07 PM
We should be filed under M (WotW) by Michael
“I'm Michael,” said Michael. Well, that was that avenue of conversation exhausted. He could have padded it out for an extra two seconds by adding his surname but she hadn't given hers so that probably would have been weird. He smiled at her. He fiddled absent-mindedly with a loose piece of binding on the spine of a book near his hand. He half glanced at it and noticed the title was something about wars. He looked back to Mellie. He smiled. Continuing to thumb the edge of the book, he wondered what else to say.“So...” he began, without any real idea of where he was going to go with that. He could state the obvious, that she was a Pecari, which he could see from her robes, but then she already knew that. He'd thought, for the last week, that he was actually surprisingly ok at talking to girls. It seemed to have gone well on his two previous exposures to the startlingly new situation. But they'd had class stuff to talk about and that was, apparently, what had saved him from sinking in the conversational quagmire. He rather felt he and Mellie had exhausted all there was to say about being in the library, having both expressed their limited interest in being there. The more he tried to think of anything to say, the more blank his mind went. And the gap had been too long now. Asking how she liked Sonora, or where she was from would probably have been ok, although boring, if he'd asked it at the outset. Commenting on her house was even starting to seem like a brilliant missed opportunity. However, the gap had been so long now that it would seem even lamer – putting it in after such a long pause would be like underlining and highlighting how rubbish a thing to say it was. After being silent for what felt like an age, he felt like what he came out with had to be pretty good to justify the amount of thinking time. And he couldn't think of anything.
OOC – sorry! I'm aware this is probably horrible to work with but he's not had much practice at chit-chat! Also, I managed to reply to myself with this initially... If someone could delete that, it'd be grand...
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We should be filed under M (WotW)
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Mellie
July 18, 2011 4:58 PM
Or S, for Speechless. by Mellie
It seemed, Mellie noted with dismay, that she’d met someone with as little of a natural talent for making graceful, witty conversation at the drop of a hat as she had. The silence went on, then on a little further, until it became just slightly uncomfortable, both of them standing there smiling at each other without a clue what to do next.Finally, Michael came up with something. It was one syllable long, but it wasn’t silence. Maybe it highlighted the silence a little, but it broke it at the same time, so that was good. Better than nothing, which was what she had come up with, anyway. She almost wondered if she should just excuse herself and run off and try not to be seen too much for the rest of the day, but they were going to be in classes together for the rest of their time at school, so that really wasn’t a good long-term strategy, and besides, it didn’t…work in another way, and how on earth was she this inarticulate with the parents she had? Dad was quiet, sure, so she guessed she could sort of blame him, but when he did talk, he was clear about it and made sense and all those really great things that she totally wasn’t doing right now, even in her stupid thoughts.
“So…yeah,” she said, with an awkward laugh she hoped was offset by a genuine smile. Why did she have to be so awkward? Yes, speaking meant risking making someone not like her or think she was crazy or something, but not saying anything was going to do the same thing, no risk involved, just fact. Why did that never process right in her stupid head?
She guessed she could make standard small talk – inquiries about his well-being, the day, the weather, all that stuff – but when she did that with people at random things her parents drug her to at home, it always felt a little unreal, and really stiff and uncomfortable, too. It was easier to be silent sometimes than to go through that. She didn’t want to do that. So she started babbling about the first thing that, finally, popped into her head.
“So, what do you think of these teachers? My cousin thinks that lesson of Fawcett’s, where we saw all the stuff that goes in potions before it’s, you know, all chopped up and dried and stuff, was to start, like, figuring out which ones he doesn’t want in his advanced class in…years from now. I thought it sounded crazy when Alison said it, but the more I’m here, I don’t really know…”
Okay, so it wasn’t brilliant, but maybe it was a start. She’d personalized it a little so it wasn’t as bad as pure chitchat, hadn’t she? So that was good. Still, she felt compelled to add, “Sorry, I really don’t get out enough. It really is good to meet you.” Wasn’t that what people said? And it was, she guessed, it just felt sort of weird coming out of her mouth….
OOC: Nah, it was fine! Likewise sorry for the title repeat up there - I really shouldn't post while half-awake.
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Mellie
Or S, for Speechless.
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Michael
July 20, 2011 11:43 AM
Or C for Can't Think of a Clever Title... by Michael
’So yeah…’ Well, Mellie wasn’t making a scornful remark and stalking off but for a horrible moment, Michael thought that she was going to leave things there. Not that he was judging her for that, seeing as he couldn’t do any better, but if they were both as hopeless as each other, this really wasn’t going to go anywhere. Luckily, Mellie hit upon something to say. Or rather a lot of things to say, actually. Her simple question seemed to open some kind of conversational floodgate as she began explaining the reasoning behind it.“I don’t know,” said Michael, because he really didn’t. “I’m not really sure how much he’d be able to tell from watching us gather stuff up though. I mean, that’s quite a different skill from brewing Potions. I hope he wouldn’t be spying on us and deciding that/i> quickly. Seems a bit unfair,” but then, whoever had said life was going to be fair? He couldn’t recall anyone ever promising him that and, even if they had, he would have been thoroughly convinced by now that it was a lie. Plus Mellie had said her cousin had said so. “But your cousin might know better if she’s been here years already. Did she tell you much before you came?” he asked, curious to know what other useful survival tips were being passed around. “Like, did she say why she thought that about Fawcett? Is he really mean?
“That’s ok, my fault too,” he smiled sheepishly, as she apologised, he presumed for the awkward silence. “I don’t always know what to say either,” he wondered whether, if he was having that problem and Mellie had that problem, maybe everyone had that problem sometimes. But he’d always felt like it wasn’t very normal to not be good at talking to people and he was too scared that it was a stupid idea to try sharing it with Mellie, even though she was also a self-confessed awkward conversationalist. “But it’s nice to meet you too,” he finished instead.
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Michael
Or C for Can't Think of a Clever Title...
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Mellie
July 20, 2011 1:01 PM
Dial R for Reply? by Mellie
Mellie couldn’t help but smile broadly in relief when her abrupt, weird attempt at starting conversation seemed to work. Her positive feelings toward Michael, not completely absent to begin with, increased significantly. It had seemed entirely possible that his response to her ramble about the Potions professor would have been to tell her she was weird and then go off and laugh with the guys about it.“I think she actually likes him,” Mellie said. “Sort of. But then, she’s taking seventh year Potions, so…” Mellie shrugged, not sure what, if any, effect that might have on Alison’s liking or disliking Fawcett. If Advanced classes were really as much harder than the lower ones as she’d been led to believe, having him for an Advanced professor seemed like a good reason to not like him in and of itself. “I don’t know. She didn’t really get to tell me too much, and plus, I think she was lying about half of it. I don’t really think the headmaster would let him and Professor Crosby run secret societies, do you? And I’ve got a sane friend from home in second year who never mentioned anything like that.”
Alison had always liked messing with her. Mellie was just glad that a long time of no contact hadn’t undone all the tiny amount of work she’d ever done toward becoming not gullible enough to believe all the weird things her cousin and others came up with. She was still more gullible than not, or at least evidence suggested she was, but she wasn’t quite ready to buy that her Potions teacher was grooming a new generation of politicians on the weekends or that her Transfiguration professor led a cult until she had something more than Alison’s word for it.
“I guess we’re good company, then,” Mellie said brightly when Michael acknowledged his own occasional problems with conversation. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
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Mellie
Dial R for Reply?
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Michael
July 20, 2011 3:14 PM
L for Lesson Learnt by Michael
“I doubt it. Sounds like something out of a story,” Michael replied. “If that’s the kind of help she gave you, I think I’m rather glad I don’t have any cousins or anything here,” he grinned. He had wished repeatedly in the run up to Sonora and his first weeks here he’d had someone older to tell him what to expect but he’d never entertained the idea that that might have been a bad thing. Nat wasn’t the sort to wind him up and tell him stories but he was aware of that kind of sibling – or in Mellie’s case, cousin – from T.V. shows. “Who’s the second year you know and what houses are she and your cousin in?” he asked.It was a little odd to think that two people who were inept at conversation trying to have one might be a good thing. It didn’t seem to be terribly sound logic. Perhaps it would lead to a more than average number of awkward moments but Michael supposed it was the not minding that mattered. It was definitely very nice to have someone not mind that you weren’t quite perfect. It would have been exceptionally useful to Michael had he been able to decompartmentalise that idea, removing it from being a possibility merely in the realm of having a conversation and apply it as a general principle. However, he failed to see the greater lesson to be learnt from the interaction, taking from it only that a conversation going wrong wasn’t always the end of the world.
“Yeah, it is,” he nodded at Mellie.
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Michael
L for Lesson Learnt
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Mellie
July 25, 2011 1:56 PM
A is for Agreement by Mellie
“Yeah,” Mellie replied, smiling so he wouldn’t think she was offended, to the idea of it maybe being okay to not have relatives here. “Alison – my cousin’s – seventh year Pecari. Russell’s in Aladren.” She paused, then added, for the sake of completeness, “and there’s Topher, second year Crotalus, but…yeah, I’d believe Alison first.”She thought about that for a second, then added, “I guess that makes you the first Teppenpaw I know. I mean, unless one of my grandparents was in there or something, but I don’t think any of Dad’s family has ever come here, and Mom’s a Muggleborn Pecari.” And when Mom had told her about Houses, she’d said that Dad would have been either a Crotalus or an Aladren right on the brink of being a Crotalus, since she didn’t seem to think of Aladren so much as a House in its own right as a place where people who were somewhere between being Crotali and Pecaris went.
Mom had been even vaguer on Teppenpaw, though. Dad fit into those House qualities – he was kind, he preferred diplomacy and consensus to a fight any day, he seemed to hold that everyone ought to improve themselves as far as they could – but he was, Mom had explained, just much more precise, detail-oriented, independent, and interested in how things worked. Those qualities were why he’d been promoted pretty regularly through his career, so that now, his knack for looking at plans and making them more water-tight could actually be put to use. It was a point of pride with him that he didn’t make mistakes on the job, that everything was done as quickly and efficiently as possible, with no disturbances and certainly no one noticing strange groups of men in gray suits the way they had in the bad old days….
But yeah. Mom didn’t know what a Teppenpaw was, just that none of them were, and Mellie didn’t really follow the extended family enough to know what was going on with it most of the time, much less what had gone on with it fifty years ago. Which meant, Mellie guessed, she’d have to figure out this one for herself.
“Is it nice, in Teppenpaw?” she asked.
She was relieved to hear that it was good that they were good company - a logical enough conclusion, she guessed, but she'd felt a little like she was walking out on a limb as soon as she'd said it. She didn't really know how to make friends, much less how to indicate that was what she was trying to do. "Also good to agree," she said.
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A is for Agreement
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Michael
July 29, 2011 9:35 AM
P is for Phew (haha, curve ball!) by Michael
“So do you know about Muggle stuff and Magic stuff?” Michael asked, as Mellie rattled off a list of friends and relations who’d been at the school, including a Muggle-born mother. He’d thought when Cherry had mentioned it that it must be really cool but it had been a bit tricky to talk out on the pitch. The library was much more conducive to conversation, so maybe he could find out a bit more from Mellie about it. “What’s it like? Do you get to have Muggle stuff like T.V. in your house or does the magic mean it won’t work?” He knew all too well the complications of trying to mix Magical and Muggle technology, having had to see a specialist to fit him with a pair of magical hearing aids before he started school.“Teppenpaw seems nice,” he replied, “I think it’s meant to be the friendly house or something, and my roommates seem nice. One of them’s a Pureblood but he doesn’t seem to mind about me being Muggleborn, which apparently a lot of them do. I guess the ones that do don’t go into Teppenpaw so I haven’t really had to deal with any of them yet. Do you like it in Pecari?” he asked, as it seemed fair to return the question. Funny how they’d come back to this topic when he’d been so worried that it was boring that he’d clammed up instead of asking it. Life was annoying like that sometimes, he supposed.
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P is for Phew (haha, curve ball!)
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Mellie
August 01, 2011 2:03 PM
F is for Friends, then? by Mellie
“A little,” Mellie said when Michael asked if she knew about magic and Muggle things, and then felt like she’d still exaggerated when he started asking more questions and she had to stop to think for a second before she remembered what Mom said a TV was.“No, we don’t have one of those,” she said. “I kind of wish we did every time Mom mentions it, but we’re really not that close to her parents.” Possibly because they lived several states over. Possibly. It wasn’t like Mom had ever mentioned not getting along with them. Honestly, she didn’t talk about them that much at all. “But they sound really interesting. Are they as cool as she makes them sound?” She figured they had to have something going for them, since Alison usually summed up time spent with her parents as “watched too much TV and played chess on Anthony’s e-reader.”
Mellie was glad Alison had finally explained what an “e-reader” was, because otherwise she was sure she would have either gone on a tangent right now that made her sound like an utter moron speculating about whether there really was something Muggles had to use to read the letter e or else asked Michael what one was out of a clear blue sky without any obvious connection to what they had been talking about. Someday, she was sure, she was going to annoy someone with that habit, which was another one she normally didn’t notice until it was too late to stop herself from doing it.
She half-shrugged, spreading her hands palms-up, when asked how she liked Pecari. “It’s pretty good, I guess. I’m still kind of getting used to sharing a room with so many other girls, you know? But everyone’s been cool so far, and I like Professor McKindy as Head of House..y person. I wish we had different House colors, though. Way too much brown, I guess since gold is so close to yellow and we share that with you guys…That would be kind of awkward during Quidditch, yeah? Do you play any sports?”
And there she went, with the things only loosely connected to the other things. And what did she know, maybe he did play Quidditch even though he was Muggleborn. Maybe Muggles had ground Quidditch or something, or he had learned since coming to school. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, though, post-agreement.
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F is for Friends, then?
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Michael
August 01, 2011 2:38 PM
We don't seem to have a very good grasp of the alphabet... by Michael
“Erm… Well, I guess they are,” Michael realised, as Mellie asked about television. “I mean, it’s sort of weird to think of it as being amazing or special because literally everyone has one, so it just seems ordinary. And there’s loads of shows that are really rubbish, so you can waste your life watching stuff you don’t really want to see but do, just cos it’s there. But when you think about it or try to explain it to someone… Yeah, a box of moving pictures, telling you stories. It’s a pretty cool thing to have. And kind of odd that you guys don’t have it, seeing as even your photographs move…” He trailed off. The world was a funny place – both worlds were funny places, especially in what one had that the other didn’t. It didn’t seem to be an even cut off, like one was more behind than the other. They overlapped in odd areas, or one world had got further than the other in one thing but lagged behind in something seemingly related.“No. Well, I dunno… I hadn’t really thought,” Michael quickly corrected himself as Mellie asked about sports. Boys were supposed to like sports. Deciding to skim around the lack of sporting experience he’d gained at Muggle school, owing to being picked last when it was compulsory, like in P.E., or left out all together at break times, he focussed on Quidditch. “I don’t really know much about Quidditch. If I was going to get a book out, it’d probably be one explaining the basics. I figure that other kids will have way more experience than me, but maybe I’ll try out in a few years or go for reserve or something,” this was almost entirely posturing. He possibly would go as far as taking a reserve position to save face, if he was actually put on the line but it would very hard to hide his hearing impairment out on the pitch, as he’d discovered in flying, so he had no burning desire to put himself forward. It seemed like a fast track to people Finding Out, and no one would take him seriously as a player once they knew, not to mention the rest of the hell that would follow. “Do you play?” he asked.
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We don't seem to have a very good grasp of the alphabet...
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Mellie
August 08, 2011 9:35 PM
Now I know my ZYXes.... by Mellie
“Photos don’t tell stories, though,” she said, biting her bottom lip a little. “Maybe if paintings put on a play…I don’t know if they’d want to, though, and it could only be somewhere like here, where there’s lots of money. Portraits aren’t super hugely common, they’re really expensive to have made and it’s supposed to be something crazy that makes them work, so most people never have them.” The only time she had ever seen a portrait before coming to Sonora was when she’d gone in to work with one of her parents, and that was rarer than portraits by far.She smiled, though. “I guess I can understand, though, why it’s weird. It seems just as weird to think of magic being special. It’s just something everyone I’ve ever known had and used all the time.” All the adults, anyway. They kids had performed magic as often as they could get away with and manage it, or accidentally, but if it wasn’t always discouraged as firmly as the law might have liked, nor was it encouraged in them. People had, she knew, very different thoughts about that; though it was supposed to be almost impossible to get full control before age eleven and most people weren’t as strong as they were going to be until much later than that, there were some who felt children should be taught some control as soon as they started performing magic or got old enough to understand, depending on which came first. Her parents thought it was good to learn to do things by hand first, though, because it taught one not to be lazy.
Mellie nodded when Michael asked if she played Quidditch, trying to look modest. “I’m going to be a Chaser on the Pecari team,” she said. “Me and Jhonice – one of my roommates – are both Chasers, with the captain. But I think we’re playing Aladren first, and they’re all older than us, so…” She shrugged philosophically, not mentioning that Jhonice had trouble flying at all in front of a Teppenpaw because she thought it might be bad form more than because she thought Michael would go carrying stories to his team. “I’ve never been on a real team, or in front of lots of people, though. I have no idea how that part of it is going to go. I’m really a little nervous, to tell you the truth.”
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Now I know my ZYXes....
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Michael
August 15, 2011 10:37 AM
It's as easy as.... x-ray specses? by Michael
Michael nodded along to what Mellie said about photos and paintings. He guessed it made sense if you thought about it that way.“I like the idea of them putting on plays,” he smiled, “Or even just telling stories. They must know some interesting stuff.” He wondered how much they actually knew. Mellie had said the magic that made them work was ‘crazy,’ which he could well believe. They seemed so real but he wasn’t sure whether they could really think. Maybe they were kind of like robots, in that they could appear to think but were only capable of running the programmes they’d been given. He wasn’t going to ask. He was sure that was a debate that was way beyond him.
“I’m sure you’ll be really great,” he encouraged, when Mellie talked about her Quidditch debut. He could definitely see why flying in front of so many people was a scary prospect but he was going to be full of respect for anyone who was daring to take it on, and he was sure lots of other people would feel the same. “They chose you after all, and the people in the stands either didn’t get chosen or didn’t try. And I promise I’ll be cheering you on. I mean, if you’re not against Teppenpaw because I think my roommates are on the team and I’m probably supposed to be wanting us to win, but even if you are against us, I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for you too.”
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It's as easy as.... x-ray specses?
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