Researching on Library

Sally Manger

April 04, 2012 11:36 AM

Researching by Sally Manger

Summer had left Sally thoughtful, and while she was often intellectually curious, this was an entirely new kind of puzzlement. She was tired of being perplexed and not understanding; there had never been anything that baffled her this way previously. While the thirteen year old could grasp advanced subjects such as higher mathematics—which she learned for enjoyment—and never struggled academically, she found difficulty in comprehending simple emotions, things that small children often master.

This would change, the brunette vowed. She would do what she knew best: research. Nora, she was aware, had been studying people for quite some time, and she was certain her roommate would share her data for the enlightening book which Sally would be penning. Already she had a title ringing through her mind. She liked the sound of The Dissection of Human Emotion.

Of course, she would have to do her own research as well, produce her own data. The Aladren would waste no time on this endeavor. In fact, she strived to begin as soon as possible. Soon, Sally would start her course to discovery of not only intellectual standards but emotional, and maybe then—somehow—in understanding, she could become more… human.

Occasionally, as her situation currently was, she did not often feel that way. Her IQ was above impressive, but what did that mean if she did not know how to properly function without a textbook before her? Sally felt foreign to her own world, and while her mother was often there to comfort her—which implied perhaps she was feeling something bad and still could not recognize it, but there would need to be more information to prove anything—her mother could only do so much. She could not make Sally normal.

Since arriving, the third year had thus far had not experienced any major breakthroughs, but she was optimistic about the prospective future of this endeavor. She had been observing her classmates from afar, unaware, for the most part, how that might have been perceived by others. It was not of the utmost concern to her what others thought of her; right now, she was more focused on learning about human nature and emotions, how they tied together, than if another student felt she was staring.

Today, she behaved similarly as she studied in the library. She was not studying for her classes—which she often did, though it was rather unnecessary—but for her project. Her eyes often wandered from the pages and the print to examine someone across the room, to try to analyze him in a way that she could identify his emotional state. Thus far, she had been rather unsuccessful. Soon, she would need to actually speak to a person.

Opportunity rose soon thereafter. Someone seated himself at the table not quite next to her but near enough that she could whisper without disturbing other library-goers. Her heartbeats increased in speed. “Excuse me,” she breathed. “Hello. I am Sally Manger.” She had gotten quite adjusted to not needing a family location succeeding her name. “How are you feeling today? And why?”

12 Sally Manger Researching 198 Sally Manger 1 5

Daisy Thorpe

April 07, 2012 4:18 PM

Questioning by Daisy Thorpe

Daisy Thorpe was not, by most standards, much of a smiler, but the corners of her mouth did lift slightly as she contemplated the vast expanses of the Sonora library for the first time this year. It was, she thought, a real shame that she hadn’t made it into Aladren; not only would she have had no need to deal with her psychotic roommates there, but she would have been around people in general who preferred books to the company of others and so not had to worry about any other kind of roommates very much, either.

That, though, was only so much idle speculation now, when she had been in Crotalus House for four years and was now embarking on a fifth, so she found her roommates amusing when she could and fled to the peaceful avenues of the library when she couldn’t, or when she had another reason to, such as the CATS. Eliza’s reception of the prefect’s badge eliminated any possibility of Daisy being thrust into the public spotlight and really having an image to worry about so long as she didn’t do anything too stupid and crazy, so she had her whole fifth year to devote to getting the best grades she could. She thought she was going to enjoy it more than she had any other period of time she had spent at Sonora so far.

With that in mind, she wandered around for a while, gathering up books, and then, when her hands felt as full as she could travel with without dropping books everywhere, she headed for her favorite table. Another girl was already sitting at it, further down, but Daisy recognized her as one of the Aladrens and therefore decided she was probably not going to be much in the way and began separating her books into stacks by subject, thinking with pleasure about the long hours of silence as she went through them, today and the next day and so on until CATS. Sometimes, maybe James Owen would join her, or someone else bright enough to talk to, and that would be good, too, but right now, she was thinking mainly of clean parchment and sharp quills as she began to take notes….

”Excuse me.”

Daisy looked up at the other girl without expression, but before she could ask what she wanted, the girl introduced herself as Sally Manger. “Daisy Thorpe,” Daisy said, touching her own chest by way of return introduction. Her eyebrows rose, though, at what it turned out that Sally Manger wanted to know. Daisy considered saying ‘what’ in reply, but she had understood the question clearly enough, she just didn’t know why on earth the other girl would ask it.

“Right now I feel curious about why you want to know,” she said dryly after a second, but she stopped short of saying why she felt it. Better not, she knew, to call a new person weird before she knew what was going on, and if that person might just be important enough somehow for insulting her to be bad. Even if this person was really extremely weird, to just ask someone that, whether it was as the set-up for a joke or not. Thinking of that as a way to set up some kind of crummy joke was weird, in Daisy’s opinion.

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Sally

April 08, 2012 1:54 AM

Answering with more questions by Sally

This is your moment to test what you’ve learned. Sally tried very hard to judge the girl’s facial expression, but she wasn’t really making one. Her blank expression, in fact, resembled what she imagined her own face to look like a majority of the time. The older girl offered her own name in return—Daisy Thorpe—soon thereafter.

”Right now, I feel curious about why you want to know.” The brunette notated the response in her specified documents. She scratched in choppy notes to be edited at a later date; Daisy Thorpe, curious as to motives—skeptical? Her grey-brown eyes flickered from the girl to her papers and back for a moment before her own reply came.

What was she to say? “Well,” the Aladren began simply, “I am doing research. I am currently studying human nature and emotions for the purpose of seeking a deeper level of comprehension.” Or some level of comprehension at all. Just a little would have been nice. “With your permission, I hope to use findings from this interaction in my work.”

“Why were you curious?” It was, she felt, her turn to ask questions again, given that she had just provided an answer. “Why did you not just respond without analyzing? And how were you feeling before I spoke to you?” Sally hoped Daisy wouldn’t mind the inquiries. This research was important to the third year, and she very much hoped the older girl would understand and be of service.

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Daisy

April 08, 2012 9:07 AM

Doing the same by Daisy

Daisy took another moment to digest Sally’s comments about doing research, and then she blinked. “I see,” she said flatly, wondering what planet this girl was from, or at least what her parents did for a living. She could just see it making sense if she was related to some crazy old professor of psychology or something like that, raised by a hermit and actually just one of the new first years, but otherwise, it seemed like the whole idea was just from another planet.

“Are you for real?” she asked when Sally asked why she’d been curious, but then realized the question might just be taken literally. “Don’t answer that,” she added, holding up a hand to forestall any further explanations about research. She had understood it literally again, and the kid looked like she was that kind of Aladren, the ones that might take her completely literally there, too. There was a chance the question might be taken as existential or something.

The topic, though, being picked by someone she recognized now as a pureblood – she remembered, now, hearing her mother talking over the summer about those Crosbys, wasn’t it a shame, the Transfiguration professor finally getting a husband just as her sister became such a scandal and got a divorce – was intriguing. Feelings weren’t something, overall, which Daisy had ever been encouraged to think about as important; if they had been, she didn’t think she ever would have attended her second party. The things that were important to people like, say, her mother, Adelle, simply didn’t interest her at all; she wanted to be left alone, not paraded around all the time like an overdressed Christmas ham. There wasn’t much in life besides the options of narcoleptic garden parties or menial labor, but there had to be something, but at the same time pining for it wasn’t too practical. The thing was to get on with it.

“I’m feeling fine today,” she said, thinking it had been true. Studying was good. She enjoyed doing it. “Planning ahead for my CATS this year. And I guess I’m just an analytical person.” She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs back the other way, and looked hard at Sally for a moment. “Now we get back to why you want to know,” she suggested. “Why the research project?” Maybe it was some kind of special independent study for Fawcett? That was the next thing she could think of. She knew he’d run a few for older students, but maybe all the Aladrens had special lessons or something. She’d have to see about getting some for herself if that was the case, though it might go no further than just seeing this year; she was already planning her schedule for next year in the back corners of her mind, after all, but she had to get through the CATS with good scores before she could bring any of those plans to completion, so it might be better to play it safe for one more year.

0 Daisy Doing the same 0 Daisy 0 5

Sally

April 08, 2012 11:41 PM

Explaining more thoroughly by Sally

The question Daisy posed puzzled the younger girl; was she for real? There were two possibilities sought here. Either she wanted to know if Sally actually existed (which was unlikely, since the answer was obvious), or she was uncertain if she was sincere in her quest or if she was just wasting time. She had heard the phrase was meant to mean sincerity, but why wouldn’t she be sincere? What could she gain in wasting Daisy’s time?

Then the Aladren was instructed not to answer, and so she did not. This, however, confused her more. Why would she ask a question if not for a response? Why would she change her mind after the question had already been issued? Perhaps she had figured out the answer on her own, which was good. Deductive skills were, Sally felt, important.

As Daisy provided answers, the thirteen year old took notes. Feeling fine was, she supposed, a good thing, though it was hardly going to be a break through. “Fine” was what Sally thought she felt when she felt nothing. She wondered if being an analytical person was a good thing. If the older girl was one—and Sally herself obviously was—then it must have been common, but did that make it good? Perhaps that would be one day uncovered. Hopefully her research would lead her there.

Speaking of her project, Daisy inquired why she was doing it. There was no reason not to tell her, so Sally began after a moment of pondering phrasing. “My father raised me not to show emotions, but… he trained me a bit too well. I not only do not display emotions, but I do not understand them. My father is not in my life anymore, so I have decided to research into what I have been missing so that I may come to a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.”

She was quite glad her father was out of her life, and after their latest interaction in the summer, the memories of why were all too fresh. Ross Manger had ruined her, and she couldn’t help but wonder what she might have been like if he had not sucked all of her emotions away. At least her mother was happier now. To what the brunette knew, her mother had been spending a mentionable amount of time with another divorcee, Ryan O’Malley’s father. She wasn’t sure what all that meant for the future, but after that first interaction, she had received a talk about what seemed to be the strongest emotion of all.

“I really hope,” she added with sincerity, “you don’t mind being a part of this research. It is quite vital, I feel, for the betterment of myself to conduct it. if you are willing, I plan to use the data from this encounter in my work—it will be composed into a book once I am finished, so that maybe I can help someone else like me. If you like, I can exclude your name or create an alias. Do I have your permission, Miss Thorpe?” The younger girl was polite in her speaking, proper as any pureblood lady was trained to be, and she used the formal edition of Daisy’s name to show her respect. She was not entirely sure Daisy’s name would even come up in the novel, but she wanted permission just in case.

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Daisy

April 14, 2012 6:17 PM

Smiling and nodding by Daisy

As soon as Sally explained her project, Daisy felt her cheeks heating with embarrassment as she remembered exactly why she really should not ask questions sometimes. Someone’s father issues didn’t bother her too much, she saw developing them at some point as the only natural progression from her father’s near invisibility in the great psychodrama of her mother issues, but someone just bluntly saying that their father was out of their life and at least strongly implying, to her mind, that this was a good thing was a little much, at least when the someone wasn’t her. How was someone supposed to react to that? She thought Sally claiming she didn’t understand emotions made it somehow worse, like she was at least partially just being embarrassed on the other girl’s behalf.

They were, after all, from a polite society. Pretty girls in pretty dresses, and never mind the things that just weren’t discussed, like bodily functions and her relationship with her mother and the general backward wrongness of everything that was part of belonging to their polite society. What kind of idiot did to a kid what Sally was describing? It made survival virtually impossible.

Feeling a glimmer of sympathy for the poor girl after having just reminded herself that some things were more appropriate than others, Daisy bit her tongue instead of pointing out that there was no one else like Sally, at least if she was telling the truth. Daisy still wasn’t completely sure about that, it just seemed too weird, but the same cynicism that made her think that also made her think, at the same time, that yes, it was completely plausible that people really were that weird, somewhere in the world. “Sure,” she said when the speech about what Sally had plans to do finally wound its way to a conclusion. She briefly considered telling the other girl just to call her Morgaine Carey, but then recalled that she did want to live, and did not particularly want Sally Manger to die, so instead, she said, “Call me Susan Howard.”

Now, if she’d had a guess and had been on the other side of this experiment, she would have been trying to figure out why that name had been chosen specifically, but the truth was that she’d pulled it out of the air. She had no idea where it had come from. It wasn’t, though, anything closer to hers, so she thought it was pretty good for an alias. A man’s name might have worked even better, but hey – what were the chances that some second or third year was really going to go through with anything, anyway?

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