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Evelyn Stones

January 30, 2019 12:50 AM

Home [tag Ness] by Evelyn Stones

In the library, in a big squishy chair, sat Evelyn Stones. She was not the same Evelyn Stones who had said goodbye to this squishy chair just a few months prior, as this Evelyn was a big sister and a daughter of two halfway decent parents. She was also a witch (for sure this time), and she was a second year. She was also a teenager now, courtesy of a summer birthday, and thought the whole thing was rather important. Which wasn't to say that Evelyn herself was important, of course. She was still sort of a pebble in a landslide, but at least she was a pebble like all the other ones around her.

Evelyn had asked one of her favorite pebbles to join her after their first day of classes. They had, of course, had classes together, but that was never quite the same as their big squishy chair. She briefly wondered how many years they'd both be able to fit in it together, and then smiled at the idea that they'd have many more years together to find out.

When the Aladren appeared, Evelyn offered a brilliant smile. She was happy to see Ness. She was comfortable with her friend, and the messy bun and lack Aladren colored lipstick were proof of it. She had written to Ness over the summer, but announcing the birth of her brother and keeping simple updates in the post, both to Ness and to Mrs. McLeod, was simply not the same.

Patting the seat beside her and holding out her arms to offer a hug, Evelyn smiled. "It's good to be home," Evelyn said.

22 Evelyn Stones Home [tag Ness] 1422 Evelyn Stones 1 5

Ness

February 03, 2019 6:33 AM

School! by Ness

Ness had been really excited to get back to school for a number of reasons. Number one, it was school. School was awesome. It was where you learnt things and learning was fun and Ness was good at it. Number two, amazingly, it also had friends. Being a lover of learning was not always something that won you a lot of points in the popularity stakes but Ness had found the right people. Getting sorted into Aladren, House of Proud Nerds, had helped with that, and the second year was super excited at having met Gary properly at the end of the previous term and scoring an invite to his D&D game. But even better than super nerding it up and playing D&D was that school had Evelyn, and Evelyn was a best friend. Ness tried to ignore the part where Evelyn seemed to give that as a joint title. After all, who had Evelyn come to with her problems? Ness. Who had rescued her and taken her home for Christmas? Why, that would be Ness. Sure, Malikhi was Evelyn’s housemate and got to see her maybe more, but friendship was all about quality over quantity, and Ness was a better best friend.

The first day of classes had been super fun, even if there had been a lot of listening to the same introductory lectures for the benefit of the first years. They’d all still got to wield their wands again after a summer off, and that felt good, and they were trying harder spells now, plus they’d already been set a decent amount of reading. Effectively, Ness had done some of it already, because why wouldn’t you want to read your shiny new textbooks and enjoy the new book smell as soon as you got them home? And now, the icing on the cake was that Evelyn wanted library time, which was some of the best time. Best friend, best place.

The sentiment with which Evelyn greeted Ness brought a big smile to the Aladren’s face. Ness would not quite have said school was home. School was school and it was awesome (QED). But it was nice to be thought of that way by someone.

“It’s nice to be home. In the other sense - as in to be home to somebody. Or part of it anyway,” Ness smiled, sliding into the big squishy chair and very much taking the offered hug, giving an extra special extended rocky-back-and-forth, so-pleased-to-see-you one in return. “Syntactic ambiguity is fun. How are you?”

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Evelyn Stones

February 06, 2019 10:58 PM

Squishy Chair! by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn spent a lot of time reading and could keep up with what Ness was saying, but still thought Ness was amazing for saying it. She wondered if that's why they got on so well. Ness was the sort of person who would be successful no matter what anyone else had to say about it, but it might do Ness as much good to have that big beautiful brain admired sometime. Evelyn enjoyed being the John Watson to her friend's significantly less sociopathic, debatably gayer Sherlock Holmes.

Plus Ness hugs were great. Evelyn accepted this one with a smile and a snuggle before replying to the words that accompanied it.

"I'm just glad nobody throws rocks at my windows," she said, wondering whether those would be her eyes or something. There were other puns she thought to make but they sounded altogether less wholesome and she left it at that.

"I'm much better now," Evelyn replied to Ness' question, nodding meaningfully at her friend. "I brought all the important things today, so we don't have to go anywhere, and I thought that might just be the best way to spend today." Gesturing to her own stack of textbooks and school supplies, as well as a few snagged snacks and a water bottle, Evelyn considered her friend.

"Did you have a nice summer?" It was the sort of question that everyone was asking everyone else, but Evelyn said it like it was special. It was the sort of tone that people have when they ask how are you but they really mean it. "I really loved your letters and your mom was so sweet to write to me."

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Ness

February 07, 2019 1:16 AM

Squishy feels! by Ness

“Me too,” Ness answered, when Evelyn mentioned not having rocks thrown at her windows. Even though they were talking house metaphors, the idea of anyone throwing rocks at Evelyn was a little uncomfortable, especially when you considered where she had just been for the summer. “Unless bludgers count,” the second year added, steering things back onto safer territory. Not that talking about Bad Things was off the cards, it was just that crashing their house analogy down with them didn’t feel right. “I can’t wait for tryouts!” the Aladren grinned. The whole school team thing actually really worked really well for them, given that it meant they got to play together.

“Sounds good,” Ness grinned, eyeing Evelyn’s supplies (though of course, the Aladren would not snack in the actual library, but they could head out when they got hungry). The fact that Evelyn regarded textbooks as ‘essential supplies’ made Ness feel squishier than ever about her. Evelyn so should have been in Aladren. But she could be hands down the best Pecari in the world instead. Studying together sounded fun, but Ness could also see them turning to the parchment and ink to play silly games like hangman (Ness, on the whole did not like gendered terms but was willing to accept that ‘hangperson’ sounded stupid).

“Yeah. Camping was the highlight. Always is,” Ness grinned. Evelyn has received a postcard on which every square centimetre had been taken up with miniscule writing detailing the trip. They always went camping for two weeks, one with their parents, and one week with their aunts but with a lovely middle weekend where everyone was there together. “And we had the Jacksons round a fair bit. Did I tell you about them? They run the Muggle Cultural Centre down in Boston and our families have always been friends. Their middle kid, Zara, came to school this year, so they were round a bit extra with questions and stuff. Kir’s got her though,” Ness added, meaning that Zara had ended up in Teppenpaw.

“Thanks for writing back,” Ness smiled, meaning it. They had both been kind of worried about sending Evelyn off home, and it had been good to be able to keep in touch and feel like things were ok. “Anything that you couldn’t say in a letter?”

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Evelyn Stones

February 11, 2019 5:33 PM

Nessquish! by Evelyn Stones

"That sounds wonderful," Evelyn smiled. "I'd like to go camping sometime. We haven't ever really gone, but it's sort of all outdoorsy where I live anyway. I think it's maybe similar." She didn't want to sound too sure because it seemed odd that her home would be like Ness' vacation and she didn't want to imply anything of the sort.

"Would you . . . would you want to visit some time?" A year ago, Evelyn would never have asked. But now? Things weren't so terrible. She tried not to consider all The Implications of a visit in their small home with no extra rooms though, and kept her attention on Ness' next question.

"Only because letters make it impossible to get emotions out right." Emotions didn't come out of her mouth right either, but it was a little better than pen and paper. "CJ is adorable, he's way cuter than I thought he'd be. I'm still . . . " She sighed. "I'm still bitter I think. CJ's cute but I never got to meet him before he was born, and I think I'd have liked to. I wish I knew. . . " Her voice was getting thick and she forced whatever was in her chest to stay there. "Dad's better though. Mom seems happy, too. It was good."

Ness was so thoughtful and kind. It was no surprise that the Aladren was just that, but Evelyn was sure Ness could give a thoroughbred Tepp a run for their money. It seemed so obvious that they were sitting so close, and it made her stomach feel funny that this seemed so important all of a sudden. She did her best to release the feelings by putting her head lightly on Ness' shoulder, ready for any signal that the contact wasn't wanted. "Thanks for asking," she said in a contented murmur.

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Ness

February 17, 2019 6:17 AM

Good portmanteau by Ness

“Yeah, probably. Especially wizard camping. Aunt Lola and the Jacksons said that non-magical camping is...harder. Though we for sure have more fires and marshmallows when we’re camping. And the grown ups don’t have to work, which is nice. It’s probably more for them - I guess we could do most of those things around the area where we live but usually everyone’s doing their own thing.” Vermont was, as Evelyn had seen on her Christmas break once they’d been convinced they had wrapped her in enough layers, quite nature-y too.

Ness felt a guilty stab at the initial answer that sprang to mind when asked ‘Would you want to visit some time?’ Because the first answer to go thorugh the Aladren’s mind was ‘not really.’ Ness couldn’t see a scenario in which meeting Evelyn’s father sounded pleasant. Maybe if he wasn’t there… The Aladren tried to put it a different way… A way that saw it as Evelyn’s little house by the beach, and those things were nice, and it was nice to have a friend who really, really wanted you to come over.

“Yeah, I’d like that,” Ness was able to reply honestly, having reframed the idea from The House Where Terrible Things Happened to this cosier picture.

“I’m sorry,” Ness said, when Evelyn talked about not meeting CJ before he was born. Technically, the Aladren didn’t feel there was much to have met. He would have been a bump. It was hard to imagine he was really interesting now, seeing as he couldn’t talk or do anything. People seemed to think babies were cute though, even before they were born, all of which was very weird. But it mattered to Evelyn, and Ness meant both sorry in the ‘sorry to hear that’ way and the actual apologising way. “We didn’t know… We didn’t know you were missing anything. We just thought we were looking after you… And, I mean, my mom asked about visiting and stuff.

“Of course,” Ness nodded, when Evelyn seemed grateful for being asked. As if she wouldn’t have. It was sort of sad-happy being thanked all the time for basic kindness. On the one hand, it was nice to show appreciation even when you suspected the other person knew they were appreciated, or their acts weren’t particularly out of the way of the usual. On the other, it felt like maybe it happened because Evelyn wasn’t used to people being nice to her, and that was awful. Ness snuggled into the snuggle, wanting to make sure Evelyn felt warm and cosy and loved right back.

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