Postal Owl
March 04, 2019 6:40 AM
A letter for Professor Xavier by Postal Owl
It was a fair few weeks into term when the owl arrived. The short letter it carried was something that had been on its writer's mind for some time but which it was all too easy to put off. Not because of anything in the letter itself, which conveyed happy news, but just because writing was always, in itself, unpleasant and difficult. However, she had eventually coaxed quill and brain into action, and produced the short missive, a good sixty percent of which was even spelt right, and which pretty much one hundred percent of was intelligible, especially to someone who knew her, and had tackled many pieces of homework with the same pitfalls.Dear Professor Xavier,
How are you and your baby doing? I hope your both good.
Ive put in a foto of me and my nees. I know you cant see much what she looks like. I think shes dead pritty tho and I love her lots. Her name is Summer cos of thats when she was born.
Things are good.
Raine.
Enclosed was a photo of Raine that was, with her typical naivity, probably not that suitable to send her former teacher. She was wearing a crop top and short shorts, her slender limbs and toned stomach on full display. Her wild brown hair was pulled into a high ponytail and she grinned at the camera, rocking a small bundle which was wrapped in a lightweight yellow shawl, and whose small pink face was just visible.
It was not quite accurate to say that Summer had watched her auntie write her letter. She was sort of still at the sitting around not doing much stage. But she had been there, and Raine had been helped on by the fact that she was supposed to be a good role model now. One who knew her letters and her magic and was going to help Summer with that in the future.
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Postal Owl
A letter for Professor Xavier
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Nathan
March 14, 2019 9:56 AM
Re: A letter for Professor Xavier by Nathan
Nathan sat out in the Teppenpaw common area. It wasn’t one of his teaching days, so Dora was with him instead of her grandmother. He knelt on the floor, a blanket laid out in front of him, with the baby lying on her stomach, practicing her head lifts and occasionally trying to roll over or get up onto all fours. She wasn’t quite mobile yet, but Nathan didn’t think it would be much longer before she could start rolling or scootching off her blanket without assistance.The four month old was pushing up on her arms when the owl came in and alighted on a nearby chair. He gave a hoot, startling Dora and making her tip over sideways as she tried to turn to see it. She giggled and reached for the bird, and Nathan let out the quiet catch of breath he’d briefly held as he wondered if she’d start crying.
Since she was in a good mood, he let her lie where she fell, on her side, looking up at the owl, as he detached the letter the bird was carrying. “We got mail, Dory,” he told her. “This is an owl. They deliver post.” He put the letter down and picked up the baby, guiding her little hand to gently pet the owl’s feathers. “Gentle, gentle, no grabbing, just pat. Pat pat pat. Nice owl. Good girl.”
He found an owl treat mixed in among the baby bottles in his diaper bag and helped Dora feed it to the owl. She giggled again as he snapped it out of the hands and swallowed it whole. “No reply,” he told the bird, not wanting to make it wait. He’d probably do that during naptime. Dora got cranky if she thought she didn’t have his full attention.
The bird flew off and Nathan sat up on the seat it had vacated, settling Dora in his lap as he opened up the letter. He smiled as he read the short missive, then showed Dora the picture. Then he had to rescue it before she got it into her mouth. “No no, sweetie, pictures are for looking at, not chewing. This is my graduated student, Raine, and her baby niece.”
He tucked the picture and letter safely back into their envelope and put it into his diaper bag. He didn’t expect the reply to take him long - he just need to confirm he believed Summer must surely be a lovely baby, and include a few positive remarks about his own little girl - but he was definitely going to need to find a picture to send back. That seemed only fair.
For now, though, he knelt back down onto the floor and laid Theodora down on her belly on the homemade knitted blanket his mother had made in alternating stripes of Teppenpaw yellow and Pecari brown. “A few more minutes of tummy time, Dory, then we can read some books.”
He smiled at a nearby student who seemed to be paying more attention to the baby and him than anything else and asked invitingly, “Did you need me for anything? Or would you like to read to her?”
Theodora had been spending a couple hours a day in the common room (excepting Tuesdays and Thursdays when Grandma Xavier had her all day) for a few weeks now, so he did not feel introductions were in order. Almost everyone in Teppenpaw had been introduced already.
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Nathan
Re: A letter for Professor Xavier
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Nathan
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Dorian Montoir
March 15, 2019 6:55 AM
Boys don't.... by Dorian Montoir
Dorian very much enjoyed the presence of Theodora Xavier in the common room. She was undeniably cute and it was fun watching her grow. More than that though, he liked watching Professor Xavier with her. In some ways, it wasn’t surprising that the Professor was kind and gentle and helped her learn new things – that was, after all, how he was with all of them. It was just interesting seeing it applied to someone so small. And by a man. Dorian’s father loved them all very much – he listened to their accounts of school, and praised them for their good behaviour, and took them ice skating over Christmas, something which he had taught all of them to do. But it was hard to imagine him taking such an interest in them before they could walk or talk. Looking after babies was, in his mind, a mother’s job. Dorian had helped take care of Émilie but he had been small too… He had liked it though, what he could remember of it, and he thought playing with Theodora looked fun too. Not that he would presume to try, but just… it was nice, watching Professor Xavier play with her.Dorian had been watching, assuming the Professor to be wholly engaged by his daughter, and was thus caught out when he suddenly looked up, and saw Dorian looking. He blinked, surprised by the offer he received.
“I can read to her?” the intonation and the look of surprise clearly marked this out to be a question.
He had met Theodora in passing, of course. He suspected they all more or less had. And he had taken the opportunity when it arose (when he thought no one but her was looking his way) to make amusing faces for her over the top of his textbooks, or at the very least to smile and wave to her. His hesitation over reading to her was nothing to do with not wanting to. He just had not really expected Professor Xavier to encourage them to participate with Theodora. Well, maybe he’d let the girls, but who wanted to let teenage boys play with babies? Teenage boys were rough and unsuitable, even if he was well aware that no one could possibly look at him and really think that, it just… didn’t seem like something someone would assume he would be interested in, even if he very much was. He had, therefore, avoided really saying more than a passing ‘hello’ before now for this reason (he did not wish to intrude) and one other pressing concern.
“You don’t think I will be a bad influence?” he asked anxiously. And then adding for clarity, because he didn’t not want his Head of House to suspect him of being a troublemaker, “To her English, I mean.”
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Dorian Montoir
Boys don't....
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Nathan
March 16, 2019 7:02 PM
Why not? by Nathan
"Of course you can read to her!" Nathan declared, surprised that Dorian would doubt this. "Don't worry," he added, to assuage those doubts. "She's still so little that right now the most important thing for her is that she hears people talking. It doesn't matter what you say, or even how well you say it, she's still just trying to figure out what language even is."Then in case this explanation caused Dorian further doubts once Dora was older, he added, "And she's going to be exposed to a lot of different accents. Her mom's from Detroit, I'm from Connecticut, her grandmother is from Britain, and she's growing up in Arizona for now . . . so she'll just need to figure out her own accent as she gets older. Grammar will come in time, too, but first she needs to get sounds, and then words. So just talking to her helps her figure out that these sounds we make to each other mean something, and that's all she needs to figure out right now."
Dora started fussing. Nathan had two guesses as to why: either she was tired of being on her stomach, or Nathan was giving too much attention to somebody who wasn't her. Both problems had the same solution, so he picked her up and sat her on his lap, facing toward Dorian. She immediately stopped fussing, pleased to be held by her daddy. She smiled and started chewing on her fingers.
He pointed Dorian toward the diaper back where a few board books were already spilling out of one of the pockets. "Pick whichever one you like. She loves all of them."
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Nathan
Why not?
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Dorian
March 16, 2019 10:45 PM
... care what other boys think by Dorian
Dorian listened carefully to Professor Xavier’s explanation. He noticed that the other influences listed were all still native speakers, and it wasn’t just his accent that made his English different… Still, the Professor didn’t seem worried, and what he was saying made sense.
Having been invited in, Dorian settled himself on the floor by the two Xaviers. He was slightly aware that he was probably about to look rather strange and potentially ridiculous, but that feeling was easily dwarfed by his excitement at getting to play with a small, cute being. He hadn’t noticed any of his fellow Teppenpaws giving Professor Xavier odd looks or saying things about him being unmanly for playing with Theodora. Admittedly, Dorian hadn’t studied everyone’s reactions… It was possible people thought that. But he had never really been afraid of other people’s thoughts about him. People could think what they liked and he was well aware it could not hurt him. It was the actions people took as a result of their thoughts which could be intimidating. Still, he had admitted the very unmasculine desire to make everything pretty for the concert, and no one had rounded on him over that… There were outliers, like Jozua and Nathaniel, but on the whole Teppenpaws were gentle, and therefore not prone to mock gentleness in others.
It was slightly off-putting that Theodora’s first reaction to was to start whining, although as soon as Professor Xavier scooped her up, she stopped, and so it perhaps seemed like it was less to do with his presence and more to do with wanting a hug. Dorian could well understand the mood of grumpiness due to lack of hugging, and the imperative to whine until someone came along to fix that.
“Hi, Theodora,” he smiled, giving her one of the little flappy-finger waves that people used with babies. He took care to put his tongue between his teeth and pronounce her name properly - it was not something he was sure he’d be able to keep up in free speech, because the ‘th’ sound was tricky, but he could manage it for introductions. He had heard Professor Xavier calling her ‘Dora’ but didn’t know if that was just a family nickname. She did not burst into tears or resume her grumping, and feeling emboldened by this, Dorian moved to choose a book for them.
“You have many books,” he commented admiringly, looking through the selection, “Lucky you. Don’t listen if people are telling you books make you an Aladren. Books are for everyone,” he advised. “Though be Aladren is also good,” he added, not wanting Theodora (or Professor Xavier) to think he had things against the other houses. He suspected he was unlikely to ever be accused of having something against Aladren given that he was perpetually glued to Jehan’s side outside of their Common Rooms, but it wouldn’t do to seem like he was encouraging divisiveness.
He returned with his selected book. There had been one called ‘Muggle Things’ which he was sure he could learn a lot from but judging by the two brightly labelled pictures on the cover, Muggles liked to give their things long, complicated looking names, and he was pretty sure he would not have been able to pronounce half the words in the book. Whatever Professor Xavier said about that not mattering to Theodora right now, it mattered very much to Dorian’s pride to not be visibly defeated by a book intended for a four month old. Plus, as far as waving red flags at people like Nathaniel Mordue went, he thought he might prefer to stick to one of those at a time. His current flag of choice seemed to be ‘I’m a girly boy who likes babies and pretty things (and other boys).’ The flag of ‘The Muggle world is probably not that bad really’ could maybe wait.
“Hello Kneazle,” Dorian declared the title, showing it to Theodora. It had been a fairly easy choice really. He opened it up, reading page by page in a cheerful voice and showing her the animated pictures of the small knitten which greatly resembled Ailuros in its colouring. “This is Kneazle. Kneazle is brown. Kneazle has stripes. We can call this tabby,” he added. He was not sure if he was meant to just stick to the exact words, but there really weren’t very many of them, and it felt like the book was going to be over very soon if he did that. “Kneazle plays. She plays ball. Kneazle eats. Mmm. Yum yum. Kneazle licks. This is good. She have clean paws now. Kneazle stretches and yaaaaaaawns,” he turned to the final page, pretty sure he had guessed the ending, “Kneazle sleeps. Aww. Sleep tight Kneazle. Sweet dream.”
As he closed the book, Theodora reached for it. Dorian remembered the way the photograph had gone and gave a quick glance to the Professor, but he indicated that it was fine to hand it over, so Dorian did so.
He was of the opinion that any reading session should be followed with some conversation about the book. The main theme, he supposed, was easy enough to identify.
“Kneazles are nice,” he commented, “We have kneazle friend at school. Maybe one time, I can bring her and you can do patting like you do with owl?” he offered, again speaking mostly to Theodora, but glancing to Professor Xavier to actually answer on whether that was an acceptable idea.
OOC - godmodding of Theodora and Nathan approved by their author.
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Dorian
... care what other boys think
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