Send me back to Tucson, I don't want the job done (Room One) on Magical Arts Room and Sports

Alicia Bauer

November 25, 2011 3:18 PM

Send me back to Tucson, I don't want the job done (Room One) by Alicia Bauer

Usually, in Alicia’s experience, her family was either traveling, properly traveling, or staying put, but that was all right because they had a lovely property that she didn’t see much of a reason to leave anyway. When she was with her father, though, there was nothing to do except try not to bite her nails to pieces while she willed the time until she could go home to pass faster, and as much as she knew that she should probably not be seen in public while she was with Dad if she could help it, she couldn’t help but jump at any opportunity to get out of that house and do something, even if it was go buy groceries. She could usually get a bit of candy out of that, anyway.

There was a park they went to sometimes, too, and she guessed she must have had it in the back of her mind as she entered the water room, because she was startled to look around and find that she wasn’t quite there, but where she was did look quite a lot like there. Then she raised one shoulder for a moment and marched over to the low stone bench she saw right about where she expected it to be.

If it had been real, she would have been paddling her feet in the water while Dad sat back here with his stupid girlfriend to make sure no one drowned, but it wasn’t, and she knew people could walk in whenever they wanted, so she just closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the water instead, hoping it would be soothing. Instead, she found it annoying to only be able to see the backs of her eyelids and switched her gaze to her shoes. They weren’t even, she thought crossly, very attractive shoes; she should have found some others to go with the gray dress, which itself felt like a rag just about now. She had gotten plenty of new clothes and shoes for her birthday – they had just all been winter things.

She was twelve now, and she’d turned twelve at school. Instead of having a party, she’d had a vast confusion of owls surrounding her at breakfast, making a lot of noise and unceremoniously depositing her packages and dropping feathers into her bowl before they finally, mercifully, left. Instead of having whatever she wanted, she’d only been able to ask for things she wouldn’t mind everyone seeing her get, and all her new clothes were for later in the year, very sensibly, since it was such a bother to send that kind of thing through the post without it getting somehow messed up. There had been no vast cake with the best bits of frosting hers to dole out as she wanted, no games she’d chosen, no special singing of ‘Happy Birthday,’ no being petted all day as though it were the most wonderful thing in the world that she had been born, no being treated for a day as though she were the most special, the most important girl in the world and she didn’t even have sisters or a half-brother. Just a great mess at breakfast and Rachel and Kate speaking cheerfully while Aunt Hannah sent a card signed by her for both herself and on Sam’s behalf and then…she’d gone to classes, just like any other morning.

It wasn’t any good. It just wasn’t any good. She felt tears stinging her eyes and she rubbed them away irritably, refusing on general principle to do that, but they were replaced just as quickly by new ones. She kicked ineffectively at a clod of dirt beside her shoe, hoping to take some of her feelings out on that. She couldn’t sit around acting like this because…because…

…Because she was the youngest of her family, the only one who’d never known anything but privilege and also the one who’d had their family the most to herself while the other girls had been away and Isaac was just a boy, and now she was just one of the many if anyone ever bothered to look and she wanted to go home and have her birthday cake and eat it, but she couldn’t and she completely hated the universe for letting that be so and there wasn’t one minute where she could just be alone and know no one was going to bother her so she could deal with that and move on. Instead, it was just all the time, being bored with most of her lessons and frustrated that she couldn’t do more and hating the changes in her lifestyle and having to be unstoppably charming anyway. It was enough to make a grown woman pause, her mother pause, enough to make even her stupid perfect sister Rachel pause, and she was only eleve – twelve years old. It wasn’t fair.

She wanted to sit and sulk all day, but she could hear Gramma Alma in her head: Don’t dwell on things, Alicia. Think about something pretty if you’re upset. No, I don’t care that it’s difficult. It’ll just go round and round in your head until you embarrass yourself if you don’t.

So she thought about something pretty, about what a party they’d have for her when she got home and how no one would even notice the others because they’d have her back, since thinking about her pretty room just made her want to cry again, and watched the water, trying to push the homesickness away and be happy to be here instead.

16 Alicia Bauer Send me back to Tucson, I don't want the job done (Room One) 210 Alicia Bauer 1 5

Cepheus Princeton

November 26, 2011 8:59 PM

Believe me when I say I can relate. by Cepheus Princeton

Cepheus was having an especially tough day. He was missing home immensely with his birthday being celebrated at school, and he was wishing he was home. Home was so far away, across the ocean, and he wanted so badly to just go back and forget about America and school and being concerned with fitting in. He hated being here. Classes weren't making it any easier. Classes wouldn't make celebrating a birthday any easier. Though he knew his family would be sending gifts by any means possible, his birthday would still pass by unnoticed by the people of this place. When he was upset, he wandered.

His wandering brought him to MARS, a place he hadn't really explored much. He couldn't decide which room to go into, so he started with number one. When he entered, he was distracted from his emotions by the amount of water this room could hold. Honestly, it wasn't anything to be giddy about. Really, there was nothing special about it. It was just water. Sneering at nothing, he kicked at the ground. And then he saw a girl a little ways away.

She looked about his age, and, by the looks of it, was sulking. Cepheus, though he tried his hardest not to sulk, was a champion sulker, so he pitied other people when they were sad. He could relate most of the time, unless they were mudbloods. He walked over to the girl, wondering if she was missing home too.

"Hi, sorry if I'm intruding," he said, his British accent thick. He paused, looked around the room once, and then looked back at her. "To be blunt, you didn't look too happy, and I want to know why. You don't have to tell me or anything, but if it would make you feel better, I'll listen." He smiled. "I'm Cepheus by the way. Cepheus Princeton." He didn't bother following his name with "pureblood of London" because he was fairly certain that she would be able to tell his origin from his accent. Only the absolute dolts wouldn't be able to tell.

"Mind if I sit?" the blonde pureblood asked, gesturing to the ground with his pale hand. Most of his peers froze up when they saw girls cry, or teased them incessantly. Cepheus had seen his mum cry on one too many occasions, and had been, in a sense, trained in the art of comforting girls. Though he wasn't good at shedding tears himself, he liked comforting others to an extent. And he was so much more comfortable around girls than around boys. Call it “male dominance” or whatever. Having this girl here would be a perfect distraction from his problems, and maybe he’d be able to make an acquaintance on the way. Hopefully she wasn’t a mudblood, or he’d have more problems.

40 Cepheus Princeton Believe me when I say I can relate. 216 Cepheus Princeton 0 5

Alicia

November 26, 2011 11:47 PM

It does seem we're in similar circumstances. by Alicia

Caught up in a fantasy of Rachel admitting to being terribly jealous of her, Alicia didn’t notice that someone was approaching her until the footsteps were right next to her little bench. She looked up, trying to summon a smile at once, but apparently the effort didn’t work as well as she might have liked it to.

I don’t look too happy, Alicia thought flatly, wanting very much to say it out loud. She recognized him from classes, of course. He was the British boy who wasn’t Gareth, the smaller one with the name that sounded vaguely like a brain disorder. They hadn’t spoken so far, and so she wasn’t entirely sure why he should speak to her now, when she didn’t look too happy.

Everyone, after all, knew a girl ought to be smiling and happy all the time, that she had no business looking unhappy. Otherwise, she might be so rich she didn't care what anyone thought of her, but she was probably just lazy and didn't matter much. Maybe it was different in London, though - something to do with the weather. Merlin knew Gramma Nadia, her mother’s British stepmother, wasn’t very happy, she’d had a nervous breakdown after they found out Aunt Lavinia was a Squib and never really gotten over it. Momma kept expecting Granddad to ditch her the way he had Gramma Claire when she became an inconvenience and find himself a merrier one and start over with a third family, though Alicia didn’t think so. He and Gramma Nadia seemed very fond of each other, they had a pair of grandchildren to bring up now anyway, at least until they showed definitively that they were just useless Squibs like their mother, and besides...The idea was just all kinds of very gross. Granddad might still be handsome for a wizard of a certain age, but he was also still…old.

If she was right, though, then she should move to London, or, if (as she suspected) the stereotype wasn't quite true, just somewhere where it rained all the time. Then she could sulk all she wanted. If all that was true, then it was being from Arizona and growing up in California that meant she had to smile and smile - it was that a girl had to be like her weather, and she’d grown up where it was brutally, unceasingly sunny. If she went somewhere where it rained all the time, she could cry all she wanted and be as crazy as she liked and no one would really mind at all.

For now, though, she had enough on her plate with not snapping at him, not just letting her temper have its way. At home, she might have, but she found something blocking her throat when she thought of a sharp comment at school. Jeremy and Gramma Alma had forced the idea of being perfect in public on her too forcefully for her to have figured out how to get past it yet, when she was in a place where she still wasn't completely sure of her place and her friends.

“Hi,” she said when he officially introduced himself. “I’m Alicia. Alicia Bauer.” She looked up, wide-eyed, trying for a self-deprecating smile. She could make the truth seem charming, she thought, if she wanted to – or at least, she hoped she could. This might not work on some of her family, who considered emotions in general stupid, but her family was weird. Normal people did not have an aunt who’d been in school with an older sister, two step-grandmothers when only one parent had remarried, and a blood grandmother who’d been in a cult. And that was just her mother’s family. The one upside of them being nobodies still was that all this wasn't common knowledge, people couldn't really use it against her because the name 'Layne' would mean almost nothing to them. “I’m just being silly, thinking too much about home. My birthday was earlier this week, I guess that made me think of it. It’s the first time I’ve been away from home then.”

Oh, drat. She could not start crying again. There were only specific occasions when a girl could cry when she came from a sunny state, and this was a little too much for the occasion. She willed her eyes to cooperate with her as she nodded her permission for him to sit. “Of course,” she said with a slight smile. “It’s nice here, isn’t it? Have you been here before?”

16 Alicia It does seem we're in similar circumstances. 210 Alicia 0 5

Cepheus

November 27, 2011 2:06 PM

All the better to comfort each other then. by Cepheus

Cepheus thought she looked slightly pathetic, but that wasn't any of his business. Sad people looked pathetic. Father had told him that too many times. She seemed to be going through the same thing as he was, which was odd. He thought he'd be the only one dealing with these kinds of problems, but already he'd found two people with similar problems.

"Happy belated birthday! As silly as thinking too much about home might be," he commented as he sat, "it's perfectly valid. I don't know anyone who wouldn't be in tears away from home, especially since it's your birthday and your first year here." He sighed. "I know I've been a right baby about it all. My room-mate has to hear it all the time. Poor bloke." He cracked a smirk and then sighed again, looking out at the water. "Yeah, it is nice. Perfect place to get away from things. Sorry if I disturbed you." He had a feeling that he'd stepped into a rather raw moment for her, and, hardly knowing each other, probably would've been rude. He had been rather thrown off lately by these Americans.

"No, I've never seen these rooms before. I was going to explore the rest of them when I found you here." He smiled a little. A good way he'd always found to comfort people was to think of all the things they weren't missing from home. But sometimes that didn't help too much either when they were so wrapped up in their self-pity. Cepheus could think about all the places he missed back at home, and the people too. If he thought too much about what he missed, he longed for home, but when he thought about Grandfather snoring in his bedroom and keeping the whole manor up, or Great-Aunt Norma visiting and leaving the manor in a tirade of feminist rants, or Devon stealing sweets and blaming him, or Theo setting his father's poor crup on fire, he didn't mind being here quite as much.

"Where's home for you?" he asked tentatively. He didn't want to make her cry, but he did want to know. Maybe if she was from somewhere far away, they'd be able to relate more. If she was from nearby, that was all right too. Home was far away when one was at school. At least it was for him, he who had been home schooled his entire life.

OOC: When's Alicia's birthday? It'd be easier to say Cepheus's passed or not.

0 Cepheus All the better to comfort each other then. 0 Cepheus 0 5

Alicia

November 29, 2011 3:06 PM

You're making some progress. by Alicia

Alicia’s mouth twisted just a little, involuntarily, at the words of sympathy and understanding – she was sure they were false, the reasonable, pitying way of adult speech, and avoiding them was one of the major reasons she always tried so very hard to be the very best there was, as close to perfect as she could be – but her expression softened when he mentioned that he was missing home, too. Maybe he was lying, but what did she care about that? She had been all but taught outright to be a liar from the time she was three, she didn’t really think of it, for herself or when it didn’t harm her in others, as anything other than another skill, like knowing how to tie her shoes and match them to her dress.

“No, you didn’t disturb me,” she lied. She had been disturbed when he came in, but it didn’t matter. “Thank you – about my birthday.” It hadn’t been happy, she had barely even noticed it was her birthday except to feel a few moments of frustration over not being able to take up any time with it, and it was a little late to wish it would be well, but it was a nice, polite gesture.

She smiled a little in return when he said it was lucky he’d found her, and held it as she was asked where home was for her. “California,” she said, making a gesture in what she thought was the direction of home. “My family’s from Arizona, but I grew up more with my mother and my stepfather in California. I was three when they got married.” She had no memory of her mother and father as a married couple, of living in Dad’s little house – of that being home instead of just a place she sometimes visited because she had to, in which she stayed no more than a week or two in succession and not often that much.

She looked like her father, the only one of them to do so. Kate looked like Momma a lot, like a Layne, with her no-color light brown hair and light eyes and very light skin, and Rachel was a freak golden child, a grandmother and a great-aunt put together, but Alicia was all Jake Bauer: dark, square-jawed, square in general. She wasn’t sure if her face was better or worse than Rachel and Kate’s long, angular ones, but she hated her wide shoulders on her short frame. She hated mirrors, sometimes, and when she saw him, sometimes she resented her father for looking as he did, and for not looking so bad as she did with it. She looked the most like him, and she thought it was part of the reason – other than being three when Momma started drawing her away from that life – she was the least close to him.

“Where’s yours?” she asked. She was guessing it was somewhere in Britain, but was aware the country had bits and pieces just like anywhere else. Her geography and history lessons had been thorough enough to let her know that, anyway.

OOC: September 16

16 Alicia You're making some progress. 210 Alicia 0 5

Cepheus

November 30, 2011 10:45 PM

I'm glad. I was all ready to leave if you wished. by Cepheus

California. Cepheus hadn't heard of the state very often, but he knew it well enough to know that that was the state where films were made. Hollywood, and all that. He hadn't paid much attention in geography class. She gave him more information about her family, and he found it a little surprising. His experience with his peers was that they only spoke of their families in a bright sense, not of divorce and remarrying. It didn't matter, really. He knew divorce happened. Not popular in his circle, of course, but not unheard of.

He didn't know how to respond to her piece of information, so he answered her other question. It sounded rhetorical since his accent was so prominent, so he decided that she wanted or was at least hinting for him to tell her more about where he was from. "Surrey, if you've ever heard of it," he said. "In the country. My family's got an estate there, and loads of my family members live in that area." Not all of them, of course, but some. Very few, actually. "I don't really expect many people here to know of it." He thought for a moment, then added, "Not because they're stupid, of course, but because I assume Americans don't pay attention to the exact counties in England the way I don't pay attention to the individual 50 states in America." Perhaps he was talking too much, but he didn't want to sound patronising.

There was a long pause as he looked out at the water, then asked, "Do you like water?" The question sounded random, but he didn't want to talk of home anymore. "My cousin's an avid swimmer. Wants to be apart of some professional swim team." He shrugged. "I was never into it all that much. It's fun to play in during the hot summer days, but that's about all." He bit his tongue lightly. No more talk of home was going to be difficult. Instead, he looked at her, wondering if she did like water or not, coming into this room and all.

He thought for a moment. "Is there any way I could distract you from sorrowful thoughts of home?" He gave a little encouraging smile, wanting her not to cry because he didn't like it when people cried. And he was rubbish at saying nice, comforting things. He was much better at distracting them from their tears and listening to all their problems, if they needed to vent. He was sure Alicia wouldn't feel comfortable telling him all the things she missed from home, having just met him and all, so distraction would be the next best thing. "What do you like to do?"

0 Cepheus I'm glad. I was all ready to leave if you wished. 0 Cepheus 0 5

Alicia

December 04, 2011 11:09 PM

Why would I ever wish to lose such charming company? by Alicia

Alicia was sure she had heard the word ‘Surrey’ before and knew it was a place and ‘sherry’ was not, so she nodded when Cepheus said she might or might not have heard of it. “I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t heard much,” she admitted, knowing perfectly well that she couldn’t bluff her way through a conversation on the topic and momentarily almost wishing her mother had managed to strike up a friendship with her half-sister, or else that Gramma Nadia would take them on a tour of her home country. “Only in passing, maybe it was in a history lesson last year.”

Or maybe it had been a geography lesson, for all she knew. Her sisters were new girls in every way, or at least Rachel was, but since Alicia had been so small when her mother remarried, it had been deemed possible to try to make her something a little…better. She was supposed to be a true lady, learned and gracious and all that, and the history classes went with the literature ones. It was the literature she was expected to be able to converse about intelligently at the sort of parties Gramma Alma could just get into, but her tutors, or at least the ones Momma had acquired to actually teach her things instead of just look officious and spout the latest in educational theory when certifying that she knew enough to come to school, had been of the school that believed it was necessary to know the history in order to really read the literature most effectively.

She managed a small laugh at the comment about the fifty states. “All the ones I know are too dull to mention,” she said. “Grandfather swears South Carolina and Massachusetts are really very interesting, but I’ve never spent enough time on the East Coast to know anything about it.” Mostly because while her grandfather talked about all the interesting politics that happened in his home state and in the Cabinet, he wasn’t really part of anything worth noting and Gramma Alma assured her she would never make it into an old East Coast family with a knut of its own whatever her education, so there was no point in hanging around them. Some things, Gramma Alma said, and this was what Gramma Alma also said Momma would never understand, that money just couldn’t quite make up for.

Gramma Alma said Alicia would be a matriarch, which was some consolation, but she didn’t want to wait until she had great-grandchildren even to be as great as her step-grandmother, though. If she could make something better for herself while she was at school, then she’d do that instead.

The question about water surprised her a little, though she guessed it shouldn’t have, considering where they were. “Ambitious of him,” she remarked of his cousin, then considered the question. “I guess I do like it, though,” she said. “I grew up around it, it’s just always there. I like to listen to it.” It was soothing, at least in small doses. Watching it worked better in the long run.

Being asked what she liked to do was a harder question than whether or not she liked water. She didn’t like to talk about it. It meant someone might spoil it just to annoy her, or use it against her somehow, or read something into it about her personality that she didn’t want them to, or…She didn’t even know. “I like all sorts of things,” she said. “Reading, obviously – I’m an Aladren.” She smiled a little to indicate this was a bit of a joke. “Crossword puzzles, sometimes, when I’m bored but I can’t think of anything I want to do.” Anne had found that out, and liked to draw her up crossword puzzles in Latin to help with her learning her vocabulary. “I do swim, sometimes. And I like to spend time with my step-grandmother, but that’s thinking about home again.” She smiled, with a bit of teasing behind it now. “And what about you? What do you like to do, Mister Cepheus?” She paused for a moment, then added, more primly, "I mean, Mr. Princeton. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be so forward, to use your first name without permission."

The moment of surprise at her presumption as she teased him, then the ending in a self-deprecating, nervously laughing confession. She'd like to see Arabella Brockert or Theresa Carey deliver it better, really. Money might not make up for everything, but a good family didn't account for everything, either. Everyone, Granddad had taught Momma and Momma and Jeremy had taught her, had been a bunch of nobodies once. That was the other reason, she thought, why she learned history.

16 Alicia Why would I ever wish to lose such charming company? 210 Alicia 0 5

Cepheus

December 06, 2011 12:35 AM

Oh, you flatter me. by Cepheus

Cepheus smiled, but couldn’t think of anything more to talk about the States. He’d never heard of South Carolina or Massachusetts before, but it didn’t matter to him, really. Didn’t seem to matter to her either. Cepheus couldn’t imagine living around water all his life. Though there was a lake near his manor, it wasn’t exactly the kind of rushing river she seemed to be talking about. Cepheus was usually too busy studying, getting into mischief, reading, or hanging out with his friends to sit around and appreciate nature. Except trees, perhaps, since he had spent a lot of time climbing them.

When he thought about his friends, his heart tightened. He wanted to be back in England with them. They had all lived an average distance away from his home. Close enough to meet up with everyday and hang out, play, read, lounge around. His favourite memory had been the summer before they had all left for school. Dorian and Emma were going to Hogwarts, Georgina to France, and he to America. They’d all tried to spend every moment together, trying not to think of the future, but now that they were all separated, he missed them so much more. Even if they wrote to each other, it wasn’t the same since he’d been inseparable from them for most of his life. Cepheus swallowed, keeping his gaze even with the water.

He liked Alicia so far. She could joke around, and he appreciated girls like that. He wondered if she was a pureblood. If she was, she certainly had a better sense of humour than most of the girls he’d ever met, and she was homesick. He knew it had taken a lot of teasing and explaining to get Georgina to realise that he and Dorian were just joking around when they teased. She had been so sensitive about those things. Cepheus’s interest was piqued when she began to list off her interests. She liked reading, crossword puzzles, and swimming. Well, they at least had reading in common. He didn’t think he had ever done a crossword puzzle in his life. He wasn’t even sure what one looked like. “You’d have to show me what a crossword puzzle looks like one day. Sad to say that I’m not familiar with one.”

When she used his first name, he was surprised at her boldness. He’d never been addressed so forwardly except by a muggle-born who didn’t know any better. He’d used her first name as well because she wouldn’t have known that it wasn’t proper and he thought it useless to waste good manners on a muggle-born. He supposed he’d have to answer her question sometime, so he cleared his mind of the summer before and looked up at the room’s ceiling, his lights reflecting off of his blue eyes.

“I like to read too,” he said, and looked at her with a smile. “Mysteries, mostly, with action of some sort.” He looked out at the water again. “I love Quidditch too. Watching it, playing it; I hope to make it a large part of my life here at Sonora. It’ll help me miss home a bit less,” he said with a slightly bitter smile at nothing in particular. He faced her again. “And it’s all right. I’ll give you permission to call me Cepheus, Miss Bauer, if you’ll allow me to call you Alicia in return.” There was a teasing lilt in his voice and he smiled kindly, a smile he hadn’t had much of an opportunity to flash at anyone since he’d arrived. He’d been too busy wallowing in his own self-pity. Coming here alone was so different from being surrounded by people he knew almost always. He could hardly think of a time someone hadn’t been near except when he was going to sleep.

0 Cepheus Oh, you flatter me. 0 Cepheus 0 5

Alicia

December 09, 2011 2:23 PM

Not at all. by Alicia

Alicia smiled. “Any time,” she said. Making a good impression – or, in this case, rescuing herself from a bad one – was all well and good, but then, Gramma Alma said emphatically, it had to be maintained. He had just indicated that he wanted to talk to her again. “They look simple enough, but some of them can be really difficult, there’s a few I don’t think I’ve ever finished.”

Not without cheating, anyway, but she knew better than to say that even without being told. There were things one didn’t say because they weren’t pretty, because everyone would be happier if they were just quietly ignored. The only reason to say them was because they were ugly and she wanted to use them to hurt someone, to bring them down to the right level when they got too much above themselves, started thinking they were too much above her, or if it would get her something. Alicia all but winced every time she heard Kate arguing with their mother, because her sister’s strategy was so utterly ineffective. It would have taken half a dozen words to shame Momma, so that while she’d lash out in the moment and threaten and try to cut Kate down as well, she’d feel so bad afterward that she’d do whatever Kate wanted if the fight had been about something like that or else buy her something pretty in an attempt to buy back her love if it had been unintentional. At least she could get a new dress out of it. That was something.

Mysteries, with action. She remembered it, smiling back at the mutual interest in books, if not, as it turned out, the same kind of books. It was important to remember as much as she could about people, to have a sort of mental file on people. She wished she could write things down, but that was too much risk even at home; here, she had to share her room. Quidditch, a fairly normal interest for boys, she guessed. Her sisters had both been mad about it, too, and Kate still was, but that was something she’d been explicitly told not to talk about, even though she’d already known after listening to the fights Kate and Momma had about it. Even Jeremy and Gramma Alma didn’t always give her as much credit as she thought was really her due.

“That’s a deal,” Alicia said, smiling brightly in relief at the bit with the names working out the way she’d hoped it would. She thought. At the very least, it hadn’t gone as badly as it could have. Idly, she wondered if someday, something would go as badly as it could, just out of sheer perversity, but she didn’t really, truly believe it would ever happen. She offered him her hand and added, “Friends, then?”

She was slightly surprised to realize she meant it a little, but she didn't analyze that too much. She had bigger problems, like how to be sure he would never reveal this to anyone. The only plan which occurred to her was to be a perfect friend, which could work, but it just didn't feel thorough enough, somehow. She was just having to hope he wasn't that kind of person.

16 Alicia Not at all. 210 Alicia 0 5

Cepheus

December 12, 2011 8:03 PM

Where do we go from here? by Cepheus

Cepheus smiled, glad to have made another friend in this horrid desert. "Friends," he replied with a strong shake of her hand. He released her hand then and looked out at the water, glad that he wasn't here alone. The lake was large; it would've been a lonely place if it weren't for Alicia. He had to think of something else to talk about soon, and he wished he could just sit here and enjoy the scenery without having his mind constantly think of topics. He'd have to spend more time with Alicia to get out of his own mind of conversation.

He wanted to do something, get his mind off of mindless conversation topics, so he stood up suddenly and offered Alicia his hand. He smiled. "Come on. Let's go do something then." They could go to the library and look at some books, maybe sneak into the restricted section if they could. Make a potion, explore the campus; he could think of hundreds of things to do, but didn't know if Alicia would be up to them.

"Have you explored the castle at all?" he asked. "I've heard its full of hidden passageways and there're dangerous creatures hidden in the gardens. We could always seek them out, if you're daring enough." He smirked, letting her know he was teasing. "If not, then fancy a broom ride? We could try and smuggle you a broom from the Quidditch supply shack." Cepheus had a sudden desire to get into a little mischief for some reason. He was surprising himself with these suggestions, but he felt reckless. He had a friend, he'd tried out for the Quidditch team, and he had a roommate who could relate to him completely. He felt like not much else could really go terribly wrong.

"Of fancy a swim instead? Or a late birthday cake from the kitchens?" He grinned. "Anyhow, I'd like to get out of here. Get my mind off things, you know?" Distractions were wonderful things. He had been so cooped up his room or in classrooms, he hadn't really had a chance to do much exploring at all. Dorian and Theo would be disappointed in him. His hand was still out there, waiting for her to accept his offer. He'd be right embarrassed if she rejected him. There was always that risk of making the moment awkward when making one's self vulnerable like this.

0 Cepheus Where do we go from here? 0 Cepheus 0 5

Alicia

December 16, 2011 9:06 PM

Wherever we want. by Alicia

Alicia returned the smile warmly and the handshake as firmly as she could, seeking, even in a moment of declaring friendship, to match what was in front of her, or in this case was gripping her hand. She thought she did a good job of it.

For a second, she wasn't as good at hiding surprise when her new friend suggested they go do something and then started coming up with ideas, not sure, in her pretty friendless experience, if this was normal, but then something odd happened. For a moment, she didn’t care, and she was tempted to just get swept away, to not care and do something without thinking. To have a water fight and completely ruin her dress – she didn’t like the stupid thing, anyway, it had just been marginally more appealing than everything else she hadn’t worn yet that was left in her closet, and she’d derided her decision countless times through the day – and figure out what to do about it later. Tempted enough that she started to smile, her eyes sparkling, before his comment about just needing to get away with it all brought her back to earth.

“Yeah,” she said. “I think so.” She smiled firmly, though, trying to recapture some of the excitement of the previous moment, just now with some thinking going on as well as emoting. “We’ll go exploring,” she said enthusiastically, still smiling. “Then we’ll find the kitchens and have our birthday cake to celebrate – celebrate knowing more about the school!”

In the very back of her mind, she wasn’t completely sure even that was enough to be deemed acceptable, but she knew perfectly well that she couldn’t just say no. She knew enough about friends to know that they did things together, sometimes even improper things together. Not too improper, of course, but a little, as long as there wasn’t much chance of being caught. It was safer, much safer, to stay alone, but it wasn’t very productive, and she knew all about it already.

She thought it was probably very impressive to have three siblings and still manage to be alone more often than not when she was home, always on the sidelines of the little family dramas, watching them unfold at an impartial distance, like a slightly dull play she was obliged to go see at the theater because she was sucking up to someone who had a friend or a distant relation in the cast. None of it felt very personally relevant to her, not the way it was to her sisters and parents and step-family or anyone else. She didn’t even find it terribly interesting most of the time, it was so predictable at this point. Kate rebelled, Rachel was stressed, Momma wanted to be loved and feared, Jeremy liked to play mastermind…They practically repeated their conversations, for Merlin’s sake. So boring.

"But I’m not afraid of the Gardens,” she added confidently. “Have you been out there yet? I haven’t had time – “ between keeping up with everything in her dorm room and keeping up with everyone else in the year and their classes and getting her work done, she’d barely had time to breathe since she got to Sonora – “but I’ve read all kinds of things about it. I haven’t really looked around the building, either, though, so whichever you prefer.” She smiled a little mischievously. “My sisters never told me about any secret passages, but they’re so boring, it probably never even occurred to them to look!” There was an especial thrill in saying that, being just a little disrespectful, when her eldest sister was one of his prefects. She didn't know if he'd made the connection, heard of Rachel Bauer and now heard her surname, but she knew about it, and it amused her greatly.

Some of her thoughts, though, were already turning toward supper. They were friends, now, and she knew his roommate Gareth from Potions, and the other Aladrens, she'd have them soon, she was sure...She could all but see her way clear to having the best, most exciting and interesting table for meals in the whole school. Feeling important, part of the best group there was....She'd like to see Rachel top that.

16 Alicia Wherever we want. 210 Alicia 0 5

Cepheus

December 19, 2011 3:23 AM

I do like the sound of that. by Cepheus

Cepheus smiled brightly. Would he finally have someone to have some fun with? It brought back memories of his tutoring lessons and his friends that he dearly missed back at home. He tried to hide his delight, but at her admission, his blue eyes lit up. "Yeah, I've been to the gardens. Nothing real scary." He folded his arms and smirked, as if recalling the memory. "I mean, I did see a beast of some sort there. It had real sharp teeth and looked ferocious. Like a mini dragon of sorts." Okay, so he hadn't actually seen any real creature in the gardens, but he'd heard noises! And he hadn't been alone either, he'd been with a mud--muggle-born, but he enjoyed dramatising his tales. It wasn't so exciting without a little adventure.

"Maybe we'll actually find something equally as scary, or more," Cepheus said enthusiastically. He understood what she meant about having boring siblings, but only partially. His cousins, when they came to visit, were extremely boring. All they wanted to do was sit and talk and act like adults. When it came to he and his brothers, Cepheus was the boring one, which was saying something. Rupert was the ultimate troublemaker and caused Mum loads of worry, something Father frowned upon immensely. Cepheus was more...careful in his mischievous approaches, something Dorian understood well and helped him with.

"That cake sounds brilliant as well," he said with a smile. "We'll just have to find a way to the kitchens first." Cepheus made a mental note to remember this place when the days became unbearably hot. It would be fun to swim, by the looks of it, and no deadly water creatures to worry about it. Perhaps Alicia--Cepheus didn't want to get ahead of himself. Maybe she wouldn't be up to it, but that was fine. He didn't want to burden Alicia with his own need for a little sporadic mischief.

He found himself getting a little too excited in front of this girl he'd just met, so he tried to curb it by brushing back his bright blonde hair with his fingers, slightly embarrassed. "Fancy a trip to the gardens?"

0 Cepheus I do like the sound of that. 0 Cepheus 0 5