Aria Yale
August 01, 2013 8:20 PM
A gift to a possible friend. by Aria Yale
Aria had discovered the gift of giving gifts when she had been friends with Liam. She was not friends with him any longer, or so she truly believed, but she still wanted to give someone who she deemed close enough of a friend something. She had given her roommates grass dolls that she had made during the winter solstice festival, but she didn’t think Jay would want a grass doll. Liam hadn’t seemed to mind, but Jay wasn’t really like him, so she thought of something else.Because her father was teaching her the art of woodcarving, Aria had been learning how to carve animals from blocks of wood. Normally, these were to decorate homes or to sell to locals during the summer festivals the city put on to earn some extra funds for the community, but Aria was given permission to make something for her friend. It had taken her a while to figure out what exactly to make for him as she did not know his favorite animal, but she did her best.
She decided to go for an amphibian and carved out a frog. Boys seemed to like these creatures and Aria didn’t mind them so much. Her father helped her with the details and even gave her the idea to make it a wand holder. Her carved creature was a fat bullfrog with a large hole on either side of its mouth to make it look as though it was holding the wand within its mouth.
The end result was rather plain and silly looking, but she was still learning how to work the tools and the wood properly. Hopefully Jay wouldn’t laugh at her attempt too terribly. Aria wasn’t confident enough to give it to him in person as she had never given him a gift before and was afraid he’d find it strange. So, once they had returned to Sonora and allowed to their rooms, Aria had attached the small gift to a school owl (not something she was fond of doing but rewarded it with many treats) along with a letter addressed to James Carey of Aladren.
Dear Jay,
I hope you do not mind that I have sent this to you late, but I needed to entire holiday to create it. In case the design is not sufficient enough to understand, this is a wand holder. Please accept this with an open heart. Gifts are still new to me and if I am wrong in believing we are friends, I apologize, but wish you to have this none the less.
See you in class!
Best wishes,
Aria Yale
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A gift to a possible friend.
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Jay Carey
August 03, 2013 7:47 PM
A thank-you note to the same by Jay Carey
Jay’s first reaction to receiving a package was surprise, since he had been sure, even with a new baby around and Cecilia, as whoever the youngest was tended to at such times, demanding extra attention, that he’d put everything he needed back in his trunk before coming back to school. Packages from home happened during the year anyway, sporadically, but not this soon; Mother would still be adjusting to not having him and Theresa around to help her with the younger ones, too busy to think to send anything, and he thought, based on the tables from home he was still carrying around in his head, that his father was supposed to be between Portkeys to Japan right about now.The handwriting wasn’t one he knew well, either, which ruled out his aunts, as unlikely as that was, too – he had just seen their handwritings on labels at Christmas. Curious, he opened the letter and read it before opening the package, which held just what Aria had described. He wasn’t sure he would have immediately guessed its function, but the shape was recognizable enough, which made it a lot better than what he could have done. He’d been told he took pretty good pictures, but that was capturing an image, not creating one.
He tried it out, then read the letter again, almost feeling a little frustrated. Sometimes, he wanted to just tell Aria, listen, people wouldn’t notice that you aren’t – well – like everyone else as much if you didn’t mention it. If you just acted like you didn't care, people would go along, you know? Like we do with Hen. Being apologetic isn’t really always the best idea.
Instead, though, he took out the writing paper he was using at the moment – because they weren’t old enough, which meant financially independent enough, to have any real yet, he and Theresa used whatever novelty papers their father picked up on the road, and Henry asked Jay to borrow some of it if it ever occurred to him to want to write a letter, something Jay thought might have happened no more than twice in the past three years – and wrote a thank-you note.
Dear Aria,
Thank you for your gift to me. I appreciate it very much, especially that you’d take the time to make it. I hope you had a good - he paused for a moment, trying to remember things Aria had said about her family and what they did and didn’t do with the rest of the people they lived around, which he conceptualized as something like his family, only not related at all by blood instead of just being more connected by tradition than a little common ancestry - break from school, and we’ll have to catch up soon.
Sincerely,
This was followed by a scribble, which clearly began in a capital “J” and also involved an uppercase “C” and a “y” on the end. Signatures, he’d always heard, were not supposed to be as neat as the rest of the writing; it seemed silly to him, which was why "James Carey" was still a perfectly logical thing for anyone to read at the end of his note. Theresa had managed, on purpose, to render her surname completely illegible when she wanted to, but had explained that her surname wasn't very important anyway, since she wouldn't keep it. The one good thing about having four brothers, she said, was that there was almost no chance she'd have to use a combination name after marriage to preserve the family name, since surely one of the four of them would manage to have a son and do that for her.
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