Grail Markner
November 18, 2006 7:07 PM
Last days here by Grail Markner
Grail sat on one of the random tables as she always did. This year was coming to a close, and she was happy to say her head-case sisters were not returning until next year. Or hopefully, not at all. Never again! Gray smiled at the thought of never hearing those voices in her head and hoped they would be gone for good. Hopefully it was just the anxity of first year that created, and she would be perfectly sane for second year.Recently, Grail had been walking around in complete comfort clothes. Her glasses on most of the time, showing off the real brown of her eyes, and her blonde hair up in a bun. Right now there was a stick sort of think in it to keep it up tighter, and she was reading another of Alice's letters. Or... Alais as she just found out. Overreacting again about how she's been spelling and saying her name wrong for years.
Honestly, the girl was only nine. She didn't need to put all that stress on herself right now. The little drama queen.
Alice, or Alais, whatever, was complaining that now she knew dad wasn't her real dad. Mom wouldn't tell her who. The baby is her only real sibling. All that other crap that Gray was pretty much just skimming over. Picking out main points such as these. Also little bits about how the three of them (not Gray, apparently) were going to their aunt's beach house in a few days (like Grail actually cared). There was more, the note was two pages after all, but Grail didn't want to read anymore. She was pretty much falling asleep in her chair, she didn't want to go home. Not back to this. Gah.
Putting the letter aside, Grail pulled out a pen. She was going to write to Alice/Alais one more time. Don't worry, stop worrying, you'll kill yourself if you keep worrying. Have fun at Auntie's (Gray flinched weakly at this, her Aunt wasn't the greatest person in the world), love you, and such. Complete random vagueness like that...
But once she began on the first sentence, Gray had trouble fitting words togather. Her first line came out as such:
This whole pregnancy thing is doing a number on your nerve! You have to stop worrying before you kill yourself...
But that sounded a bit too casual for a sister Gray didn't even get along with all that well, so Gray shoved the paper aside and leaned back to rub her temples. What to say, what to say. God, she wished she could ask someone what to say to little miss Alais. Sighing she looked around for just that person. Or just someone to talk to. Gah, where was everyone she knew?\n\n
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Grail Markner
Last days here
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Zack Dill
November 18, 2006 9:08 PM
Alas, so true by Zack Dill
Zack entered the Cascade Hall and looked around for an empty table, or perhaps one with Ginger, Guenther, or Zoey (not Anne though because the Captain probably hadn't yet forgiven him). None of them appeared to be present. Who he did notice was Grail. The girl with the King Arthur name who was on his Quidditch team.She pushed aside a page of paper she'd been writing on with a sigh and looked unhappy. It had been a while since he lost the game for Aladren, so she probably wasn't rehashing that memory. She hadn't seemed quite so obsessed with the game as Anne was, so maybe it was safe to sit with her. Team bonding and all. Not that Zack really believed in it, but maybe Anne would notice and not throw him off the team next year.
He took one of the empty seats at Grail's table. Not so close that she would feel obligated to talk to him, but not so far away that conversation would be awkward. He smiled politely at the younger girl and nodded in greeting. He thought about taking out a book to read, but figured he wait to see if she wanted to say or ask anything.\n\n
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Zack Dill
Alas, so true
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Gray
November 18, 2006 10:06 PM
So sad by Gray
Looking around she noticed the Seeker of Aladren, Zack Dill, sit near her and acknowleged her. Gray gave the boy a smile and moved a few seats closer to him, bringing her letters with, not wanting to lose them but not planning on writing more on them, since Zack seemed like her savior. The person she could talk to to get away from Alice/Alais."Hi, Zack? Right?" Gray smiled. Of course it was Zack. She was just being polite. "How've you been?" Zack seemed a bit down a few months ago, when they lost the Quidditch match against Pecari. She remembered she had been too, losing more goals than saving them and having to listen to Libby forever. But that was a while ago, so it didn't really matter anymore, especially since the end of the year was coming closer and closer. Gray would just have to try again, harder, next year on Quidditch. Right now she could just have the time to be sad about the year's end.
"Good year, eh?" she smiled at Zack. Not really for her. Or was it? It was only Gray's first. And she had met Leo, someone she trusted most here, Nikki, Ginger, and Adam. Sure the voices hurt, but that could just be the fault of her anxity. "Mine was okay..." she muttered off before Zack answered. Grail pulled her wrist to press against her lips before she said everything, she had a feeling she wanted to spill every bit of her insanity to someone. Aurther's beads hurt her lips, but she didn't pull them away. Gray's eyes moved somewere out in space as she waited for Zack to speak and distract her.\n\n
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Gray
So sad
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Zack Dill
November 19, 2006 12:23 PM
It's too bad by Zack Dill
She shifted a few seats closer to him. Guess that meant she wasn't still holding the lost game against him. He knew it was his fault. He'd been too arrogant after his discovery that the Snitch was an alien. He'd just assumed that the Snitch would want him to win since he had been clever enough to deduce the truth.If anything, Zack had realized in hindsight, that just made the Snitch want him to work harder to find it. The leaf he'd mistaken for the snitch when Ginger had apparently been spotting the real one had just been a halucination the Snitch had placed in his mind to distract him. He needed to be able to recognize such tricks. He'd do better next year.
Quitting was out of the question, of course. It might put Alderaan at a disadvantage with the Snitch playing with his mind more than the opponent's, but how many activities at Sonora were there to interact with real live alien beings from across the galaxy?
"Hi, Zack? Right?" Zack startled back to the here and now. Here being the Cascade Hall with Grail the Alderaanian Keeper. (Being somewhat fuzzy on what the rest of the Quiddich team did, he wasn't quite sure what it was she Kept, but he was sure she did a fine job of Keeping it.)
"Yeah," he said, nodding, just barely managing to squeeze the affirmative in before she asked how he his year went and answered her own question in relation to herself.
"Well," he began, uncertain how much detail she wanted, but she had asked, so he'd tell her. "I was a upset that Professor Dione wasn't teaching Astronomy anymore, but Professor Chitterjee seems reasonably competent. I did make the Quiddich team again, so that was fine. Ginger and Guenther and I have been running a D&D campaign, so that's been fun, too. Also, I started taking Ancient Runes this year, and that is an interesting subject. Not quite what I imagined it would be, but it's not bad. The only seriously bad part was not catching the Snitch in the Pecari game. Overall, though, I'd have to call it a good year."
He nodded, having decided the year was good. "I'm sorry to see it end, really. The food's better here, the rooms are brighter, the people smarter. The only thing Sonora's missing that would make it even better is a computer and an internet connection in my room. What about you? Looking forward to the summer?"\n\n
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Zack Dill
It's too bad
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Grail
November 20, 2006 5:28 PM
So true... by Grail
Grail nodded along with Zack. Listening to everything he said. She realized "Chitterjee" meant "Chatterjee," or Deck, the professor she'd mistaken for a student during midterm. He was pretty cool. The Quidditch team point was fairly obvious, since she was his teammate. D&D? What was that? Gray would have to ask when Zack was done. Ancient Runes? This also sounded fun. She frowned at the Snitch thing though. It was her fault too, that they lost the game, she wasn't a very good Keeper...And then, Zack concluded his sentences, and turned on Gray with another question. "Well, in a way. I miss my computer too, but I was happy to get away from my sisters for a while..." Like that lasted very long, before those stupid voices came. "And I'll miss the people I met here..." Not that she met many. "But it's only for a short while, and I'll spend a lot of it in Detroit..." She always spent summers in Detroit, but would her mother (who had custody of the kids) let Gray leave again to see her father? "And next year I'll be a second year..." She was smiling a little more at this point. "It seems people look down on first years. Second year will probably be better..." And she probably wouldn't have those voices.
Grail slid her glasses off to clean for a second, letting her brown eyes wander to the back wall as she spaced off for a few seconds. Then she came back to Earth and remembered what she was going to ask Zack. "Hey, what's that D&D thing anyway?" she asked, giving him a puzzled look. Gray knew Ginger and had heard of Guenther, but hadn't heard of that. It was only natural that Gray was confused.\n\n
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Grail
So true...
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Zack Dill
November 20, 2006 5:59 PM
So blue... by Zack Dill
Zack nodded along in agreement with her comment about sisters. Not that he had any sisters, but he did have a brother that he was delighted to be away from. Fortunately, Nick would be at some sort of get-out-of-the-city camp thing for low income at-risk teens for the first month and Zack would be spared his presence until nearly July. (The powers-that-be probably figured the campfire expenses would be cheaper than the property damage the kids would otherwise inflict if left unoccupied over the summer.)But then she said that word. That terrible terrible word that should be a curse but masqueraded around the United States and especially Michigan as a city name. He sat up straight barely heard the rest of what she said, though he did catch D&D and made a mental note to get back to that later.
First though, he had to clarify. "You're from Detroit, too?" He didn't offer his address or school district. If she recognized them, they would only tell her he lived in a subsidized housing development and had gone to a school with minimal funding and more probation officers per capita than teachers, and that was something he tried not to advertise here at Sonora.\n\n
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Zack Dill
So blue...
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Gray
November 20, 2006 6:43 PM
So gray *grins half-heartedly at little pun* by Gray
"You're from Detroit, too?"Grail noted the "too." So Zack was from Detroit? Maybe he knew her father. No, that was unlikely, David never let anyone know him except the peopole at his work. Maybe he knew Hector? Hector was pretty popular for his photography at the College for Creative Studies. Her father simply lived in a small room in the Carrick Apartments, about a half mile from Hector's school, up in Midtown Detroit.
"Well... I used to live there," she replied. "After my parents divorced, we stayed for a little longer, but then my brother, Aurther, died and mom moved up to Traverse City. I go to Detroit every summer though, to visit my dad up in Midtown. And my brother's friend Hector..." Then, as a side note she added, "Hector's a photographer at the College for Creative Studies. My brother wanted to be a religious symbologist and applied for a lot of colleges, but he died before he could get in to any..." another side note, "Aurther graduated early when Hector was a senior..." Aurther was a Junior.
Grail took a second to glance at the beads Aurther had given her. "So, I used to live in Detroit. But my mom moved us. She's was kinda mad at Aurther because heliked learning about religion, and Momma was born Cathar," that bit wasn't needed, it was more of another side note. "Anyway, what's D&D? You haven't told me." Hopefully Gray spilling that much of her home life wouldn't distract Zack from the D&D question. \n\n
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Gray
So gray *grins half-heartedly at little pun*
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Zack Dill
November 20, 2006 10:47 PM
Let's stay by Zack Dill
Zack blinked a little. That was a lot of information right there. He was unfamiliar with the apartment building she mentioned, and the people were just about impossible for him to have met since they worked or attended classes at the College for Creative Studies. That, he'd heard of, but it was about ten miles closer Lake St. Clair than where his family lived. With neither a car nor the money for day trips, Zack had only gone down that way on the rare school field trip.Zack didn't say anything about her dead brother - what was he supposed to say? Neither did he comment about her parents being divorced. His were still married, but that was the anomoly, not the norm where he came from, so he found nothing strange in it. Religion was something he read about but had little personal experience with, and 'Cathar', whatever that was, was not a demonination he was familiar with.
Her last question, though, that he was more than comfortable talking about. "Dungeons and Dragons. It's a role playing game. You create a character of a particular race and class, give them skills, feats - which are like abilities, and spells if they happen to be a magic user, and have them go on adventures with characters made up by other people. It's a totally geeky thing, but you're in Alderaan, so you're already labelled. There's tons of books about it. The Player Handbook, hang on, I've got mine with me," he heaved his backpack up into his lap and made a mental note to try to find the spell for creating a Bag of Holding.
As he rummaged through the textbooks he had with him, he continued talking, "Anyway the Player Handbook has just about everything you need to know to get a basic handle on the game. It'll walk you through the character creation process, telling you the strengths and weaknesses of the different, here it is," he pulled out the book and let it thud onto the table before sliding toward Grail, "classes and races," he finished his sentence as if he hadn't interrupted himself. "Want to join our campaign for next year? Three's a little too small for a proper adventuring party."\n\n
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Zack Dill
Let's stay
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