[Sports] Meeting with Liliana on Magical Arts Room and Sports

Ginger Pierce

July 14, 2015 1:11 PM

[Sports] Meeting with Liliana by Ginger Pierce

It had been an eventful week. First the concert sign-ups had gone up and that had been exciting. Then she'd spent a great breakfast in the company of Liliana, which had started a bit awkwardly as they didn't really know each other that well and were three years different in age, but after arranging to meet today in the Sports room to practice Keeping, conversation had naturally turned to Quidditch, and from there branched into other interests, so the awkwardness had passed pretty quickly.

Then, things had taken a downward turn a bit. She'd gotten called into Deputy Headmistress Skies' office and been questioned about some kind of tree carving in the Gardens that Ginger had heard rumors about but mostly ignored as having nothing to do with her. She was still twelve, and if she liked anybody, which she was only just beginning to suspect she might, his initial wasn't an A. One of her fingers touched absently against the pretty Teppalus ribbon tying back her hair that Jake had given her last Christmas, while her other hand tightened around the hand-me-down-but-still-pretty-awesome broom he'd given her to use this year instead of a school one.

But she'd gotten called in anyway because her initial was a G, and she'd had to explain that California Pierces did not harm trees any more than most of them ate meat, and even if she was inclined to do so and didn't think it was a horrible thing to do to a living thing, she didn't know of any As whom she fancied nor did she think there were any As who fancied her. Andrew and Alistair were both on her Quidditch team, and so were both nice enough to her, but they were also society pure-bloods who would likely die before publicly carving a declaration like that about a mixed blood like her. And none of the other As in the school were people she knew well enough to even consider as anything more than classmates or acquaintances, even including the girls in her year with that initial. So if anybody with an A initial thought well enough of her to do that kind of thing, it was Andrew, who barely spoke to her at all despite being in the same House and Quidditch team, so surely not, or Alistair who was, well, Alistair.

Even if Alistair was acting kind of weird around her sometimes. He hadn't even frowned much when she'd shrunk his chair out from under him or, at least, not after he'd realized she was the one who'd done it . . . but that he fancied her? That was just plain silly, and she'd told Professor Skies so, in a blabbering stream of consciousness sort of way that hopefully had been convincing instead of just nervous and mildly suspicious.

Still, maybe she'd keep an eye on how he treated her versus how he treated other girls, just in case . . . He didn't exactly have the best of social graces, so maybe being patronizing instead of outright rude was how he showed girls he liked them.

Ginger startled a little as she realized Liliana had arrived, and she blushed a little. "Hey," she greeted cheerfully with only a hint of embarrassment for being caught thinking about boys. "Sorry, I didn't see you for a second there. I was trying to figure out if I need to tell a boy I'm not interested or not. I mean, he hasn't said anything to make me think I do, but . . ." she shrugged, "his initial is an A so I'm over-analyzing probably." With the staff chastising the entire school about defacing school trees, she figured everybody must know what she was talking about by now. "It wasn't me, by the way," she added quickly with a defensiveness she wouldn't have thought necessary before Deputy Headmistress Skies spoke to her. "Carving trees is bad for them."

She bit her tongue before saying anything more, but her fingers drifted up to the ribbon again to nervously fiddle with the ends of it. "So! Keeping! How do we want to do this?"

1 Ginger Pierce [Sports] Meeting with Liliana 302 Ginger Pierce 1 5

Liliana

July 15, 2015 10:59 PM

Clandestine(ish) meeting with Ginger. by Liliana

Liliana enjoyed the little Pierce’s company. She knew that Ginger was probably not someone she was supposed to associate with for two reasons— not only was she the Enemy (being the Teppalus Keeper) but she was also not of society. However, Liliana was not used to not having her way, and she was also the sort of person who would do whatever she liked until she got caught, and since her friendship with Atlas had continued for nearly five years now acknowledged but never reprimanded, she figured she could get away with befriending little Ginger Pierce too. The younger girl was, Liliana found, refreshing. A welcome break from some of the more serious minds of Sonora, and Liliana was reminded of this freshness as she walked into the MARS room that day for their arranged meeting.

At first Liliana had fretted slightly over what she should do if people were to find out they were meeting and what for—teaching an opposing keeper how to play was likely some sort of offense that went against everything in a Keeper’s handbook. However, Liliana also realized that Ginger had no one to learn keeping from. Liliana herself had learned from her cousins and she figured Theodore had learned from his relatives too as he likely had a Quidditch playing family seeing as two of his sisters also played. Ginger, on the other hand, Liliana didn’t know much about other than she had looked ridiculously small in those hoops the two games Liliana had seen her in the last year. But after encountering her in that moment, Liliana realized she didn’t have to do anything. People would talk, let them—Ginger was a student in need, a fellow female player in need. Who was Liliana as a prefect, as a female to let that go unnoticed?

Now, however, all those thoughts went to the wayside as she raised an amused eyebrow at Ginger’s rambling. Though neither of Liliana’s initials started with either a ‘G’ or an ‘A’ she had still taken an interest in the defacing. Her best friend’s name was Atlas, after all and though she knew that particular ‘A’ ‘hearted’ an ‘M,’ she couldn’t be too sure that there wasn’t a ‘G’ who ‘hearted’ her ‘A.’ “Boys?” Liliana asked, curiously, her ears perking up a little. Since she had lost touch with Tanya and Noey, Liliana hadn’t had too much girl talk and though Ginger was only twelve and Liliana was fifteen, she still felt the yearning to chitchat before they got down to practise. That being said, Liliana’s only experience with fancying any boys was that ridiculously stupid crush she’d had on Emrys Lucan’s cousin and then the just-for-fun arrangement she had with Vètil. “Intriguing. The best way with boys is to be frank—that’s been my experience anyway.” And it was true, too. Wesley and her had just kissed and she was quite open and honest with Vètil about everything. And then there was her best friend who was strange and round about but who she could always lay to rest once she bluntly explained what was up.

“But, boys aside, let’s warm up, shall we? We can talk while we do so if you like,” Liliana had skipped her morning run and opted instead to do some star jumps in her room when she got up to fully be awake. “Stretching and then a couple laps should do. I like to run a lot since Keeper is a pretty stationary position and you don’t really get the same kind of exercise as everyone else in-match, so I try my best to keep in shape whenever I can. I run nearly every morning and when I can’t I do something else like star jumps. That’s what I did this morning so that I would be able to devote myself to your training.” She gave a smile. “After running we can fly a couple laps before getting down to technique, sound good?”

10 Liliana Clandestine(ish) meeting with Ginger. 274 Liliana 0 5

Ginger

July 16, 2015 11:33 AM

Mum's the word! by Ginger

Ginger flushed a little more at Liliana's intrigued query of "Boys?" but no immediate follow-up of specifics followed, so she relaxed again and nodded solemnly to the advice the older girl offered. Be frank. Okay. That could get a bit awkward, but if she phrased it right ... just to clear the air and stomp out any potential issues; he'd likely appreciate not having potential issues ... she thought she could probably bring up the subject with Alistair without embarrassing both of them and give him an opportunity to make his own denials, and everything should go back to normal. Assuming he wasn't the A, of course. Which he surely wasn't.

She was relieved when Liliana set a task of doing stretches and a few running laps. Running really wasn't her most favorite warm up, and she groaned every time they had to do it at Teppalus practices, but today she was hoping it would rid her of these entirely silly notions. "Okay, sounds good," she agreed readily and set to stretching.

She was fairly flexible - she'd tried learning acrobatics from some of the Rennfaire groups her family had worked with over the years, and while she was nowhere near ready to go on a world tour with them, she had enough natural talent and practice behind her now that she'd picked up enough tricks to add a little tumbling to her juggling routines, which was always a crowd pleaser. So she started with a couple splits, followed by a few back bends and back walk-overs, and then finished up with a set of jumping jacks to get the blood moving before their run.

As they ran, Ginger tried to keep even with Liliana so they could talk as the older girl had suggested they might. "So you're an intermediate, right?" she asked, trying to sound casual and not entirely pulling it off, "Does, um, anybody have boyfriends or girlfriends in there yet? Not just As and Gs, but anybody," she added quickly, in case Liliana thought she was still on the subject of the graffiti. "As, Bs, Cs ... Js, maybe?" she clarified, not nearly as subtle as she thought she was being.

1 Ginger Mum's the word! 302 Ginger 0 5

Liliana

July 17, 2015 8:59 AM

Merci beaucoup! by Liliana

Liliana nodded approvingly when Ginger began to bend herself. It was good she was limber, Liliana decided, it would mean she could twist herself into all kinds of positions to block the Quaffle if she ever were brave enough (or, perhaps stupid enough) to preform such acrobatics thirty feet up in the air on a broomstick. So long as she doesn’t use that against our Chasers, she thought to herself kind of wryly. There really was no backing out now, even if Liliana had wanted to (perhaps if she’d thought the letter through before so impulsively hand-delivering it) she was in this arrangement and hopefully no one took offense. Though, she thought, if the Teppalus team showed up, interrupting her breakfast to accuse her of meddling with their Keeper’s abilities she would laugh in their faces.

She had come a long way from the angry, elitest first year she had once been, Liliana realized as she watched Ginger move around the room. Five years ago she never would have approached the younger less-than-pureblood, likely choosing instead to avoid any interactions with her unless forced. She blushed slightly at the recollection of what a horrible person she had been. Atlas and Waverly Canterbury had helped her to grow out of that once Quidditch had loosened her up and allowed her to start having fun again. “Where’d you learn how to do those things?” she asked Ginger now.

Liliana herself was rather flexible to an extent—over the years she had stretched enough between ballet and running that she could do the splits and get quite a good grasp on the ends of her feet while sitting down with her legs straight out in front of her, but she had never been able to do many gymnastic exercises that proper acrobats did even though she had always admired them from afar while her grandmother explained to her why being an acrobat was not a suitable profession for a Lady.

Once they began to ran, Liliana kept pace with Ginger, making sure that she wasn’t running too fast that the younger girl wouldn’t be able to keep up but still pushing it a bit so that Ginger would learn to increase her stamina and Liliana would get a moderate work out. Ginger’s oh-so-subtle questioning about the dating habits of the Intermediate Js did not go by unnoticed and Liliana had to suppress an amused smile while trying to recollect all the J-names in that class. Since a whole new year group had entered Liliana was still remembering names but she was almost positive the only J-name in Intermediates was fourth-year Jake Manger unless Ginger was referring to Jaime Park who Liliana honestly didn’t think anyone could find attractive he was so frustratingly cocky. Then again, she thought as she went over the new faces and remembered there being that Aladren boy who knew everything, there was John Umland.

But really, Liliana thought to herself as she scanned over faces once more. It was most likely to be Jake even though John was closer to Ginger in age because both she and Jake did Quidditch together and were in the same house. “I don’t think Jake has a girlfriend to my knowledge,” she said, skipping the part where she hinted around things in hopes her conversation partner picked up on it. Liliana wasn’t really a fan of that sort of talk though she understood Ginger’s hesitance in outright asking. Relationships could be embarrassing, Liliana remembered. She herself had been loathe to admit when she’d had a crush on someone at that age.

“No one in Intermediates really does I don’t think,” she continued. “Unless they have someone back home like Atlas does.” Liliana still wasn’t a fan of that Ann Marie girl Atlas was still dating but she didn’t let that slip into her voice. Her discontent was for her and her alone to know. She didn’t need it getting back to Atlas that she disapproved as they had been getting along so well as of late and she didn’t want to have yet another fight over some Muggle girl. “Why do you ask?” She was pretty sure she knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it out of Ginger’s own lips. She was making up for the nearly five or so years she’d spent without female company to gossip with. That she was fifteen and Ginger was only twelve didn’t cross her mind. She wanted female companionship and it appeared that Ginger was just going to have to step it up and play that role for her.

As they finished up their laps, Liliana took a drink from the water bottle she’d brought and grabbed her broom. “We’ll do a couple laps next, I think. This time I want you to go as fast as you can, I want to see what your broom can do.” Liliana wasn’t really a broom expert but her own broom was, in her opinion, quite an excellent one and as it had been made by a British company she felt Very Patriotic and believed it was the best sort a witch or wizard could have—American companies just didn’t measure up, she thought, not in the least.

10 Liliana Merci beaucoup! 274 Liliana 0 5

Ginger

July 29, 2015 12:15 PM

I think that's French, but that's all I got. by Ginger

Ginger finished a back-walkover and smiled at Liliana when the older girl asked about the gymnastics. She hadn't exactly been trying to show off, but who didn't like impressing older, more experienced, people?

"My family runs in some of the same circles as acrobatic performers. They were kind enough to teach me some of the basics during our off time. I'm still too young to get a leading role anywhere, so having lots of skills helps me fit in wherever there's an opening." She knew her family was well know in wizarding circles - Uncle Harvey even ran for President a few times on the Integration With Muggles Party ballot - but she wasn't quite sure if they were known for just being half-blood upstarts with dangerously liberal ideas and the money to promote such causes, or if people also knew them as the band of traveling hippies and gypsies they had as their own self-image. "We're wandering performers," she added by way of clarification, just in case, "We do gigs like the Midsummer Fair last year; that was us.

"If you saw the stage magician, or the tightrope walker, they were both former Pecari captains. They played chaser and taught me to fly, but we only have the one broom since there are so many muggles around all the time, and that's older than my Mom and doubles as a sweeper." She rolled her eyes a little at the ridiculousness of using the same broom for flying as for brushing dirt out of tents - and in truth it saw more use doing the later activity. She assumed she did not need to explain now why she had been using a school broom last year. "Well, Saul got another one when he made captain, and Jose used it when he was Captain, but it's sized for sixteen year old boys, not twelve year old girls, and it's fifteen or so years old itself by now, and it's the family's only decent flying broom, so I don't get to use it much." She continued stretching as she talked, finding it easier to grasp her toes when her legs were straight out in front of her if her brain was otherwise engaged in conversation and not thinking that this was hard and kinda hurt a little.

As they were running later, she nearly lost her step and tumbled on her face when Liliana skipped right past her casual enquiry into the dating lives of the Intermediate class and just outright said Jake wasn't seeing anybody.

"Who said anything about Jake?" she asked in alarm, face flushing bright red and her voice rising in pitch.

Then the meaning of Liliana's words trickled through her panic at getting found out, and she added, trying to sound unruffled and missing the mark by miles, "But that's good to know."

She did manage to relax a little as Liliana expanded into a generalization for the whole Intermediate class, but that abruptly vanished at the question "why do you ask?"

"No reason," Ginger lied quickly and poorly. She was a pretty good actress when she was prepared for it, but she needed time to get into the right headspace to tell convincing untruths, and frankly, running laps around the MARS room was not an ideal environment for coming up with a character who didn't maybe have a bit of an interest in Jake's dating status right now.

When they finished running, Ginger picked up her broom, flushing a little again as she recalled both of their earlier conversations. The broom in her hand was clearly not her family's old model nor a school broom. Jake had kept it in great condition. "Yeah," she agreed to the task at hand, "Jake gave me this one, but I haven't really tested its limits yet."

Not giving Liliana a chance to comment on that opening, Ginger kicked off and started flying laps as quick as Jake's less-new broom would go. Not used to high speeds for an extended period of time, her knuckles turned white as the scenery flew past, more like blurs than real objects, and sweat broke out on her forehead.

At this unfamiliar speed, her corners were wild, sometimes nearly running into the walls of the MARS pitch, sometimes cutting the corner so close she couldn't rightly say she was flying along the outside anymore. By the third lap, she was more consistent, but she had also slowed down noticably.

"Not used to that," she gasped, a bit out of breath, when she and Liliana could talk again. "I don't usually get to fly so fast. Woo! That was a rush!"

1 Ginger I think that's French, but that's all I got. 302 Ginger 0 5

Liliana

July 30, 2015 5:23 PM

One Keeper, Two Keeper; Old Keeper, New Keeper by Liliana

Liliana grinned as Ginger talked about her family. She thought the younger girl was quite adorable, she kind of reminded her of Atlas’ younger sister, Katie. It almost made her excited for the new baby—almost. Then she remembered that the new baby was to be a boy and she felt sick to her stomach all over again. Weren’t there enough male Rosenthals running around the planet? Did they really need another? Well, technically the baby would be a Bannister, like her, but who was counting? It would still have Rosenthal blood, it would still be male, it would still take her place as the youngest (and therefore cutest) cousin. Babies sucked.

“That’s cool about your family,” she said. “Mine is just the typically boring pureblood type where the adults pretend not to notice their children running rampant and participating in illicit activities until it’s time to send them off to the family business at which point they had better buckle down or risk disinheritance.” If her tone was slightly bitter, Liliana didn’t notice. She loved her family deeply and was the sort who would risk pretty much anything if she thought someone was attacking her family, but watching her oldest cousins being integrated into the business world had been kind of hard and just thinking about it kind of put her in a foul mood.

On the other hand, Ginger’s blushing and attempt to act cool amused Liliana and she stayed quiet as the younger girl tried to act like what Jake did or didn’t do in his spare time was of no consequence to her. It was painfully obvious that Ginger had a crush on Jake, but Liliana only smiled quietly to herself as the Teppenpaw lied about having “no reason” to inquire after the Intermediates’ dating habits (or lack thereof). She didn’t further the conversation though she desperately wanted to—until Ginger brought Jake up again and then took off around the room.

“Nice broom,” she said, appraisingly. “Nice friend, too. Where was it made?” She was kind of surprised that Jake had given Ginger such a broom.

10 Liliana One Keeper, Two Keeper; Old Keeper, New Keeper 274 Liliana 0 5