Ingrid Wolseithcrafte
January 12, 2017 11:13 AM
New heights (continued from Pecari Commons with Diana) by Ingrid Wolseithcrafte
The one problem, as far as Ingrid was concerned, with society was all the crazy double talk politeness. Was Diana Carey’s admission that she knew nothing about climbing and that Ingrid would, quite literally, have to show her the ropes, a coded plea for ‘I really don’t want to go climbing but nor do I want to embarrass you by outright rejecting the idea’? And, if it was, how was she meant to tell the difference between that and the words actually meaning what they sounded like they meant? It would have helped if there could have been a signal. She’d heard that ladies in the olden days used to flirt by having the way they waved their fans mean different things. This worked because apparently only the younger generation knew what it meant so they could do it without their parents knowing. The same thing could work here, if they could all mutually agree that all this faux politeness was just silly and awkward, but they knew their parents would be mad if they didn’t speak ‘properly’ to each other, so they’d all just twirl their wands in a particular way if they didn’t really mean what they were saying… Of course, because of all the rules of coded polite double talk, she had to pretend that enjoyed talking like this and implicitly understood people’s nuances. Anything else made you borderline savage or unladylike. She briefly toyed with the idea of talking to Louis about it… He was so down on society after all, and the thought of having someone to confide this thought in felt nice - she very definitely didn’t want to seem anti-society to anyone else given his dangerous leanings and her possible association with him - as well as having that spark of natural, honest friendship again. But she didn’t want to. Not really. Talking to Louis was too hard. He seemed so impervious to understanding her feelings… He talked about loyalty, and integrity, asking her to invest in a friendship with him whilst simultaneously telling her he pretty much planned to flush all that effort she’d put it down the toilet within a couple of years. Why couldn’t he see what a ridiculously unfair thing that was to ask?In the end, with Diana, she had thrown caution to the wind, deciding that they had both ended up in Pecari for a reason, and that that greatly increased the odds that Diana vaguely meant what she said and would quite like an activity like climbing.
“I don’t mind teaching you, if you’d really like to,” had been the only nod to the fact that Diana might not have really meant it, but without really giving her much space to manouevre. So, after stepping out to let her change, they were on their to the sports room.
As they entered, it took on the appearance of a large wall with a wooden front, in which circles of different colours and sizes were cut out. Ingrid was a little surprised to see it. It had been her first ever wall, and she’d come to see it as a little bit childish, having moved onto real fake rocks and either using proper harnessing charms or going bouldering. A small note appeared at the bottom of the wall that hadn’t been there the first time she’d used it:
Level one: use any handholds
Level two: use only the yellows
Level three: use only the reds.
“You just… kind of climb,” Ingrid said, a little lamely. “With this one, I mean. There’s others where there’s more to it.” She couldn’t think of much more wisdom to impart. It was a beginners’ wall. The cut out circles were chunky and easy to hold at any angle, so you didn’t need to think about particular finger grips. “These ones have slowing charms too, so you don’t have to be afraid of falling, and you can just let go when you get to the top. You glide down all slowly, and there’s cushioning charms all over the floor.
“I can show you?” she offered, thinking it was gracious to at least take the plunge first. She was pretty sure the yellows only challenge was well within her reach but so as not to show off, and to get a bit of a warm up, she climbed using whatever holds came naturally to her. Being long limbed and well-practised, she made stretching between holds look easy. At the top of the wall, she let go, floating gently back to the mat.
“Go on, give it a try,” she grinned at Diana.
OOC - based on wall number 2 in this video. Feel free to use other walls from it, should they get onto a new challenge, or make up your own, or just have Diana say she’d like to move onto something new and then leave it up to me to describe it if you’re not really sure about what/how.
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Diana Carey
January 22, 2017 1:20 PM
One handhold at a time by Diana Carey
It couldn’t possibly explain everything, but there were times when Diana thought that height must be part of the reason why her family had deliberately developed a fearsome reputation for itself. There were exceptions – Uncle Anthony and Arthur were among them – but most of Diana’s family ranged from ‘on the shorter side’ to ‘tiny.’Diana was in between those two extremes, though admittedly closer to the latter than the former. She would have blamed her mother if not for their figures – Regina Carey didn’t have that kind of figure now, but pictures of her from before and not long after she married Diana’s father showed that Gigi had been very dainty before she had seven children, while Diana was someone who’d had to be careful about what she ate since she was thirteen. Short she was, but wispy she was not.
Normally she didn’t see that as necessarily a bad thing. Curly dark hair, a bosom, and a voice which had settled in the alto range weren’t fashionable at the moment, exactly, but Diana didn’t mind standing out just a little. Right now, though, watching as Ingrid demonstrated what she meant by climbing, Diana thought that at least being very slim would have been good for an hour, and being taller could have helped, too….
She wasn’t sure she saw the point of the exercise, either – if she wanted to jump from the top and float down, couldn’t she just get the room to give her stairs to climb that high instead? – but, well, she was here. She smiled, too, as Ingrid landed. “Here goes,” she said lightly. “I’ll understand if you laugh when I land flat on my back,” she added.
Level one was using anything she could reach. Diana tested out the bottom handholds and footholds first, seeing how her hands and feet fit into them. She suspected she was going to have to redo her nails later, but that was not a major problem. Stretching between holds was still not so easy for her as it had looked for Ingrid – she was sure she made several distinctly unladylike facial expressions along the way, and muttered an unladylike expression she’d picked up from her father when one of her nails did start to splinter a little when she grabbed the handhold with the tips of her fingers and pulled up hard – but she made it almost halfway up before her foot slipped and sent her floating back toward the ground, slowly enough that she was able to cross her ankles out of habit before she reached the ground and had to quickly uncross them to land.
“We need to have more dances around here,” she said, smiling and hoping her flushing would be recognized as exertion rather than embarrassment. “Or else I need to make my brothers climb trees me with again this summer. I’m getting too soft sitting around studying all the time.” She smoothed a few curls away from her forehead. “What do you and Joella do?” she asked. “Have races, or just – climb for the exercise?” she asked.
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