Headmaster Brockert

April 15, 2016 1:00 AM
Nothing, it seemed ever changed in Mortimer's life. His daughter-in-law, Amanda, Gene's wife, had just announced her pregnancy last week. At least, though, it wasn't Opal. In fact, after Amethyst's birth, Mortimer had had a talk with Zeke about not having any more kids, which had been awkward as can be.

However, since it was Gene and Amanda and it was their first, he supposed he could be happy about it, like most people were about having grandchildren-and really he shouldn't have been that surprised to constantly having grandchildren since he had five sons and they were more than old enough to do so. Besides, Amanda was overall less stupid than Opal. Not that that was saying much since Mortimer suspected there were actual opals that were smarter than his daughter-in-law of the same name.

And just as every other year, when the first years filed in, he stood and began to speak. "Welcome to Sonora for the new first years and welcome back for all older students. In just a minute,first years will be receiving a goblet distributed by Deputy Headmistress Skies, in order to sort you into your houses. You will turn the color representing your house which are blue for Aladren, yellow for Teppenpaw, red for Crotalus, and brown for Pecari. Afterwards, you may join your house table."

Of course, this year there were relatives among them, a Brockert girl and another girl who was Clifford Brockert's great-great-granddaughter or something. That wasn't anything new either, they just weren't that closely related to him. Next year his own granddaughter would be here.

Come to think of it, maybe it was good for things to be the same. When things weren't that meant they were going wrong and it was a lot of bull crap that he had to deal with. Then again, things had started normally when the Charms facility had malfunctioned and when the Satori had shown up, so it really didn't matter. It was just painfully repetitive.

After the first years had been sorted and found their tables, it was-like every year-time to announce Head Student and prefect. Mortimer picked up the official ballot and while his face naturally did not betray his inner emotions, he internally did a double take. This was certainly something new and different. "Would Duncan Brockert and Serena Brockert please come up and get your Head Student badges. In addition I'd like to call up John Umland, Aiden O'Neil, Makenzie Newell, and Joella Curtis to recieve their prefect badges. Congratulations." He was rather surprised really, no Brockert had won Head Student in over twenty years. There were those two girls whose grandmothers had been Brockerts but they themselves had been a Dobson and a Lennox. He thought the last person whose last name had actually been Brockert to win was actually Duncan's father but he wasn't really sure. It was hard to keep who was related how straight. His niece Alessa was as far he knew, the only one who could. Mortimer would be shocked if Clifford himself knew.

Anyway, he had one more announcement as they sat down. "This year's Midsummer event will be the ball and this year there will be theme, to be announced later.Now we will sing the school song." Though I am not sure why we bother.

Every day we strive
Learning to survive
Life’s hardships and to solve its mystery.
Learning to defend
Our honour and our friends,
Flying high to meet our destiny
We will stand and face those who want to harm us.
We won’t let the world transfigure, jinx or charm us
I won’t fight alone, as long as you are with me.
Sonora be my home, my tutor and my spirit
Vasita quoque floeat; Even the desert blooms.


With that, food appeared, students were free to converse, and he was free to enjoy his meal as well as a family victory.
Subthreads:
11 Headmaster Brockert Opening Feast 6 Headmaster Brockert 1 5

Joseph Umland

April 26, 2016 6:19 PM
Joe was not substantially taller than he had been as a first year, but he tried very hard to convince himself that the new first years looked tiny as they drank their potions and joined their tables, the Teppenpaw ones with his applause and the Aladren ones with his sympathy. He was still a Beginner, too, but he was a senior beginner, which had to count for something in the height-and-prestige department even if it didn’t involve physical realities. He knew his way around the building now, or had, and since he had still been able to navigate his neighborhood just fine after months away from it over the summer, he didn’t expect to have any trouble getting around Sonora again after a much shorter period of separation.

He applauded as the prefect’s took their badges, too, even though one of them was probably an enemy (he didn’t know Joella personally, didn’t really have anything against her, but Aladren and Pecari had bad blood between their Quidditch teams and John’s enemies had a way of becoming Joe’s by default, so it was better to just skip all the intermediate steps and assume John had personally offended her at some point and that she’d become antagonistic the second she heard his last name if they ever met), one of them was someone he didn’t know (though he did think it was for the best that Araceli wasn’t the Crotalus prefect; he couldn’t imagine that being even more older than them would improve her manner with first years much), and the last one was his brother, who Joe didn’t really think had any business in a position of authority. He had expected John to agree with him on that, which was why it was a surprise to notice that John looked like he was trying very hard not to be pleased and failing pretty spectacularly at that as he returned to the Aladren table. He had thought John would be repulsed by the thought of all the mandatory interaction with people who weren’t either family or just like him that went with being a prefect. Maybe he hadn’t thought of it yet….

All in all, though, it was a good night to be a Teppenpaw. They had more than one socially competent prefect and had produced the Head Boy and Head Girl. He thought that ought to qualify as a good show in anyone’s book.

Joe wasn’t much of a singer – better than John, sure, but then, ‘minstrel’ was on the List of Jobs John Was Never Allowed To Attempt Ever, right there with ‘therapist’, ‘schoolteacher’, ‘politician’, ‘mortician’, and Joe didn’t even know how many other things there were that John just was not allowed to attempt, ever. Joe figured it was the universe’s way of balancing things out – but he gave the school song his best before the food appeared, at which point he promptly forgot all about it for another year. It had been interesting to see who had badges this year, tomorrow he expected there would be Quidditch sign-up sheets and things would get a lot more interesting around here when Teppenpaw joined in the battle for the Quidditch cup and Aladren very possibly left it (John had muttered about that when Mom had asked if they were looking forward to going back; he had caught himself before he said anything to her, but Joe knew his brother had been worried that they might have either more or less than exactly one new face on the Aladren Quidditch team, as he and Clark would no longer be able to basically blackmail the rest of the House into being nice to them if there was no team or if there were enough people willing to be on it for Bennett to fill their places if they walked. Sometimes, Joe was so glad he was in Teppenpaw. He was still a bit of a nerd, occupational hazard of growing up with Mom and John around, but at least the much cooler people in his House were actually cool and not inclined to beat him up in order to prove a social point), but right now, he was hungry.

Food tasted different in America, he thought. He couldn’t even put his finger on exactly what was different about it, but there was something about flavors which just didn’t quite mesh with what he expected when he ate a given dish. Breakfast was the one meal where he didn’t expect to feel off for a while. Potatoes, though, were one of those things that he thought were nearly the same wherever one went, only varying in the spices and toppings, so he added boiled ones to his plate (he’d cut them up and sprinkle shredded cheese on later) along with a helping of a salad, deceptively decent-looking at first glance, which he didn’t realize until too late had at least two things he didn’t like in it and a couple of pork chops.

“Eat, drink, and be merry,” he said cheerfully to one of his neighbors when he made eye contact for a moment. Another year had begun.
16 Joseph Umland Here's to another year. 329 Joseph Umland 0 5


Ginger Pierce

April 29, 2016 10:54 AM
Ginger's summer had been a whirlwind of rehearsals, performances, campfires, laughter, food, costumes, and so many other things she could scarcely remember them all. It had been the good kind of busy, filled with friends and family and faires. She'd kept up a steady stream of owls to Jake, Jemima, and Lauren, as well as more isolated letters to Lilliana, Owen, her Teppenpaw teammates, and even one to Alistair when one of her sketches made her think of him and she'd sent the drawing off to him on impulse along with a rambling letter about her summer to date because it seemed weird just to send him a drawing of a fashionably dressed wizard with a vaguely Alistair-ish face. With all those correspondences, as well as the normal California Pierce postal load, the family's three owls were nearly as busy as she was and she was sure to shower them with treats upon their returns to show her appreciation.

The owls were probably as glad as she was for her return to Sonora. She loved her family and her crazy summers, but she loved Sonora and her friends here, too, and coming back felt like returning home just as much as seeing her mom again after months at school. She'd given hugs to her roommates and they'd decorated their room and caught during orientation, as was now tradition. She'd contributed some rainbows to their walls this year, using some intermediate spells she'd learned last year to make them shimmer and shift around depending on where in the room you were standing. It was a really neat effect and she was pretty proud of it.

Now it was dinner time, when Jemima usually sat with Owen and she was hoping to catch up with Jake again, but when she got there, Jake had no open seats left around him. Feeling a bit disappointed and maybe just a bit irritable that he hadn't saved her a spot, she took another empty chair in a mild huff.

She realized after she sat down that she could have gone looking for Lauren and her roommate would have been able to cheer her up again, but she was already sitting and now the first years were coming in, and it just would have been a bigger hassle than it was worth. As it was, she was buoyed by the reminder that the ball was this year, and singing the school song always brought back glorious memories of her previous Feasts, so by the time the food popped out - such delicious variety, every year! - her spirits had been restored and she gave her neighbor a bright smile when he invited her to eat drink and be merry.

"For tomorrow we sit in chairs and listen to professors go on about syllabuses," she finished, her light tone and smile indicating she was joking rather than making a genuine gripe about the first day of classes. Her companion this year was Joe Umland, a second year. With some small degree of shock she realized she was as much older than him than Jake was older than her. For the first time, her certainty wavered and she worried that maybe Jake wouldn't want to take a relative child as his date to the ball this year.

Not that Ginger, now fourteen years old, felt she was a child anymore. She had a training bra on, for one thing, though she doubted she'd ever really bust out too much; she was just built too slim, like her mother, and Mom didn't have very big boobs either. Beyond the chest department, she was actually getting taller, finally. She'd grown significantly last year, and her wingspan had gained several inches that it hadn't had during her last Quidditch match, which would hopefully translate into better Keeping skills thanks to a better reach.

Beyond those physical changes, Ginger was dressing older (not that anyone could tell with the school robes on tonight) and she had ditched her pigtail braids in favor of an older french braid hairstyle. She also had lip gloss. Lip gloss flavored like strawberry. It was pretty and delicious.

So, really, she tried to reassure herself, she was grown up enough for Jake. Even if he was an advanced student now, which until just this moment when she realized he had moved up a level, had seemed distant and ancient to her.

To distract herself, she started filling her plate with any food that looked like it didn't have any meat in it.

Figuring that given she had started her friendship with Jake over Quidditch, it would be an appropriate topic to talk about with Joe (and Tobi would surely appreciate any recruitment she could manage), she asked, "Are you planning to join the Quidditch team this year?"
1 Ginger Pierce May the Ups Outnumber the Downs 302 Ginger Pierce 0 5