I am a reasonable, non-stabby human on Cascade Hall

Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

May 05, 2018 2:03 PM

I am a reasonable, non-stabby human by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

Tarquin took a seat at the staff table, trying not to stab too moodily at his lasagne. He was spending a lot of time floo calling back home, but his family were insisting that he occasionally needed to get out of his office and mix with actual people, and that the social interaction incurred by students checking out books did not count. He was also aware that he needed to eat, and so avoiding the public areas of the school was fairly impossible, although his schedule often had him eating at slightly odd hours. Today though, he was having a meal at a normal time, and pretending to be a relatively normal human, which was why he was trying not to be too stabby with the lasagne. Part of the reason he didn’t want to talk to his colleagues much was that he was acutely aware that the last time he’d said anything in front of most of them, it had been to be angry, announce himself as Dangerous to Others, and storm out of a staff meeting. He knew there was a lot of that middle one going around right now, but it didn’t help him feel any less embarrassed, especially as he didn’t think most of the staff knew him well enough to know what he was like on a good day, and then they’d managed to see him on a pretty terrible one.

He was no longer a Danger to Others, having come down with the fever shortly after his song and dance number in the gardens. He hadn’t bothered the medic… He and Danny had been using the floo connection a lot, not just to talk but also to send things. As soon as Danny realised Tarq would be coming down with the fever soon, he had sent a care package consisting of medication and records with Tarq’s favourite wireless dramatisations because regardless of the fact that Tarq was stuck in a facility with a fully licensed and qualified healer, he was his husband, and it was his job to take care of him.

“Hello,” he nodded, when someone sat next to him. “How’s it going?” he asked, a little stiffly, both because he felt awkward about his previous outburst, but also because he felt this was a somewhat loaded question given that they were all, at the very least, probably going stir crazy, if not expressing that graphically through displays of accidental magic.

13 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds I am a reasonable, non-stabby human 1464 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds 1 5

Grayson Wright

May 24, 2018 5:48 PM

I...am a non-stabby human? by Grayson Wright

In his first year at Sonora, Gray had done as much writing as his teaching duties would possibly allow. No small part of it had been letters – attempts to make his life sound more interesting than it was to family and friends, and mostly inquiries to anyone he thought could help him get back in the only real game he knew – but one way or another, he had written something nearly every day.

In his second year, his quantity had decreased, but he had told himself the quality had partially made up for it. He’d had evidence to support this idea – he’d sold several stories and a script he had cowritten had been accepted for production in an episode of someone else’s show. His personal correspondence had assumed a saner quality, dealing with actual events he’d found moderately entertaining.

In his third year, he had slowly realized, he was not really producing much of anything beyond that almost-reasonable personal correspondence at all.

Easy enough to blame the workload itself. Offering actual instruction took up relatively few hours of his week, and there were fairly generous breaks between classes, and most days his classes finished at three o’clock, but he had quickly discovered that it was next to impossible to get his mind settled enough for any writing in class while the students practiced – this year had been worse than others, but one always had to keep an eye on them to make sure they were not presenting a danger to themselves, others, or the building, and to intervene with the ones who seemed to be struggling, and of course to watch for hands raised to call for his attention. Then there were supervisory duties outside of the classroom – these were most prominent when Rory was absent, even alternating them with Daniel, but even when Rory or Daniel was acting as Head of Aladren, Gray was still expected to spend no small part of his time supervising public areas to make sure children were behaving reasonably well. Then there were the hours that went into grading – he had expected handwriting decipheration to be an issue from the start, but had not anticipated the strangeness that was Raine and Kyte Collindale’s background knowledge and spelling, or Tatiana Vorontsov’s combination of creative spelling and irregular handwriting which he supposed resulted from working in a foreign alphabet. And then there was tutoring, and holding office hours, and planning lessons, and…well, it was all too easy to just fall asleep at the end of it all each day.

The longer it went on, however, the more he began to see times he could write – for goodness’ sake, on three days a week his classes were over at three o’clock – but simply didn’t put forth the effort. He found his amusement instead in writing letters, or things like analyzing patterns among students with badges, or within papers written by more difficult students – figuring out what had made them as they were, or had resulted in the specific thing in front of him. He derived considerable satisfaction from coming up with clever lessons and assignments. Oh, he was annoyed enough whenever he did have an idea and was interrupted, or read something by an old rival and reflected on how little he’d even tried to publish this year – but essentially, he didn’t feel he was trying enough.

Holidays, he had told himself – soon enough it would be the holidays. First Christmas, then summer would give him opportunities to write, and that way he could become a Balanced Individual, someone who worked a sensible job and was also a writer. There had been greats who did that – some, in fact, who claimed they couldn’t have done it if they had not had that anchor of a job to add urgency to the times when they could write. The holidays would cure him of this vague restlessness, and this vague sense that he was having all thought and expression drummed out of him by Ordinary Life.

And then Christmas had gotten cancelled. And it turned out that feeling irritable with his duties occasionally was not nearly as bad as feeling imprisoned within them. It was, he supposed, a good thing that he had gotten over his illness before the quarantine came down – he might have burned the school down otherwise. Over the holidays, his sleep had gradually grown more and more irregular, his mood correspondingly lower –

And then, one evening, he had been sitting in his room staring off into space at nothing in particular and a sentence had come to him.

Hours later, he had only stopped writing for two reasons: one, he had hit the bottom of the ink bottle he’d then had in the top of his writing desk, and two, he had realized it was the small hours of the morning. He had gotten a fitful few hours of sleep before his first class. He had been a little distracted during that class, and the next, but had managed well enough. He had done the same the second day. By the third….

By the third, things were beginning to get a bit complicated.

Taking his desk with him to classes and meals was tempting, but he knew it would be foolish – for one thing, it would keep trying to distract him from his duties even more than the characters in his head did, and for another, he didn’t like to risk allowing other people near it. It was cleverly made with secret openings – indeed, to the casual eye, only the top portion, which held slots for inkwells and pens beneath a cover, opened, though it would take only brief inspection to determine that the wooden slope which formed much of the outside of the desk also lifted away to reveal a compartment large enough for paper and envelopes and a little packet of sealing wafers; other openings, however, were more difficult to discover – but its interior was still the most private space he had in this job and the thought of putting it out around children who might or might not lash out magically at any time horrified him. So he left it in his room every morning and instead carried on, in the spare moments he could snatch away from employment during the day, writing on the back of a staff memo with a scrap of pencil. It was these scribbles he was reading over as, his head aching, he walked more or less automatically to the staff table and sat down, only putting his notes away when he realized that there were, in fact, real people there.

He did not think the people in his head appreciated this concession to the supremacy of physicality, but there was no help for it. This – fit, or whatever it was, would pass probably in another day at most – he had had these spells before and knew this – and for a while he’d write nothing at all, and since he did not have time to dedicate to forcing himself to write once it passed the way he had in his previous life, he would have to give the whole story up once he was back in more thorough command of his faculties. For now, however, the rest of the faculty non-verbally commanded that he put up a façade of fairly normal behavior and interests, and other people’s wishes were his commands just now – which was why he did sometimes wonder why students supposedly lusted after adult life.

He was surprised by the librarian, who he hadn’t seen much of since that dramatic display during That Staff Meeting, being the one to specifically require non-writerly behavior of him, but he nodded when greeted. “I still haven’t decided if we should have just kept giving them classes through midterm,” he said, tilting his head toward the student body to indicate who ‘them’ was even though it was doubtless obvious from context. “But things go. You?”

16 Grayson Wright I...am a non-stabby human? 113 Grayson Wright 0 5

Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

May 25, 2018 10:41 PM

That's probably the most important part by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

It was Grayson who had joined him. He wasn’t entirely sure how they felt about each other, given their last encounter… He worried that Grayson felt awkward around him, which made him feel a bit awkward in return. But both being somewhat awkward ex-Aladrens was, at least, something in common. Grayson, at best, seemed sort of harmless and non-threatening, which Tarq generally did like in people, and he suspected their conversations could become quite interesting if either of them could succeed in drawing the other out.

“I don’t know,” he replied, when Grayson suggested that they may as well have just continued lessons, “When literal explosions are a risk - well, even more than usual - I think giving everyone a break’s probably a good idea.” Of course, when the students weren’t in class, that meant that there was usually more traffic in the library. His schedule tended to work the opposite way to most people’s, and thus he was glad of the relief brought by everyone going back to class, and the fact that he wasn’t having to keep an eye out for accidental magic wreaking havoc within his domain.

“It goes,” he echoed Grayson’s words, poking slightly moodily at his food. “I want to go home. I’m gutted about missing Christmas with my family. But who isn’t? Or at least, missing out on whatever they usually do,” he shrugged. Professor Philpott had seemed more annoyed at having to cancel skiing plans than anything else, and not everyone had families, or liked them if they did, he supposed.

“Been reading lots,” he added. This was perhaps not exactly surprising Aladren behaviour, although it was of a different quality than his usual reading habits. In some senses, he wasn’t reading, so much as researching… Of course, he had plenty of time now he was alone, to read his own books. And he was doing that too. But a large portion of his time was spent combing the shelves of the Sonora library for things Danny might enjoy. It was something they had done at the start of their relationship - Tarq’s knowledge of literature ran far deeper than his husband’s, but it didn’t mean that Danny didn’t appreciate it. He had always been recommending him poems, or other interesting material. They still shared books, but… not like they had done. They would read the same book and talk about it, but he wouldn’t go out of his way to find pieces just for Danny. He couldn’t remember when they’d stopped. When they moved in together? When they got married? Had that made them lazy and complacent in their relationship. Maybe, more likely, it was the children’s fault. Children were time consuming. But now that they were grown up, it was sort of nice to rediscover his and Danny’s relationship... His husband was sending back music. He had to admit that, much as he teased him about it, and much as a lot of Danny’s taste was just terrible mainstream pop music, he did also like some fairly decent stuff. “You?” he asked in return.

13 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds That's probably the most important part 1464 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds 0 5

Grayson Wright

May 27, 2018 10:41 PM

Are there many reasonable stabby humans? by Grayson Wright

Gray considered the argument for discontinuing lessons for the break. “Hm, fair – though if they’re going to explode things anyway, it might be better to have them where you can watch them instead of wandering wherever they want all over the Gardens – or in the library.” Explosions in the library would be very bad. The type who were apt to explode things probably did not have an enormous amount of overlap with regular library patrons, but…explosions in the library would be very bad.

He was surprised by the frank admission of missing family and routines – ‘gutted’ was a strong word. He had missed going home to see his mother and father, and his cousins and friends and former colleagues and et cetera, but he wasn’t sure he would use the word gutted - rather harsh vowels there, contained emotional overtones that the simple ‘missed’ didn’t carry. No, he didn’t think he’d go for something that strong – his own life wasn’t something to use harsh vowels over.

Reading a lot, however, was a good way to pass the time, and one he had used as well during midterm, and so he nodded agreeably to that statement. “I was reading a lot, too, yeah – reading and writing.” He didn’t realize, at once, that he had just mentioned that he scribbled to another human. “I was mostly in my own books - Do you read out of the main library much?” he asked curiously. The library was not entirely devoid of titles interesting to (mature, non-Gray-like) adults, but it was aimed at students, and also it amused Gray to think of the librarian having an ultra-secret stash behind wards sealed with his own blood or the like.

16 Grayson Wright Are there many reasonable stabby humans? 113 Grayson Wright 0 5

Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

May 28, 2018 8:57 AM

We have been forcibly incarcerated with teenagers... by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

“Indeed. I am quite glad that they’re back to being your responsibility,” he nodded, when Grayson mentioned the possibility of explosions in the library. “I do hope anyone who was feeling… that way inclined would take themselves off somewhere else and not recklessly endanger innocent books though,” he frowned. He certainly had done, although his own exploding had been of a far less literal nature. He hoped most of the people who were inclined to use the library were conscientious enough to think of that, or to just be gentle enough people that their accidents didn’t take the form of explosions. It was hard to imagine Dorian, for example, blowing anything up. Although… “If you have reason to suspect that…. Uh… Is she called Tatya? Tatiana?” he had never had an actual conversation with her, but he had heard Dorian talk both to and about her, though considerably less than Jehan Callahan, and had had cause to hear and write down both student’s names when they checked out books. “The very flamboyant Russian one,” he clarified. He had witnessed her frustration during the little language study group they had going, and felt that she had potential towards being incendiary, “If she gets sick, warn me.

“Mmm, a fair bit,” he nodded, when Grayson asked if he read much out of the main library, “I mean, we might not regard them as adults until… Whenever,” he gestured vaguely, given that the age varied somewhat depending on what adulting, exactly, was being suggested, “But literature-wise, your average high schooler’s capable of reading the classics. And I certainly haven’t read every piece of decent literature, poetry and philosophy in the library yet. There’s probably some quite interesting theory, enough to challenge the brightest students means it goes above RATS level occasionally, and it’s not like I took seventh year exams in every subject, though I do tend to stick more to the arts.

“What’s your preferred reading material? And did you say writing?” he added curiously. Possibly Grayson just meant writing to family, but people usually put ‘to family’ on the end of that verb to make it clear they meant that as opposed to actual… writerly writing.

13 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds We have been forcibly incarcerated with teenagers... 1464 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds 0 5

Grayson Wright

May 28, 2018 11:45 PM

Which would increase our stabbiness and decrease our reason. by Grayson Wright

Gray sympathized with the librarian’s position – he truly did – but he had to work to suppress a smile at the indignation roused on the part of the innocent books nevertheless. Could books, then, be said to have morals and moral statures? He supposed the idea that they could – specifically, that they could be dangerous – was the argument used to support book burnings (activities of which he disapproved greatly) and there was the rhetoric that some books were improving and beneficial, so he supposed they could be innocent as well. What else could they be, then?

Tatiana. It seemed that the librarian had not had quite such difficulties with her as her teachers, but still that he knew something of her. Yes, Gray could see how Tatiana might not be the best person to have around the books if she caught this illness….

“Tatya is what her friends seem to call her, but she writes ‘Tatiana’ on her papers – when she writes it in English at all. I’m afraid I’ve never tried to figure it out when she writes it in Russian letters – I don’t think any of the other students would use them, and anyway, her handwriting and her – er – prose style – they’re very…distinctive.” He realized he had wandered away from the point and cleared his throat. “Yes, Tatiana. I can see why you’re concerned. I’ll keep an eye out for any signs of – er – more unusual outbursts than usual.”

The explanation of the library’s charms was, indeed, enticing enough. Gray knew the theory was decent enough, having refreshed his own knowledge of theory enough to teach the Advanced classes in his first year, and still referring to the Charms section, but he had never closely investigated its classics and philosophy. In fairness to the library – and to the youth – this could have owed something to the fact he didn’t really read philosophy at all, whatever libraries were at his disposal.

“Er – did I? I did, didn’t I – yes. I try to – when I have half an hour, sometimes,” he said, hoping to downplay the thing. When he had been an author, he had taken pride in claiming the title, but he wasn’t Grayson Wright anymore – he was Professor Wright, who was rather different. “I read this and that – I’ve been reading biographies lately, mostly nineteenth century Europeans – some authors, some politicians.”

16 Grayson Wright Which would increase our stabbiness and decrease our reason. 113 Grayson Wright 0 5

Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

May 30, 2018 8:47 AM

Which might make our stabbiness seem more reasonable by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

“Drawing the line at learning a new alphabet seems a reasonable choice,” he acknowledged, when Grayson commented on Tatiana - it seemed ‘Tatya’ was for her friends, which made sense, but one could never be sure, as some students preferred to go by their nickname with everyone; he was fairly sure Henny had been ‘Henny’ with everyone, though he could just about imagine teachers feeling that was too familiar and informal, as it was quite an unusual shortening. He could not imagine anyone calling Charlie ‘Charles’ after spending more than thirty seconds with him. He was not in the least bit Charles-like.

“That sounds interesting,” he nudged gently when Grayson mentioned writing. It was hard to tell whether he didn’t really want to talk about it, or whether he just needed a little encouragement on the subject. Tarquin was the sort to err on the side of not pushing people into potentially uncomfortable territory though, and so he decided to leave it at the fact he considered the subject interesting which meant that perhaps Grayson would, now or at some point in the future, feel free to return to it without feeling too self-conscious. Danny would just have asked. “A very good vintage,” he nodded approvingly, when Grayson mentioned nineteenth century Europeans. “Wilde, the Brontes, Keats…. Though perhaps I’m being a little Anglo-centric in my definition of Europe here. I have to say, I don’t tend to find myself venturing onto the continent much in my reading.”

13 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds Which might make our stabbiness seem more reasonable 1464 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds 0 5

Grayson Wright

June 03, 2018 1:11 PM

To us or to the judge? by Grayson Wright

Gray preferred not to admit it, but he was secretly glad to hear someone else agree that learning a new alphabet was a reasonable place to draw the line. “I have figured out one thing about it, just from Tatiana’s most common mistakes,” he volunteered. “They have some letters that look just like some of our letters, but only about half of them make the same sound. It’s like reading those old documents- you know, before they really bothered making any difference between ‘s’ and ‘f’. Your brain just doesn’t want to read what you know it’s trying to say.”

Gray was never quite at his ease around other educators. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, but as a rule, he still suspected he knew only the words and not the tune and that he might give up the game by mistake at any time. Tarquin, however, seemed if anything even less suited to educating young people, and therefore less likely to judge the expression of any sentiment other than total happiness at the prospect of bending over backwards to be more useful to students - that his former classmate was another one Gray was somewhat more comfortable expressing some vague traces of individuality before was one reason Gray had often sort of hoped they wouldn’t find a proper teacher to replace Daniel. Gray knew it was all irrationality on his part, but….

“I don’t guess I could persuade you to become chief editor of a literary journal?” joked Gray when Tarquin said his scribbles sounded ‘interesting’. “It’s been a habit since before I was one of them - “ he gestured slightly in the direction of the mostly-Aladren table - “but I haven’t had much luck the past few years.” Part of this, he suspected, was his attempt to transition into writing for adults, but it was nicer to just imagine he was an overlooked genius.

The names the librarian mentioned were not very familiar to him, but then, for all his pretentious, his education was fairly modest in general and likely deficient in culture - his reading was all cobbled together as he came across it, had never really been structured beyond the mandatory classes at university, where it had been impressed on him that he was only going to acquire skills that could be quickly turned to practical work after his departure. “I read more biographies from the continent than lit, yeah,” he said. “Especially the later it gets - nineteenth, twentieth century. But I mostly just read what I stumble over anyway,” he admitted. “Especially since I came here - most of the stuff I read on purpose is for lesson-planning, or trying to figure out what in the world is going on in their heads.” This with another slight wave toward the student body.

16 Grayson Wright To us or to the judge? 113 Grayson Wright 0 5

Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

June 05, 2018 9:28 AM

I plead reasonable stabbiness on the grounds of diminished.. by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds

“That’s interesting… Although very confusing,” he commented, as Grayson mentioned the not-quite-crossovers of the two alphabets, If one was going to have a different alphabet, he would have thought it would make sense to make it all different. Although.. Were these letters the same because of a shared etymology, or just because there was a limit on the different ways you could combine a finite number of curved and straight penstrokes? But then, there were other alphabetic languages where the whole… style of the alphabet was manifestly different. Arabic - which, to his untrained eye, just looked like a bunch of squiggles. Whereas with Russian… He could at least see where the different letters were. “I wonder whether they share an etymology or it’s just… a coincidence - I mean, I would hazard a guess that Cyrillic and the Roman alphabets are more closely related, compared to others - Arabic for example,” he mused outloud, having sorted through his internal ramblings and made them presentable, “But that could make an argument for either - they look the same because they share a history, or because when you’re writing in that sort of style, there’s a finite number of shapes you can make. I might have to look that up.

“Of a particular one where you’d like someone with influence, or are you suggesting we found our own?” he asked, when Grayson asked if he had any interested in becoming editor of a literary journal. “If it’s any sort of encouragement, I applaud you for getting around to writing yours down. I always think how there should be a piece about this or that - and about how one day I’ll be scholarly enough to sit down and craft all my clearly deep and profound notions into proper papers, and that has yet to materialise.” He and Henny, and a couple of his like minded friends, exchanged long letters which rambled in potentially enough detail about their chosen reading and opinions to at least be a good basis for a couple of articles, but there was a difference between writing it to his daughter and writing it For Publication, and the degree to which he felt it needed to be serious and more than just his (very well informed) opinion to constitute something worthy of the latter. Although his letters did often include going away to do background reading on a particular point - to answer, for example, questions of the type he had just posed regarding alphabets. Had this been a letter, he would have gone away, looked it up and informed the recipient of his findings. And yet he still felt that he couldn’t do it. It might have been something formal and tangible, such as solid sources or the need to have a novel point (which he wasn’t sure that he did) in order to make it a worthwhile contribution to lit crit, or a lack of commitment to shifting from the easy and familiar setting of writing to known persons to unknown, or the fear of that and its potential rejection - or perhaps a bit of all of these - but he had never committed pen to paper in this way. It was disappointing that Gray hadn’t seemed to leap on any of the names mentioned, but perhaps that just meant they had more to introduce each other to.

“Ugh. I wouldn’t. I’m sure it’s all terribly nasty,” he grimaced, when Grayson mentioned attempting to work out what was going on in the students’ heads. Even the nice ones, the sort who liked to read and who would turn into fine upstanding members of society like himself and Grayson, were probably currently considering said reading material alongside a healthy dose of neurosis about whether people liked them and whether they fitted in and what their feelings about certain people meant. At least, that was certainly the case if he used himself as a benchmark. Being a teenager had not been a fun or pleasant experience, and he suspected there was a shoebox of miserable poetry somewhere attesting to that fact.

13 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds I plead reasonable stabbiness on the grounds of diminished.. 1464 Tarquin Fox-Reynolds 0 5

Grayson Wright

June 06, 2018 4:20 PM

Diminished time to ourselves away from teenagers? by Grayson Wright

Gray thought about the issue of the connections between alphabets. “My guess would be that they’re related,” he said. “If - sorry, I’m tripping over myself here - if we look at alphabets as just...someone made up a shape and said ‘this sound goes with this shape’ - okay, capital ‘h’ you could come up with for both, I guess, and ‘T,’ but lowercase A doesn’t seem as...much like something you’d just both independently make up to make the same sound? But it could be a mix of both - borrowing back and forth before they settled into permanent alphabets?”

He did not quite suppress a chuckle at the idea of solving his publication problem by starting a literary journal. “I never thought of that one,” he said, and listened with some interest as the librarian described himself as a would-be essayist.

“That’s about how I feel about novels,” he offered. “One day I’ll have something that actually needs to be written down - until then, it’s - just - a thing I do.”

Not writing it down at all had always seemed unnatural to him, at least for as long as he could remember. His mother had once suggested that if he would just communicate with people, he might not feel the need to write anymore, but his former career had made that thesis seem tenuous: he’d always been working with people and it had made him want to produce more and better, not less, as he responded to other writers, worked with sound artists and voice actors and marketing. This had required a lot of cooperation and communication, and he had been good at it. Now, though, he was still communicating a lot and writing less. Maybe it was something to do with the nature of the work.

“What sort of topics do you think there should be articles about?” he asked.

Apparently, the thoughts of teenagers were not part of the list. “You could have a point,” he acknowledged. “This year they’re probably mostly boring - all about the Ball and stuff. But if I know what they’re doing, maybe I can figure out how to tell them things so it sticks in their heads enough to get them through exams.”

16 Grayson Wright Diminished time to ourselves away from teenagers? 113 Grayson Wright 0 5