DH Skies
July 20, 2019 7:26 AM
Team Challenge Lists by DH Skies
There seemed to be a lot of talk about both the upcoming challenges and the possible team combinations. Professor Skies had assured everyone at breakfast this morning that, this evening, the waiting would be put to an end, and had advised everyone to be punctual to dinner, as it would be a good opportunity to get to know their teammates. She had also given a brief rundown of the team selection process - they had been able to divide the number of students at Sonora exactly, in a way where it worked out that they could let every seventh year lead a team, plus one sixth year. Said sixth year had been a random pick from a hat. They had drawn the rest of the school at random too, with an occasional adjustment if too many of one age group ended up on the same team (there had been an occasional veto too, for families or sworn enemies, but on the whole the idea was that it would just be a case of suck it up, buttercup). The challenges would be designed to be accessible to a range of grade levels, and scored in varying ways to take into consideration the different skill levels of the participants.That evening, as the students entered the hall, they would find that the usual layout of house seating had been abandoned in favour of thirteen smaller tables, each with a number displayed prominently in shining green light which hovered just above the centre of each. The team lists were posted at intervals along the wall, so that all the students wouldn’t be clustered around the same small piece of paper, and each team’s members were also listed at their table, just to make sure everyone found the right space.
Team One
Emerald Brockert
Brett Newell
Caitlin Pierce
Nicolas DiCaprio
Friederike Albert Zauberhexen
Team Two
Amelia Layne
Eden Manger
Peyton O’Malley
Evelyn Stones
Isabella Harrington
Team Three
Florence Newell
Jasmine Delachene
Ruby Brockert
Christabel Davidson
Ellie Alperton
Team Four
Gwen Fintoc
Cleo James
Lyssa Fitzgerald
Anastasia Delachene
Ahria Wells
Elizabeth Smith
Team Five
Kir McLeod
Parker Fitzgerald
Nathaniel Mordue
Jake Daniels
Dathan Fischer
Team Six
Isaac Song
Dorian Montoir
Heinrich Hexemeister
Julius Astley
Beatriz Coulthon
Team Seven
Natalie Atwater
Vladimir Brockert
Jessica Hayles
Hilda Hexenmeister
Emilia Lewis
Team Eight
Luke Powell
Tatiana Vorontsov
Jehan Callahan
Michael DiCaprio
Ness McLeod
Team Nine
Victor Callahan
Sylvia Mordue
Katerina Vorontsov
Sophia Priory
Martin Crosby V
Team Ten
Salali Bly
Ivy Brockert
Zara Jackson
Bridget Ferguson
Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Team Eleven
Winston Pierce
Loren Aalto
Topaz Brockert
Malikhi Hill
Jeremy Mordue
Team Twelve
Simon Mordue
Beauregard Tate
Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
Sapphire Brockert
Nerida Sound
Team Thirteen
Connor Priory
Gary Harper
Allegra Brockert
Felipe De Matteo
Theodore Flores
OOC - these posts will not be scored but we thought it would be fun to have a chance to mingle and get to know your teammates, and to get that out of the way before challenge 1. IC the selection process was ‘random’ but OOC we have tried very hard to balance teams, in terms of frequency of posting, as well as provide combinations that may be interesting/enjoyable/fun.
I have checked and double checked, but if you see any glaring errors such as missing people or anyone doubled up, please let me know asap.
Subthreads: Team 13 (nm) by DH Skies with Gary Harper, Teo Flores, Felipe De Matteo, Allegra Brockert, Connor Priory
Team 12 (nm) by DH Skies
Team 11 (nm) by DH Skies with Winston Pierce, Topaz Brockert
Team 10 (nm) by DH Skies
Team 9 (nm) by DH Skies
Team 8 (nm) by DH Skies with Tatiana Vorontsova, Ness
Team 7 (nm) by DH Skies with Hilda Hexenmeister, Jessica Hayles
Team 6 (nm) by DH Skies with Heinrich Hexenmeister, Dorian
Team 5 (nm) by DH Skies with Parker Fitzgerald, Kir McLeod, Nathaniel Mordue
Team 4 (nm) by DH Skies with Anya Delachene , Lyssa Fitzgerald
Team 3 (nm) by DH Skies with Ellie Alperton, Jasmine Delachene
Team 2 (nm) by DH Skies with Peyton O'Malley
Team 1 (nm) by DH Skies with Emerald Brockert
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DH Skies
Team Challenge Lists
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DH Skies
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DH Skies
July 20, 2019 7:30 AM
Ellie Alperton
July 21, 2019 2:30 AM
Hovering with intent by Ellie Alperton
It had been a long day. It was feeling slightly like every day might be a long day. Ellie was anxious that now that the initial excitement had worn off, this whole thing was just going to feel constantly exhausting. She loved both the fact that she was a witch and that she was Ellie, and she was getting to be both of those all of the time but that was all still so new. It was really mixed up and contradictory because even though she knew Ellie was who she was, really and truly, it still felt like something to consciously put on at times. Having never had the freedom to be Ellie, she still felt like she was having to learn how to do it right, and had to live with the fear that she would get it wrong. She didn’t want to go back - already that short haired person who everyone had called by a different name felt like a place so alien and unreachable that she couldn’t imagine ever having to endure it again. She couldn’t imagine giving up her lovely hair, or her lovely clothes, or her lovely name. But sometimes, they felt like things she was supposed to earn, and she wasn’t sure she’d managed it yet. Wasn’t sure she’d got it right enough or done it well enough.Today was really feeling like one of those days. She thought that it was probably the announcement at breakfast about the challenge teams that had done it. She had settled into her class routine and her room (for a given value of ‘settled’ where both still made her anxious) but this evening, she would have to meet a whole group of totally new people all over again, and it would include students way older than her and - it just felt like a lot. She was often kind of done with people by the end of a day of classes.
She had put on her Confidence Clothes and tried to believe in herself. It was outside of class, so she could wear whatever she wanted and, even if she was tired at the end of the day, it was still a wonderful moment where she went and opened up her closet and there were only Ellie clothes in there (at home, she had kept her Ellie clothes separate, so admittedly she had been able to open up cupboards and see the same thing, but at home she had known that one drawer along, the Other Clothes were there) and she could put on whatever she liked and wasn’t going to feel like she needed to change back if anyone unexpected came along. For the team meeting, she had chosen to wear a pink t-shirt with rhinestones declaring her to be a ‘Princess’ and outlining a tiara. This was paired with purple leggings and a short flared skirt which was a similar pink to her t-shirt with little lipsticks and kisses picked out in white. They hadn’t been designed as a set, but she thought they went well together. A princess was always perfectly presented, after all. She had brushed her hair - a ritual that was both necessary (because she was still a bit slow at it, and so giving it a good long and proper detangling after class made up for any knots she’d missed in the morning and gave her additional practise) and calming to her, and then had adorned it simply with sparkling barrettes. She gave herself a firm nod in the mirror, one that said ‘You are Ellie’ and made her way down to the hall.
She was glad she hadn’t worked her hair into a proper style, because she realised as she got to the hall, that her fingers were already busily twirling little strands of it, and she couldn’t pinpoint the precise moment in which they had even started doing that.
She found her name quite quickly, seeing as she was in team three. She did not know who any of those people were. A couple of the surnames were familiar. There were Brockerts in her class. She thought Christabel might be a second year, actually, so they did have classes together, but she didn’t know her. There was also a Delachene in her class. It was the girl who seemed to bounce and get in trouble a lot. Ellie didn’t think that there was anything bad about that particular girl, per se, but she was definitely a Tigger, and Ellie was much more of a Piglet, and even if the Tigger girl didn’t mean to bounce her, the end result would still be being bounced if she got too close, and it was not necessarily a desirable one, and it was hard to be brave when you were such a small animal and all that. She suspected that Anastasia didn’t appreciate princesses much, even if she shared the name of one, as did her sister.
Ellie made her way towards table three, but with very small, slow footsteps. She wasn’t sure what to do if she got there first. Was it presumptuous to just take a seat before the big kids? She was also not sure what to do if she got there and they were there first. She was just generally unsure what to do with any variation of the situation that the universe had decided to throw at her, because pretty much the only way she thought she could have just sat down was if it had been with Freddie, which of course it wasn’t.
She slowed, hovering with clear intent, in the vicinity of table three. It was unmistakable that she must be on her way there, but also that she wasn’t really sure what to do with herself or how to make the final steps over there.
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Hovering with intent
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Jasmine Delachene
July 21, 2019 10:25 AM
Come, sit! Be fabulous! by Jasmine Delachene
It did not take Jasmine very long to find all the names she was interested in finding. Peyton's was in Team Two, hers was in team Three, and Anya and Cleo were together in Team Four. She was mildly disappointed but not too surprised that she wasn't put with Peyton. They were both sixth years and the oldest students needed to be spread out among all thirteen teams. She found herself feeling mostly relief that Anya wasn't on her own team, so much so that Jasmine felt compelled to find Cleo and offer condolences (well, actually, she wished her luck, but it was the same sentiment) before she headed over to Table Three.Her team sounded like all girls (assuming 'Cristabel' was a girl's name and not some weird form of 'Christopher'), which Jasmine hoped was going to be a good thing. However, Ruby was the only one she knew even remotely, though even her yearmate wasn't a close friend. They hadn't ever had anything against each other though, just not much reason to spend time together, so Jasmine hoped this would be a chance to make a new friend.
She knew who Florence was, from their one year of overlapping Intermediate years, but she'd have even less interaction with the seventh year than she had with Ruby. Still, she didn't think they'd hate working together.
She didn't quite get all the way to the assigned table before encountering a girl with a Princess t-shirt hovering in the near vicinity. "Team Three?" she guessed, "Come, sit. I'm Jasmine." They were a matched pair, which boded well, she thought. Jasmine was also wearing an equally pink sundress with equally shiny rhinestones that spelled out 'Princess' in a very similar font. A darker pink pair of leggings covered her legs, shimmery and glittery. Unlike the first year's shirt, though, Jasmine's dress did not have a tiara on it; instead she wore one of those on her head, and the dress sported a fairy castle outline behind the word.
At fifteen, Jasmine was just starting to develop a bust so the straps of a training bra peeked out from beneath her dress's spaghetti straps. She was secretly kind of pleased about that. While it did not look entirely beautiful, having two sets of straps crossing her shoulders, it did prove she was no longer a child, which she felt had been an overly long time in coming.
As she sat down at table three, she smiled at the younger girl. "Enjoying Sonora so far?"
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Jasmine Delachene
Come, sit! Be fabulous!
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Ellie
July 21, 2019 11:30 PM
I'll do my best by Ellie
Jasmine was perfect, and was simply everything a girl called Jasmine ought to be. Ellie looked at her with wide-eyed admiration but also felt immeasurably comforted by her appearance. Already, some of the girls back home had been saying that princesses were for babies, and had wanted to be into fashion instead. Ellie had been worried that she had missed out on getting to do the princess phase anywhere beyond the closed doors of her own home. Clearly, that was not true, because here was Jasmine, who was old enough to have a figure and wear a bra, and she was still declaring herself to be a princess."Yeah," she answered, when Jasmine asked if she was on team three, relieved at being swept up by someone who was so obviously nice, "I'm Ellie."
She followed Jasmine over to the table, settling into the seat beside her, and evaluating how to answer her question.
"I like it," she answered, with a small smile, "It's so fun to do magic, and-" she had almost said 'be Ellie' or 'be myself' because those two ideas were so firmly twined together in her head, but she was aware that was a remark that couldn't pass by without some explaining. She supposed being who you were meant to be and feeling like you had found yourself were things that other people felt too, but she felt like that was going a bit deep with someone she had just met, "people are nice," she finished instead. "There's just a lot to get used to," she added, aware that for all she was saying the right things, she wasn't exactly overflowing with enthusiasm. She had stopped playing with her hair briefly, although as she had wondered how to finish her first sentence, her fingers had twisted the little friendship band of flowers in white and pastel blue and pink that she always wore. Still, she felt much more settled than when she had come into the hall, even if this manifested itself more as an absence of anxious behaviour than an abundance of positive ones, though she kept shooting Jasmine hesitant little smiles.
"I like your outfit," she added, seeing as she couldn't return the question that had been asked of her, "Are you and your sister named after the princesses?" she asked, hovering somewhere between assuming that it was too good to be a coincidence and forgetting that some people wouldn't automatically know what she meant by that.
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Ellie
I'll do my best
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Jasmine
August 01, 2019 11:01 AM
I’m going to adopt you, okay? by Jasmine
“Hello, Ellie,” Jasmine said with a warm smile, after the first year introduced herself. “I’m pleased to meet you.” The etiquette of a first meeting was second nature to her but it was also completely genuine. It really was a pleasure for Jasmine. Ellie was Anya’s age, and Jasmine couldn’t help the somewhat wistful and also somewhat unkind thought that this was the sister that Mom had meant to adopt instead.Jasmine loved her sister, she did, but she didn’t really connect with her the way even just this brief superficial meeting with Ellie did.
“It can be overwhelming,” she sympathized. “I’m glad my parents and uncle were able to tell me what to expect, and it helped that Uncle Daniel was teaching DADA when I started, too, so I had a familiar face to turn to. It must be hard without that.” Anya seemed to be adapting just fine without Daniel, but Anya was a Pecari, and she did have Jasmine. Not that Anya had passed much more than a ‘Hi, Jasmine!’ her way since she started. But Ellie was nothing like Anya. Jasmine could tell that conclusively already.
Anya never complimented her clothes. If Anya noticed them at all she just rolled her eyes and shook her head. Jasmine didn’t see how she had any room to comment when Anya’s own clothing choices were fit to made eyes wince with just a glancing blow.
“I love your shirt, too!” Jasmine enthused, which was something she couldn’t begin to imagine ever saying to Anya. “And that skirt is just adorable!” Anya did wear shirts. Sometimes even princess shirts, if they came out of the hand-me-down pile. So it was just barely within the realms of possibility that Jasmine might approve of a shirt Anya wore before it got torn and dirty, but Anya did not wear skirts. Not ever. Not since Mom stopped dressing her. And even then she was prone to taking them off. “And the purple leggings go very well with both,” Jasmine concluded.
She smiled widely and nodded in pleased approval when Ellie recognized the source of their names. She knew animated musicals, too! Jasmine really did need to adopt her now. “Yes! My mother loves the Disney princesses! And so do I! Anastasia was Dreamworks, but we love that one, too, and it almost counts. But sometimes Mom thinks she should have name my sister Ariel instead, or maybe Merida. It would fit better. My brother is named for Prince Phillip, but we’re half French, so he actually shares his name with Belle’s horse, Philippe, instead. Which is kind of cool, because we love horses, too. We own a flying horse ranch in California. Where are you from?“
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Jasmine
I’m going to adopt you, okay?
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Ellie
August 01, 2019 8:32 PM
At school, right? I get to keep my family too? by Ellie
Jasmine came from a family that already had magic then. Ellie had been warned that not all such people took kindly to those born into non-magical families, but so far Jasmine was being really nice. She also knew about Disney, which Ellie had been told not everyone would, so maybe she was some sort of in the middle type person.“No one else in my family’s magical,” she confided quietly, in case that wasn’t already obvious from what she’d said, her tone and the way her large blue eyes searched Jasmine’s face making it clear that she was checking she still had approval.
“Thank you,” she beamed, straightening up a little, growing like a flower exposed to sunshine, when Jasmine complimented her outfit. She searched for something more to say, but clearly couldn’t find anything, but still, she looked very happy.
She listened carefully to all of Jasmine’s explanations about her life, which all sounded very cool and glamorous, and a little bit funny - she had to giggle just a little bit at Phillipe getting named after a horse whilst his sisters got to be princesses. But they owned horses! Flying ones! Jasmine really was like something out of a Disney movie. When she’d been told she was going to live in a castle full of witches and wizards, it had sounded cool, but it hadn’t sounded like it would have quite this much sparkle. But now she could see a lot of potential. Unicorns were real, she’d checked that, as were mermaids but they weren’t like what she thought they were (apparently), and she supposed that maybe it was really possible to turn a pumpkin into a coach if you got very good at Transfiguration…
“That sounds wonderful,” she sighed, “Do you have magic carpets too?” she asked.
“My kitten is named Ariel. She’s my favourite princess,” she said, the firm emphasis on this word suggesting that there were many other elements of Disney that had been ranked and ordered, “Do you think she and Merida are alike? Apart from being redheads,” she asked cautiously. She knew that asking suggested that she didn’t, and she was hesitant to disagree with someone so nice, but she was also curious to hear what Jasmine thought. She could always end up agreeing with her.
“I’m from California too,” she admitted, smiling at the coincidence. “Whereabouts are you and your horses?” She had never seen any. She knew that Explain-Elaine had said it was all secret and people made it so you couldn’t notice. She wondered how near though, she had grown up to flying horses. She imagined what it would have felt like, when she was younger, looking out of her window and feeling sad, and seeing a glimpse of a flying horse in the distance. Then she could have watched for them, the way other people watched for shooting stars, and known that something better was out there. That would have been nice.
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Ellie
At school, right? I get to keep my family too?
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Jasmine
August 02, 2019 12:06 AM
Yes, of course! It’s a sister adoption; those are easier. by Jasmine
Jasmine nodded, not too surprised to learn Ellie was muggleborn. Few purebloods recognized Disney princesses until Jasmine educated them, so the options had been between muggleborn and halfblood. “My mom is a muggleborn, too,” she shared, keeping her voice as hushed as Ellie’s. She was pretty sure her mom had never really grasped how unusual it had been for her to be accepted amongst the purebloods, but Jasmine was perfectly well aware of the uphill battle she faced as a half-blood, even with her parents’ connections. Sylvia Mordue was proof enough of that. Thank Merlin she and Anya had been spared her on their teams.Jasmine smiled as Ellie asked about magic carpets. “Not yet! But I intend to get one when I’m older! Maybe next year, when I’m sixteen, Mom will finally let me have one. We sing the song while we’re flying the horses - Anya takes Aladdin’s part - but it’s not the same at all as being on a carpet!”
She waggled a hand and half-grimaced at being called out on equating Ariel and Merida. “It’s more in how they disobey their parents than anything else. Anya is probably more Merida than Ariel, but Ariel does exactly what her father told her not to do and gets into all kinds of trouble for it. And she can’t stay near the ocean floor any better than Anya can stay on the ground. Then Merida and her mom are constantly fighting over incompatible world views, which is basically exactly what Anya and Mom do. So, basically, none of the three of them are remotely Crotalus.” Jasmine wasn’t currently wearing her school robes, but she still tapped where her House badge would be if she had been. She considered the other Houses briefly. “I’d peg both of them as Pecaris, too, probably. What do you think?” she asked, genuinely curious and open to dissenting opinions. “I know the Houses are still pretty new to you, so if you don’t know, you can just name what you think are their primary personality traits and strongest driving factors, and I’ll try to translate that into a House.”
“Wow! That’s neat!” she exclaimed when Ellie said she was from California, too. “We live in the desert near the Arizona border, south of Las Vegas. Not many people around there, which makes owning winged horses easier. But my grandparents all live in or near Hollywood and L.A.”
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Jasmine
Yes, of course! It’s a sister adoption; those are easier.
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Ellie
August 02, 2019 8:09 AM
Phew. Can't be too careful with fairytale contracts by Ellie
“It still sound ma- well, um, wonderful,” Ellie smiled, when Jasmine explained that, for now, she didn’t have a carpet, and had to have her sister substitute in for the role of the handsome prince. She thought it was pretty obvious that she had been going to say ‘magical’ which of course it was, because there were flying horses involved, but the trouble with using that as an adjective was that everything was magical now. She trusted Jasmine not to laugh at her though, and to maybe understand that there was another sense of magical. There was the shiny Disney sense, and the literal daily life sense. Although it was definitely cool that magic was real, so far, real magic was by turns fun, but also frustrating or slimy. She supposed some slimy things happened in Disney too. Like when King Triton got turned into a polyp. She couldn’t watch that bit. It was just so icky.“Um…. Well, Ariel reminds me of me, and Merida doesn’t,” Ellie ventured hesitantly. Jasmine seemed genuinely interested, and it definitely seemed like a fun game to try and sort the Disney princesses. She poured herself some juice, offering it with a gesture to Jasmine too, to buy herself thinking time. “Merida argues with her parents, and she does all these impulsive things, and then she kind of learns… They were both wrong, and they meet in the middle,” she took a long sip of her juice, trying to explain how it wasn’t the same for Ariel, or why she related to her so much without saying ‘she’s a metaphor for being trans.’ However, equally, she found herself not wanting to not say that either. She’d come here to be herself, after all. She talked about things like this all the time with her friends at Group, or with her parents, and she had assumed it was because those were the places that she felt able to talk. But, speaking of Ariel being a metaphor, she didn’t want the price of being Ellie all the time to be losing her voice. Having to edit her explanations of how she felt about things, or why she liked things felt all wrong when this was supposed to be freedom. She was a bit wary of the idea of Jasmine being from California-but-not-the-city because that, in her mind, translated to where she was from, and it wasn’t exactly very open minded. But Jasmine’s family were city people, in LA which had loads of gay actors and you weren’t allowed to be rude about it and there was proper Pride, and maybe Jasmine just didn’t live there because the horses couldn’t. It didn’t mean that her parents were Republicans. “Ariel’s supposed to be a person. It’s not her fault that she got assigned mermaid at birth,” she knew that that terminology might easily sail over Jasmine’s head but it was the best way of explaining it, and she didn’t mind if Jasmine didn’t understand what she was getting at (in fact, she sort of thought she might be a little bit relieved, because she still wanted to choose her words carefully) but she did mind if she herself ended up not being honest about things. “And only King Triton changes his mind. She doesn’t have to change her mind cos she wasn’t in the wrong.”
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Ellie
Phew. Can't be too careful with fairytale contracts
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Jasmine
August 02, 2019 10:49 AM
You are so right! by Jasmine
Jasmine smiled as Ellie almost said ‘magical’ but replaced it with ‘wonderful’ instead. “Don’t worry. I’ve had season passes to Disneyland since I could walk. I know what you meant.” The Disney version of ‘magical’ was very different from the Sonora version, and Jasmine was fluent in both uses.She blinked a little at how Ellie explained the difference between Ariel and Merida. Anya’s problem was definitely more on the Merida scale of things, Jasmine thought, because Anya was not blameless in the fights she got in with Mom, but at the same time, there was also some of the Ariel-Triton unfairness thrown in, too. Anya just wasn’t a princess, and Mom couldn’t accept that.
Anya didn’t have to dress like a slob or constantly be defying death to prove it though. Mom was already on anxiety medication without her youngest daughter jumping off the stable room on purpose.
Something niggled, though, in the terms Ellie had used. Something that didn’t apply to Anya, but might apply to Ellie herself, since she said she identified with Ariel but not Merida.
Then her eyes widened, and she said, “Oh!” as it clicked.
Jasmine was sheltered. She knew perfectly well she was protected by magic and wealth and an overprotective helicopter mother who wanted to make her world a beautiful fairytale and usually succeeded (see previously mentioned magic and wealth as well as their isolated living arrangements in the middle of nowhere).
But as hard as Mom tried, they weren’t completely cut off from the outside world. They had satellite TV. She spent some time in the City visiting her three sets of grandparents, and the two sets of muggle ones liked to take her out and make sure she didn’t lose sight of her muggle heritage. And Uncle Daniel had been her tutor before he got hired at Sonora, and Uncle Daniel had no patience in sugar coating the world for her (much to her own dismay at the time).
So she knew what Pride was and why it was important. She knew what some of the letters meant. And while the cutesy rainbows she loved wearing on her dresses and drawing on her homework were not intended as a political statements, and most people took her to be too much of a sheltered child to read anything into them, she still thought a little bit about Uncle Daniel and his Dads when she put them on.
So she smiled at Ellie encouragingly, and then abruptly giggled as she remembered something. “Doesn’t King Triton make a rainbow with his trident at the end of the movie? That’s perfect!”
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Jasmine
You are so right!
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Ellie
August 03, 2019 12:06 AM
Or with life in general by Ellie
“We’ve been twice. Once for my birthday when I was smaller, and once this summer to celebrate,” she smiled, when Jasmine talked about Disneyland, “It really is the best place,” she beamed. “I dressed as Rapunzel the first time, and I met the real one - well, you know what I mean,” she added, not wanting Jasmine to think that she was dumb enough to think they were really real, but within that world they were, and it was so fun to think of them that way. She had still had short hair but it had been okay because ‘Tangled’ had made her feel like she could still look like a real princess in spite of it. And the real Rapunzel had hugged her for a photograph, and even though she had her enviable flowing, golden locks, she had told Ellie that she liked her hair, and Ellie had managed to stammer out thanks, and then when Rapunzel left she had cried because she was so happy. “She was super nice.”And the she and Jasmine talked more, and then oh. And either Jasmine was having a revelation as Ellie’s utterly profound Disney theories, or Jasmine knew exactly what she was saying. And Jasmine’s reaction was oh. Ellie sort of felt like someone wouldn’t recognise what she was saying unless they understood. But there was understanding what she was saying and there was being understanding about it. And she suddenly realised how very different they were, and how badly wrong this could go. She had just enough time to tense her entire body - she sort of wanted to hug her knees to her chest but she always had the lurking paranoia that it meant people would be able to see up her skirt and she did not like that idea, so one leg curled onto the seat in front of her, and her arms wrapped around herself, one hand reaching up to play with the little key pendant that hung on a chain around her neck. And then Jasmine was smiling at her. It was a nice smile, like it had been before. And then… laughing. Ellie wasn’t sure what the laugh meant, until Jasmine added her own bit of explanation. Ellie nodded, wide eyed and mute for a second because Jasmine understood, in both senses.
She searched for something to say. She sort of wanted to check ‘You still think I’m a princess too, right?’ and she sort of wanted to hug Jasmine or burst into tears, but both were probably a bit too weird to do in the middle of the hall, and it was still sinking in that this had just actually happened. And it was unsurprising that, in that time, someone else arrived at their table.
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Ellie
Or with life in general
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Ellie
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