A party! on Sandbox

Ginger Pierce

December 18, 2014 10:39 PM

A party! by Ginger Pierce

OOC (Out of Character): Hi and welcome to the SA23 sandbox. This is just a social thread like you might post in the Labyrinth Gardens (as this one is set in), or one of the other non-class boards. Feel free to reply (click the "Post Reply" button below) as either the person talking to Ginger or just someone attending. Or you can make your own top level thread by clicking the "Post Message" on the Sandbox page. If you've got any questions, feel free to post them here or on the OOC or in Chatzy.
BIC (Back in Character):

Ginger was excited about today. May second! She was turning twelve! Birthdays were the best things ever, but this was the first year she didn't have any of her relatives nearby. Well, she supposed those seventh year twins were technically relatives, but they were New Hampshire Pierces and Ginger, quite frankly, was a little bit afraid of them. But! But there were loads of new friends around Sonora that she'd made since September, so she had told everyone she saw in class earlier in the day that it was her birthday and there would be cake in the Gardens after class let out, so here she was, in the Gardens, with cake.

The prairie elves had done a great job. She'd told them she wanted the icing to be the blue and pink of cotton candy and - well, they hadn't quite known what cotton candy was, but she'd been able to narrow the colors down to something approximating cotton candy colors for them, and it looked just totally delicious.

As people began to arrive, she greeted them and pointed out the cake, which the elves had kindly already cut up into nice sized pieces and put onto plates along with a napkin and a fork. "Grab cake! There's chocolate and vanilla, so take whatever you like. Also, I've got stuff for games over there, if you'd like!" She pointed over to where some balls and brooms were lying about in case anyone wanted to start a game of hot potato or keep away or broom tag or something.

After it seemed like most people had arrived, she abandoned her hostess duty and got a piece of chocolate cake for herself - it wasn't vegan, but she didn't really mind. She wasn't a stickler for her family's traditional diet, and it was kind of nice to have normal cake every once in a while.

"Hi," she greeted conversationally to one of the people who happened to be nearby. "Glad you could make it. When's your birthday?" Next year, she thought, maybe she'd throw birthday parties for all of her yearmates. That would be fun. People would know her as the birthday girl. It would be awesome.

1 Ginger Pierce A party! 302 Ginger Pierce 1 5

Sylvetta Vuong

December 19, 2014 5:56 AM

A party? by Sylvetta Vuong

OOC: Hi Ginger Pierce, I'm here a little bit late, but pleasure to meet you! I really want to practice, so here I go :D

BIC:

If Sylvetta could actually separate her nose from the book page, maybe she would know what was going on. But no, the book was good, genius even, and nothing could beat that. At least at the moment.

What she was (kind of) trying to do was to find a place to go for a walk while digging in the book. She didn't like staying at the library: that was the place for books, not humans. Light physical activities made reading more fun. So she went out to do just that; and she wandered until there was a piece of cake on a plate in her hand (what? cake? nice, but what?) and all around her people were chatting with great enthusiasm.

However, Wizard of the North was just throwing her most powerful spell at the Wicked Witch of the West, so the piece of cake rapidly became a secondary problem. It was good anyway, though the color was a little bit too much.

Sylvetta never looked up from the pages; even when she heard the happy greeting and the question, she continued reading. "June sixth," she replied absently, taking another bite on the piece of cake. "The weather's always nice on my birthday. A blessing, really." To try not to be rude, she waved her hand holding the plate, "This is delicious," and smiled at the book.

0 Sylvetta Vuong A party? 0 Sylvetta Vuong 0 5

Caelia Lucan

December 19, 2014 7:14 PM

Oui, a party. by Caelia Lucan

OOC: Hey, no worries. Because of something we call “fuzzy time” it allows us to reply to each other over a course of days while “In Character” the exchange happens over a couple of minutes. Great first post, by the way :)

BIC:

When Caelia had first heard that there was to be a birthday party, she had been a confused because to have such late notice for a proper party was an astonishing idea to her rather simple mind. Perhaps the Caelia of a few years ago would not have paid any attention to it, but when Emrys had left for Sonora her feeble mind had been easily susceptible to the prejudices of her father’s parents. As it was, she was already cautious in accepting the invitation lest Grandfather roll over in his grave, but she was sure that one little party in which the whole class was invited wouldn’t be too bad. Besides, it was rude to decline an invitation when one was so obviously free and so perhaps that aspect of propriety would gain her a “pass.” Caelia almost asked her brother for advice before remembering that he wasn’t the sort to care about blood barriers though he still tried to conduct himself in a respectable manner and this was the sort of thing that would anger him. He had already been ticked off when she announced her decision to cease friendship with Matthew and Caelia didn’t want to make her brother annoyed with her again. Though it had been the first time, Emrys was a rather sweet wizard, slow to anger, and the experience of him telling her off had not been a pleasant one.

So, for perhaps the first time in her life, Caelia made a decision on her own and that decision was to go to the party, mingle with her classmates, and not worry for once about what was and what wasn’t proper. Perhaps that would earn Emrys’ forgiveness for the slip-up she’d had over the summer regarding Matthew. That decided, Caelia carefully brushed out her blonde curls upon her return to her dorm and chose one of her favorite dresses, a pale pink with a faint, semi-floral pattern on it. “Hello,” she greeted Ginger politely once she arrived. “Happy Birthday.”

Caelia selected a piece of bright blue cake because she felt that to choose pink would be entirely too matchy-matchy and that wasn’t at all the impression she wanted to give to the other party-goers. She could have fun—perhaps not the sort of fun that came with brooms and balls at least, not anymore, but she could still have fun. After a couple bites of cake she noticed the hostess talking to a girl with her nose in a book. Caelia smiled because it reminded her of so many conversations between her and her brother so she wandered over to join the conversation.

“The cake is delicious,” she agreed when the other girl commented on the cake. Personally the blue was a little brighter than Caelia would have liked, preferring pastels herself, but it wasn’t her party and she thought Ginger probably enjoyed that color if she chose it for the cake so Caelia decided that it would probably be rude to say anything regarding that. “And it is a nice party, I’m glad the weather turned out for it.” She smiled politely before taking another bite of the cake. “Do you always have birthday parties like this?”

OOC: The bit about the weather turning out was just me assuming it was probably nice since we’re outside and Ginger didn’t make any mention of it being difficult weather for an outdoor party.

10 Caelia Lucan Oui, a party. 307 Caelia Lucan 0 5

Ginger Pierce

December 19, 2014 10:11 PM

Yes, a party! by Ginger Pierce

OOC: Yeah, what Caelia said. No rush on responses. You just post when you can, whether that be the same day or the next week, and the narrative continues as if no time passes in between. Caelia, totally safe assumption. I was thinking after I posted that maybe I should have mentioned the weather was nice. BIC:

The girl she addressed was deeply involved in a book. Ginger recognized this because the girl did not even look at her when she answered the question. Ginger wasn't quite sure what to make of that. It wasn't something she had ever encountered before. Nobody in her family was really much of a reader. Whenever she saw one of her cousins reading, it generally meant they were probably bored or stuck doing tedious homework, and she usually took it as an request to invite them to go do something that was actually fun.

This preference for reading over talking was quite baffling to her. Still, she noted the date of the girl's birthday and made a mental note that she should hold a party before the midsummer event to celebrate all the summer birthdays and at least one piece should have a book draw into its icing.

Fortunately, another girl approached before she had to decide whether to keep talking to the book (and its attached girl) or if she should just wander away and find somebody who actually wanted to chat.

"Hi, thanks!" she said in response to the well wishes for her birthday. "My family usually gives me a cake, but it never tastes nearly as good because they don't use eggs or milk when they bake," she grimaced a bit, recalling the birthday cake she'd gotten for her eleventh birthday. She'd pretended to like it, because Aunt Lacey had worked hard on it, and really it wasn't bad but it wasn't like this cake, all fluffy and moist and wonderful. She enjoyed another bite of her chocolate cake with the brilliant pink icing. Delicious. "But, yeah, otherwise, pretty much like this. Outside. Chaos. Food. But, you know, more grown-ups and other people older and younger than eleven or twelve."

"That's a great dress, by the way," she added, having thought so from the moment she saw the other girl but it hadn't seemed quite the right time to mention it until she answered the question posed to her directly. She herself had changed into a light sundress of a pretty minty-green color after class so while maybe quite not as fancy as the pink-dress-girl (whose name she was 62% sure was Karen), Ginger was at least dressed up in nicer clothes for her own party than the shorts and t-shirt she normally favored outside of class. Her dark hair (she'd been named for the character in Gilligan's Island, not her own hair color) was freshly brushed, too, but she hadn't had time to do anything with it before rushing down to the Gardens.

"And what are you reading?" she curiously asked the book-girl (whose name was almost 30% certainly Sylvestra). "You seem really engrossed in it."

1 Ginger Pierce Yes, a party! 302 Ginger Pierce 0 5

Sylvetta Vuong

December 20, 2014 1:51 AM

The conversation actually went on. by Sylvetta Vuong

OOC: I'm just a little bit nervous, but everything's OK now, thank you for the reassurance :D Also, hello Caelia!

BIC:

Hey, hey, hey, someone's doing the talky-talky, part of Sylvetta's brain nudged at her lightly. They expect an answer, as from someone who can be a decent human being and return the talky-talky, so /answer them/.

Sylvetta stared at the letter "r" in the word "rơi", and decided that she could be a decent human being. It was just a little bit, well, new to her: bookworms were never the most sociable people; and through her first four years going to public school in her hometown, being ignored by half the class and looked at curiously by the other half, she had never got a chance to develop thoroughly the ability of participating in a conversation. Nonetheless, her vocabulary was more than enough for daily conversing, and she had a mouth. "The great Wizard of Oz," she looked up from the book (there was two girls next to her, but she knew better than questioning that aloud) and showed them the cover. This was one of the only three books she'd brought with her when she first moved to the US to live with her aunt and uncle, and the artwork on the cover was just stunning.

Now, when having moved her head to take a look around, Sylvetta realised that she and the two girls (and, uh, this party - obviously this was a party and she had dived head first in it without any knowledge of her current situation) were in the Labyrinth Garden, and there also were more people than she had estimated. This was a birthday party, apparently, she though, looking at her half-eaten piece of cake. It could have been slightly embarassing and wholefully disrespectful for her to appear in a party looking the way she did right then - white shirt, Christmas sweater, woollen hat, black pants and her one-of-a-kind pair of glasses - but one had to admit the book was good.

Oh, talking about the book. "It's in my native language," Sylvetta added, "Vietnamese." Somehow people making mistakes concerning languages always got on her nerves. Not many things could do that. "And happy birthday," she turned to the girl in pink dress - this person sure had a distinctive color preference. "Sorry for appearing out of the blue, uh, Ginger?"

OOC: Really, Sylvetta's making such a mistake here... It's consciously written in, I swear.

0 Sylvetta Vuong The conversation actually went on. 0 Sylvetta Vuong 0 5

Caelia Lucan

December 23, 2014 3:57 PM

Conversations tend to do that :) by Caelia Lucan

A non-egg, non-milk cake sounded horrid and Caelia scrunched up her face a little bit. She felt for Ginger who, though seemed to enjoy the rougher things in life like balls and outdoor games if her comment on chaos and the appearance of outdoor activities at the party seemed to be any indicator, had good taste in baked goods. “That sounds like it could be fun,” Caelia said, thinking that even if she didn’t necessarily enjoy participating, she did like to hear the stories that Emrys told her about the trouble he and Wesley got into or, more recently, the trouble Wesley got into and then wrote to Emrys about.

“Thank you,” she said, running her fingers over the cotton fabric of her dress. The dress wasn’t particularly a dressy sort of dress but, like all of her other dresses, was light weight and swished a little when she walked. Perhaps her favorite part about wearing dresses was that they twirled out when she spun around, making her feel like a princess or perhaps better yet, a fairy. Though Caelia knew fairies existed and were real—and some of them weren’t as nice as Muggles liked to believe, she still liked to entertain the fanciful notions of them that her brother, mother, and maternal grandparents did when they invested themselves in the tales of Camelot.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a book that Caelia recognized as being distinctly Muggle. Her older brother who enjoyed reading anything and everything under the sun; Muggle or Not had read this book to her when she was younger. Of course, Caelia being herself, she hadn’t really paid much attention as she’d been busy doing other things like playing tea party with her dolls and now that she was older she also didn’t really feel like picking up non-Muggle books, much less Muggle books. However, she was doing that thing today where she was showing people that she could have fun and so Caelia bit her tongue and watched as Sylvetta looked around the party, down at her cake and back to them. The other girl was dressed rather oddly, but, Caelia said to herself it was rude to comment on that sort of thing and so she just smiled politely as the Sylvetta kept talking.

It’s too bad Emrys isn’t here, Caelia thought as Sylvetta explained that her first language was Vietnamese and as she wished Caelia a happy birthday as Ginger. He loves other languages and I’m sure he’d find this girl a lot more interesting than I do. “It’s Caelia,” she said instead, careful to pronounce her name. She’d found that often times people didn’t realize that the A in Caelia was silent—at least, the way her family had done it. Personally, Caelia didn’t like the hard “K” sound, finding it to be distasteful and rather boyish. The softer sound of the “C” hitting the “E”, slightly reminiscent of a snake pleased her a lot more, especially as snakes made a lovely slithering pattern in dirt and moved in such a fluid, continuous way. “She’s Ginger.” Caelia gestured softly with her hand towards the other girl in their little circle, wondering how Sylvetta didn’t know that yet. They had been at school for nearly a whole year now. Even Caelia who often had a hard time learning had painstakingly memorized the names of the children in their class by the end of the second week.

“So do you have any particular summer plans that you’re looking forward to?” Caelia asked the other two girls. The end of the year would be approaching in a few weeks—had the year really gone by that quickly? and Caelia herself was excited to go on break. Lessons had never been her favorite and Grandmother Viviane had promised to take her out to a tea shop to celebrate completion of her first year at Sonora.

10 Caelia Lucan Conversations tend to do that :) 307 Caelia Lucan 0 5

Ginger Pierce

December 23, 2014 10:28 PM

I'm a talker by Ginger Pierce

OOC: Just as a note of etiquette, it is considered polite - and might be an actual site rule now, I'm not sure - to take turns in three(or more)-person threads, so you keep posting in the same order in the thread and everyone has equal opportunities to post and we don't overrun a slower/busier member of the thread. BIC:

Ginger blinked in surprise as Book Girl told Karen to have a Happy Birthday. At first she wondered if maybe they shared a birthday, but then Sylvestra called Karen by Ginger's name, which meant it was definitely a case of mistaken identity. She giggled. They didn't even look alike!

Karen - no Celia - corrected the mistake politely, preventing Ginger from making one of her own.

Celia. Right, okay, definitely not Karen then. Ginger made a mental note to remember that. She was usually pretty good with names once she actually met a person, but when she only knew them through proximity, she was often off by a bit. She wasn't quite sure how she missed Celia so bad though. Usually she got the first couple of sounds right anyway. Oh, well, at least she hadn't actually called the girl Karen or anything. Maybe the other girl just looked like a Karen she'd met once. She'd met a few Karens over the years . . .

That was neither here nor now though. Here and now, she had a Vietnamese girl and Celia. "Wizard of Oz, cool," she said to Sylvestra. "I watched the movie." Honestly, she hadn't even known there was a book. "And wow, you speak English really well for a non-native speaker. I wouldn't have guessed." She herself spoke Spanish pretty well, being exposed to it three months out of every year when they migrated South for the winter, but she wasn't sure she'd be ready to start going to a Mexican magic school or anything. Yoko probably could; she was amazing with languages, but Yoko was a muggle (or so they classified her since she couldn't see Regina's ghost, though she had a few magical ancestors mixed into her family tree) so she wouldn't have had an option to do so anyway. "Is Vietnamese anything like Mandarin? My cousin is half-Chinese and she's learning that, but she says it's really really hard." Well, technically, Yoko said it was 'kind of tricky' but translated out of Yoko-language-genius that meant 'really really hard' in Ginger speak.

Ginger beamed at Celia as the other girl brought up the summer and she jumped right onto the opportunity to share. "I'm acting! Mom said I can act this year! Well, I need to audition first, obviously, but if I get a part, I can act. Last year I wasn't old enough to audition for anything more than a few lines. I mean, I won't get anything amazing like Cosette or anything because I don't have that kind of voice training, but I heard they're doing Peter Pan at one of the local theatres near our Rennfaire, and I might try for a Lost Boy or something. What about you?" she turned the question back to the other girls, not wanting to dominate the conversation too much, though if asked, she could go into a whole list of productions she could audition for once she got home. She just thought Peter Pan was going to be her best bet as that had a lot of kid roles.

OOC: Misspelling of Caelia's name is on purpose since this is how Ginger assumes it is spelt. Apologies from the Author.

1 Ginger Pierce I'm a talker 302 Ginger Pierce 0 5

Sylvetta Vuong

December 24, 2014 10:53 AM

Not much of a talker, but maybe acceptable by Sylvetta Vuong

It took Sylvetta a whole three seconds to conjure up a plan of reaction to the new information - new? There really should be embarassment here - and she chose to blink at the obviously-not-Ginger miss Caelia four times, then smiled. The smile wouldn't appear to be awkward, she assumed, because this was totally not awkward at all. At least to her. "I'm very sorry," she said, calmly, "it might be the dumbest mistake one can make."

Looking at the other girl (obviously-Ginger), Sylvetta felt her eyes squint just slightly behind the glasses. So... Ginger. A rather extrovert character, considering the kind of party this person was holding. The girl looked pretty, well, normal, for lack of word, comparing to what Sylvetta's imagination conjured up when taking a look at the piece of cake. However, she could see the loud kindness and dreams as free as the southern birds in those eyes - definitely the more outgoing of the two, now that she had observed carefully. "So you're Ginger." She said out loud. "My mistake. Happy birthday to you."

Then Sylvetta's gaze moved back to Caelia (what a nice name, she rolled the syllables in her mouth, but yes, often easily mistaken for other less desirable names), to her soft figure and her swift but quiet hand gesture. "And Caelia," Sylvetta greeted. What nice people one could meet just by wandering around and tumbling into a party, she mused, and being sociable was turning out to be a pretty natural behaviour.

Sylvetta realised that, thorough the first year spent at Sonora, she had not made many new friends, and therefore could easily be compared to an old hag. Let's fix that, she decided, marked the page she was reading and closed the book, holding it in one hand. She made a cheesy hand gesture and bowed down a little bit toward the two girls (could they now be considered her friends?) "I'm Sylvetta Vuong. My family name's just a struggle for most, so I'll go by Sylvetta. Making it official," she stood up straight and shrugged. Her accent, just so light, blurred the name a little bit, but she never gave too much thought about people saying her name wrong. People learnt, most of the time.

Ginger and Caelia seemed to take some interest in Sylvetta's book, and of course that pleased her a bit. The movie was really cool, she thought, and she voiced that thought to Ginger. "And thank you for the compliment," she spoke carefully - it took her time to get more casual - "I moved in with my aunt and uncle in the US since I was nine. English is a beautiful language, the swiftness's what get to me most."

Ginger talked about Mandarin and one of her friends learning it. "There's a subtle relation, yes," Sylvetta nodded. She could see the logic. Vietnamese vocabulary had a great number of words borrowed from Chinese, but they were all Vietnam-ized. The rest of the vocabulary consisted of a now-ethnic-minority language, also altered after centuries of history, and word borrowed from French and English. The analyse could go on forever, and honestly it would have gone on if Sylvetta was with a fitting audience; but she reminded herself that this was a party and languages were never a hot topic in parties, so she did a summary. "We use a lot of words originated in Mandarin, but we use a Latin alphabet; but yeah, it's still a tricky language. Beautiful, but not suitable for international use."

Sylvetta's mind ligered around the thought of her maternal language and how badly she didn't want to lose it, and she looked down at the book in her hand. Other than being a piece of art, it was also a reminder. She only stopped entertaining the nostalgia once Caelia had brought up the plan for summer holidays. With great enthusiasm, Ginger shared her plan of acting - Sylvetta smiled at the passion in her voice - and returned the question. Sylvetta'd love to try a hand on the art of acting, although, well, it would be more of a theatrical nature than cinematic. A good study, and a new world to discover, could be a nice choice, she mused. But she had other plans for this summer. "I'm going home," Sylvetta said, "back to my homecountry. My dad's so hyped that he now has a person with first hand experience to question - he's never gotten a proper training as a wizard, you see. He's trying to build a system of magical language more friendly to our people, since Latin's kinda out of reach. He'll work from the Mugle language side, and I from the wizard side. It's a big project though, so we'll probably spend half the time chatting about school and whatnot." And she'd probably try to write as much as possible, too, but if she already did that everyday then it wouldn't be considered part of the plan.

"Next summer I'll stay with my aunt and uncle though," after a moment, she added. The nostalgia wouldn't hit full force until then, she thought, but she should leave that to another wakeful night.

0 Sylvetta Vuong Not much of a talker, but maybe acceptable 0 Sylvetta Vuong 0 5

Wujy

December 29, 2014 1:24 PM

An Interruption by Wujy

Hot dog! Izzy thought to herself as she dressed for her first school party. My first invitation to a party for magic folks!

She spritzed her wild curls with water and combed through them briefly, scrunching them up so that they bounced whenever she turned her head, and then coated the whole thing over with a leave-in conditioner and mousse so that it wouldn't tangle up in case it was windy outside. She put on her nicest plaid button-up—pink with light blue cross-stripes—which she tucked into a pair of faded jeans. She pulled on her favorite red cowgirl boots and pulled her pant legs over the top of them so they were only from the ankles down.

She took one look at herself in the mirror, grinned and waved at her reflection, and took off for the Gardens. She was glad the party would be outside, what with the weather being so nice and all. She hated to be cooped up indoors on days like this.

The party was in full swing when she arrived, and she realized that she must have been late.

"Whoopsie daisy," she said to herself out loud. "Musta got the wrong time. Hoo-wee," she said, spotting a group of three girls chatting with one another. She walked over to introduce herself.

"Ever'one sure is dressed fancy," she said. "An' with me just showin' up in my Levi's, I feel all underdressed."

0 Wujy An Interruption 0 Wujy 0 5