The cake is a lie on Herbology

Professor Nathan Xavier

November 15, 2018 10:35 AM

Advanced Class: Laganaphyllis Simnovorii by Professor Nathan Xavier

Nathan would be married in less than two weeks. He honestly wasn’t sure if teaching his lessons was a hindrance to the preparations, or a welcome break from them. Certainly, since the beginning of April, which marked the final countdown as the calendar on his office wall daily showed the date marked in hearts and bells, the homework and exams the students received back was either slower in coming back or else lacked the thoroughness of corrections and comments that they previously had.

He was, after all, spending a lot of his time off campus, trying to coax his mother’s garden into blooming perfection for the date in question. Not to mention all the other fiddly details like decorations and food and where everyone would stand or sit during the ceremony, what music to play, seating charts for the reception, who to hire to officiate, and every other little thing.

It was exhausting. Though, according to Mother, a cake walk compared to having a new baby, which was certainly no secret any longer, given Isis’s changing shape.

The current advanced class, though, that he felt pretty certain fell into the welcome relief category. He’d managed to obtain a rare plant from a friend and he was excited to show it off.

“Today,” Nathan began, smiling as he looked out over the advanced students, “as you may have guessed,” he slanted his eyes toward the large visiting plant that was not normally a resident of Greenhouse Two. It was huge, and planted in a pot about the same size as its great horned head. The heavy pot kept the whole thing from tipping over as the plant moved around, but ‘magic’ was widely cited as the method by which the relatively narrow stem was able to support the large head. It wasn’t a small stem, exactly, being thick and ropey and a few inches in diameter, but the head was big enough to fit a grown wizard inside. That was not a coincidence.

The thing also occasionally mooed, so even Nevaeh would have likely noticed the herbological guest. “We will be learning about the rare species Laganaphyllis simnovorii, commonly known as the cow plant.” He looked at the plant again, with its great bovine head, which chose that moment to let out another low moo, and he added, “For obvious reasons.”

Of course, it didn’t look exactly like a cow’s head. It had what looked like an udder hanging off the underside of its chin, almost like a beard. It had teeth. Large pointy teeth, exactly like herbivorous cows did not have. Leaves fell over its face where eyes ought to be, though it had none and was as blind as almost all other plants.

“The cow plant is carnivorous,” he stated, as the teeth were one of its more attention grabbing features. “If it is well fed on a diet of meat - it particularly likes leg of lamb, but any meat will work - at least once every twelve hours, so twice a day is usually sufficient, it is entirely harmless to wizards. If it gets hungry, though, it will offer cake to lure in human prey. Never take the cake. It will swallow you whole if you try. If you are lucky, it will spit you back out. If you are unlucky, it will kill you and digest you.”

He looked around severely. “Do not ever take the cake from a cow plant no matter how delicious it looks,” he repeated, because this was one point of safety that had to be understood and followed. He also knew from experience how tempting the cake could look. “It isn’t hungry until it puts out the cake, so it won’t accept your offered food until the cake appears. When it does, give it the meat so it eats that instead of you or anyone else. Of course, the cow plant only produces milk after it swallows somebody. If they survived, this milk is a powerful mood altering substance, which will make the drinker feel the same emotions the victim felt just before they were swallowed. So often ‘yay, cake!’ is among those emotions.

“If the victim did not survive, the milk does have very potent healing properties, as well as a euphoric effect, but such milk is very tightly restricted due to the process necessary for its creation.”

“So long as you avoid the cake pitfall, though, cow plants are very good companions and are among the most intelligent of all plants. They are good listeners and will actively play with humans. Interestingly, they will not offer cake to small children. It is still unknown whether that is because those children are simply too small to bother with, or if they have some kind of magical protection of youth and innocence that the cow plant can sense, similar to unicorns.”

“You may now head over to interact with the cow plant. I just fed it some sausages an hour ago, so it should be perfectly safe. You many touch it, talk to it, and play with it, but if it senses a threat, it may nip at you, so don’t play too rough. Any questions? Okay, go meet the cow plant.”

OOC: Credit for the cow plant goes to Maxis and the creators of The Sims. Further information: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Laganaphyllis_simnovorii”>here

Subthreads:

The cake is a lie by Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw

Awwww by Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw

1 Professor Nathan Xavier Advanced Class: Laganaphyllis Simnovorii 28 Professor Nathan Xavier 1 5

Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw

November 21, 2018 8:46 AM

The cake is a lie by Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw

“The thing that’s not usually here is a big people-eating plant, I think” Raine noted to Nevaeh as they entered the greenhouse. She sort of trusted that, especially in an advanced herbology class, Nevaeh had the sense to stay away from unknown items but… well, it didn’t hurt to mention it.

Raine took a seat at a fair distance from it, pretty certain it was a Cow Plant. She had never seen one but she had heard of them, mostly from the folk song 'Never Take Cake From a Cow Plant' and given that it was a big old plant that looked like a cow it didn’t seem like a crazy guess. The song detailed the sad story of a maiden fair, a bonny lass with rosy cheeks, and woven gold for hair (there were rarely any other types of girls in folk songs - apparently ugly ones either did not meet untimely deaths or it was just not deemed worthy of commemoration in verse) who upon the day she was due to be wed wandered past a hungry cow plant. Never having listened much to her mother (a common flaw of folk heroines) and thinking it was offering her the cake in congratulations, she took it and got all swallowed up. The chorus reiterated the lesson that the foolish girl had not known several times, just to be sure of its listeners not making the same mistake:

Never take cake from a cow plant,
It’ll be the last thing that you’ll do,
For if you take cake from a cow plant
It’ll make a meal of you.

Raine found herself humming softly whilst she waited for the class to begin. She was quickly confirmed as being right in her assumption. She wasn't even thrown by the much longer and fancier name that Professor Xavier gave the Cow Plant. She was used to everything having two names by now, though she still didn't stand a snowball's chance of spelling it. She tried to take careful notes on what Professor Xavier was saying. Often times, teachers just told you what was in the book anyway, but Raine tended to have a hard time with the books, and actually it turned out that teachers were giving.you a hand and just cutting it down to the important bits. Her own notes of what a teacher had explained the book had said were maybe sometimes a few too many steps removed from the truth or missed things.out but it really was a lit easier to understand herself than some rambling book writer, and even if she missed bits out, she still got something. She tried to put her notes into useful sections. Professor Xavier often told them the same things about each plant, so that was helpful. She could write about its uses to magical people and how to care for the plant. Usually, now that they were in advanced classes, there were always dangers to note down too. She had these headings written out ready on the page to help her notes stay more organised. That way, when she answered questions, her answers stayed more organised too.

She did her best to fit what Professor Xavier was saying into the different headings. When information made sense to her, she was actually quite good at remembering it, and so even though she took a bit of time, jumping up and down the page to fit things into the right places, she got most of it. She did have one question but she didn’t want to ask in front of the class, so she waited until they were all busy petting the cow plant to go up and ask.

“Hey, Professor?” she asked, “What’s yooforia mean?” she asked. “And uh, I probably didn’t spell it right. I just put down how it sounded…” she admitted, laying the page on his desk with far less self-consciousness than she would have done before.

Cow Plant:

Care: eats meat - Raine knew and understood the word ‘carnivorous’ but she could never remember where all the vowels went, it had far more than she thought it needed, so she just stuck to writing simple words. Feed 2 times a day.

Uses: can produse milk that causes you to feel sumones feelings (if they didnt die - they mite be thinking yay cake).
Can produse milk that causes yooforia and healing (if they died - but this is controled)
Playful and nice

Danger: can eat you. Never take the cake.

Other: does not eat kids

Raine had been taking more and more care about her notes throughout her time at school but there had been a definite upsurge in her attention to them over the final semester - a point that was perhaps a little unusual given that she was not expected to take any theory exams.

13 Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw The cake is a lie 327 Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw 0 5

Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw

December 23, 2018 6:03 PM

Awwww by Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw

The school year was getting closer to the end and Juniper had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, she would get to see her horse and wouldn't have to be around other people all the time. On the other, she would have to attend balls and she hated every second of them. Juniper was generally more anxious around people she saw at parties because she didn't know them that well.

Plus, they were society people so she had to worry about their opinions more than people at school.If people at school were nasty to Juniper, then, for the most part, it just really hurt and was hard on a personal level because she had to be around those people for the better part of the year. If society people were nasty to her, then not only did it hurt but she also had to contend with Mother's criticism of how she'd done wrong and deserved it.

And Juniper also didn't get asked to dance by nearly enough boys for her mother's taste either. It wasn't as if she wasn't asked at all, by boys who were attracted to her family name but Mother wanted her to be a combination of Angelique and Kelsey Atwater.

Of course one of the problems was that Juniper didn't show enough interest in the potential suitors who still were interested in her after dancing with her because she only wanted Finn. Which was the other thing she didn't like about summer. She didn't see the other Teppenpaw nearly enough. They occasionally went to the same balls but they lived on opposite sides of the country. Plus, Juniper and her family were in St. Berylla's part of the time.

The sixth year walked into Herbology and noticed their guest. She actually felt a little bit excited about it. This was the infamous cow plant she'd read about. She never really thought she was going to ever get to see one in person because they were pretty rare.

They were a neat plant because well, they seemed to be part animal. Or at least had similarities to a cow. They even mooed like one. Of course they were carnivorous and would eat a human whereas cows ate grass. Still Juniper wasn't afraid. So long as she did not eat the offered cake, she would be fine and anyway, Professor Xavier had just fed the cow plant some sausages.

Still, it would not criticize her or tease her or reject her. Professor Xavier had even said they were good listeners though Juniper wasn't going to confide in it here in class, less other students overhear her but still. She approached the cowplant with something about as close to confidence as the shy girl could muster. "Hey there." Juniper smiled softly at it. She put her hand out to pet it. "You're a nice cow plant aren't you?"

She didn't even notice the person coming up behind her until they spoke.

11 Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw Awwww 345 Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw 0 5