Grayson Wright
November 29, 2019 12:05 PM
Welcome to Orientation, New Students! by Grayson Wright
He had, Gray thought, no-one at all to blame except himself. He had actually brought up the subject of Orientation at the last staff meeting and asked if he was up for it again, which had been taken as volunteering.Admittedly, it was not the most onerous of duties, and he had to admit that Nathan had other things going. Wife, child, that sort of thing. Gray thought most of the staff wanted a moment or two to brace themselves against the oncoming storm of a new year, but if what he understood about small children was accurate, Theodora Xavier was at just the size where Nathan and Isis were not getting such a moment right now at all. Plus, Gray had the least going on in his personal life of anyone on staff, he thought - at least so far as his coworkers knew.
In reality, his summer had been...interesting. He put it out of his mind, though, as the wagons landed and he stepped forward to play the role of usher.
“New first years over here,” he called. To help out further, there was a sign directly over his head saying “1st Years Here” - the formatting deliberate, as he figured that even any students whose English wasn’t very good would be able to recognize the Arabic numeral and make some logical deductions. They would almost surely not all be Aladrens, but developmentally, they should all have some capacity for reasoning. Just in case, though, there were other signs, arrows, pointing them toward the clearing where he would talk a lot and then allow them to ask questions or get to know each other, as they pleased. “Leave your luggage with the wagon, please - it’ll be in your dorms after the Opening Feast. New first years over here!”
Professor Grayson Wright was thirty-eight years old, fairly tall but not to the point that his height drew attention to him in most crowds. He had dark hair and dark eyes and unremarkable robes - neither expensive nor cheap - a couple of shades brighter than navy blue. If there were students who were not good with names among the little throng which came over to him, he expected he would for some time - definitely at least for the day, unless they were Aladrens - know him mainly as That Professor With the Glasses, as his glasses were more distinctive than any of his facial features. He smiled pleasantly at them once he was sure he had them all.
“Hello everyone,” he said. “My name is Professor Wright. I’m going to be your Charms teacher, and if you have the honor of joining Aladren House after the Opening Feast this evening, I’ll also be your head of House. For now, I’ll be your orientation leader. Welcome to Sonora Academy.”
He shepherded them into one of the clearings in the Labyrinth Gardens, where a running fountain stood in the center and there were three tables off to one side, away from the roped-off entrances to other paths. On the first table was a number of folders, each the same forest green color as the students’ robes. These contained class schedules, school maps, and lists of the major school rules students would be expected to follow. On the next table was a variety of snacks – sandwiches, fruits and vegetables, cupcakes, cookies, and various other finger foods – and small plates to eat these on. On the third were small glasses and a selection of water, fruit juices, and fruit punch.
“Everyone be sure to collect a folder, there’s a lot of information in there which will be helpful for you as you get settled,” he urged them, and then began the speech. After several years, he had it down pretty well. “Sonora is a seven-year school which focuses on giving you all a thorough education in magical theory and practice. You’ll start out, for your first year, with seven classes – Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, Potions, Transfiguration, and flying lessons. You can drop flying lessons in your second year and start other electives in your third year, if you want to. In your fifth year, you’ll take your first set of major exams, the Critical Assessment of Talents and Skills, or CATS. After that, you may select classes to focus on, though you’ll need at least two to graduate and three if you want to pursue your education in the magical arts further after you leave Sonora.
“In the meantime, we know that you all come from different educational backgrounds now,” he said, because this was true. Some might have gone to Muggle elementary schools while others might have had specialized tutors for each subject while others might have had…more unorthodox training. Most fell somewhere on a continuum between the extremes of unschooling and specialized tutors for each subject. “Your professors all have office hours when we can give you extra help in our subjects if you need it, and Professor Skies, our Deputy Headmistress and your Transfiguration teacher, runs special sessions for anyone who needs help with reading and writing English more fluently, or with basic maths, or other general academic support. You can see times for those in the schedules in your green folders.
“Outside of classes, you have options about how you spend your time. We have some student-run clubs and sports here, and you’ll see notices about meetings posted around the schools when they’re ready to start up for the year. Breakfast is from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m, lunch is from 11:00 to one, and supper is five till seven, but you can find snacks and drinks there between those times as well. Curfew is at ten p.m., and at that time, you’ll need to be inside your Houses – those are parts of the building where your dorms are attached to a common room you share with other people in all seven years who were Sorted into the same group as you . They’re four groups of rooms, and tonight, at the Welcoming Feast, you’ll be Sorted into one of them by dipping the blank badges you have now into a cauldron. If your badge turns blue, you’re an Aladren – the House that values learning and problem-solving.” He might have sounded a little proud there; he was a former Aladren as well as Head of the House. “If it turns red, you belong in Crotalus, the House for people who like to be well-prepared for everything. Yellow means you’re in Teppenpaw, the House for our diplomats – and a House which has done very well in the House Cup recently,” he added, lest Teppenpaw sound lame to them. “Finally, if your badge turns brown, that means you’re a Pecari, the House for people who always land on their feet and are always willing to take a chance. All the Houses have other traits, though, so don’t worry if you don’t think any of those things sounds exactly like you – there’s a place for everyone here at Sonora.
“Your House will have prefects, who are older students, and a Head, who is a staff member – I’m the Head of Aladren, for instance. They’ll all look after you while you’re here. Your House can earn points based on things you do – excelling in class or in sports, or showing responsibility, or somehow helping the school community and showing leadership. The House with the most points at the end of the year earns the House Cup, and sometimes other privileges – Teppenpaw House has hosted the Cup for a good while now, but last year they tied with Pecari, so anyone can win.”
“If no-one has any questions about all of that, you can mingle and get to know your classmates for a while and have some snacks until we begin our tour of the mansion. If you do have any questions, feel free to come see me – and welcome again to Sonora.”
OOC (Out of Character) Note: Welcome first years to Sonora! You can post a reply here to ask staff questions or meet your new classmates. This thread is intended for first year students to have a chance to try out posting and get acclimated to the site before we throw you into the big Opening Feast, which is open to the entire school population and can be a bit overwhelming.
Now, go forth, new first years of Sonora! Post, enjoy, have fun! Everyone here is happy to help out, so if you've got a question, put it on the OOC board or try to catch somebody in the Chatzy and we'll try to get you an answer as quick as we can. Have fun and we’re glad you could join us!
[Credit to Nathan Xavier's author for the content of this OOC notice]
Subthreads: I don't know about this by Mab with Morgan Garrett
Taking an unexpected step. by Mara Morales with Leonor De Matteo
Is this a trick? by Alexander Pierce-Beales with Alexandra Borealis
I choose upside down! by Theo Spurn with Joanna Rose-Turner, Josephine Clyde
#FreshStart #MeetingMrWright by Sadie-Lake Chalmers with Grayson Wright
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Grayson Wright
Welcome to Orientation, New Students!
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Grayson Wright
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Theo Spurn
December 06, 2019 6:13 PM
I choose upside down! by Theo Spurn
Theo disembarked the air-wagon and regarded his new surroundings. There were two reasons why he followed the large arrows pointing first years in a particular direction but neither reason was being a first year or being supposed to do that. The first was because they were easily the most interesting thing in the immediate vicinity because they sort of seemed like a pirate map or maybe an elaborate trap, and the second was because dad had given him a lot of reminders about at least trying to follow instructions. Dad knew that was difficult, and he didn’t mind so long as Theo really did try his best, but he would appreciate it if Theo really, really tried because first impressions counted. Theodore liked that idea. He had imagined a whole hall full of First Impressions, which initially looked just like the words but then took on the more abstract idea of things having been pressed into surfaces and leaving a mark – anyway, lots of them were sitting around in big regal robes counting little stacks of coins. The image was whimsical enough that it stayed with him, and then he remembered why it was in his head and that following the signs would make dad happy, so he did.Theo and his new friends (unless they were mean) were taken through to a clearing. Not many of his new friends (unless they were mean) seemed to be wearing their robes. Theo considered this for a moment. He did not dislike his robes. His mom had sewn a small strip of velvet into the inside of each cuff so that he would always have something soft to touch. Theo liked soft things more than anything else. However, what he was wearing under his robes was better. He removed his robes, dropping them next to the table where they had got their folders. There was a strong chance he would remember to pick them up later because of the velvet. He wasn’t good at keeping track of everything (there were too many things in the world for that to be practical) but he usually remembered where he left soft things. He had forgotten the part where he wasn’t supposed to leave his things lying around or that other people might not be trustworthy or nice with them.
So, there he was, ready to make his first impression count (its pirate treasure in a high high tower!). Under his robes, he was wearing a burgundy velvet shirt and fleecy pyjama pants with penguins on. Theo had never found pants he liked that were not intended as sleepwear. People seemed to think that pants didn’t need to be as soft as other clothes. He wasn’t sure what everyone’s legs had done to upset clothes designers but it wasn’t fair. Legs were very necessary bits to wrap in soft things because legs and bums were the bits that got pressed against a chair when you sat down (if you did it the way most adults expected) and therefore if something scratchy and unpleasant got between you and it, it was going to make keeping that posture even harder than it already was. He also had a bright pink streak down the middle of his otherwise very dark, slightly messy hair. This topped a skinny freckled face and had not caused an argument. It was not an argument because his parents did not argue, they just sometimes disagreed. Theo was not supposed to have overheard because he was meant to have gone upstairs for something but he’d forgotten what it was by the time he got out of the front room and he had also remembered how he wasn’t going to be able to touch the stairs carpet for ages and had stopped to pet it goodbye. The discussion was one that his parents had had several times before. Essentially, it involved Dad suggesting that Mom was making Theo stand out unnecessarily/in a bad way, and Mom argued that she wasn’t and that there was nothing wrong with Theo being himself until Dad backed down. Dad meant well but he wasn’t a fan of drawing attention to himself, and sometimes it meant that he worried about things that weren’t worrying anyone else. Mom had been charming her hair and so Theo had wanted his done too. If anyone was mean about it they could very strongly go away. He knew another word for that but he wasn’t supposed to say it.
Professor Totally Correct started saying lots of things, and Theo ran his finger up and down, up and down on the velvety arm of his sleeve watching the little patterns as it went against the grain (eeeee, kind of almost wrong but sort of tickly and nice at the same time – school is seven years) and back down (smooooth – Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, Potions, Transfiguration, and flying lessons). And up (electives) and down (exams). People often thought he wasn’t listening when he did things like this. He refrained from thinking that people were stupid because of this because dad had thought it for a long time and dad was definitely not stupid but people were confusing. Theo liked touching soft things more than he liked anything else. Therefore, he had a lot of them around. If he didn’t, it made him sad and anxious, wondering when he would get to touch them next and why everything had to be so cold and so hard that it felt almost stingy under his fingers and very uncomfortable. Uncomfortable people could not concentrate. If soft things were there but he wasn’t allowed to touch them, then he was just distracted by thinking about how much he wanted to touch them. He could keep his hands still and stare at Professor Wright and apparently a lot of people would find it quite pleasing if he did that for reasons that he could not fathom but he would not be listening. He would be thinking about how still he was standing and actively concentrating on keeping his hands off his sleeves. Sometimes he didn’t listen if people weren’t very interesting, and then they blamed his soft things which was very rude when it was their fault for not saying anything worth listening to. The fact that he was stroking soft things and not listening was an example of correlation not causation. He also stroked soft things a lot of the time that he wasn’t meant to be listening, and he also listened a lot of the times he was stroking soft things, and the fact that they only noticed the two when they went together was an example of confirmation bias. Firemen did not cause fires and people with colourful hair were not hoodlums.
After a while, he noticed that the lull of words had stopped accompanying the stroking of his own sleeves. They were meant to do something else. Theo had probably been standing stroking his own sleeve and thinking about confirmation bias for some of that time. No one else was doing much except standing and chatting though. He decided he could do that, as it was not mutely exclusive with playing with his shirt. He scrunched the ends of his sleeves over his hands in tight fists (the sleeves were deliberately too long for just this purpose) so that he could feel his knuckles pressing against the velvety insides of the shirt. This was one of the easiest ways to be touching soft things without overtly doing it. He gave himself a little rub on the nose too because that was nice, then walked over to someone.
“Hi. I’m Theo. I’m quite odd,” he informed them cheerfully. This was something they could probably figure out for themselves but it was something he found important about himself and also for some reason when people were left to figure it out for themselves they somehow then felt awkward about it, like maybe he didn’t know (he had met him before, more so than they had – he was very definitely aware) and they were going to have to tell him, or just they didn’t know how to handle it. He had a good remedy for that though, “If that makes you uncomfortable, a good solution is just going away and not being a jerk about it," he advised.
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Theo Spurn
I choose upside down!
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Joanna Rose-Turner
December 08, 2019 12:33 AM
Jo didn’t know what to think. by Joanna Rose-Turner
Jo was pushed with the flow of children walking towards the tall man with glasses, but her mind was elsewhere.The whole wagon ride seemed like a fuzzy memory of questions that ran through her head. None of the country side that had flown by her window could penetrate past the internal dialogue that sped so fast it made her dizzy.
Are wizards the same as her friends back home?
How did one learn how to cast spells?
Something in the stories her parents had told her growing up just always seemed too fantastic to be real, really real. Friends and teachers assuring her it was all just fairy tales just seemed more convincing. What they believed in was right in front of them, in front of her, and magic was something that existed
beautifully in her own mind, but nowhere else.
Would it be like everything she dreamed of?
Since the stories she read were real, that meant the characters she loved were real. That meant she could potentially meet them. Maybe more.
Maybe make her own stories.
It was a thought she wanted so desperately to talk to her parents about. Her parents who were actually wizards, she thought. Did that mean they were still her real parents? Real wizards surely would be too busy having adventures and solving mysteries to have children.
What was it that they told her?
From the moment the acceptance letter had reached their front doorstep, to the moment she waved good bye from the wagon seemed like the blink of an eye. She remembered when her parents sat her down at the kitchen table to tell her about the school and what she would be doing there, but she couldn’t remember what they said.
Instead, she remembered seeing their worried faces. She remembered seeing their faces and crying, and being held by them until the tears dried.
She realized the man had stopped talking, and the children were all paired up already, leaving her alone.
Hi. I’m Theo. I’m quite odd.
Jo jumped as she heard Theo’s voice from behind.
Indeed, he did seem quite odd in his velvet shirt and pajama pants. Maybe he’d forgotten to change, she thought. She had done that once or twice, and upon arriving at school and taking off her winter coat, would realize her embarrassing mistake. Best not to draw any attention to it and make him feel worse about it.
Being odd also seemed something like a good thing. Being ordinary was more like a curse. If you were ordinary, no one would think you were cool or remember you.
Maybe being odd was something to look for in a friend.
“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, I think I’m quite odd too.”
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Joanna Rose-Turner
Jo didn’t know what to think.
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Theo Spurn
December 08, 2019 4:51 AM
Think fun thoughts! by Theo Spurn
This girl said she was quite odd too. That was interesting. Not many people said that about themselves, and Dad wasn’t sure it was a good idea for Theo to do that, but he liked it better that way, just putting all the oddness out there and this just went to show how well that could go. He wondered what was odd about this girl.“That’s good,” he smiled encouragingly. “What’s your favourite texture?” he asked. He was aware that there were a lot of ways to be odd, and it was quite likely that they did not have exactly the same quirks but that wasn’t really why he was asking. If the girl wanted to stay and accepted he was odd, they could talk about the things Theo liked, and he liked textures that felt soothing. After they talked about that for a bit, they could talk about what she liked because that was only fair, and maybe he’d discover what was odd about her. Or ‘odd.’ Not everything that other people gave that label seemed that way to him. From inside Theo’s own head, his own way of looking at things made perfect sense and he couldn’t understand why everyone else wasn’t bothered more by all of the bad textures. Bad textures felt like they sliced at his fingers, and they stayed there too long. Even after things had gone away, the memory or some part of the texture just stayed lingering on his skin. He had had enough conversations about how other people managed to deal with this that he had gathered other people literally did not notice the things he noticed. He found that mind-bending, but had long since come to accept that most people did not regard their lack of sensitivity to be odd, so that was probably not what this girl meant about herself.
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Theo Spurn
Think fun thoughts!
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Josephine Clyde
December 08, 2019 7:26 AM
Out with the old, in with the magic by Josephine Clyde
The robes had to be green. Josie played with her right sleeve and tried not to think about how she’d looked in the mirror when she first tried the robes on…or the look on her father’s face. When her father talked about his time at magic school he’d never talked about the color, just how uncomfortable they made him feel. She didn’t understand why because they were super comfy. It reminded her of all the beautifully soft textbooks she and her father had bought. As she ran her fingers over the covers and spines she imagined what they would be about. So maybe she started looking at them on the way to magic school inside of a flying wagon, but it didn’t last long. A. Flying. Wagon. Giddiness bubbled up inside of her like the baths she used to take with her mother. After years of listening to her father’s stories about Sonora it was impossible to believe that she was going to go there. Josie was finally going to learn about magic and witches and wizards and read soft as butter books and not have to force her father into it.Getting out of the wagon was easy; following the flow of students towards the “1st Years Here” sign was a bit more challenging. She made sure to keep her hair around her face, like a curtain so that even the people next to her could only see the tip of her nose. Professor Wright. Charms. Aladren House. Opening Feast. Sonora House. It was, literally, a whole new world and she didn’t want to miss one drop of information. Especially when she was no better than any normal girl from her elementary school. This time, when the river of students followed Professor Wright into another area it was easier for her to go along. Josie snatched a folder off the table and resisted the urge to start reading it. The professor was talking and she couldn’t afford to miss anything. Charms. There was that word again. Care of Magical Creatures. Defense Against the Dark Arts. Herbology. Potions. Transfig…uration? And flying lessons. Flying. Flying! Everything she knew about Quidditch was from an ancient book she’d found in the attic and though it sounded like fun what had really interested her was the flying. Who on earth would drop such an amazing class?
Josie continued to listen with an open heart that was full to bursting with all of the delicious information that kept pouring in. Eating hours, okay, curfew, great. The Houses. This was what she was most excited about and nervous. After poking and prodding her father finally admitted that he had been in Pecari, not that it had meant much to her then, but as she listened now she felt bitterness creep in and invade the happy information. Always land on their feet? Like cats. There had been nothing cute and cuddly about the way her father had remarried so quickly. Nothing. She began praying that her badge wouldn’t turn brown. She wanted to be anything other than that. And there were older students who would help them out? The bitterness soaked in further. Well, if they were anything like Daniel and Samuel then she’d have to steer clear of them. Josie had always wanted an older brother, then she had two and they weren’t like anything she’d wanted. They must not have wanted her either.
What did it matter if her step-brothers were cold and nice and her step-mother was awkward and nice? She was at magic school. She was at Sonora and nothing was going to stop her from making new friends. Marching over to the table she saw a little group of people had formed and stepped right up to them. The boy had on some fluffy looking pants and seemed to be talking to a tall girl.
“Hi, I’m Josephine, but I prefer Josie.”
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Josephine Clyde
Out with the old, in with the magic
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Josephine Clyde
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Joanna Rose-Turner
December 09, 2019 4:24 AM
Act natural. by Joanna Rose-Turner
Texture?Jo had never been asked this question before.
When she thought about what textures she’d ever really noticed in her life, she could only think of all the different types of materials her parents had taught her about.
“Smooth stone or wood, I think. Both my parents make lots of cool things out of them, see?”
Jo took out her onyx pendant from under her shirt and leaned forward so the boy could take a look.
Jo could see Josie approaching out of the corner of her eye, so she turned her head to look.
She’s so pretty, Jo thought.
Making girl friends always seemed to be such a challenge to Jo. In her childhood, Jo had always made girl friends that would end up being something like bullies. They would make fun of her clothes that had gotten dirty from loose art supplies, or take her sparkly pens without her permission.
Boys just always seemed easier to talk to, as long as they didn't believe in cooties.
For a girl to come up and be so friendly right away made Jo a little nervous.
Best to just pretend like you don't care, Jo thought.
“Hi Josie, I’m Jo.”
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Joanna Rose-Turner
Act natural.
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Theo Spurn
December 09, 2019 5:34 AM
Why?? by Theo Spurn
Smooth stone or wood. That was interesting. It was mostly interesting that the girl was answering at all. Sometimes people didn't know how to answer his questions, and sometimes that meant they just ignored him, which he found rude. Those same adults then tended to take it very badly if he chose to ignore questions they asked that he deemed boring. He wasn't sure why they were allowed to have an expectation for him that they were unwilling to follow themselves. Luckily, there were not really any people like that in his daily life. His mom and dad didn't hang out with jerks. But jerks happened sometimes because the world was full of them."That’s pretty,” he acknowledged about her necklace, “My mom makes things too! She does lots of art. I do some kinds with her but it depends on the textures,” he commented. Paint was sticky. He sort of trusted painting with Mom because she would let him be slow and careful and had never, never made him do finger painting and had taken him away from the playgroup where they had made him because ‘everyone needed to join in.’ Mom had told them that was bull and that Theo had said no and that they should have listened, and she would rather have picked up a happy child at the end of the day than a crying one and a perfect freaking handprint animal. Mom was awesome. She had taught him to tell the world to go screw itself whenever it had a problem with him. He preferred collages to painting. And he liked art with mom but found galleries boring because you couldn’t touch. Sometimes he went because they made mom happy and he watched her looking at art and stroked her arms because she always wore something cool on gallery days. There was a recent trend for splatting big thick oil paints on canvases so thickly they were three dimensional though and it made his skin crawl because it was so painty and he thought about it not being dry when it would have been all sticky and then, once it was dry, it was spiky. The one good thing about wet textures (which were on a whole different continuum to dry ones) was that they could never ever be spiky and rough, and then someone had taken the two worst points of the two textures spectrums and combined them. He knew you were meant to believe in different strokes for different folks and all that (and strokes were so nice!) but there were some real psychopaths out there.
“Smooth stone and wood are both quite nice," he acknowledged fairly. He could understand their appeal. They were smooth and cold, which could be soothing. They were inoffensive textures, and he was okay around them. If he felt very hot or agitated, he could even get behind some of their properties. “They’re a bit like silk,” he observed, because most of his processing of texture related to fabric. “They’re good textures for hot days, and they are also on one of the opposite points on the Texture Triangle to rough.” The Texture Triangle was a concept he had been working on to explain the textures that were enjoyable versus those that were not, though currently he had only developed it for dry textures. He was about to launch into an explanation of this when they were joined by a third person.
“We’re talking about texture,” he informed her, “Do you want to join in?”
(OOC as we now have a multiperson thread, it will keep going in order. So, Josie's next, then back to Jo. This is so if people are in different timezones or one person is more busy, their character doesn't get left behind in the conversation).
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Theo Spurn
Why??
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Josephine Clyde
December 09, 2019 6:53 AM
Disappearing glitter by Josephine Clyde
They’d obviously been in the middle of a conversation, but hopefully they didn’t mind her too much. She would never forget the stares her step-brothers gave her whenever she launched into her latest book summary.“Look, Josie, I’m busy with homework and I don’t really care. Can you just go bother someone else?”
Daniel’s words had sliced at her. Her parents loved hearing her stories. It used to be a running joke between them that Josie always managed to find the weirdest ways to tell the most normal story. But her step-brothers wouldn’t even give her the time of day and her father no longer listened to her. Hopefully these two didn't feel the same way about her barging in on them.
“I’d love to, if that’s alright with you.” Josie looked at the black pendant around Jo’s neck, “Wow, that’s pretty. I always lose or break my necklaces, so my father stopped buying them for me.”
It was truly lovely and it looked like Jo might even have matching earrings. Deep down, Josie was jealous of the beautiful black rock around Jo’s neck, not because it was pretty, but because it gleamed from obvious care and just seemed well-loved. All of her mother’s jewelry had vanished into a box; the strands of pearls, winking blue gems clothed in muted gold, sparkling ropes of bracelets…they’d all disappeared without a trace. Sometimes she wondered if her father had sold it all. But she was determined to move past the bitterness. Or at least try.
“Oh and I like the texture of books! The pages, the ink, but especially the covers of old, leather books. They feel,” she shrugged, "Like bread?"
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Josephine Clyde
Disappearing glitter
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Joanna Rose-Turner
December 10, 2019 8:13 AM
I'm so cool right now... right? by Joanna Rose-Turner
“Thanks,” Jo replied a little cooly.Jo imagined she was the big superstar and Josie was one of her adoring fans, desperately trying to get her autograph. Playing hard to get was of course what they always showed in TV shows to get people to like you, but Jo hadn’t yet had much practice using the method in real life.
She thought it was totally working. She bet she looked super cool at that moment.
Jo turned back to the boy, and realized she hadn’t asked for his name yet.
Was it too late in the conversation to ask? She wasn’t sure.
Rather than risk embarrassment, maybe it’d be better to just wait for Josie to ask him, or until they were in class and the teacher called on him, Jo thought.
And what was this “Texture Triangle” the boy was going on about? Jo had never heard of it before in her life. Perhaps it was on one of those confusing charts that filled the walls of her elementary classrooms, like the periodic table, and the teacher had just never gotten to it. Whatever it was, this wasn’t the moment in an introduction to show weakness and question it.
Maybe he would be impressed if she seemed like she knew of it already.
Fake it till you make it, as they always said.
“Leather that feels like bread… but in the Texture Triangle, bread does seem a bit on the rough side though doesn’t it? Maybe the inside of bread instead of the crust would be better?”
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Joanna Rose-Turner
I'm so cool right now... right?
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Theo Spurn
December 12, 2019 4:57 AM
Yeah, all the cool kids reference the Texture Triangle! by Theo Spurn
Breeeead???? Leather…. Leather and bread. Bread? Theo tactilised both (‘tactilise’ was the word he had coined to fill the gap for what you did when you imagined how something would feel. ‘Imagine how it would feel’ was a clunky long phrase, and visualising got a word all to itself, so why didn’t the other senses?). They were not a very close match but he was just excited that he had found two people who wanted to talk in depth about texture. Jo even referenced the Texture Triangle, which was exciting! He was still developing it as an idea, but clearly it made some logical sense if someone was able to reference it accurately in conversation after only hearing it mentioned once.“Ohhhh,” he nodded, when Jo mentioned nasty crusty hard bread. Theo was less particular with food textures than hand textures because even though his mouth was more sensitive, it was already quite wet, so soggy things were less of a problem but spiky things were still generally unpleasant. He did not eat crusty bread. He was familiar with the concept though. His mind had gone first to very neatly sliced soft bread. He thought that leather probably fell somewhere in between those two, as he would definitely stroke leather but he wouldn’t stroke crusty bread.
“I would say that neither is an exact match. Crusty bread is very spiky,” he said with evident dislike. “But it is crackly, the same way book leather can be. Book leather is interesting! It is firm but soft at the same time. Most soft things have squish. Bread is very squishy. It had a lot of three dimensional softness which book leather does not. But book leather can get hard enough to crack which is very strange for something soft, and perhaps it’s the thing that goes right in the middle of the Texture Triangle!” he beamed with absolute enthusiasm, his speech having gained both speed and excitement as he chattered on. “You are good people. You can both stroke my shirt sleeves if you want,” he added, holding out his velvet shirt-clad arms for them. There were rules about touching and asking others to touch you but the closer you were with people the more okay it was and they were definitely friends and friends, in Theo’s world, stroked.
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Theo Spurn
Yeah, all the cool kids reference the Texture Triangle!
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Josephine Clyde
December 13, 2019 12:14 AM
Pound cake is delicious thankyouverymuch by Josephine Clyde
Josie cocked her head at Jo’s response. Was it just her or did the other girl seem a bit colder? She wasn’t expecting friendship to magically start, but still. Back home they’d moved to a completely new area and Josie hadn’t had the time to make any friends before she came to Sonora. Maybe she’d been too weird? She thought she was being perfectly normal. At least she hadn’t started with a summary of her latest book! Actually, maybe she should’ve. Or maybe she was still just a little sensitive. Daniel and Samuel were the definition of cold; she was probably just over-thinking things. As usual.Crusty bread? If her mother had taught her anything about baking it was that things should only be crusty if you want them to be. Her nose wrinkled slightly at the idea of her precious books being as rough and tough as the store bought loafs that Daniel crammed the cupboards with. She’d have to bake them a pound cake one day so that they could see just how soft bread could be.
“Well,” Josie began, “If you guys have time and the school lets me, I could make some soft bread on the weekend?” As the boy held out his arms for stroking Josie realized she had no idea what his name was, “And my mother always told me I should know someone’s name before I pet their sleeves. Also, what is the Texture Triangle exactly? Do you have a picture of it that I could look at? Or you could draw a picture?”
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Josephine Clyde
Pound cake is delicious thankyouverymuch
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Joanna Rose-Turner
December 16, 2019 7:51 AM
Cat belly by Joanna Rose-Turner
So Josie liked baking. Jo would keep a mental note of that in case she ever wanted to bake something. It was always nice to bake with others. Hopefully Josie would be interested.The prospect of being able to bake or not was also something Jo hadn’t thought about, but she felt like she probably should have. Cooking and experimenting was always fun. Some of her fondest memories of being home alone was when she could find a few things to throw in the blender to experiment with.
“Oh that’s a good question, Josie. Maybe we should ask that tall guy?”
It also started to occur to Jo how much she probably should have been listening to the tall guy with glasses. Come to think of it, she hardly knew what the schedule of the day was like. Maybe she could just follow these two and find her way from there.
Jo looked down at the boy’s sleeves. They did look especially plush.
She stuck out a finger and touched the sleeve gently.
Boy, it was pretty soft, she thought.
“What’s this made out of? It feels like a cat’s belly.” Jo giggled at the thought of two tiny kittens being hidden in the boy’s sleeves.
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Joanna Rose-Turner
Cat belly
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Theo Spurn
December 18, 2019 11:35 PM
The Texture Triangle by Theo Spurn
"My name is Theo," he informed her, giving his arm an inviting little wiggle now that he had fulfilled those necessities. He understood them. His dad often gave him suggestions like that. "And I will happily draw you the Texture Triangle!" he beamed."There used to be a baking club, back when Sophie was potions teacher. She's my cousin and my dad's god-daughter so we are related twice but not in a weird way and apparently god-sibling isn't a thing but if it was she would be mine. She's too old to be my sibling anyway but she has kids who I play with a lot," he was about to continue explaining about Wally and Stanley, and Tommy (who wasn't Sophie's but also counted) and Charlotte (who was but was smaller than Tommy so belonged there in this sequence) but then he remembered they'd been talking about baking and he tried to steer his brain back to that. "I don't know what Not-Sophie is like but maybe if they're nice, you can get their help." Mum was talking to the new Not-Sophie right now to find out if she was a butt or not. Sophie had sometimes been at Sonora when Theo was big enough to remember stuff but it had been very on and off even then because she had been busy having babies. Then she'd just stopped going back. It was long enough before he was due to start that he hadn't felt like he should expect Sophie to be here - she had been, sometimes, but now it was normal for her to be at home. He was confident that the new person was either not a butt to begin with or that mum could yell them into not being a butt, so that was fine.
"This is velvet," he replied to Jo, slightly surprised that she didn't know. It seemed very sad to have gone eleven and a bit years of your life without knowing about velvet. "It's in the top section of the Texture Triangle, which I will now draw for you," he smiled, happy with the strokes he had received.
Having procured a pen, he took one of the sheets from his orientation folder (which he had not yet lost! He had been standing still and was not near any horizontal surfaces but it was still good to celebrate when successes happened) and began to draw and equilateral triangle with its point facing downwards.
"The Texture Triangle demonstrates how texture works. At least, for me. It applies to dry textures only. In the top zone, are soft things," he wrote 'softness' across the top and drew lines dividing the triangle into thirds. In the top section he wrote, from left to right, silk, plushies, velvet. "These are all good things," he pointed out, though he felt this should be obvious. "There are two ways in which we can move away from softness," he said, looking slightly sad at this. He drew an arrow getting wider down the left hand side of the triangle and labelled it 'Hardness (increasing)' and another arrow, this one getting thinner, down the right hand side which read 'Smoothness (decreasing).' "Things like nice wood and stones go over here," he wrote them in the middle section on the left. "They are not soft, but it's because their hardness increased rather than because their smoothness decreased. The opposite is true for scratchy fabrics. They are still a kind of soft but they are not very nice," he explained, pulling a face. "The middle zone is things that I have mixed feelings about. Stones and smooth wood can be nice," he added because he didn't want to offend Jo and because they were sort of pleasant or neutral or calming to him. "But I do not like scratchy fabrics. But when you decrease both these factors, that's when things get really bad," he labelled the bottom point of the triangle 'Roughness (oh no!)' and filled it in with examples such as sand paper and jagged rocks.
"Like I said, it's sort of a work in progress, and it might imply that thinking of soft things as the best is correct, and I certainly have nothing against your stones or your leather," he nodded at each of them in turn, "So I will take that into consideration. I also don't like that I am expressing the joy of softness using something as pointy as a triangle but it alliterates, so there's that. You are good friends," he declared happily, wrapping a velvety arm around each of them and squeezing because not everyone wanted to hear about texture at length.
"Do you want to talk more about this or about something else that you like?" he asked because it was polite to share conversations and not only talk about his own interests.
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Theo Spurn
The Texture Triangle
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Josephine Clyde
January 01, 2020 8:02 AM
Elves and stuff by Josephine Clyde
Josie laughed alongside Jo as she pet Theo’s sleeves. They really did feel like the furry tummy of a cute kitty. Her hands had still been in the middle of petting when he started gushing information. So a woman named Sophie used to be the potions teacher and they were not not related, but then there was another lady who wasn’t that first one who was maybe not nice? Too much information. She shook her head and her brain latched onto the one thing Theo had said about baking. Baking club. There used to be a baking club. That would keep her grounded. God, to bake again. For fun! Josie smiled at Jo, baking with someone else, a friend, would be a nice treat. Pun intended.As she watched Theo draw his Texture Triangle the details of it snapped into place for her. Soft things were always good things, but she adored the cold marble countertop in their old home where she’d spent hours baking.
“Thanks for the explanation! I understand it much better now.” She hummed, “What about other things you guys are interested in? I like reading really terrible books.”
Josie gave each of them a wide smile and hoped that it covered the glee she felt. This would be the make it or break it time for them. If they just stared at her then they’d be like Daniel and Samuel, but…But! If they were curious, asked questions, didn’t brush her off, then maybe…maybe! Maybe she’d find new friends. Friends that were worth the risk.
“My favorite one is about two elves falling in love, he’s a commoner and she’s the princess. They meet in an enchanted forest and fall in love.” She started illustrating things with hand gestures, “But their parents are super against it because she’s the princess and she already has a fiancé, but then they have to fight an evil witch with their plant magic powers and the commoner is the most powerful plant magic user. They defeat the evil witch, but then the princess’s fiancé shows up and challenges the commoner to a duel even though he doesn’t need to.” Josie took a breath and beamed, “Do you guys want to hear more?”
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Josephine Clyde
Elves and stuff
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Joanna Rose-Turner
January 03, 2020 10:14 PM
Changing the subject by Joanna Rose-Turner
While Theo’s texture triangle seemed interesting, Jo was kind of glad Josie changed the subject. Most textures Jo could agree with. Plush and velvet were really nice, and softness was always a factor of how she decided on which stuffed animals to add to her huge (100+) collection back at home, but there were also some good properties of rough things. Rough things, in fact, made other things smooth and soft, but this didn’t seem like the best time to have that discussion.Jo had always loved fantasy books. Some turned out to be less than a fantasy than she thought… but she still loved the genre. Thinking about mythical creatures and far off lands always made her feel that there was so much to life, more than she could even understand.
“That sounds interesting Josie, I think I’ve read a few books like that, but why would you call that a terrible book?”
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Joanna Rose-Turner
Changing the subject
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Theo Spurn
January 11, 2020 6:54 AM
Good choice by Theo Spurn
It was time to move on. The Texture Triangle had had its moment, and been appreciated, and now other people were going to get to share too. And-“YES!!” Theo enthused, bouncing a little when somehow he just totally lucked in (‘lucked out’ had never made sense to him as a phrase - he was very much not out of luck right now, he was deep, deep in and rolling around!) as somehow another favourite subject of his came up. “I love trash books,” he grinned. “The less literary value the better. Preferably things that come in series so you can just keep going and going.
“I read all these old boarding school books about girls at posh schools in England and they’re always like… busting smuggling rings and whatever and everyone says things like ‘That was a right lark’ and ‘jolly hockey sticks’ - they actually say that - and then I go around saying those things to my parents - they’re English,” he added, his own accent slipping slightly more towards that register and not just as he quoted the books but as he talked about talking to his parents too, “And my mum says that no one this century talks like that, and that she definitely does not talk like that, and that I am a horrible offspring. She doesn’t mean that,” he added for clarity. “Dad sometimes plays along and goes Very British Gentleman.
“I sort of want to know more but don’t spoil the ending,” he requested of Josie, his voice returning to its much more American cadences as he was talking to one of those again.
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Theo Spurn
Good choice
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Josephine Clyde
January 18, 2020 1:59 AM
Tally ho good sir! by Josephine Clyde
She was sure that her smile was full of evil feelings, but, hopefully, all Jo saw was a friendly one.“Well, their names are Hojo and Marianne, or Jojo and Mara for short. Jojo only loves Mara because she looks like his dead wife and he only gave her the nickname Mara because that was his wife’s name. Also, there’s a big pink unicorn on the cover and it definitely plays an important role in the story, but I’ll keep that a secret for now.”
As she listened to Theo she grew more and more interested. Trash books? Oh, now that was delightful and accurate. She’d have to remember it for the next time she began one of her stories. They wouldn’t be awful books, but trash instead. Now that she thought about, she did remember hearing Daniel say that her stories were trashy, but he’d been rude about it.
“Theo, you’re British? My step-mother went to a magic school somewhere in Europe! Why’ve you come to Sonora if you could go to school there?”
Honestly, magic school anywhere would be nice, but having to leave home…Well, if it had been two years ago then it would be different. Two years ago Deidre Clyde was still alive and Josie couldn’t imagine going one day without her. Theo seemed to have a good relationship with his family. If he was really British (and his accent had been really good) wouldn’t he rather go somewhere near his home? But then again maybe he had been born in America. It definitely explained why his regular English was so good.
“Or…wait. Now I’m confused. I confused myself. Ignore me. What is a “right lark” and a “jolly hockey stick”? Aren’t larks birds? And is the happy hockey stick a metaphor for something?”
British English was kind of weird. Josie’s face scrunched a little as she thought more and more about the strange words.
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Josephine Clyde
Tally ho good sir!
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