We should do this (tag Tatiana) on Cascade Hall

The Coach

December 14, 2019 8:22 PM

Quidditch Sign Ups by The Coach

Sonora’s Quidditch fortunes had been so-so for the past handful of years. The sport was rarely gaining enough interest to support full house teams but since the introduction of the full school team, things had been going a little better. Pooling their resources worked out in their favour, and gave them a strong-ish side. It was challenging to compete against schools where the ‘whole school team’ was a best-of-the-best scenario, comprising almost exclusively of older players, but they had found some teams of a similar enough standing to themselves to make matches fair and interesting. They had won some, lost some, and they were leaning.

It was something the coach hoped to build on this year, particularly as there was an exciting event coming up in Tumbleweed, the nearby town, towards the end of the term. Details were still a little fuzzy, but it looked to be some sort of Quidditch day – probably with exhibition flying, but maybe also workshops or the like. It could prove an interesting day out, anyway. Thus, ready to greet the students as they arrived for breakfast the morning after the opening feast, an encouraging, brightly coloured notice had appeared in Cascade Hall.

Quidditch Sign Ups!

Our school-wide team is looking for enthusiastic players. No prior experience is necessary.
The team travels throughout the year for friendly play offs and coaching sessions with other small school sides.
Try outs will be held on Saturday on the pitch.
Please sign up with your name, year, house and preferred position or positions (if known) below.

In order to encourage those who might not know the sport well, a handy list was posted next to the sign ups, detailing the basics of each of the positions, although the coach was perfectly open to people just trying their hand and seeing what would suit them.

Subthreads:

Mich! Und mein Bruder! by Hilda Hexenmeister

Well, sure. by Evelyn Stones

This is a terrible idea. by Nathaniel Mordue

What could possibly go wrong here? by Morgan Garrett

Giving it a spin. by Mara Morales

FLYING!?!?! by Joanna Rose-Turner

No, you know what, Imma gonna try by Anya Delachene

One more try by Eden Manger

The talent is here by Jeremy Mordue

We should do this (tag Tatiana) by Ness McLeod with Tatiana Vorontsova

Something like that by Ness McLeod with Tatiana Vorontsova

13 The Coach Quidditch Sign Ups 0 The Coach 1 5

Hilda Hexenmeister

December 16, 2019 8:36 AM

Mich! Und mein Bruder! by Hilda Hexenmeister

Hilda didn’t normally read the bulletin board. The notices were all in English and if anything was really important either the teachers or Heinrich would mention it. However, the beginning of the year was different. The beginning of the year was when Quidditch sign-ups were supposed to go up. Last year, she wasn’t good enough at English to check for herself though, so it had been day after day, week after week, of “Heinrich, are any of these about Quidditch?” and day after day, week after week, the answer was no, until she had grudgingly accepted that no Quidditch was happening concurrent to the challenges.

This year, her English reading comprehension was good enough that she trusted she would at least recognize the word Quidditch, and sure enough, not too long after classes started up, she saw it.

She laboriously worked her way through the words. There were some unnecessarily large words, in her opinion, but her English German dictionary got her past them. That was the nice thing about print. It would wait patiently while she looked words up. Interacting with people required more guessing.

That was why she wrote two names down on the list. She didn’t trust her verbal comprehension was good enough to do this by herself yet, and she knew her brother would be willing.

Evelyn was going to be on the team, too, after all. Or at least, she had been two years ago, so it was reasonable to assume her name would be joining the Hexenmeisters’ soon enough.

Hilda Hexenmeister, 3, Pecari, Beater
Heinrich Hexenmeister, 5, Aladren, Chaser

1 Hilda Hexenmeister Mich! Und mein Bruder! 1433 0 5

Evelyn Stones

December 17, 2019 3:03 PM

Well, sure. by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn hadn't been entirely sure whether she wanted to sign up for Quidditch or not, but Hilda's and Heinrich's names were encouraging. She suspected Ness might go out for it as well, and if she could just use it to spend time with friends, that would be great.

But there was something else. Evelyn had spent her summer running, climbing, and getting in shape. She was more fit now than she'd ever been, and with everything going on around her and in her life, it would be nice to have some amount of control. Some outlet that didn't require magic. Even a break from the reading. She liked school but she liked flying more than homework.

She had tried out for seeker before and had never been good enough. Now, things were different, but probably not that different. Evelyn's summer didn't make her feel more coordinated, or more eagle-eyed, it made her feel more fierce. She hadn't been practicing catching snitches - or golf balls - she'd been practicing playing catch, kicking a soccer ball around, and running. If Quidditch were on the ground, she'd be a shoo in. As it was, she still had a pretty good shot. Maybe. Hopefully.

There, beneath Heinrich and Hilda's names (neither of which, she noticed, were in Heinrich's handwriting), she wrote her own.

Evelyn Stones, 4, Pecari, Chaser

22 Evelyn Stones Well, sure. 1422 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

December 19, 2019 1:53 PM

This is a terrible idea. by Nathaniel Mordue

OOC: Some internalized ableism regarding mental illness, along with descriptions of some symptoms of depression.

The Quidditch list had appeared, and Nathaniel had not noticed at first. Once he had, though, it had seemed almost as if the thing was looking at him. Taunting him.

He knew he needed to sign up. For one thing, it would be expected of him. He had played before last year, after all, and thus should play again. For another thing, it was another place where he could keep an eye on his brother. He could not in good conscience let Jeremy wander off to other schools with no supervision whatsoever from a member of the family, someone who could help keep Jeremy in line. Nathaniel was the only candidate now that Simon had graduated, so therefore, Nathaniel should play again. It shouldn't have even been a question.

But.

These days, there was always a but. No more simple calculations, no more certainty about what to do, what was right and what was wrong. Everything was complicated now, and far too much of it was completely out of his control.

The...heaviness, as he called it, still struck him unpredictably. It wasn't as chronic as it had been at one time, but it hadn't gone away either. Just walking for any length of time was exhausting, and sometimes he almost had to consciously think just to put his feet in the right places and keep moving instead of forgetting himself and standing still and staring off into space. How, exactly, the hell was he supposed to play Quidditch like that? He remembered, vividly, one time when he was supposed to have been talking to Doctor Greene, and it had been like he was suddenly trapped in a fog. He had not been able to lift his hand, to speak, or even to understand what she was saying. It had been like sleep paralysis, only while he was fully conscious - at least in one tiny corner of his brain, which had been screaming at him that this wasn't right, while the rest had actually found the idea of sinking into that fog at worst unobjectionable and maybe even appealing. If something like that happened while he was a hundred feet off the ground, with Bludgers rocketing around, that could be as bad as if he blacked out again. Which was also a possibility. It had only happened once, but there was nothing saying it couldn't happen again, and that terrified him almost as much as the actual incident had at the time.

Then there was the other thing - specifically, the state of his relationship, to the extent he even had one, with Jeremy.

He doesn't trust me anymore, and I can't blame him. Not while I'm actively lying to him every day and he doesn't know why things last year - went the way they did, or what's going on now....

Some of that, of course, could not be discussed, but...he had thought about being honest about his own more bizarre behavior over the summer, or at least doing so to the extent he had with Sylvia, explaining that apparently he had managed to make himself ill. He hoped he had managed to imply to Sylvia that stress had made him physically ill - that it had broken something in his health - instead of having something wrong in his mind.

The doctor said it was his mind, but that this didn't make it any less of an illness. Nathaniel truthfully didn't know what he thought of that. He felt ill, to be sure, and the world looked so different, compared to how it had...before. Either his mind was wrong now or it had been before; they couldn't both be true. He just didn't know which one was true. What he did know, though, was that he could not let Sylvia or especially Jeremy know he was apparently not well in the head. All they would think of was Mama. And why should Jeremy listen to anything he said if he was a head case? So he had to keep that as far under wraps as possible. Which would be hard if he cracked up a hundred feet in the air.

There was also the question of whether the staff would even have him. For one thing, he was a prefect - he had obligations on campus. For another thing, the staff...he didn't know if his uncle had informed the school that he was now officially a person with mental problems, but he assumed that if his uncle had, it was only a formality. The staff had watched him fall apart last year. They had seen his grades go from very good - thanks to intense effort on his part - to barely getting through his fourth year. It would be utterly humiliating to put himself out there and then get turned away.

But knew he needed to sign up. For one thing, it was expected of him. He had played before last year, after all, and thus should play again. For another thing, it was another place where he could keep an eye on his brother. He could not in good conscience let Jeremy wander off to other schools with no supervision whatsoever from a member of the family, someone who could help keep Jeremy in line. Nathaniel was the only candidate now that Simon had graduated, so therefore, Nathaniel had to play again.

I must, therefore I will. He signed up.

Nathaniel Mordue, 5th Year, Teppenpaw, Keeper.

16 Nathaniel Mordue This is a terrible idea. 1412 0 5

Morgan Garrett

December 20, 2019 8:06 PM

What could possibly go wrong here? by Morgan Garrett

Morgan Grace Garrett had never played a game of Quidditch in her life. She had only seen two, neither at the highest level of the sport. She had flown on a broom before, but not that often, and never really on her own. She also owned a broom, but it was a hand-me-down, rather old and of no particular distinction to begin with.

It never occurred to her that any one of these might be a good reason not to sign up for the Quidditch team, much less the idea that they might all combine into an excellent reason not to do so. The closest thing she had to a good reason in her own head was that it was not exactly very film star-like behavior, but the sign put that thought right out of her head again with its tantalizing promise of going to other schools.

That was, after all, the one thing she disliked about Sonora. Right now, of course, it didn't apply - the school itself was still a whole shiny new world to her - but later, she knew, she would start to feel the walls closing in on her. To feel the old urge to go and see and do - to be part of the great world instead of running through the same routine day after day in some tiny little corner. Of course, other schools might look just like this, but - at least they wouldn't be literal same thing! So she signed up.

Morgan Grace Garrett, 1st Year!, Aladren!, undecided

16 Morgan Garrett What could possibly go wrong here? 1470 0 5

Mara Morales

December 20, 2019 8:42 PM

Giving it a spin. by Mara Morales

I am going to end up knocking this girl upside the head sometime, thought Mara as she looked over the sport team sign-up list and cringed - slightly, but truly - at the way her roommate had signed up before her. There was just no living with people who used exclamation points like that. It was sick and wrong.

Aside from insight into Morgan's character, however, there wasn't really a lot on the sign-up sheet to help her make decisions about her future. Jessica had told her once that the school only had one official sport, one which involved being on broomsticks in the air. Jessica couldn't see that risking breaking her neck was beneficial to her resume - what was left of it - and so she hadn't paid it any further mind, which left Mara without much information about it beyond a few references in things she'd read up to now, which was unfortunate. An athletic pursuit was good for resumes - showed well-roundedness or whatever - and since Mara was reasonably sure that something organized enough to function as a school had to funnel into something organized enough to require resumes....

She read it again. It was on a 'pitch'. That was possibly a good sign. Soccer (Mara found it easiest to think of it as 'soccer' in English and 'futbol' in Spanish, rather than 'football' in English, since that meant something totally different to Dad and he was her primarily Anglophone parent) was on a pitch, and Mara had been playing that for years. Soccer, student government - those were her things, at least for now. She had never intended to cram her resume with as many activities and societies as Jessica had had planned out - had frankly not seen how there were physically enough hours in the day for everything which had been on Jessica's seven-year plan - but she had known that just going to class and doing all her work correctly wasn't enough. It was too competitive these days, and...

...Well, it wasn't as if Mara really needed anything, if she was honest. She knew Dad had made some arrangements for her and Lola, and knew he would make even more underhanded ones if it came to that. Dad had his flaws, but she had never once considered the possibility he was one of those dudes who didn't actually care about his kids or wives beyond what they could do for him. Still, though - he had raised all of them to want to do something, not to be useless little rich girls, which was why it had hit Jessica so hard when she had realized that no, she really was not going to get to go to Princeton or Wharton or the Iowa Writers' Workshop or any of those other big-name schools. As far as Jessica was concerned, without those, she had no options other than being a useless little rich girl living off Dad and eventually her inheritance forever.

Mara was not quite that pessimistic. She could tell there was money here. Maybe it was weird, clunky money guarded by creepy orc-looking things, but it was money nevertheless. Where there was money, there was an opportunity to get money, which meant there had to be a system which could be worked. If she could figure out what these people valued in a resume.

It wasn't, she concluded, as if she had to marry this - quad-ditch (four ditches? Or British money in a ditch? Didn't they call their money 'quid' sometimes?) - team, though. If it didn't work out or seem to give a good opportunity for networking - or if Morgan just drove her insane, if her personality matched her exclamation point usage as closely as Mara feared it did - then she'd just quit and find something else. No big deal.

Mara Morales, 1, Aladren.

16 Mara Morales Giving it a spin. 1472 0 5

Joanna Rose-Turner

December 21, 2019 11:04 PM

FLYING!?!?! by Joanna Rose-Turner

Jo noticed the small crowd by the bulletin board and wanted to see what the commotion was about. At her own public school, their bulletin board was always where events and announcements were posted Jo always thought the best part about school were the extra curriculars. Her parents had always preached the importance of math and science, and how their purposed would reveal themselves to Jo when she didn’t even think about it, but arts and performances always seemed to have more grounded value. They made Jo feel powerful.

OMG IT WAS QUIDDITCH!!!!

What had excited Jo most about coming to Sonora was Quidditch. Flying was Jo’s greatest wish in the world. When she was little, and every night her parents still told her stories about the wizarding world, she always begged for flying stories. Soaring high in the air, wind in her hair and sun on her face, like a bird, were Jo’s best daydreams and could distract her for hours.

Quidditch sounded difficult for sure, especially since Jo wasn’t usually the sporty type, but it would be oh so worth it.

Jo had tried asking her parents all about it when they mentioned it off-handedly as one of the many benefits of Sonora. But despite her desperate need for answers, they proved to be unhelpful, mentioning something about it not being their thing during their time at school.

Though attending the school had initially sounded like a lot of change to her life all at once, the promise of flying was too titillating.

Secretly, it was a very big factor in her final decision to attend Sonora. Her parents wouldn't really like hearing that, as their thought was the most important reason for Jo to attend was to learn more about her culture. Culture sounded like something important to Jo, but it was another thing that didn't seem to have much grounding in real life. Put simply, culture, smulture.

She couldn’t get to the head of the line fast enough.

She took a look at the separate sheet provided of the different Quidditch roles, and decided they all sounded wonderful.

Joanna Rose-Turner, 1, Teppenpaw, Any

43 Joanna Rose-Turner FLYING!?!?! 1478 0 5

Anya Delachene

December 22, 2019 6:51 PM

No, you know what, Imma gonna try by Anya Delachene

For days, Anya walked up to the Quidditch Sign-up Sheet, stared at it for a few minutes, then walked away. It definitely wasn't that she wasn't allowed to play. If that had been the case, her name would already be up there. Despite her mother's distaste for the sport, Anya was permitted to play if she so chose. For all of her mother's other faults, being an ignorant prejudiced tyrant wasn't one of them.

Anya was curious. She was tempted. Flying was the best thing in the world, even if it was just on a broom (horses were better, and straight up flying under your own power was best of all, but that usually only lasted a few seconds at a time and most people called it 'falling' and got really angry at her for doing it on purpose). Quidditch did flying, and even encouraged high speeds and and wild tricks, but Anya and organized team sports did not generally work out super great together. She like Gymnastics. That was awesome. But the team element was limited, and each event only last a minute or two, or even just a few seconds in the case of the vault, which was easily her best and favorite piece of equipment, though the uneven bars did come in a relatively close second place.

Quidditch was different. She'd never really played Quidditch, in all honesty. Last year, Sonora didn't have it, since Challenges were going on, and at home the horses and cliffs and gymnastics satisfied all of her needs for heights and flight, without getting into the messy problems of needing to keep track of other people and four different balls, not to mention finding a team when she lived in the middle of nowhere and was taught mostly by tutors. She did . . . fine . . . in the community gym, when she joined a pick-up game of soccer or something for PE credit, but that only had the one ball, and she could not deny that there were times when she just forgot to pay attention and then she missed it completely when someone tried to pass to her. Being Goalie was the worst though. For so much of the time, you were just standing there doing nothing, and she got into so much trouble for climbing up the goal net . . .

But Quidditch was on brooms, so it had to be better, right? And it was supposed to be exciting and the bludgers would make paying attention a little more important and therefore easier to do, she'd guess. And well, if it didn't work out, it didn't work out. And it wasn't like Sonora had a gymnastics team or flying horses or even great cliffs to climb, so maybe this would let her get her height quotas worked out without upsetting the teachers so much as she had last year. The Sports MARS room helped some, but not nearly enough. She hadn't been totally out of shape for Summer Gymnastics, but she missed the dizzying feel of real heights most of the year.

She kind of knew what all the positions were, since her uncle used to play for Aladren once upon a time, but she skimmed over the explanatory sheet anyway so she got the terms right, because they were a little different from the sports she knew a little better from the muggle gym, and a lot of positions didn't have close equivalents anyway.

Anya Delachene, 2nd Year, Pecari, 1st Choice: Seeker, 2nd Choice: Chaser, Last Choice: Don't make me the Keeper please

1 Anya Delachene No, you know what, Imma gonna try 1453 0 5

Eden Manger

December 24, 2019 11:56 AM

One more try by Eden Manger

Eden took a deep breath as she looked over the Quidditch signups. She started playing as a first year because Jake had graduated the year before and left an opening. She had just met her youngest older brother that summer, after Dad died, and she wanted to help their House (and Jake’s girlfriend, who was the Captain) fill a team. Then she had found she was really good at it, so she kept going.

But she stopped there somewhere. That had been after she learned the truth. Because for years, she had been getting broomsticks and letters that seemed to be from Dad, and that made her so confused but so happy. She felt like he was close, and like he was proud of her. But when she learned that the circumstances of his death were… well, different than she had thought, it was just all too much, and she gave up the game because it was too tight a connection to everything Manger - her dad and her brother and all of it.

She had cut them all off for a while. Well, not all. She saw Asher here and there, but they had perhaps the least in common. And she held tight to Sally. Her oldest sister was the other person the most hurt in everything that had happened. After a while, she had forgiven Desiree, simply because she really, really missed her. Desiree was Eden’s only full-blooded sibling, and the one she had grown up with. Eden didn’t really know what to do without her.

She hadn’t spoken to Jake or Arnold since then. Not intentionally, at least. It was difficult to avoid at occasional family functions. She knew that hurt them - Jake especially, who either felt things more strongly or at least couldn’t hide his hurt as well as Arnold maybe could. She missed them too, but things were too complicated for now. She didn’t think she could ever forgive Jake, and she didn’t think Arnold should ever forgive her.

The wounds had scabbed over at least some by now, and as Eden stared at the Quidditch sign up, she remembered how much fun she used to have playing. She would be rusty, she was sure, but maybe it would all come back, like riding a bicycle. So she signed up, however reluctant.

Eden Manger, she wrote, her quill a little shaky. seventh year, Teppenpaw, Seeker.

12 Eden Manger One more try 385 0 5

Jeremy Mordue

January 06, 2020 5:18 AM

The talent is here by Jeremy Mordue

Jeremy cast his eyes over the sign up sheet, feeling somewhat irritated. On the plus side, the garish Pecari girl had given up her attempts to become Seeker. On the other hand, Eden was back. She had quit the team for years, and now that it was meant to finally be his turn, she had come waltzing back in. She had no commitment, clearly. Jeremy felt quite qualified to say that there was no excuse, given that he was still here after everything that had gone on last year Whatever Eden’s reason, it wasn’t good enough. He hoped she’d got really rusty whilst being an incredible flake and that she sucked. Not that he needed her to, because he was actually really good, just it would serve her right.

The fact that some second year who couldn’t pay attention to whether she had her robes on inside out or not wanted a spot requiring attention to detail was laughable. The rest of the board was filled with newbies who, judging by their level of opinion on positions, had never picked up a broom before. What a freaking disaster this team was. He was almost too good for it. Heck, he was too good for it. He had played for county and he could have played for his state’s junior side, except Sonora’s connections with the Quidditch world were one of the many drawbacks of this festering dump of a school. He wasn’t sure what was reputedly so great about it. So, it had a Brockert in charge. So what? It was still full of trash and was useless at giving a leg up to people who deserved it.

Still. Carry on as normal. That was the message. And, more than that, Jeremy loved Quidditch. He wasn’t mushy enough to talk about it in those terms, or to identify how it had been the one steady constant, or the thing that made him feel good, and other people feel good about him. That would have been far too emotional. But he knew he liked it, and it was just… cool. And he wouldn’t give up how good it felt to win, even if he had to associate with this lot to do it. So he signed his name.

Jeremy Mordue, Crotalus, 3rd year, Seeker.

13 Jeremy Mordue The talent is here 1443 0 5

Ness McLeod

January 06, 2020 5:28 AM

We should do this (tag Tatiana) by Ness McLeod

Ness was excited, as ever, for the Quidditch team to reform, even if it was often semi-dominated by buttholes. They had to at least tolerate the rest of them, or else there was no one to play with. On that subject, the Aladren was keeping an eye out for the sign up sheet, and for Tatiana. It was pretty clear that the main reason the Pecari had given up was to do with Simon Jerkface being a jerkface and that was not okay. Admittedly, he had graduated now, which limited the chances to stick it him by showing up again, but there were two other Jerkfaces on the team by name alone, and probably plenty of others by attitude. Ness was for sure going to ask Tatiana if her name didn’t appear on the list of its own accord.

The sheet already had a few names on by the time Ness got to it, including Evelyn’s. For Chaser. That was also an exciting development, and Ness wanted to talk about that as soon as possible. However, glancing around, neither target was in sight… And there was the Aladren’s own sign up to be taken care of.

Ness McLeod, 4th year, Aladren, Chaser, got added to the list.

Ness headed over to get some breakfast, keeping an eye out. Tatiana became visible before Evelyn, and so Ness pounced.

“Hey. Signing up again this year?” the Aladren asked encouragingly, nodding towards the sheet.

13 Ness McLeod We should do this (tag Tatiana) 1419 0 5

Tatiana Vorontsova

January 06, 2020 6:29 AM

You don't think Jeremy's been punched in the face often enough this year? by Tatiana Vorontsova

Tatiana enjoyed breakfast. Breakfast had all kinds of yummy foods in it. Tatiana enjoyed eating, especially yummy foods. American breakfasts had some differences from those Tatiana was used to (she had stared in incomprehension the first time she was introduced to the notion of 'scrambled egg,' and had seen more than one person looking at her as though she were incomprehensible for adding some jam to her porridge), but it was also a meal with enough similarities to what Tatiana was used to for breakfast to feel comfortingly familiar, especially on days when everything else felt very alien. Tatiana enjoyed breakfast.

She would, however, enjoy it more if it could just occur slightly later. Mornings here were much brighter than autumn and winter mornings at home, as a rule, but they were still...mornings. Immediately upon sitting down, she reached for the darkest-looking teapot she could find and began pouring herself some tea and throwing a slice of lemon into it. She was just trying to decide if she was stupid enough to try to drink it despite knowing it was probably still too hot or if she should try to get food onto her plate first (oh, how she missed Nadezhda in the mornings; at home, she never had to get out of bed until after she had had a glass of tea and generally a bite of toast!) when she became aware someone was coming up to her.

"Eh?" she asked, stirring her tea. "Sin up..." She followed Ness' line of sight back toward the wall. "You mean Quidditch. Why? Team has need?" she asked, raising the cup to her mouth and trying to take a sip, only to immediately lower it again as it burned her lip. She muttered a few words in rapid, cross Russian before putting the cup down and reaching instead for a plate of something that strongly resembled grenki, though the Americans seemed to think it was how French people took their toast. "I have not play in long time," she added, though she assumed Ness knew this, or could reasonably extrapolate it.

16 Tatiana Vorontsova You don't think Jeremy's been punched in the face often enough this year? 1396 0 5

Ness McLeod

January 11, 2020 6:22 AM

Something like that by Ness McLeod

Tatya seemed somewhat slow and unenthusiastic but given that she was trying to throw a scalding liquid at her face, it was probably a morning thing. Ness understood the hypotheticals of tea/coffee. People drank it, then they were human. Ness had tried to enjoy tea in order to feel included in mornings. Kir drank plenty of it, and had done so for all of living memory. Ness could remember Kir having tea with milk and sugar from a little red plastic cup with a sticker bearing his name. Mom was a coffee person, so didn’t quite fit into The Ritual That Was Tea, but was still allowed to sort of join in with tea and biscuit time in the afternoon even if she called them cookies and had them with coffee. And, of course, no one denied Ness a biscuit/cookie but dipping it in juice definitely made you an outsider. Even though biscuits dipped in juice tasted really good. No one else was willing to believe that, apparently.

“You quit because of Simon being douchey,” Ness replied, when Tatiana asked her for a reason to sign up, “And that sucks. He shouldn’t have been able to push you out,” the Aladren stated crossly. There was probably something about no one having to confront and re-educate people who made them uncomfortable, but in spite of the liberal upbringing, Ness was still fourteen and leant a little towards the ‘screw people who try to make you do things you don’t want to do’ side of things. People like Simon needed people like Ness and, apparently, surprisingly, Tatya shoved in their faces until they couldn’t, at the very least, admit they existed. Then they would work from there. Or something.

“I mean, you can’t stick it to him cos he’s gone, but there’s still a few Mordues on the team. Plus people shouldn’t be able to stop you doing things you like. You like it, and you were good at it,” Ness argued.

13 Ness McLeod Something like that 1419 0 5

Tatiana Vorontsova

January 16, 2020 9:34 AM

Should we organize a line? by Tatiana Vorontsova

Ness was, Tatiana thought, something like her brother Alexei. Lyosha filled his comments with explanations of why he was right and his interlocutor was wrong. Tatiana had not even really advanced an opinion, but Ness was putting forth arguments of why the opinion Ness apparently thought she had was wrong anyway.

"One thing," she said, with a slight frown. "Simon does not tell me to go away. I made mind to go away, because he is too..." She searched for a term she knew well in English or Russian, and then shrugged. "You said 'douchey'? for me to talk to him more."

She started to move her head, out of sheer habit, to toss her hair, but stopped before she made a fool of herself now that it was distinctly not in a condition to be tossed, pinned up as it was. Still. It was an important point. Tatiana did not get pushed anywhere, and it touched it her pride to hear it suggested that she would be so fragile, even if she...well...sort of had been.

"Still. The Moroduy are not good reason to do, to not do," she acknowledged. For one thing, Nathaniel only annoyed her mildly, and Sylvia and Nathaniel's dvoynik had never really offended her at all, though she watched Sylvia with suspicion, as she was Simon's sister. "I like flying. I want to go places. But I have much classes." She couldn't help a note of pride there. She had been terrified that her written CATS would be bad enough to keep her out of any of her accustomed classes, but she had managed to pull out decent results. She had worked extremely hard on her writing last year, but still assumed that it had been a case of the messages being clear enough that they had taken priority over the technical quality of her English prose. She didn't regret the work, though, because she suspected that all the practice she had put into writing responses in English had helped her remember more things to write when she had taken the actual exams. "I will think on this," she said.

16 Tatiana Vorontsova Should we organize a line? 1396 0 5