R U N on Quidditch Pitch

Brett Newell

March 01, 2020 10:38 AM

R U N by Brett Newell

Brett ran fast.

He flew down the pitch, the air whirling by, tugging at his shaggy brown locks and whizzing in his ears like a quiet scream. It always screamed the same thing :Eden.

Brett tried not to be that guy, but he couldn’t help it. He thought about his girlfriend constantly. They had been together unofficially since forever, and officially not much shorter than that, so the fact that they would be graduating into a world of who knew what in just a few short months was already driving him insane. She would obviously want to go to college, but what about him? Academics had never been a strength or interest for him, so he didn’t really think college was the right place for him. Unless he was there on an athletics scholarship, but that seemed unlikely. He had never taken the initiative to play Quidditch for the school, and somehow, he doubted sanctioned collegiate Quodpot teams were particularly readily available.

So for now, he just ran. He tried to run from his thoughts and from his body and from this place and from nowhere and from everywhere and from himself. But he couldn’t. The wind kept up, and the wind knew Eden’s name. Eden Manger. Maybe Eden Newell. Hopefully someday. Hopefully someday soon.

As Brett concluded his current lap around the Pitch, he noticed somebody approaching. He couldn’t tell at first if they had any gear with them, but whether or not their intentions were to fly didn’t matter to him. Maybe a little competition would help. “Hey!” he called over, bending into a runner’s starting pose. “Want to race me?”

12 Brett Newell R U N 384 1 5

Nathaniel Mordue

March 18, 2020 11:41 AM

I doubt it will help much. by Nathaniel Mordue

I did try.

Nathaniel had not, he supposed, told Sylvia a lie when he had said that. He had tried, over Christmas. Perhaps he had not been trying to do what Sylvia had expected him to do, or wanted him to - and perhaps he had been fully aware of that, and had taken advantage of it - but he had tried. And, to a greater or lesser degree, failed. Again.

It was not a total failure, of course - he hadn't been thrown out of the family yet, after all - but it rankled with him anyway. He could have worked harder, he knew he could have. It wasn't, after all, as though he had been able to sleep properly for a few weeks leading up to midterm - he could have spent all that time figuring out what to say to Jeremy, rather than lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling sorry for himself. Or at his uncle's - he could have just gambled, said anything and hoped it wouldn't be the wrong thing, instead of giving in to the increasingly addictive lure of solitude, studying his potions books as though they might fix something...

Of course, he could also do that right now, and he wasn't. Instead, he was walking down to the Quidditch Pitch. In theory, of course, Jeremy could be there - wasn't even terribly unlikely - but realistically, Nathaniel knew he was really still indulging himself, being lazy and selfish. If he had had any doubts about that, they were resolved when he almost froze at the sight of another person, fighting the impulse to simply go away before he could be seen, even though he was pretty sure the person was not his brother from the word 'go.'

Brett Newell. Nathaniel didn't really know him well, for a variety of reasons - they were in different years, different Houses, and from backgrounds which were all at once too different and too much the same. The Newells, too, knew their share of scandal, and that was something that made Nathaniel want to avoid them as though they had fleas and catching plague. He did not want to know people who understood something of where he came from; he wanted to believe the lies they had told themselves before last Christmas, at least, himself, even if he never could anymore. But here they were, and he had been spotted.

"Race?" he repeated blankly. Is this what other people do? Or just Pecaris? Just...invite any random passer-by to join whatever activity they're doing? Why does he want to race anyway? Why didn't he organize it properly ahead of time if he wanted to race someone? However, Nathaniel had come down here because it was one of his anxious, restless days, rather than one of the heavy, draining ones, and Newell already looked fairly winded. A cheap win would still be a win, so he shrugged. "Why not?" he said. "Though I'm not sure who will give the signal."

16 Nathaniel Mordue I doubt it will help much. 1412 0 5

Brett Newell

March 26, 2020 3:06 PM

Nope, no questioning life, just running by Brett Newell

Oh, it was…. What’s his face. Brett was bad with names, even in a small school like this. N-something. Norton? That was definitely not it, but mentally calling the kid Norton was amusing, so Brett settled on that one for now. He was pretty sure that Norton was in Teppenpaw, though. Of course, had he cared to look with any detail at the robes the younger boy wore, he would have seen the glistening Teppenpaw Prefect badge pinned to his robes, but Brett didn’t ever look that closely at things like that. It didn’t really matter, anyhow, and he wasn’t about to stand around staring at dude’s chests.

Norton was concerned about who would give the signal, but Brett just kinda shrugged that off. Proper rules and regulations weren’t needed for a contest among peers. They could just take each other at their word. “Eh, I’ll just signal,” he commented idly as he adjusted his starting position. He gave Norton a few seconds, listening until he thought he heard him bent down and ready, and then he said, “Ready…. GO!”

Brett shot forward hurriedly on his own signal, completely oblivious to the obvious advantage. It would also only occur to him later that Norton might have expected a “Set” in there somewhere. But the Pecari never “Set”. He just got some facsimile of ready, and then he just went. Too much preparation was bad for the brain, and if you just sat and thought all day, you never went anywhere. So Brett went. And he went fast.

12 Brett Newell Nope, no questioning life, just running 384 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

March 27, 2020 12:16 PM

Yeah, I don't think I'm capable of that. by Nathaniel Mordue

Newell would just signal. Well, didn't that work out nicely for Newell? It gave him a clear advantage from the start - something which became immediately apparent when Newell skipped part of the traditional signal. Nathaniel, startled, just sort of stared for about a second, then swore and started trying to catch up.

Running was something he disliked thinking about, but when he did it - generally at Quidditch practice - he enjoyed it. Running was slightly hypnotic - something that didn't involve a lot of brain, really. Since the movements were highly repetitive and the track generally cyclical, his mind eventually largely began to hover in a sort of point-in-place, never touching all the things it normally darted between constantly. It was as close as he could get to what he always wanted to be these days, which was just...in existence, without thought, without feeling, without conflict.

Normally, that was. Today, he was experiencing emotion - specifically, annoyance. More specifically, annoyance with Newell. That had been a dirty trick and Nathaniel wanted to beat him in this footrace just to make a point. He focused not on what he was doing, but on what Newell was doing - on deliberately accelerating as fast as possible to catch up with Newell. He did, too, briefly. But his head was too far in it. He had to actively think about what he was doing, rather than allowing his legs and arms and breathing to fall into natural rhythms that happened to move him fast. Furthermore, he had not really properly stretched before they started, and that had an effect - he could feel the strain even more than the unnatural pace he had pushed himself into should have accounted for. By the time they completed the race, Nathaniel had fallen behind again, and was wincing as he came to a halt.

"Well done," he said, catching his breath. "Pity there's not a running team here," he added, finding the thought odd. Why would people have running for a sport on its own? Children could run, if not very fast. Muggles could run, for goodness' sake. Plus, there were any number of spells and potions that could subtly enhance skills or endurance just so, so it looked natural...hard to prevent cheating, even by the usual difficult standards. "You'd do well. Do this often?"

16 Nathaniel Mordue Yeah, I don't think I'm capable of that. 1412 0 5

Brett Newell

March 27, 2020 1:27 PM

Just keep on trying by Brett Newell

Brett poured all of his energy into his body. Into his legs pushing against the ground, his arms pumping along. His breathing was harsh but deliberate, and he could feel the full expansion of his lungs as life-giving air rushed through him, carried down his anatomy by his blood vessels, in a race of their own. He pictured them, flowing as quickly as they could through his veins (or maybe arteries? He didn’t know which did what). They were racing too. One of them was him, symbolically. And that one was going to win.

When his body got all the juice, his brain didn’t get to do the thinking. His body was in control of everything. Thought, action, power, all that stuff. The only thoughts his body permitted was about the race. It was a casual thing, sure, but Brett let it absorb him. A busy body was an occupied mind. No worries about graduation or Eden or anything else. Just the run. The run the run the run the run the run the run.

But then it ended. He had looped all the way around without realizing it. As he slowed to a stop, the intoxicating feeling in his lungs was replaced by a burning. He had done it, and the adrenaline subsided, and the pain set in. He glanced around and discovered that he had won, as it was only now that Norton caught up to him. “Well done.”

“Thanks,” the seventh year replied. Norton had a point about some sort of running team, although Brett noted mentally that even if they had, he probably wouldn’t have joined. He always forgot about Quidditch tryouts, even with Eden there to remind him, so any other sports team would have probably gone the same way. Norton asked if he did this often, and Brett paused to consider. “Kinda, I guess, yeah,” he answered. “It’s not, like, a scheduled thing? Just when I need to blow off some steam.” Brett grinned. “So what were you doing here before I pulled you in?”

12 Brett Newell Just keep on trying 384 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

March 28, 2020 1:00 PM

You're an optimist, aren't you? by Nathaniel Mordue

OOC: For the record, going in, Nathaniel's thoughts on the prospect of Medication are entirely his own, not his author's; his author entirely rejects the notion that taking medication implies any weakness of character whatsoever, and strongly encourages anyone who needs them to take their meds. The author thanks you for attending her TED talk and sends you BIC:

Newell was a RATS student, a prefect, and someone from a family with a history of scandal and disgrace who was facing the prospect of making his way in the real world very, very soon. In light of all that information which even Nathaniel - who was not sure he had ever had a conversation with the guy before in the whole many years they had overlapped as students, or the past term they had overlapped as prefects - knew about him, Nathaniel was not sure why it came as a bit of a surprise that Newell could have steam to blow off. He just didn't look like someone who knew exactly how to take things seriously enough to have stress about them.

Of course, the goal was always to look as though one could bear up under one's problems, wasn't it? Nathaniel was not expected to look as though he took life as a joke (even though he thought it really would make a fantastic dark one sometimes), but he was not allowed to look as badly off as he really was, either. Even at the very worst, he thought, nobody had known how bad it really was for him - he had always, at the last moment, caught himself short of lashing out at anything and everything as much as he had wanted to, sometimes, last year. Perhaps Newell was simply a superior liar to Nathaniel.

"To tell you the truth," he said when asked what he had been planning to do down here, "I don't really remember." He said this as casually as possible; it was a thing, forgetting what he had meant to do if he was interrupted, and sometimes if he wasn't. One of the reasons Dr. Greene wanted him on Medication, which his uncle did not think was necessary; next year after his birthday, Nathaniel supposed, he'd have to decide for himself if being better before his RATS was worth the humiliation of admitting that he lacked the will and brainpower to pull himself out of it without assistance. "Probably just wandering somewhere to avoid writing my Charms essay," he joked. He could never decide what he thought of Professor Wright, and a lot of that had to do with the way the man marked essays; though he didn't seem to count off for it, he did correct punctuation and spelling sometimes (Nathaniel had the impression this was done almost absent-mindedly, something about the handwriting), and often wrote tips about how to write stronger sentences along with questions and suggestions related to the arguments themselves. On one hand, Nathaniel had actually learned stuff from the feedback before, which was good, but on the other, it was always stress-inducing to be nearly certain there would be feedback to read when work was given back to him. As if just waiting to find out what his grade was wasn't stressful enough by itself....

"I'm sure it's probably easy compared to the homework you have, though," he added politely. "Exercise is supposed to be good for the brain, though, so maybe it'll help us both out there." At least, Dr. Greene insisted that air and exercise and novel stimulation were good for his brain, and thus they were part of his schedule whether he really wanted them to be or not.

OOC Again: The author also notes she can write about how Professor Wright writes on essays because he's another of her hapless victi - er, characters. The author will stop talking now and go write something else.

16 Nathaniel Mordue You're an optimist, aren't you? 1412 0 5

Brett Newell

April 05, 2020 4:27 PM

I try to be. by Brett Newell

At Norton’s response, Brett gave an understanding chuckle. He had many times wandered somewhere only to realize he had forgotten his own intentions. Sometimes he wondered if he was being puppeted, either by a ghost or a deity or something in between, and then released, just for the puppeteer to laugh at him. But then he remembered he just had a rather short attention span and was easily distracted, and that was a way more realistic explanation anyway. In any case, he understood the sensation the younger boy mentioned.

“My classes are pretty hard,” Brett conceded to Norton’s next point. “I’m not really…” he trailed off momentarily, searching his brain for the word academic or something of that vein. Not finding it, he laughed and offered a replacement: “smart. My sister got me this far until she graduated last year. This year my girlfriend’s been helping me.” Eden was pretty smart, but admittedly, she wasn’t like Florence. For his sister, school just made sense. She was the brightest person he had ever known, always had been. And being at school this year without her sucked, both for his grades and his heart. He missed her, but he was glad to hear in her letters that she was having a great time in college. Brett couldn’t have gotten this far through his seventh year without Eden to pick up some of the slack, but it was still just not the same. Eden understood most things, but she wasn’t as able to spit it back to him in a way he understood. Flo got his brain a bit better.

If exercise was good for the brain, as Norton purported, then Brett didn’t know what his problem was. He loved exercise. He moved his body much more readily than his mind. “Here’s hoping it helps, huh?” he replied. “I’ve got my own stack of essays to write back in my dorm. Just couldn’t focus today. Maybe when I go back, it’ll be better.”

12 Brett Newell I try to be. 384 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

April 09, 2020 4:28 PM

I suspect you're in for a life of disappointment. by Nathaniel Mordue

People at Sonora never failed, Nathaniel thought, to have one more shock up their sleeves. He had thought Beauregard Tate had been the worst of it, the time the other fellow had been willing to openly criticize a prescribed lesson as beneath himself, but Newell was taking the cake here for most appalling things said by - well, not anyone. The most appalling things said by anyone to him at Sonora would have to be the things said by Lyssa Fitzgerald, insisting that it could be anything other than perverted for their kind to mix with Muggles. It didn't get much more appalling than that. But in terms of people who were part of society - if Newell still counted, of course....

And to think that this was supposed to be one of the United States' more respectable institutions!

Regardless of where it ranked compared to other appalling things he'd heard in the past five years, though, Nathaniel was still appalled by what Newell had just said. He was just...admitting he was not smart enough to get through school without his sister and his girlfriend? Of course, Nathaniel was fairly sure he would not have made it through this year without Sylvia, either, but that was because he had lost his nerve under all the stress of the past year. It wasn't actually a matter of...well, it was a matter of inability, he supposed, but not academic inability. And at least he wasn't...taking it all outside of the family, trading kisses for homework answers, breaking up the monotony of studying with a bit of groping, memorizing lists by writing their contents on....

Well, of course, he had no idea if it was all that inappropriate or if he was just letting his mind wander - but still!

"Ah," he said, for lack of anything more diplomatic at the moment.

Essays were a safe subject. Relatable. Did anyone really like essays? Nathaniel doubted it. They were rather unlikable things. He was glad they were back on essays, which were in Newell's room, which meant there was little probability of Newell saying anything else particularly appalling in regards to how he usually managed to not fail his classes. "Here's hoping," he echoed. "They give us too many essays. I don't know how anyone concentrates this time of year - our brains are exhausted by Easter."

16 Nathaniel Mordue I suspect you're in for a life of disappointment. 1412 0 5