Chair thread? (Tag Evelyn) on Library

Ness McLeod

November 01, 2020 3:40 AM

Chair thread? (Tag Evelyn) by Ness McLeod

Summer had been weird. Sometimes it had been weird that Evelyn wasn’t going anywhere, that they weren’t all having to fight to keep her. And sometimes it had been weird that Evelyn still wanted to be friends even though Ness had been a sucky friend at the end of the last year. And sometimes it was weird that it wasn’t weird because there were somehow all of these moments where, in spite of everything else that had gone on, it just felt back to normal. Their normal, anyway. Which was weird cos Ness’ family were all weird, but good weird.

Ness was pretty sure that The Fight had been over even before they’d left Cascade Hall that day, but it still felt uncomfortable. Like, it was a thing that had happened and that Ness didn’t like, and there was maybe a tiny bit of a worry that Evelyn would hold a grudge about it forever, and that however normal things seemed on top they could quickly go South. On top of that, it wasn’t normal here anymore. Gary was gone. Ness was president of the gaming club. It sometimes felt cool and powerful and exciting, but mostly it just felt like this really big empty sadness that Ness was gonna run all these cool adventures without him around to see and be proud. Gary had taught Ness how to be a DM, and now wasn’t going to get to see any of that.

Craving some normality, Ness wandered into the library, and over to the chair which was for any time conversations with Evelyn but definitely for start of term conversations. Ness sort of felt like meeting at the chair would draw a line under the crappier things that had happened last year, and even though it wouldn’t bring Gary back, it would be a sign that this year could carry on as some kind of normal.

The Aladren flopped down, trying to leave space – a task that was getting harder and harder, even with legs draped over the chair’s arms – and waited.

13 Ness McLeod Chair thread? (Tag Evelyn) 1419 1 5

Evelyn Stones

November 02, 2020 8:11 PM

Chair thread, party of two. by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn tried not to feel too happy about how good it was to be back at school. To be in her sixth year. To be an adult (that was a little bittersweet, but she put it aside in favor of enjoying the positives). To get to see Heinrich regularly, even if he hadn't won Head Boy and he definitely had feelings about that and Evelyn had feelings about that and she wanted to hex a lot of people in the face about that. To be alive. It was ridiculously pleasurable and not something she wanted to take for granted. It was also not something she thought that either Heinrich or Ness would appreciate being reminded that she couldn't take for granted that long ago. Then, of course, was the guilt of feeling like she shouldn't probably be so happy about it when it had come at the cost of another life (maybe - she didn't actually know for sure what would have happened had things gone differently), but she just couldn't help it. She was alive and every breath felt like a new opportunity.

Today's opportunity included one of her favorite parts of Sonora and she was almost giddy as she made her way to the big (ish) squishy chair, with Ness already seated there. She beamed at her friend, glad that she could say Ness was her friend. Her best friend. Glad that she knew exactly how much that meant and that they were on the same page about that mostly. It was weird and had been weird, but now it wasn't weird and Evelyn was too happy to be here to worry about that right now. She had an advantage over Ness in that she had mostly stopped growing a while ago, but it didn't matter too much; they mostly sat tangled up together in the chair these days anyway.

Evelyn did a happy little jump as she drew closer and then squished her way into the chair with Ness. "Hello, you," she grinned. It felt good to be here because it meant this was the start of something. That something could be a whole lot of things, and they'd get to find out together. "It seems silly to say I missed you when I spent most of the summer with you, but I did miss you anyway. It's nice to be here with you," she smiled.

22 Evelyn Stones Chair thread, party of two. 1422 0 5

Ness McLeod

December 04, 2020 6:22 PM

Hurrah! by Ness McLeod

"Same," Ness admitted, echoing all of Evelyn's sentiments. Sure, they had shared a house for the summer, but they each had another sibling there, and both of them were attention seekers. CJ because he was five and that, apparently, was what five year olds were like, and Kir because he was Kir. Kir liked to steal Evelyn for playing with make-up and like... Ness got that Evelyn had been around a lot and Kir was invested in her as a person too, but it still felt weird sometimes to think the two of them had their own friend/sibling relationship outside of Ness. And then there was CJ. Ness was just trying not to really have emotions about CJ because it felt like they might be too big and that all of them would be unfair. Ness did not want to be unfair to a small semi-orphaned child but also couldn't particularly dredge up any positive feelings either. It was much nicer to be back where he wasn't so much of an obvious problem.

"There's less annoying music here," Ness agreed, deciding it was safer to dig at Kir Though actually, people were often singing with CJ too, and his taste in songs was worse than Kir's. Kir's music taste was mostly annoying in that it wasn't actually bad, and in fact maybe Ness would have liked some of those bands too, if given the chance, but now Kir had found them first it would seem like copying.

It would have been nice to think that now they were back at school, Ness had more of Evelyn, but there weren’t exactly fewer people here demanding the Pecari’s attention. And Ness had to be cool with that, and not be jealous and a butt. It helped to have chair time, that they had this tradition and that Evelyn didn’t seem to want to skip out on it, however much time they spent together at home, or however many other options she had.

“Sixth year feels weird,” Ness admitted, snuggling in appreciatively, “Like, we’ve gone from being the big ones in class to the little ones again but now we’re so much older than almost everyone else. Are we big or small? Also, we’re sharing a class with people who are getting ready for real life. It’s sort of hard to feel like settling into our advanced courses compares. And then the advanced program is only two years, so it’s going to go from ‘hey what even is this year?’ to ‘this determines the rest of your life’ when we move up.”

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