Great...Jumping...Elephant Ears? on Herbology

Nathan Xavier

October 24, 2020 7:20 PM

Intermediate Herbology: Alocasia Volant by Nathan Xavier

Nathan stood before Greenhouse One. Well, 'stood' was perhaps a generous description. In truth, he more leaned against it than stood beside it. The day was hot. Inside the greenhouse, it was even hotter, and he'd just taught a two hour lesson for the beginners in there and then had to stick around afterwards to tidy up between lessons. Being outside was a relief, but not enough of one.

It was very nearly the last class period of the day, and as much as he loved teaching and loved his students, he didn't really want to be here right now. His bed was a rather nicer alternative, he thought. His living quarters were charmed to be pleasantly comfortable and a nap would be lovely. Or maybe a beach might be nice; the one in Maine where he'd proposed to Isis would be just about perfect. Or he'd settle for the artic circle, if he had to. That would be a welcome change of pace for a little while anyway.

As he spotted the first of the intermediates approaching, he attempted to do more standing and less leaning, but didn't quite manage to pull himself away from the doorframe entirely. "You don't need to go in yet," he advised, not moving to allow them entrance. "If you think it's hot out here, it's worse in there. Robes are not required today." He himself was wearing grey trousers and a short sleeve button up shirt. The only reason it wasn't caked in sweat right now was because he'd cast cleaning and drying charms on it only a few moments ago. Late afternoons where the worst and he did not want to go back in there until dusk at least. Most of the class should remember that robes were rarely required in his class for the first month of school, so hopefully they had dressed appropriately underneath.

Once most of the class had assembled outside, and the time reached that point where dallying any further would be purely procrastination and no longer waiting for the allotted class time, he sighed and waved them in. "Go on in."

It was their second class of the year. For their previous class, they had gone over syllabus for the year, and done some review of important terminology and procedures and safety precautions (which had been particularly important for the new third years because intermediates did cover more dangerous plant life than beginners did), and he'd conducted it outside because they hadn't needed anything inside the greenhouse for that. Today, that was not the case.

He followed last, reluctantly closing the door behind him, not that leaving it open between the classes had done anything to cool the place down. If anything, it had risen a few degrees since he'd escaped. Heat assaulted him immediately and he felt himself sweating again. "Apologies for the temperature and humidity," he said, "but today we start our tropical unit."

He trusted they would remember all the layers of the rainforest from when they covered that in beginners, so he jumped right to the first specimen. The large worktable that ran down the center of the greenhouse today had what could best be described as a long sand box on top of it today. Wooden boards were nailed together into rectangles that filled much of the table area but gave each student just enough room in front of their stools to place a piece of parchment if they wanted to take notes. Inside the boards, dark loamy dirt had filled in the space, and every foot or so a trio of broad leaves rose from a single point in the soil. They were not entirely evenly spread, but there was a clear distinction between each individual plant.

"In front of each of you, you will see a large leafed plant." By tropical rainforest standards, the plants were still fairly small, each one being only between three and eight inches tall, but they were by no means fully grown yet. "Don't touch it," he said, a bit more sharply than he'd intended to when he spotted one student getting too close to theirs. It wasn't dangerous, exactly, but . . . well, he didn't want to spoil this plant's surprise too soon.

They were a vibrant green, and the leaves fluttered slightly in the air, despite there not really being any sort of breeze in the heavy humidity of the greenhouse.

"These plants are from the alocasia family, and they are cousins to a common garden feature you may know as Elephant Ears. They grow on the forest floor of tropical rainforests, and on a fully mature plant, the leaves can reach a height of almost ten feet, though most don't grown much larger than two. These, obviously, are still very young. However, being young does give them an advantage. These are a magical tropical plant, and what makes them magical is this defense mechanism." With that, he reached toward one of the plant and touched one of the leaves. The leaves began spinning like a helicopter and it flew up into the air, its root dangling beneath it. It came down into an clear spot a few feet further along the trough, and rooted itself back into the dirt.

"Like other Alocasia species, this plant is toxic to humans, so wash your hands if you touch it." He cast a cleaning spell on his hand that had touched the leaf. Then he cast another one on his shirt because even he could tell he was smelling sweaty again.

"This ability stays with them into adulthood, however, the larger they grow, the shorter the distance they can fly. However, a ten foot tall plant spinning around and jumping out the dirt, even if by only a few centimeters, is often plenty good enough to scare off whatever was trying to nibble on it. Unlike other Alocasia plants, these can be identified by only ever having three leaves at a time, though they can grow a new one to replace a damaged one. Are there any question?" He waited for and addressed any that were offered. "All right, take a few minutes to observe the plant. You may touch it, if you like, just wash your hands afterward. It's mostly harmless other than its toxicity if ingested, but it can cause papercuts if a spinning leaf edge catches you just wrong, so gloves are not an unreasonable precaution. Take notes on its appearance and behavior. See if you can notice a difference between how far the smallest ones can fly and how far the largest ones here can go. You may talk amongst yourselves while you do this. Once you've had a chance to interact with them a little while, I suggest we all head outside for the rest of my lecture about how to take care of these guys." He pulled out a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and mopped his sweaty forehead. "Go ahead, you've got about ten minutes."

OOC: This plant is completely made up and is inspired by bugs that look like leaves. I flipped it around and made it leaves that could fly. The plant looks something like this:

References: The Spruce and Amazon

Subthreads:

This is ridiculous by Martin Crosby V with Theo Spurn

I totally belong here. No big deal. by Alexander Pierce-Beales with Sadie-Lake Chalmers

Great...Jumping...Elephant Ears? by Morgan Garrett with Leonor De Matteo

This is...almost really cool. by Dathan Fischer with Ellie Alperton

1 Nathan Xavier Intermediate Herbology: Alocasia Volant 28 1 5

Martin Crosby V

October 25, 2020 2:14 PM

This is ridiculous by Martin Crosby V

OOC: Just wanted to reiterate what I told Nathan's author in chatzy: Martin is woefully unimpressed, but I thought this lesson was very cute and clever! Props to him! BIC:

While Martin had spent the entirety of his life with magical plants in his general proximity or at least his well of knowledge, he had absolutely no taste for them. They were useful as potions ingredients, but he just felt they were most often ridiculous and unreasonable. Plants had no good reason to be causing trouble, yet so many magical plants had chaos up their metaphorical sleeves. It was simply unprofessional of them.

To that end, he was debating dropping Herbology next year, regardless of his CATS exam results. Although, he noted with mild disappointment, it might be useful in his still ill-defined future, so perhaps he ought to stick it out another year if his mind was not made up by his sixth year. In any case, Herbology was foolishness on its face, and often involved plodding along through the dirt and mud, which he also found distasteful.

It was only the second day of class, and already, the Crotalus was disappointed. The tropical unit could have better served in winter. Not that it ever got too chilly in Arizona, but September was still nearly summer, and the heat was remarkable even without the added tropical environment. Professor Xavier stated that robes were not mandatory today, and as improper as appearing in a lesson without them would be, Martin simply had to remove them for his health, revealing his dress pants and long-sleeve white button up. He rolled the sleeves up to his elbows and prepared himself for the heat of the greenhouse.

Martin was always amazed by how readily this school allowed their students to interact with things that were dangerous or, as was the case here, toxic. Obviously he could handle it, but as for some of his classmates, he had his doubts. There were third years in this class, for Merlin’s sake. Literal children! Martin produced his gloves from his pocket and, with regretful curiosity, scooped up one of the smaller plants. “You will not move,” he instructed firmly. He looked up from it when he felt someone’s warm gaze upon him, and to his discontent, a neighbor did indeed have their eyes on him. “I was just…” he fumbled, embarrassed that he had been seen talking to a plant. But he did not finish, for he had no explanation.

12 Martin Crosby V This is ridiculous 1439 0 5

Alexander Pierce-Beales

October 27, 2020 11:06 PM

I totally belong here. No big deal. by Alexander Pierce-Beales

Alexander had a hard time believing he was anybody, let alone somebody, and stepping into his Intermediate classes for the first time had made him feel rather as though he had to confront that fact. Not that he'd ever exactly felt grown up in his Beginner lessons, but at least there had been a time when he wasn't the smallest dog. The anxiety of going back to square one, of being the worst again, had gotten to him more than he expected and for all that Mab's presence made him feel better, Barnabas had also found a place back in his bag. The first day hadn't been bad, mostly because he'd not yet had to do much, but that wasn't true for all his classes, and was generally short-lived anyway, so here they were.

Working on the tropical unit was something he was excited about, despite himself, because it was very much outside of his range of familiarity. He was pretty familiar with stinging nettle and a lot of the mushrooms that grew native to the Pacific Northwest, even for having spent most of his life there in cities, but he didn't know anything about tropical parts of the world. He sort of thought that he'd like to maybe travel someday. In any case, he was excited for this new work and it only grew as the plant they were going to be working with literally started flying around. He thought that he could relate; sometimes he wanted to just leap into the air and find a new place to sit when people got too close too.

Summer was one of his favorite times for that reason. As much as he loved being at Sonora, being at Bel's - being at home - in the summer meant that he got to literally only be with people he wanted to be with, and only as much as he wanted. He could live life instead of just survive it. It was nice to see Sonora again, but Bel's house had already begun to feel more like home than this old stucco mansion had. In any case, he was at the old stucco mansion right now and that's what counted. And he was about to get learned.

At first, he thought it was probably best if he didn't touch the leaves at all. However, since the next ten minutes were about how far these things could go, he thought that maybe he should go ahead and touch them. He didn't want to go whirling one into a classmate though, so he turned to the nearest student - the one most likely to be whacked by a leaf if this went badly - and raised an eyebrow. "Do you want to work with me? That way we don't get clipped?"

22 Alexander Pierce-Beales I totally belong here. No big deal. 1475 0 5

Sadie-Lake Chalmers

October 29, 2020 10:01 PM

Yup, me too by Sadie-Lake Chalmers

In spite of the step up to intermediates, quite a few things had remained the same. The majority of the teachers were the familiar professors that Sadie had come to know over the past two years. As classes got going, she found she knew a surprising amount - certainly not about the content, which she expected was going to start ramping up a gear over the next few classes, but certainly in the routines, their ways of doing classes, and their expectations. Even though there was a lot more things not to touch now.

Accordingly, she had dressed well under her robes. This was virtually habit anyway, just in case, but it was an effort that was worth taking extra care with for the first few weeks in the greenhouses, and especially now that Jessica would be in the same greenhouse as her. Predictably enough, they were told they could do away with their robes, and for once, Sadie found herself in agreement with this recommendation. As a SoCal native, she was used to being warm, and once it got past mid-October, she found herself internally raging at the stupid school founders because she could not see why Ireland was a place anyone would want to mimic the climate of. She knew a lot of the original pilgrims had been seeking like... religious freedom and stuff, but she would also have totally believed that some of them just wanted to get away from the weather. Sometimes, she found herself enjoying herbology purely for the warmth.

Today, however, was not one of those days. Sadie always took off her robe if it seemed like the majority of others were taking up the offer, and today she was glad to shed it, revealing a pink sleeveless button-up with a white lace skirt. Her hair was in a side braid that she wasn't totally sure suited her, and she fiddled a little self-consciously with the floaty floral tie on it as she took her seat, worried that it just looked like she didn't know how to braid her hair straight.

She was quickly distracted from this by the lesson. She had thought she had gotten used to magical plants being kinda extra in her first two years, but she still jumped in surprise as this one responded to being poked by leaping out of the dirt. Also they were toxic. Great.

On the whole, Sadie was pretty sure she absolutely did not want to touch them. As far as she was concerned, she had just been shown two very good reasons why not to - the plant would be angry, and it was toxic. However, two years in magic school and the consistency between this and the beginners program was giving her a pretty good guess about what instruction was about to follow the lecture on how touching this plant was a really bad idea.

Yup, there it was.

She watched at first, cautiously evaluating how it was going for other people, which also gave her neighbour a chance to speak to her before they got stuck in. That neighbour, it turned out, was Alexander. Sadie wasn't sorry to find herself sitting with him, though she thought she might be stretching it to say she was actively glad. Alexander was theoretically nice. He was Mab's friend. They had worked together on the ABCD booth last year. That was something which gave them common ground but Sadie still wouldn't really say she knew much about him. She knew he was quiet. Like her. On the one hand, she could hope for pleasant companionable silence. The ABCD craft sessions had seemed to work that way sometimes, and she also wanted to reach out and connect with her fellow silent people, in case being on the edges made them feel anxious and invisible the way it did with her. On the other hand, there was vast potential for awkward silence. Whenever Alexander, or anyone else, didn't talk to her, she found it hard not to extrapolate that they didn't want to, and that they would rather she went away. Or even if they did want to talk, it could get uncomfortable when neither person quite knew how. There was something to be said for people like Valentine who could cheerfully fill however much silence someone like Sadie left without seeming bothered by it.

Still, for now at least, Alexander had raised the subject of their classwork, and that would keep them going for a bit.

"Yeah, that sounds good," she smiled tentatively, regarding working together and not getting clipped. "Uh... so we poke it and then duck? Whilst observing?" she added, realising the slight flaw with that plan as she said it.

13 Sadie-Lake Chalmers Yup, me too 1480 0 5

Theo Spurn

October 30, 2020 8:52 PM

No, it's herbology by Theo Spurn

Theo sat in the greenhouse. He had happily discarded his robes when entering, both because they were meh (apart from the little strips of velvet his mum had sewn into the insides of his cuffs) and because it was hot. He could feel himself sweating. It was not a nice feeling. He could feel individual drops of water beading around his chest and on his back and then sliding down his body. Theo tolerated baths out of necessity but he did not enjoy being wet, or being sticky. and sweat was both of those things and it got in between him and his nice silky shirt and it was bad. Apparently adolescence was going to involve having to tolerate a higher number of baths because there was going to be a higher degree of sweating, and he could already believe it because his armpits felt super gross right now. He was not down for any of that.

His pyjama trousers had nice cooling charms on them so that he could wear the fuzzy ones all year round, so his legs were doing okay. He focussed on that instead, running his hand along the soft fuzz and admiring the pattern of purple stars. His shirt could be cleaned. It would be okay.

He looked up sharply as they were told not to touch, ready to yell that they were HIS trousers and he could touch if he wanted, but for once he wasn’t the one who was doing inappropriate touching. Someone wanted to touch the plant. Weird. But, hey, it took all sorts to make the world go round. He returned his focus to his own legs, hearing that the plants were interesting and defensive and toxic. Pyjama trousers were not toxic. This was amongst their many merits. The plants could fly, which was sort of cool. Theo sometimes wished he could just jump super far for no real reason/because the floor was lava. But most of the time he was happy on the ground. You couldn’t have big squishy hugs without gravity.

Apparently, they were only in here for ten minutes and they had to watch the plants and take notes. Theo eyed them carefully from the corners of his eyes, watching other people touch them. He glanced up when he heard another command, though again this appeared to not be addressed to him but to one of the plants.

“You were making a plant friend,” Theo smiled encouragingly, when the boy didn’t seem able to finish his sentence, “That’s okay. Plant friends are a nice thing to have. I talk to them all the time. But I think these ones like moving, so you might want to try not bossing them around if you want them to like you,” he advised.

13 Theo Spurn No, it's herbology 1476 0 5

Martin Crosby V

November 01, 2020 4:57 PM

It can be two things. by Martin Crosby V

Oh dear sweet Merlin and all that was holy and esteemed.

He should have looked at - he should have known - who was beside him before bothering to expend energy on worrying about their thoughts of him. Between Martin and the younger boy, there was one of them who might be crazier, and then there was also Martin. He had never bothered to learn this boy’s name as his surname hadn’t been deemed an important one and they hadn’t been in the same classes until now, but the boy had something of a reputation around here. This young Pecari was a Weird Kid. Ugh.

Now, Martin found rudeness nearly as distasteful as stupidity or eccentricity, so he made a concerted effort not to be mean to him, even as he confessed that he spoke to plants “all the time”. You know, like a crazy person. “Thank you, I will try to keep that advice in mind,” the older wizard replied, doing his best not to sound like he was forcing it through his teeth.

“Are you having any better luck getting their cooperation?” he asked good-naturedly enough, turning the conversation back to the boy. In all sincerity, he did not much care about the answer, because he could not have cared any less as to whether or not these obnoxious little plants liked him, but Martin was stuck in this conversation now. Cursed social obligations! “Also, forgive me - I’ve forgotten your name,” he added truthfully. “Would you mind reminding me?”

12 Martin Crosby V It can be two things. 1439 0 5

Theo Spurn

November 06, 2020 3:18 AM

Oh. Cool. by Theo Spurn

“They aren’t moving but I’m not poking them,” Theo answered when asked if he was getting the plants’ co-operation. It was very hard to say whether that made it a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ “We’re supposed to poke them and make them move,” he added. The boy wanted that not to happen though, and Theo could understand not wanting to do things that were part of class, and usually the teachers were nice about it if you needed an exception, but it left him unsure whether he should mark the plants’ lack of movement as a win or a failure. “It’s okay if you don’t want to though,” he added reassuringly. “I mean, you can kind of see what happens already…” he gestured to some of the other plants that their classmates were disturbing. “It feels a bit mean to disrupt them when they’re all cosy, doesn’t it?” he added. This boy was nice, he seemed like a sympathetic person who didn’t want to disturb the plants. Theo smiled at him, though it was slightly directed at the ceiling instead of Martin’s face but it was meant for him.

“Oh, no. I don’t mind at all,” he smiled, when the boy asked if he minded reminding him what his name was. Theo would not mind doing that in the slightest, if he was asked to. He also didn’t know this boy’s name. Names were less important than a lot of other things about a person. “What’s your favourite texture?” he asked.

13 Theo Spurn Oh. Cool. 1476 0 5

Alexander Pierce-Beales

November 07, 2020 1:32 PM

I'm glad we're in this together I think. by Alexander Pierce-Beales

Sadie looked a lot too good for this class. No, not like that. Well like maybe like that. But mostly, she just looked really fancy all the time. Sometimes that wasn't a big deal because they all wore their robes, but sometimes they didn't wear their robes and then Alexander felt like a potato and people like Sadie looked like. Whatever. Not potatoes. His own plain tee shirt and jeans weren't that impressive, and he felt self-conscious for a moment before realizing he didn't care that much what he was wearing.

He laughed, surprised at how funny Sadie's idea seemed to him. "I'm just imagining us laying on the ground underneath it now, watching from the only safe place in here," he explained, smiling at her with amused eyes. He glanced at the plant, trying to decide how bad that option really was until he remembered that Sadie looked fancy and so she probably wouldn't want to lay on the ground. "Poke and duck seems like a good option," he agreed after a moment's thought. "I wonder if we could hold on to the bottom and it would be strong enough to fly with us attached," he pondered. Then, realizing how that sounded, he quickly clarified: "I don't want to find out. Not even a little bit." His grimace showed exactly how serious he was about that.

He glanced at Sadie again. "My arms are longer . . . should I be the poke person?" he asked with another grimace.

OOC: Let me know if Sadie's arms are actually longer than Alexander's, I just assumed.

22 Alexander Pierce-Beales I'm glad we're in this together I think. 1475 0 5

Martin Crosby V

November 08, 2020 5:09 PM

This situation is far from quote-unquote "cool" by Martin Crosby V

What the hell kind of hippie nonsense was this boy on about? First of all, that was not an answer to the question: a question Martin had only asked, mind you, for the sake of being polite. Then he tried to offer reassurance that if Martin did not want to poke them it was okay - which it was, only because the lesson was inane, but he already knew that. And then the younger boy had the gall to suggest it was mean of them! Really! Mean, to a plant! It was probably mean that they would uproot them, crush them, and use their corpses as potions ingredients, too, but that was a daily occurrence. And to that end, it was probably mean to eat a salad! But still Martin pressed himself and held his tongue.

But the next offense, the Crotalus could not forgive so easily. Any idiot who had ever spoken to another human being in their life knew that may I ask your name meant one was supposed to respond with their name thrown in there somewhere. But this brat simply stated that he would not mind telling him, then didn’t even tell him! AND he instead asked his own question, a most random and stupid one.

“What is your name?” Martin demanded, snapping a bit in his frustration. His favorite texture, indeed! Martin’s favorite texture would be whichever one he could wrap around this kid’s throat if he didn’t say something intelligent or at least useful soon!

12 Martin Crosby V This situation is far from quote-unquote "cool" 1439 0 5

Morgan Garrett

November 12, 2020 10:58 AM

Great...Jumping...Elephant Ears? by Morgan Garrett

Morgan had had her hair down when she had left her dormitory, because she thought it looked better this way, but she had kept a hair tie in her bag just in case. Within seconds of entering the greenhouse, she had grabbed the nearest seat and started rummaging through her bag for said tie, sweeping her hair up into a ponytail without a second thought for how it did or did not look next to her round face. It was hot as anything in here, and there were certain occasions when even a real lady wouldn’t worry too much about form over function. Steaming-hot rooms where they often had to use manure were the sorts of places that caused such occasions. Tropical unit? She’d always thought going to the tropics was supposed to be a pleasant thing to do!

One by one, she thought mournfully, illusions just had to fall. Plus, since when were elephant ears magical plants? They had those in the yard back in Kentucky!

The question was answered a moment later – that the elephant ears at home were not magic, specifically because, unlike these, they could not fly. Morgan jumped when the one Professor Xavier touched took to the air, emitting a slight but distinctly silly squeak of surprise. She should, she knew, have not been too fazed by flying plants – they saw weirder all the time – but she had just not been expecting something that looked like something she knew to act like that. Keeping up with these was probably a pain in the rear for whoever it was who actually made sure the Statute of Secrecy was kept, she reckoned….

…unless it poisoned everyone who fooled with it, but she didn’t reckon many people were going to chomp down on a regular elelphant’s ear, never mind a flying one. At least, Morgan could not imagine that her response to something in the yard doing something it was not supposed to do would be to try to bite it, and she thought she had a lot more imagination than most of her family did, or most of Industry, Kentucky in general. In some respects, it was better to be like everyone else, and biting plants that could react didn’t seem like a great idea even if one didn’t know they were poison. It could jump hard enough to yank itself out of the ground and come down hard enough to go back in the ground. If you bit it, it might pull hard enough to take a tooth or two as it got away. That would kind of suck, even before they got to the poison bit.

She examined her hands when Professor Xavier said the thing could cause papercuts, and that such a small cut could still be enough to cause trouble. She didn’t think she had anything like that, or any breaks on the skin of her hands, and she was kind of curious about what the fake elephant ears felt like, but….

Ah, the heck with it. She was pretty sure that if it could really hurt them, they wouldn’t have it in class – not for third years, anyway – and Professor Xavier had just cast a charm and that had been that. Plus, she wasn’t sure she had remembered her gloves; she was bad about that sometimes. She reached out and tried to press the tips of her fingers to a broad leaf – ‘tried’ being the operative term, as she had hardly grazed it when it leapt into the air and she automatically leapt backward, nearly colliding with someone else in the process.

“Oh, gosh, sorry,” she said, her voice still even more heavily accented than usual in the second class of the year. She had spent the last few weeks of summer in Kentucky this year, and had not been around other people long enough to start unconsciously speaking more ‘proper-like,’ as she called it in her head, on the rare occasions she thought about it that much. “These are som’thin’ else, aren’t they?”

16 Morgan Garrett Great...Jumping...Elephant Ears? 1470 0 5

Dathan Fischer

November 16, 2020 9:43 PM

This is...almost really cool. by Dathan Fischer

Dathan, for the most part, liked Care of Magical Creatures. There were times it was bizarre or scary, but most of the time, it was pretty straightforward: if he did x, y, and z, it would have result 1, 2, or 3, and he wouldn’t have to write fifteen pages of notes about it like he generally thought he was supposed to do in classes like Potions or Charms or Transfiguration. It also –

Well, he guessed they did things in all their classes, but one point that even Potions had over Charms and Transfiguration and usually Defense Against the Dark Arts, a point shared even more thoroughly with Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology, was that he could see what was he was doing. It wasn’t as bad now as in his first year, but sometimes, he’d just be in one of his classes doing his thing, waving the wand around and saying the silly words, and it would dawn on him again: I’m waving a stick around, and what I’m saying might as well be bibbidy-bobbidy-boo, and we’re calling that a class!. It was wild. He had often daydreamed, back in the day, about a world where classes involved more silly stuff and less math, but still – even that hadn’t involved the silliness actually being treated seriously. Much less being serious. It was easier still to get his brain to work in terms of plant biology or zoology or chemistry than ‘it’s magic,’ no matter how many underpinnings of complicated-sounding stuff Professor Wright and Professor Skies tried to install for their subjects. Or maybe because of how many underpinnings of complicated-sounding stuff they put in – it just made it even more opaque to him, and he was pretty sure they both thought that his mother had dropped him on his head a time or two when he was a baby.

Herbology, though, that made sense. Sometimes, there were plants that did really weird things, but…well, that happened in the outside world, too, right? Like venus flytraps. Venus flytraps were totally weird, and really not in that much different of a way from the plants they were looking at today in Professor Xavier’s class. The jumping plants were a little more dramatic maybe, in that they could, like, uproot themselves and stuff, but still, similar concept. He wasn’t too sure about touching it if touching it was literally poisonous, though….

He began rummaging through his bag, looking for his gloves, but looked up when someone near him spoke. “Huh?” he asked, a split second before thinking it was possible the remark hadn’t been addressed to him at all….

16 Dathan Fischer This is...almost really cool. 1457 0 5

Ellie Alperton

November 18, 2020 6:26 AM

I quite like it by Ellie Alperton

As Ellie entered the greenhouse, she was very grateful for the fact that her hair was tied back. It was, in fact, tied back very prettily (in her opinion) with careful sections brushed to either side so that multiple ponytail bands could be placed down its length as it made its way to one joined together ponytail at the back. They were in trans flag colour and order, as part of her ongoing effort to be more visibly herself. She had thought about adding a pin to her robes but she wasn’t sure if she was allowed, or if it would look like she was trying to pretend to be a prefect. She had seen Dorian wear a rainbow pin, but he’d been head boy (which was awesome) so it wasn’t really like anyone could claim he was trying to usurp anything. Hopefully next year she would be a prefect and then she wouldn’t have to worry about that, and in the meantime she could always check the dress code or ask Professor Wright, she just hadn’t got around to doing either of those things yet.

She slightly regretfully and self-consciously shed her robes as well. It was strange, when she had first started, she had been so worried about them - about how they covered up her pretty outfits, and half her signifiers of who she was. But she was so firmly Ellie in the minds of her classmates, she was pretty sure none of them ever thought to doubt or question that, and the robes had a comforting sameness for all of them. In their own clothes, there was much more to read about a person, and it was much easier to see the shape they were. Or weren’t. Jasmine might have assured her that she’d had no real bust until she was well into advanced classes (and even then it hadn’t exactly been a prominent feature) but it was still getting harder and harder not to worry about lagging behind her peers. At least her clothes for the day were cute. She had a lightweight pink plaid shirt with capped sleeves and diamantes on the pocket, and a ruffled cream skirt. She might have worried about getting dirt on that, but the house elves really did seem magical with their cleaning powers.

Professor Xavier mentioned that today’s plants were cousins of elephant ears, which was a fun name, and a fun thing to think about having a cousin. Ellie wasn’t sure whether they looked sort of familiar because she really had seen them before or because she’d just been told to expect them to be. Plants had a habit of all looking kinda planty (pyschological bias was much more interesting). She could see the difference between this and, say, a daisy, but after a while they did all just blur into big leafy things. Really big, apparently, sometimes with these ones.

She definitely had not seen a plant do what these ones did when poked and she gave a little ‘oh’ of surprise, even though surprises were becoming unsurprising at this point in her magical education. She found herself grinning in spite of the warnings about toxicity and paper cuts. The plants were just so cute and so magical, and that never failed to delight her. She did take Professor Xavier’s advice of getting her gloves out, before turning to address the plant. However, before it could reply or she could act upon her threats, she got a ‘huh?’ from beside her. She turned to find Dathan looking at her, and tried to read whether that was ‘huh, why are you being weird?’ or ‘huh, I didn’t hear you?’ She took a punt, based on the look on his face, at the second one.

“I said Hey there, ready to get poked?,” she stated, her hand, the angle of her body and everything else clearly indicated that she had been talking to the plant more than him, though she now turned her hand on him, index finger extended, “What’s your answer?” she deadpanned.

13 Ellie Alperton I quite like it 1456 0 5

Leonor De Matteo

November 22, 2020 5:25 PM

What is that nonsense? by Leonor De Matteo

Leonor didn't, on her own, actually hate Herbology. It was in the blood of a De Matteo to have at least a minimal interest in flora and agriculture and the like. She also generally preferred the heat of the greenhouses to the perpetual chill of the rest of Sonora. However, she did hate humidity like this, and she did hate being in Felipe's classes, and she did hate being in Felipe's favorite class with him in it, and she did hate getting dirty. It was sort of nice that she was in classes with Jeremy now, but it wasn't as if they were about to go prancing around campus holding hands, and kissing was only somewhat appealing these days. Plus, they weren't going to makeout in the greenhouse anyway, so what was the point? The best they could do here was chat, and even that was a bit more clingy than either of them usually went in for.

Today's lesson did have the added interest of being dangerous, so she supposed that was good, even if dangerous also usually went hand-in-hand with dirty in this class. It also required people spread out enough that she probably wouldn't have to overhear Felipe talking with his stupid girlfriend or something, which was great. However, she was nearly collided with by another stupid person and she turned to find that it was Morgan. Great. The girl who couldn't tell coral from red. Her immediate groveling did help Lorena solve one mystery though: Morgan's accent was vaguely similar to Billy's. So that's why he sounded funny. At least this one could string together a sentence the right way.

"Yes," Leonor said. "They're something else. I suppose we should work together now?"

22 Leonor De Matteo What is that nonsense? 1471 0 5

Morgan Garrett

November 27, 2020 11:59 AM

It's some jumping elephant ears. by Morgan Garrett

Morgan’s grin had begun to fade almost as soon as it had come, her mouth finishing her remark more by reflex than in accordance with her thoughts. In her head, there was, abruptly, only one thought: oh, no.

She had only really had one proper conversation with Leonor De Matteo in their three years at school, but it had been the sort of single conversation to make an impression. The impression was a swirl of unhappy feelings which consolidated themselves into the concept that Leonor was the sort of person around whom Morgan found her accent invariably thickening, all while she couldn’t decide whether this was a person she should die before she ever said ‘ain’t’ in front of, or if this was a person she should very carefully say ‘ain’t’ in front of, just to be defiant, or possibly annoy Leonor, or…something.

“I – I reckon?” she said, wishing it didn’t sound so much like a question, and that she had not said the word ‘reckon.’

She tried to think as rapidly as possible. Work together? They had been told they could talk during the ten-minute observation period, but she could recall no specific task for them to do besides taking notes, much less a task that required working together. Had she missed something? She knew well enough that she didn’t always pay enough attention in class, or pick up on the subtleties of what people said, but she usually caught onto stuff as big as the task of the day….

“Guess we can observe two at once that way,” she said, trying to imitate the sort of assurance about what she said that she associated with Mara, and the casual indifference to other people’s opinions that she admired in Josie. “We’gn’ get more done at one time like that. I guess we can try havin’ a big one and a littler one jump at the same time, so we can compare ‘em?”

16 Morgan Garrett It's some jumping elephant ears. 1470 0 5

Leonor De Matteo

November 29, 2020 5:09 PM

Isn't that a food? by Leonor De Matteo

OOC: CW: Leonor thinks poorly of people she doesn't view as speaking properly, and she is being mean and crappy about it. Morgan speaks just fine. BIC:

Leonor had been trying to be nice. They were stuck talking to each other now and professors liked the whole interaction thing most of the time, so it seemed like offering to work together would be more polite than just bailing out of the conversation, or else trying to pretend either of them was interested in small talk. But no. Instead, Morgan accepted the offer of working together and then suggested they work independently. Why not just say no, Morgan? Ugh.

She supposed, since an effort was being made to at least put on appearances of almost working together, that it would be best to accept the offer at this point. Besides, wouldn't it be just riveting to see a 'littler' one jump? Ugh. How come Leonor had spent so many years working on her own English only to come to school and find out that some people couldn't even be bothered to speak one language correctly, let alone bother with more than one? It wasn't the first time she thought that she'd have been better off at one of the more elite institutes for magical learning, but at least there were people like the Mordues and Brockerts here, so she knew she wasn't the only one who far outstripped most of her classmates.

Pausing long enough to blink disdainfully at her classmate, Leonor finally answered. "Sure," she decided. "You can do the smaller one," she said, emphasizing her words without making any effort to conceal the fact that she was talking down to Morgan some. "I should probably be the note taker for the group then?" she added, raising an eyebrow.

22 Leonor De Matteo Isn't that a food? 1471 0 5

Dathan Fischer

December 01, 2020 6:52 PM

That definitely adds a coolness point or two. by Dathan Fischer

Not for the first time, Dathan wished with all his heart that he had coloring other than the coloring he had. Pale skin flushed easily, and red hair just made it that much more obvious. A pretty picture he made, he was sure; and knowing this just made it all the harder to think of how to play it cool, since he knew that he clearly did not look cool, so it would be obvious that he was trying, and if it was obvious you were trying, then that was…not cool….

There was something wrong with the logic there, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what. He was not sure if this was because he was not very good at logicking or because he was more occupied with looking uncool, but he was sure there was something…off with his thinking, and vaguely sorry he couldn’t manage to deal with it.

“Um – I guess?” he managed, and realized he sounded super-lame there. “I mean, I would jump, but probably not as far as the plants do, so – I’m not sure if that means I’m more or less ready for poking than they are.” He managed a grin. “What do you think?” he asked, despite the logical thing to do (specifically, endeavoring to use magic to sink into the floor, or at least to focus intently on his work and hope Ellie forgot he existed) being clear here. For some reason, though, he wanted to keep talking to her, even though he was sure she was thinking that he was a moron and suspecting he’d prove it in a prolonged conversation…Well, there was a reason he wasn’t in Aladren, he guessed.

16 Dathan Fischer That definitely adds a coolness point or two. 1457 0 5

Ellie Alperton

December 02, 2020 8:07 PM

Wait, really? What/how/why?? by Ellie Alperton

OOC: CW - transphobia BIC:

Aww and oh no! Had she... broken him? Ellie was kind of used to using Seth as her model of what boys were like, and Seth was just silly and goofy and ready to laugh at most things. She knew, of course, that there was not just one type of boy. Freddie and Theo and Alexander all exemplified that fact, although she was still pretty sure she could have joked about poking with at least one, maybe two of them. Dathan just seemed like such a garden variety, boy next door kinda boy. He definitely hadn't seemed shy when they'd worked together before.

Was it because he knew?

She hated the fact that this was the first thought to flash through her mind almost as much as she hated the fact it might be accurate. Of course, there were other reasons why Dathan might feel awkward or embarrassed about her touching him. Maybe he just felt sweaty and gross. Maybe he just didn't like being touched by people he didn't know well. But maybe he thought she was gross and didn't want to be touched by her. She didn't know if Dathan specifically knew, and she felt like she was giving off singnals mostly only to those who knew how to read them, and who were therefore likely to be kindly inclined, but she had done the fair. Even if that hadn't let Dathan know specifically what subcategory she fell in, it gave a general vibe. She tried desperately to remember if she had seen his name on the sign up sheet of promised allies.

"It sounds like you're a little bit more ready but like you don't really want to be," she stated, withdrawing her hand, and keeping up a smile. She could feel her own cheeks burning slightly, partly out of horror at the worst possible case scenario that she had just envisioned, and partly just out of sympathy-embarrassment.

"Maybe we should stick to the basic lesson first," she suggested, trying to give a way out that saved face for both of them.

13 Ellie Alperton Wait, really? What/how/why?? 1456 0 5

Dathan Fischer

December 09, 2020 7:06 PM

Well, you're really cool, so if you think it's cool.... by Dathan Fischer

Oh. Oh, no. He had said something wrong and had completely botched this entire interaction. Not for the first time, he mentally cursed the quirk of magic which (to his vague understanding) meant he couldn’t do spontaneous magic anymore without waving his wand around and saying something in probably-Latin. Right now, he would have given everything he owned to be able to create a distraction, or just sink into the floor….

“Oh - uh - I didn't mean like - Um – yeah – that’s – that’s probably a good idea,” he agreed miserably, looking straight ahead at one of the plants, too.

Unfortunately, that plant could have spontaneously manifested a top hat and started dancing the Charleston and he might have barely registered the irregularity. He was too occupied wondering what he had said wrong and – more importantly – why it had been wrong, and if there was a snowball’s chance in Sarasota that he could at all save the situation. He didn’t think any ideas would have more than a snowball’s chance in Sarasota, but he really hoped one of them at least had that much going for it.

The year before, he had noticed that Ellie was…kind of cool. She was super-smart, and didn’t hide it or anything, but in their (admittedly limited) previous conversations, she somehow still didn’t make him feel particularly stupid most of the time. And – well – she was cute. Maybe not quite pretty in the porcelain-doll-like way some of the girls here were, but she was definitely cute, and nice, and smart. He didn’t really know what to do with this set of observations, or even if he wanted to do anything with them – the thought was simultaneously embarrassing and scary and generally weird – but he definitely did not want to offend her and never be spoken to again….

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I mean – I was looking for my gloves, you know, so I wouldn’t get, um, poisoned, and I just – heard someone talking, but not totally what you said, because I wasn’t paying attention, so…yeah. I really didn’t mean to be weird or anything,” he added earnestly. "I just sort of blanked out for a minute."

16 Dathan Fischer Well, you're really cool, so if you think it's cool.... 1457 0 5

Morgan Garrett

December 15, 2020 7:45 PM

Ornamental plant, actually. by Morgan Garrett

Morgan was not a person with a particularly well-developed sense for the subtleties of expressions and body language, but something about the look Leonor gave her struck her as…off. There was something about it that she felt must be a sign that she had done something wrong, but what it could be, she didn’t know, all she had said was….

Oh.

If all Leonor had said was ‘smallest,’ Morgan wouldn’t have noticed the criticism, but the tone was openly condescending. That made that one word the thing that made the problem obvious. She had said it wrong. Like some inbred hick from Bum-nothing, Kentucky…She flushed deep red.

She wanted to lash out. To tell Leonor to go shove her head where the sun didn’t shine and to do her own work. If she did that, though, then she would give Leonor what she wanted, plus she would make herself look like a crazy person. Plus plus, she knew that when she got angry, if she started yelling, her accent would thicken like some bad peanut butter and just make the problem that much worse.

“Might be easier to tell how close they end up if we put a couple side by side and we both poke one at once,” she said stiffly. “Unless you’ve got a tape measure in your pocket, anyway.”

She could not control her complexion, but she tried to act as though she hadn’t noticed Leonor’s tone. This would probably just make Leonor think even less of her intelligence, but at least it wouldn’t give Leonor a motive to poke her with the issue whenever she was bored and wanted a reaction. She knew this. It had not taken her very many trips north, after she’d met her father and stepmother, to come to know this.

Sage said that she shouldn’t listen to stuff like that. She had learned to talk by listening to the people around her talking, just like everyone else did. Since everyone learned to talk that way, the only thing the way she talked meant was that she’d grown up around people who talked like that. Intelligence, her stepmother said, was a completely different thing that had nothing to do with the way she pronounced words, or even the grammatical structures she put those words into.

Dad – who, most of the time, barely sounded like he was from Kentucky at all; if she listened closely, or heard him talking right after Sage said something, then she could just discern a kindness to vowels that was like home folks, and that he said individual words more slowly than Sage did, with fractionally longer pauses, but she usually had to try – had just patted her shoulder and said just think about makin’ - he did drop final consonants sometimes, too - those movies, and then you’ll have enough money to drive down every street in this city in a limo with a middle finger painted on every window.

He had sort of half-smiled – as if to encourage her, she thought, rather than in amusement at his own joke – when he said that last part, she remembered. That had been one of the first time she had felt really fond of the actual person who had abruptly sort of drifted into her life about eight years late, instead of just the idea her late aunt had built up for her. It seemed a bit too pat to be true, but she still thought that it might have also been one of the first times he’d also felt fond of her, the then half-toothless reminder of the existences of her mother and of Industry, Kentucky which had been abruptly dropped into his life to deal with.

“But you do what you want,” she added loftily, turning to select some good plants for the experiment. This allowed her back to be to Leonor as she cheered herself up imagining Leonor’s face in a scenario where she happened to be standing on a street which Morgan drove past in a very, very impolite limousine.

16 Morgan Garrett Ornamental plant, actually. 1470 0 5