Just once. on Library

A Memory

November 23, 2020 5:52 PM

Just once. by A Memory

OOC: CW: on screen violence, implied reference to child loss BIC:

The figure of a young man, only a few years older than the oldest students at Sonora, was looking bored and somber, peering out at a view only he could see. He wasn't facing the person who'd made him appear, but he glanced toward them every once in a while, his eyes focused on a spot about his height a short distance away from his side. His face couldn't make it any clearer how uncomfortable he was, and he rubbed a nervous hand across his shaved head.

When he spoke, it was with a strong Irish accent. "Hey, I know you're sad but . . . well, maybe it's for the best?" He withdrew some from the withering look on the face of the person he was looking at, unseen by anyone around, but quickly recovered. He lifted one hand to deliver a playful punch, accompanied by a suggestive tip of his eyebrows and a grin as he continued. "Hey, means you're free to start dating again, right? The sea has more fish than the Black Lake and you'll meet someone better."

There was a pause and his expression turned sour as he looked away again, taking in the environment for a moment before responding. His voice was hard and bitter. "Don't kid yourself. You and me would make lousy fathers. We're the same you and me. You don't want to get stuck with a kid."

He raised an eyebrow, glancing sideways again for a moment before his head suddenly jerked back and his nose gushed. Appearing as silver as he did, it was only a bright flash of shimmering liquid across his mouth and chin. He wiped it off with a growl, swore profusely, and then lunged forward at the person who'd hit him, landing them both on the ground, him on top of the other person. "You're just proving me right, idiot!" he crowed as he landed several blows at various heights. "But you're not as big as me, are you?"

His torrent - both physical and verbal - continued, and the memory seemed to warp and fade as if whomever had originally been the viewer was losing their vision in spots. Then, with a flicker, it faded completely.

OOC: New rule: instead of having two sub-threads, this post is set up in a class-style format. There should be a max of two responses, either separate (two people posting directly to the memory) or interactive (one thread with two characters in it).

22 A Memory Just once. 0 A Memory 1 5

Selina Skies

November 23, 2020 8:36 PM

That's more than enough by Selina Skies

After her conversation with Mary, Selina had come to the unfortunate conclusion that Katey’s dragon had not been an isolated incident. They seemed to have some sort of shape-shifting mist on their hands. On neither of the occasions that it had manifested had it appeared entirely human, as the figure that Mary and Zeus had encountered – whilst broadly humanoid – had been somehow larger than life. It didn’t seem like it could hurt people per se, or at least had made no move to do so thus far, but it was at best an inconvenience and at worst seemed to be trying to rattle people. It was sort of like a ghost crossed with a boggart. She had asked the staff to keep a look out and, if it manifested again, to try to capture it for further study.

To that end, she had borrowed several books from the library. Basic containment spells were easy enough but she had rarely had to bind something non-corporeal, and she had wanted to double check her ideas. They had been accurate. A basic containment charm worked best on solid beings, but it should hold for at least long enough to stop the thing from vanishing. Using the containment charm to channel it into a vessel would help hold it for longer, especially if binding spells were added.

She had just dropped the books back off, and – as Tarquin didn’t seem to be around – was preparing to head out when a noise attracted her attention.

She did a double take at the figure in front of her. It seemed human. Not solid, but it looked like a regular, albeit rather grumpy, teenage boy. So, like a regular teenage boy. Of course, there was nothing to say that their shapeshifter couldn’t impersonate a human if it so chose, just that it hadn’t until now.

“Excuse me?” she asked. From everything she’d heard so far, she was not expecting it to respond. However, she didn’t know all the school’s ghosts, and she didn’t want to upset one of them by shoving it into a bottle unnecessarily. But the figure made no reply to her. It had plenty to say to the unseen person it was talking to though. The words washed over her, half processed. She could make guesses at the subject from the halves of the conversation that she was getting, but it was not her primary concern right now. She reached for her pocket, having started carrying a vial around since her advice to the staff and- drat. She’d given it to Katey to fill with a potion sample and never replaced it. Good, well done Selina. Well prepared for emergency there.

The figure recoiled, blood streaking down its face and she flinched, though not as much as she did when he launched his attack.

“Accio teacup!” she improvised, calling something she knew would be in the library, and could at least somewhat help her with the containment until she got back to her office and found something more stable. Catching the cup that sailed out of the office, she pointed her wand at the creature, relieved when the containment spell started drawing it in. For good measure, she grabbed a spare piece of parchment from Tarquin’s desk, placing it over the top of the cup and adding a sealing spell.

She wondered whether she had been right about the assessment that this was an impersonation of a human. Humans, when they were angry, could do terrible things, but its reaction, its attack, had dehumanised it greatly. She came back again to the idea of a ghost crossed with a boggart. It seemed to have some clear intent to manipulate people’s feelings, only it was not quite so sophisticated. She didn’t understand why there was only half a conversation, or how it was meant to be effective when it didn’t react to the specific person it was around, but whatever this was, it was clearly designed to push people’s buttons. The dragon had seemed innocent enough, but looks could be deceiving. And Mary’s figure, which had been crying out for help… There was something sinister or mischievous about all of them. But at least now she had it and could study it, or send it off to MACUSA if it turned out to be beyond her.

If she had considered the history of Sonora’s problems, she might have thought that really, that had been far too easy…

OOC: Although Selina caught the memory, I am very open to her having responses or someone else seeing it either:
- In that they were there too and were the one who triggered it (I tried to be nonspecific about whether she did or not)
- that they came in whilst she was doing that
- that they start a new thread but fuzzy time it to be before hers took place

She would have prioritised catching the memory, although if there is another person in her eyeline at the end, you can assume she asks if they're alright, should you wish to.

13 Selina Skies That's more than enough 26 0 5

Katerina Vorontsov

December 07, 2020 8:50 PM

I agree very much. by Katerina Vorontsov

Katya stood still, her eyes fixed on the now empty spot in front of her. Two books were clutched to her chest, and she was aware that her fingers were beginning to ache from putting too much pressure on the books’ edges, but she could not quite seem to make herself relax her grip.

Logically, she thought, she should be relieved now. Professor Skies was here; she had seen the strange apparition, too, and had taken it away. It could not hurt her (if, in fact, it had ever had any ability to do so; it had not seemed to notice her presence when she had frozen in place) and the professor interacting with it meant that she was not going mad, or suffering from a dangerous fever, or anything like that. Whatever it had been, it was well done with now, and she should move on with her day without sparing the matter another thought.

She knew all this, could think it through fully in three languages. She had just done so; it was always soothing, somehow, to tackle the same idea in multiple languages, forcing herself to pay attention to her thoughts. It was easy, sometimes, to let them flow together in her brain – to think one thought in English and another in Russian, or to start a thought in one language and then stop short when the only word she could remember for something offhand was from the other, and the one she could recall in no way worked grammatically with the rest of the thought. It was a good point of discipline, to sort them out now and again: first the Russian, then the English, then the French, being careful and deliberate….

Somehow, though, it failed to work properly right now; she still felt shaken, and her fingers were not relaxing. Perhaps she should do it over a fourth time, should try to do it in German. That would be a very thorough distraction, a real challenge. Ozwiena knew her German did not get enough practice; that was why Mama often wrote to her in German instead of in Russian or French, so she would have to translate the letter instead of just reading it, so she would not lose all of her German, when it was important to Mama that she know it –

She realized her thoughts were rambling as aimlessly as a peasant stricken down by Poludnitsa and made an effort to slow them down.

It didn’t make sense, being so unsettled, which was in and of itself unsettling. Yes, that – thing – had given her a start when it had appeared from nowhere – yes, it had given her another one, when Professor Skies had abruptly captured it – but really, nothing had happened. It had spoken to itself, about things that (insofar as she had been able to understand them; the quality of the English was dreadful, even harder to understand than Papa’s, and Papa did not really speak English half so well as he fancied he did. The strange accent had seemed familiar, though, if only she could place it; she was sure she had heard it here before – where else would she hear English pronounced in ways that did not sound familiar by now - ) had nothing to do with her, unless she had really very badly misunderstood something, far worse than she thought she had misunderstood anything in years.

It must have been the…scenario, she supposed, that the thing had been enacting. The appearance of what might have been blood, based on its position, followed by violence – now it was almost funny, the thing beating at nothing, but even the appearance of such things had been alarming at first sight, along with the general situation. Violence was…she knew about it. Men might brawl like Magly in a gutter when they had had too much to drink, or wanted some woman – or, to be fair to them, in other ways if there was something necessary to do, like protecting a child from a bear or a pogrebin. All of those were things she had heard about, either in stories or gossip or one time in an actual report involving a bear on the edge of the village, but they were not things she had ever seen before. They did not touch her existence in the quiet, well-regulated world behind the walls of her house, or the wall surrounding the land on which the house stood. Men were the ones who did such things, as Monsieur Strange English had so strangely illustrated, and they did not do them in the contexts in which Katya had ever encountered such creatures. Suddenly, she could almost understand Tatiana’s aversion to the idea of marrying one….

Katya blinked, realizing she had been spoken to. “Oui, Madame,” she said, and realized it was the wrong language. Blin, she thought, borrowing from her sister’s vocabulary. She had thought of Tatiana and her reluctance to marry; the chain from ‘perhaps it is because men are like that’ had obviously led to ‘but the boys Tatya knew best were not like that’, which naturally had led to French…. “I well am,” she assured her, but the grammar was wrong. “I do not…it caused me…horror? But it did not harm me. Vs – all is well,” she said.

It was, of course. But still – when she went to finish checking out her books, she managed to avoid stepping through the spot where the apparition had been, despite that representing the most direct route to the desk.

16 Katerina Vorontsov I agree very much. 1418 0 5