Mortimer Brockert
December 18, 2020 1:30 PM
Returning Feast by Mortimer Brockert
Mortimer had to admit that he really hated the holidays. First, there was all the socialising, something he had never liked, preferring to unwind with a good book and a glass of bourbon. Secondly, it was all just so nauseatingly sappy. All that holiday cheer made him want to throw up a bit. Everything about the season was disgustingly saccharine. It was all happy and cheerful and joyous and a lot of other things that were the opposite of him. In short, it was a time of the year that he didn't feel all that comfortable and not just at parties either. In some ways, he totally understood his brother Ichabod's granddaughter Liesl and her preference for Halloween. While Mortimer was not as passionate about it as his grandniece, he too felt more in tune with that season.Heck, even the entertainment on the wireless was crappy this time of year. All that bland, mushy romance stuff that lacked any substance whatsoever. And, for some reason some of his daughter-in-laws and at least one of his granddaughters, Ruby, liked it. In Opal's case, it did not really surprise Mortimer since she had the IQ of a flobberworm. And Helena was just damaged. Her, he had some sympathy for, considering all the miscarriages and being married to Eustace, whom even he, the man's father, had to admit was probably not a great husband. Therefore, Helena was likely trapped in little girl fantasies about having her Prince Charming that those programs fed.
The rest was family friendly kiddie stuff. Which was great for the little kids, but not so interesting to a man his age with slightly darker, more serious interests.
So, as much as any teenager not directly descended from him was annoying, Mortimer was glad to be back at Sonora. And glad the holiday season was over. Although the next holiday coming up was even more irritating and nauseating and saccharine then the Yuletide season was. Valentine's Day, yuck.He planned to ignore it. Vivien knew not to expect gifts for that day because it was an idiotic holiday that he didn't believe in. She knew that he cared in his own way and Valentine's Day was not part of his own way.
The students filed in and Mortimer rose and put the Sonorus Charm on himself. "Welcome back. I hope you all had a nice break." He still didn't actually care. "Before we eat, I have one announcement. We will be starting workshops regarding the Midsummer Concert. However, participation is still not mandatory." Mortimer was never going to enforce mandatory participation in any non-academic thing other than the Challenges.
With that, he sat back down and began his usual feast dinner of steak and bourbon.
OOC: Apologies to anyone who likes holiday movies, romantic or otherwise
Subthreads:Aladren
Home again, home again, again. by Lorena Abernathy with Rosalynn Tellerman, Isla Brockert
One Last Feast by Heinrich Hexenmeister
Crotalus
Definitely not having a minor crisis. by Martin Crosby V with Jezebel Reed-Fischer
Yup guess this is still a thing. by Henry Spellman with Samantha Cinth
Pecari
More schoolin' huh? by Billy Cobb with Evelyn Stones
Nothing to think here. by Leonor De Matteo
Teppenpaw
Staff
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Mortimer Brockert
Returning Feast
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Billy Cobb
December 21, 2020 6:32 PM
More schoolin' huh? by Billy Cobb
Billy Cobb flopped down in a seat at the Pecari table, unsure if he was glad to be back at school. On the one hand, he was going to have to sit in classrooms all day again. On the other hand, he wasn't being pulled between Pa trying to get an entire season's work outta him that he'd missed and his sister who wouldn't stop asking him questions that he didn't know the answers to. Gee-whiz... you tell her how these folk go 'round introducin' themselves and suddenly your an expert in manners 'n etiquette.The old headmaster guy said something about that concert thing. Oh shoot. He'd been meaning to ask Ma or Pa about some story he could've written down. Oh well, to late now. Maybe he'd just need to help out movin' stuff around. He could do that well enough... after he was done being sore from that last batch of wood-stackin' Pa had insisted on before he'd left.
When the food appeared, he started stacking his plate full. Here was another advantage of being back, while this stuff didn't hold a candle to Ma's cookin', it sure beat his sister's and she'd been insistent on practicing and making him test her experiments. Girls. He sighed to himself. Anyway, he was back now. Best make the best of it. He turned to whoever had sat next to him and grinned, "How was yer break? I got Ma a mink fer Christmas."
It'd been a cute little thing he'd caught the first day he'd been back home again. Poor critter was just a baby and had been abandoned. He'd always had a bit of a knack with critters and it weren't more 'n a few days before the little guy was happy in his new home. Ma loved him as well. When he was a little bigger, he'd make a better rat catcher than any cat on the mountain.
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Billy Cobb
More schoolin' huh?
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Evelyn Stones
December 30, 2020 6:45 PM
Always more to learn. by Evelyn Stones
Going back to Sonora had always been weird for Evelyn, because it was always after something. For part of her school years, it had been after a trip home, with varying members of her family. Then, it had been with Ness and her new family. Now, Heinrich also featured prominently in her time away from campus. But if Ness and Heinrich were her de facto family now (and the McLeods and CJ but she knew them all less well), then Sonora wasn't really leaving much behind. So it was weird. She sat at the Pecari table without her family, who got to sit together, and she was only slightly bitter over that these days. She liked her own House well enough and she was pretty proud of the fact that she'd been a reasonably decent prefect in her own opinion so far. If nothing else, she had managed to connect with some of the students in the House, and she'd made it a point to be available should anyone want to talk to her.One person she had not gotten to know well yet was one of the first years, Billy. Still, Billy had seen a big glimpse into part of her life that she would never have shared with him of her own volition and she wasn't sure exactly what to do with that either. She was sure Heinrich hadn't laid out details of what her dad had so kindly acted out for them - or the mist that looked like her dad or whatever it was - but Billy had been there and that was enough for her mind to spin into dangerous spirals of anxiety just to sit near him. Thus, naturally, she needed to sit near him.
The headmaster said some stuff, blah blah blah, and then Billy spoke up, saving Evelyn the trouble of needing to decide if she was going to say something first. "A mink like the coat?" she confirmed, surprised. Sonora students were from all over the world but it was hard to come from hippy dippy Oregon and not automatically think animal cruelty at the thought of giving someone a mink. The boy's accent gave her a clue where he might have been from but she didn't know enough about the South to know what could be done humanely, whether his family would care, etc., and she didn't know if this was some magical thing or not. Geography was hard. Politics were hard. Everything was hard. "Or the animal?"
She scooped some potatoes onto her plate - mashed and roasted since both types were the bomb dot com - and remembered he'd asked her a question too. "My break was pretty good," she decided. Other than everything that went into her anxiety seeing Billy now, this had been the first break where she hadn't had to think of her dad, and CJ had hardly seemed to notice the man's absence anyway. That was good. She almost said something about visiting Heinrich in the snow and getting warm, snow-melting kisses - okay, so she probably wouldn't have mentioned the last part - but she didn't necessarily want to draw Billy's mind to what may have been the only time he'd really spoken with Heinrich just then. "Busy and snowy," she decided with a smile before chomping into a potato.
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Evelyn Stones
Always more to learn.
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Billy Cobb
January 02, 2021 6:22 PM
So I've been told. by Billy Cobb
Evelyn looked a bit surprised at his statement and Billy gave her a bit of confused look back. 'Like the coat?' What did that mean? Was there a kind of coat named after the critters? They liked the water, so maybe some sort of coat to keep the rain off you? She seemed to recollect her thoughts and figured things out though. That was good. He grinned and nodded. "Yeah, I found it abandoned and caught it the firs' day back from break. I got it mostly friendly, before I hadda leave to come back here." He shoveled a sizeable amount of meat into his mouth, chewed and swallowed it before continuing. "Ma thought he was awful cute."He ate some more while the older girl talked, not that she said much. He'd kinda avoided the prefects when he could. The rumor was they could get you into trouble for the smallest little things. Still she played Quidditch so he knew her best from there, but she chased while he beat? beated? was a beater? Eh. Still it'd probably be good to stay on real nice friendly terms with any of these prefects he talked to. "Snowy?" he inquired mildly, "We had a pile of snow too,'bout two feet. It made gettin' up 'n down the mountain a little tricky. Pa hadda borrow Uncle Jeb's horse team and sled." That did make him think of a question for the older student, "Do we learn any magic that'd make that easier? Some sort of snow movin' charm?"
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Billy Cobb
So I've been told.
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Evelyn Stones
January 03, 2021 2:05 PM
There are pros and cons. by Evelyn Stones
It was the animal, not the coat, and Evelyn relaxed some. She didn't know enough about minks to know whether bringing them inside as pets was strictly inhumane and she trusted that Billy knew more than she did. Also, he didn't strike her as someone who came from a family that was about to dress up their pet mink in tutus or something, so it was probably in good hands. Her throat constructed some to hear it had been abandoned though. "Why do animals abandon each other?" she asked, genuinely curious, and a little sad. "That sounds cute. I'm glad your Ma was happy," she smiled."Snowy," she agreed with a happier expression still. "It was perfect." She blinked, trying to think of what sort of charms might be helpful. This was the sort of puzzle she enjoyed but it would be weird to grin her head off at Billy over snow moving charms. "We used a warming charm while we were out," she began, thinking over what was useful. "And depending on what you're trying to transport, you could just Apparate there. It's like teleporting. But you could really only take your backpack or whatever. I think you could move snow with a levitating charm probably, or put a lightening charm on the sled and then it wouldn't get stuck in the snow so much anyway. I think some stuff is risky because it could do other damage. Like if you melted all the snow, then you could cause flooding or something probably," she added. Then, giving into the grin and her knowledge of Billy playing Quidditch too, she continued: "You could put a lightening charm on it, hook it up to a broom, and fly there. But not in front of your family if they're muggles," she suggested.
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Evelyn Stones
There are pros and cons.
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Billy Cobb
January 09, 2021 8:33 AM
Thems are wise words by Billy Cobb
Billy shrugged, seemingly oblivious to any sort of negative reaction Evelyn may have had. "Dunno, could be any number o' things." He considered for just a moment. "His ma coulda been caught and eaten by a bigger critter, maybe she couldn't find enough food for 'em both, or maybe he jus wandered off 'n got lost." Billy ate some more of his food unconcernedly. "Nature's rough, wild and don' much care for playing nice." A brief memory flashed through his head of a gigantic bear looming up before him. He shuddered briefly, "Everything jus wants to survive, and that's all they care 'bout." He, for one, was all for surviving. The alternative didn't seem very nice.He grinned, "Ma will be even happier once he gets a bit bigger. The mice were pretty bad this year in the house and that guy will quickly deal with that problem." Still grinning he took a particularly vicious bite from a chicken leg to illustrate the point. "Do you use cats for mice problems where yer from? We've got some of them roaming around, but minks work better. They can follow the bigger ones back into their holes."
Billy nodded a bit as Evelyn very minimally expanded on her holiday experience. Apparently it had been very nice. He mentally shrugged while a dismissive 'eh girls' thought floated through his head. His eyes narrowed a bit as she began thinking about his snow problem. She was breaking out some awful big words now; apparate? teleporting? A levitating charm had come up at some point, that was a fancy word for 'floating in the air' if he was remembering correctly. His eyes then widened in excitement, then dimmed again as he realized she had said 'lightening' not 'lightning'. Blasting away the snow with bolts of lightning would be amazing though!
"Huh?" He'd been told, many times, that he couldn't to magic at home until he was seventeen. He'd assumed flying on a broom was the same thing, so all of this thinking that Evelyn was doing he assumed was for after he was older. But then he still couldn't fly in front of them? "Ma and Pa are muggles," he started slowly, "but they already know I can do stuff..? Why couldn't I fly around them?"
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Billy Cobb
Thems are wise words
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