Isis Carter-Xavier
February 07, 2021 6:11 PM
Chapters [Oz] by Isis Carter-Xavier
Isis had asked Oz earlier in the day to come by her office this evening. She had made it very clear that he was not in trouble, because that always seemed to be a concern present on his mind, and reassured him that she just had something she wanted to show him. As the time grew nearer, though, she began feeling a bit nervous. Was this really her best idea? Maybe not, objectively, but maybe for Oz, it would be helpful.When she heard a knock, she encouraged, “Come in!” and was glad to see that it was in fact Oz who appeared before her. “Hi, Oz. Can you shut that behind you?” she asked.
The office itself looked a little bit different. She had pushed the chairs up close to the desk to make room for a medium sized black cauldron, in which a swirling silver liquid ebbed and flowed. “This is a pensieve. A broken one is what caused the memories to manifest as we’ve been seeing them all year. This one is working properly, so I want to show you how it works, just to be sure you understand.”
“You see, it’s used to store memories. Some witches and wizards use it as sort of a backup plan for their physical memories. As we get older, our brains grow more full, and we forget about things from our past. Pensieves allow us to copy and paste our memories, like a zip drive backing up a computer’s memory, if that makes sense. Let me show you.” Isis raised her wand and gently pressed the tip against her temple. As she pulled the wand away, a glowing silver fiber appeared. “It doesn't hurt,” she added calmly, to preempt the question. “You don’t even feel it.” Isis dragged the silver fiber to the fill line of the pensieve, and the moment the tip of her wand touched the liquid, a scene began to play.
There was a woman not horribly unlike the one from Oz’s memory. These types of people were always alike. She was crooked in every way; her nose, her glasses, her posture, and more. But in this case of functional magic, the person to whom she spoke was visible, and indeed recognizable. A small black girl who looked to be about nine or ten years old stood before her, shrunken down by the might of the teacher’s wagging finger.
“You need to try harder, Isis,” the teacher scolded. “You never turn in your homework, and your grades are slipping.”
“I ain’t got nothin’ to do it with,” the small girl sniffled. “And I ain’t got nobody to help me.”
“There are resources if you seek them out,” the woman returned, brushing the statement off entirely. “You just have to take some initiative and get it done. I’ve done everything I can think of for you, but you have to want to succeed. This is your last chance.”
The image swirled to nothing as the child drooped her head. “There will always be teachers who don’t know how to support you,” said the real Isis as a new image came to be. “But there are also people out there who will be there for you.”
A new Isis stood before them in the silver iteration, a taller girl, perhaps thirteen. A different teacher stood before her, with kind eyes and round features. She was a petite woman in height, shrunken further by age, as she was perhaps only a few years from retirement. “You did it!" she smiled, waving a test marked with an A. “Isis, I’m so proud of you!”
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Reed!” Isis grinned, tears streaking down her cheeks. “I couldn’t have done it without all your extra help.” The two hugged as this scene faded away as well, leaving nothing but a slowly turning tide.
Professor Isis Carter-Xavier wiped a tear from her eye. She really could never repay all that the Reeds had done for her, but to be able to give back to a new generation was always her dream, and this was the time. Isis believed in karma. She believed in returning energy to the world, and in beautiful cycles of famine and growth. And she believed in Oz. “Teachers were all students once too. We all got here from different paths and experiences. Everyone has their own story, with good chapters and bad ones. I hope Sonora can be a good chapter for you, Oz. And I will do everything in my power to help you through it.”
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Isis Carter-Xavier
Chapters [Oz]
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Oz Spellman
February 08, 2021 4:57 AM
Can I just... put a bookmark in it? by Oz Spellman
Oz was not in trouble. He was not in trouble, but Professor Carter-Xavier had something to show him. He wished teachers wouldn't say things like that. He wished they would just be like 'hey, come in here now' so then whatever it was just happened. He was aware enough of the whole memory drama going on (who could not be?) that any summons to a teacher's office seemed very ominous. More ominous than usual. Even if he wasn’t in trouble. His stomach was twisting itself up in knots by the time he casually sauntered into her office.“Uh-huh,” he nodded, when she talked about the penthing. He had listened to the lecture in the hall. He knew this. Had Henry told her that he hadn’t known about the seating thing and now she thought he didn’t listen to anything and needed it going over an extra time? It seemed weirdly overly informative for her to be personally showing him this. Something was going on.
And then she started pulling stuff out of her actual head, like something out of a 18+ movie where they stole your thoughts using space lasers or people got brainsucked by demons or something. Oz gave a visceral, verbal reaction to the sight, taking an abrupt step back. And then she eerily and calmly informed him that it hadn’t hurt. Which was exactly what the space demons would say when you were strapped to a table right before sucking out your brains. He was, he thought, generally pretty chill with magic. He’d been excited not freaked when Netflix Cop had floated potato chips around their living room. He was glad that the guy had chosen that as his party trick and not this.
Once she’d finished literally pulling literal thoughts from her literal head, and dumped them in the pen-pot, it got kinda interesting. It was a bit like a video, only with the best 3D and the worst colour resolution he’d ever seen. He stepped forward, curious in spite of his shock, although the words the lady was saying were sending more chills down his spine than seeing the memory get pulled out of his professor’s head.
“That’s you?” he confirmed, when the mean lady called the little girl by name. He’d seen Professor Carter-Xavier’s name on papers, and heard other teachers say it. It confused him, cos he thought that was the name of the bad guys in the news sometimes, but it probably wasn’t and it’d be rude to say so. Maybe even racist. He felt his stomach twist again as Lil’ Professor Carter-Xavier said no one was helping her. Kind of the opposite of his problem really, but it still sucked. It was weird looking at an adult and a kid from this angle. As a kid, he was very aware how adults were bigger than him and how they could make him feel small, but it was somehow different seeing both of them. He could see their relative sizes, and that the adult looked so much more like a bully instead of someone he had to look up to/at.
“Hey,” he protested, as the bigger figure continued to tell the smaller one off. He was bigger than both of them this time. And he knew from his own experiences that they probably couldn’t hear him, but it made him feel better. “Shut your face,” he told the mean lady.
And then Professor Carter-Xavier, the real, big one, was talking, and there was a nicer memory, and then she said more stuff, about him doing well and believing in people and whatever. He found the ceiling really, really interesting. It was like… up there and everything. Above his head. Where the eye contact wasn’t. She wanted him to pull his socks up and try his best, and she was behind him, and all that stupid stuff. He should just tell her that yeah, he would try, or whatever, but the words stuck in his throat because he wasn’t sure he could say them to her if he didn’t mean them.
“’Kay,” he said, doing his best to shrug it off like it didn’t even matter, although once again, his best was probably a bit of a far cry from good enough.
There was very little doubt left in his mind that she had seen his memory. Teachers didn’t just pour out their brains and give you speeches for no reason. He wasn’t, in spite of what some people thought, stupid, or totally immune to subtext.
“Why are you showing me all this?” he asked, even though he knew. In another surprise skill, unknown to most, he could keep things he knew or thought to himself sometimes, and he wasn’t about to be the one to say what they were both thinking. Though there was enough of an edge to his voice that it was definitely an accusation not an enquiry.
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Oz Spellman
Can I just... put a bookmark in it?
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Isis Carter-Xavier
February 08, 2021 5:52 PM
Absolutely. You can come back here whenever you want to. by Isis Carter-Xavier
Why?That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? Why was Isis showing Oz this? Why did she make herself relatively vulnerable to some eleven or maybe twelve year old, after all these years of shutting herself off, keeping past days past and silent, revealing only what she had to, to whom she had to?
Oz didn’t say much, but she could tell in his tone that she had reached him. She could feel it. “Well, to be honest, I encountered your memory, and it resonated with me. But it’s more than that. It’s because… because I think we understand each other,” she said after a moment of thought. “I think we’re very similar; you remind me of myself in a lot of ways. I think we can help each other, too. Without meaning to, you challenge me. You are making me a better teacher and maybe even a better person. And I want to help you become the best version of yourself, too. Maybe it sounds silly, but I think the universe has a way of keeping its balance.
“I am here now because of the support I found,” she stated plainly. Her tone did not condescend or patronize. She spoke to Oz like she might speak to an equal. “I just want to make sure you get that same opportunity.”
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Isis Carter-Xavier
Absolutely. You can come back here whenever you want to.
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Oz Spellman
February 09, 2021 6:34 AM
But urrrgh by Oz Spellman
“’cept you’re a black chick, and you’re grown up and stuff,” Oz pointed out when Professor Carter-Xavier said they were similar, because there was only a certain number of times per conversation that he could be expected to check what ran through his head before it reached his mouth. Plus she was saying all this sincere stuff about believing he could maybe turn into some kind of figured out adult like she was and he had zero ideas how to respond to that except with things that he’d rather keep to himself.She’d also called him challenging, which was much more familiar territory. Except he wasn’t sure she was saying it like a bad thing.
“Yeah, I figured,” he sighed when she admitted to seeing his memory. He sounded exasperated, like she was stating the obvious even though he’d asked her to be the one to say it. It was easier to be annoyed than it was to be scared or worried or any of the other things it made him feel. And also, any idiot could have worked that out, and he wasn’t an idiot. Occasionally, anyway. The feeling of judgement prickled fresh under his skin from seeing that old bag’s face staring down at him from the poster in the hall. But she wasn’t the one staring at him now. It was this person who said she kinda got what it was like to be him. He sort of felt bad for being a butthole when she was trying so hard to act like he wasn’t one, and part of his brain said to just lean right into that because it was going to be easier to prove her wrong than right. It would hurt less too, to shut down her belief in him good and early on when it was just some small idea. Before she invested time, before he tried-
Except he was trying. He was trying all the time. Maybe not at the things they wanted him to. Most of the time, he was trying to look like he wasn’t trying. He was trying to get people to like him. He was trying some of the stuff his mom wanted him to do, like keeping his head down, and pulling his socks up, and not getting into trouble. He was trying. It was just harder. He failed more often. He tried to laugh it off like it didn’t matter. And he tried- more than anything there was one thing he tried to do…
It was sort of weird, talking to someone who thought he might be trying, or might be good at it if he did. He thought about the images that had swirled before him in the pensieve.
“I do see a bit how we’re the same,” he admitted, pretty sure that was more of an insult than anything, except she apparently wanted it to be true. His own memory swirled around, playing out before his eyes even though no one had fetched it poured it out. He could still see it, even if it wasn’t there. And she had seen it. And… “You believe me not her?” he checked.
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Oz Spellman
But urrrgh
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Isis Carter-Xavier
February 12, 2021 5:56 PM
It's worth the read, I promise. by Isis Carter-Xavier
Isis generally did not have any explicit or specific expectations for these personal interactions with Oz, but even so, his comment surprised her. Maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised, because sometimes kids in awkward or emotional situations sort of lost the ability to… filter their words, but she definitely had to smother down a laugh. Yes, the two of them had some obvious differences, namely that she was, quote, “a black chick” and an adult, but she was talking about the things that were deeper than that. Isis was fairly positive Oz knew that, though, so she did not comment back.She was proven right by his acknowledgement further on, that he did see how they were similar. That was good. She wanted to be relatable, someone he could trust because she understood. There were a lot of differences, sure. Oz definitely seemed to have a better relationship with his mother than Isis ever had growing up, for example. But it wasn’t so much those sorts of details. It took all the aspects of the image to paint the complete picture, and their pictures bore a striking resemblance.
“Of course I believe you,” she responded simply. “We have been very honest with each other. So if you say you’re trying, I believe you are.” At the end of the day, that was all some kids needed sometimes. A little faith. A little trust. A little patience. And maybe just a dash of extra love.
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Isis Carter-Xavier
It's worth the read, I promise.
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Oz Spellman
February 12, 2021 6:49 PM
I'm not sure we're on the same page by Oz Spellman
Oz was surviving the conversation. He was pushing back, and it wasn't landing him in mire trouble. That, more than any kind of lecture, made him want to watch his mouth in future. Professor Carter-Xavier was trying - was he trying? That was a big question, even though Professor Xavier-Carter hadn't asked it, she just assumed he was. He had been thinking that he had to, sure, in all these unseen ways his teachers didn't know about or seem to remember from their own school days. He would give her enough credit to think that she actually hadn't forgotten all of that. The evidence of it was on the table in front of them and in all their conversations. But was he trying in the way a teacher who believed him would want him to? And how did that relate to Ms. Clarkwell?"She didn't say-" he began. Of course, she had said that sometimes. Try harder, Oscar. She had some fricking nerve after having had a go at him for- and that had been the one he had been thinking about a lot lately. But maybe it wasn't the one that had fallen out of his head? "What did you see?" he asked Professor Carter-Xavier
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Oz Spellman
I'm not sure we're on the same page
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