Why do you hate me? on Elective Hall

Giselle Duell

September 15, 2023 10:40 PM

Advanced Divinations by Giselle Duell

Giselle waited for her advanced students to arrive. As usual she knew when they would arrived and in what order. Their latest tests had been laid at the places where they would sit as usual. It was at times like this when she wondered if she had made all of the right choices in her life. Well, no, she knew she hadn't, but most of those were made under duress or deception. That wasn't what was really bothering her right now, she looked over her momentarily empty classroom and wondered if this was what she was supposed to be doing. She had been trained at a world-class academy for a talent few knew how to harness properly, she had a connection to some grand unknown that even fewer could even conceive of... And she was using it to see if Isla, Gus, or Rosalynn would be the first through her door, and where they would sit.

It wasn't that she didn't acknowledge the importance of educating young witches and wizards. But, was this really the best place for her? Was there something more or different she should be doing with her talents? What else was there though? Was it just because Valentine wasn't at school anymore to keep her company? Her niece had moved on, as students do, while she stayed behind at the school. Was she just feeling abandoned again? She knew she wasn't. Valentine, Marissa, and Andrew were all there if she needed them... but still...

Making a snap decision, Giselle waved her wand about, reorganizing the room's equipment. Some of the tools which had been tucked away moved out where they could be accessed easily. A fire leapt to life in the hearth at the back of the room. Things just settled down again as her first student arrived at the door to the classroom.

She greeted them as they entered and took their seats. As usual Giselle was wearing another somewhat mismatched output, this time it was an aqua blouse with a full length leopard print skirt. Her hair was held back from her face with a dark purple band, and as always her mirrored glasses covered her eyes.

Once everyone was settled she began. "Today I have decided to take a break from our current topic for an experimental exercise. We will be trying something that is quite difficult, and quite frustrating, but you are the advanced class and we will see what happens." She gave them all her best sweet and innocent smile. It was something she had learned from Valentine. "Today I want each of you to do your best, through whatever means you like, to attempt to divine some information about where you will be five years from now." She had told them often enough that looking into your own future was difficult and vague at best. Usually the best one could hope to achieve was some odd symbolism that only made sense once the time had passed. "Keep in mind all that we have discussed on this concept previously, and don't worry about it to much. I'm really just quite curious to see what sorts of results you all may get. As always if you have questions, I am here to help. You may begin."

Subthreads:

Why do you hate me? by Xavier Lundstrom with Constance Melcher

Arriving at my designated time to my designated place (tag Isla) by Rosalynn Tellerman with Isla Brockert

Waiting for the future to arrive by Amethyst Brockert with Tommy Jamison

2 Giselle Duell Advanced Divinations 1517 1 5

Xavier Lundstrom

September 22, 2023 9:56 PM

Why do you hate me? by Xavier Lundstrom

Xavier made his way into advanced divination. It took him a minute to work out what he was feeling as he entered the room. It was... Neutral. Physically. Mentally. He didn't have a churning stomach or a fuzzy head. Mentally... He wasn't sure that the neurality would last. It was more like a lull in the storm than a full change in the weather. But walking into the room wasn't like dragging himself forcibly through the sandpaper of reality. So. That was something.

He took a seat at a random desk, feeling a flicker of annoyance at Professor Duell's party tricks. He didn't appreciate being made a plaything of predetermined fate, nor reminded of the seemingly innavigable rules, whereby he was advised against peering too definitely into the future but she was free to use it to show off. He tried to just Elsa it, preferring the blank canvas he'd been when he walked in the room to the flickers of annoyance.

But then, as she started the lesson, those were fanned into full on flames of anger and fear. This was the trouble with taking mainstream divination. Everyone else was just taking it for fun, making their best educated guesses formed from what they knew or wanted to be true. There was limited real damage that they could do to themselves or others by pretending to look into the future for their own amusement, and for a grade that - as far as he could tell - was based on their creativity. It was all the things he'd had to guard himself against, and here it was being thrown down like a fun, meaningless challenge. Which, to everyone else, it was.

He scrabbled, clinging with his fingernails to the edges of his previous feelings - that precious absence of fear and pain, which passed for a good day in his book. He wanted to stay there.

At least the method was open. She had said… what had she said? What you were best at or whatever you wanted? Those were very different things for Xavier, who wanted to avoid the thing he was best at at all costs… The things that worked well for him had a history of getting too tight a grip on him. Crystal balls, Oz, Xanax… He always thought he was in control, conquering his demons, until suddenly those things were controlling him instead.

He considered tea, his absolute least favourite method because it combined vaguery with something that tasted awful, but maybe tarot was a happy middle ground. There was already somebody shuffling his favourite deck, and though they hadn’t been told to work together, it seemed like a good opportunity to maybe like… speak to another human. Hopefully he could do it without getting future-trancey and weird.

“Hey,” he said. “Do you want to sort of… work together? Sometimes it helps to bounce your interpretations off another person.” Which, without wishing to sound conceited, was probably especially true if it was him… “I really like that deck too,” he added, nodding to the tarot cards in their hand for further justification of why he’d come over.

13 Xavier Lundstrom Why do you hate me? 1529 0 5

Constance Melcher

September 30, 2023 4:36 PM

I do not hate you. by Constance Melcher

Constance was a creature of habit. She liked to sit in the same seat every day in class, and preferably the same spot for all her classes, barring any exceptionally different layouts like the greenhouse days in Herbology, whenever she could swing it. She tended to dress very similarly each day, even when she was not required to wear her school uniform, and kept many exact copies of the same clothing articles, just in varying colors. She often ate the same breakfast for as many days in a row as she could stomach it. The familiarities and consistencies allowed her peculiar little brain to focus on more important decisions.

So it was always troubling to her how much the professors and staff around Sonora tended to change things up from day to day. The lack of structure was truly disorienting to her. Connie liked clear instructions and goals, not abstract suggestions like “pick a method and figure something out.” Sometimes Constance wondered why she bothered taking Divinations. Part of it was sheer curiosity, and another part was the nagging urge in the back of her mind to know and explore everything. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure how much faith she put into predictions, but she told herself to go into it as unbiased as possible so as not to ruin the potential experiments she could conduct.

Ultimately, she selected a tarot deck and began to shuffle it up to see if that could give her any ideas. As she did so, Xavier Lundstrom asked if she wanted to work together. That wasn’t explicitly allotted by the instructions, but then again, it didn’t seem like Professor Duell would really care.

“It’s my favorite deck too,” she commented back with a nod to confirm she was in agreement, glad to see another believer in habit. “I’m… glad you’re better and back with us.” Connie didn’t know many of the details of Xavier’s previous absence, but she spent time, when she could, helping out Miss Katey in the infirmary, and she knew that even the medic had seemed worried.

Connie finished her shuffle and held the deck out to him. “Would you like to go first, or should I?”

12 Constance Melcher I do not hate you. 1523 0 5

Rosalynn Tellerman

October 08, 2023 10:18 PM

Arriving at my designated time to my designated place (tag Isla) by Rosalynn Tellerman

Rosalynn arrived at the Divination classroom about ten minutes early, which was approximately when she arrived every day, and almost all variation was due to her previous class getting out either early or late, as there were only fifteen minutes between the end of Care of Magical Creatures and the start of Divinations, and Rosalynn walked directly from one to the other, and five minutes was about how long it took to walk between the two classrooms.

It didn't take a lot of Sight to assume she'd be one of the first to arrive, but Professor Duell might have a slightly harder time picking out where she'd sit. Rosalynn tended to follow a particular table cloth she liked rather than picking a specific geographical location in the room as her own, and she wasn't sure how well Professor Duell, being blind, could tell apart the different table cloths.

She had a few friends in this class, including both Tommy and Isla, so her partner tended to vary from class to class as well. Today, it was Isla she spotted first and waved over to join her.

"Hi," she greeted. "TGIF," she added with a sigh and slight eyeroll. It was the last period of the day on the last day of the week, and she was feeling brain drained after a full week of seven RATS courses (that had definitely been a mistake, she realized that in hindsight, but it was almost over - just a little less than two months left until graduation, if RATS didn't kill her first).

Rosalynn perked up a little as Professor Duell announced a break from their regularly scheduled study topic to do something new. Something new was welcome and just the kind of change of pace she needed on a Friday evening.

The particular assignment though just made her groan. The reason she was taking seven RATS courses was because she'd had no idea at the end of her fifth year what she wanted to do with her life, and hadn't wanted to limit her options by not having enough RATS to pursue whatever program she did eventually decide to follow ... and she hadn't narrowed those choices down any in the last two years. She'd applied to six different schools for six different majors and the admissions boards hadn't eliminated any of those choices for her, sadly.

She had no idea at all where she'd be in five years and she kind of felt like that was a failing that she should have corrected by this late date in her seventh year. Some of her Vegas friends had been wearing their college sweatshirts since December.

Of course, the standard Divinations disclaimers applied - the future was always changing, seeing your own future was difficult, Divinations was not an exact science - so nothing she saw today (if she saw anything at all that she could interpret even vaguely) was immutable and it didn't mean she didn't still have free will to weigh her pros and cons and make her college decision rationally.

She glanced over at Isla. "What method do you think you'll use?" she wondered. She was partial to the Crystal Ball herself, just for the Hollywood dramatics and stereotypes of the tool, but she doubted gazing into one of those would give her much more than obscure symbolism, because that's all it ever gave.

1 Rosalynn Tellerman Arriving at my designated time to my designated place (tag Isla) 1520 0 5

Isla Brockert

October 09, 2023 6:13 AM

Same by Isla Brockert

Isla had to say, she was super glad that she’d continued with Divination. It was absolutely one of her favorite classes. However, right now, she really did not especially want to think about the future. Not that she thought it would necessarily be bad but well, she felt her time at Sonora getting closer to the end and admittedly Isla was not too thrilled about it.

It wasn’t even just the Ball. Currently she didn’t even think that would go as bad as last time, she would be able to hang out with Lorena and she was sure that Rosalynn would hang out with them somewhat too, with or without Tommy or both, since it was going to be their last night and all. So, Isla doubted she was going to have to stand around by herself while everyone else was paired off like last time, to her utter relief. She didn’t think that it was the worst ever thing to happen-considering what happened to Xavier and well…. just Topaz and Uncle Eustace in general, it was pretty minor-or the worst feeling ever, but that and it’s aftermath was the worst thing that had ever personally happened to Isla and the worst she’d ever felt.

Things were much better now. Although she did feel pretty bad for being happy that nobody asked Lorena. Obviously her friend deserved a great guy-a better one than Oz, who admittedly was just incompatible with the other Aladren anyway and whom Isla had not had the best opinion of before he was aggressive towards Jasper after the Challenges-but Isla did not want to feel left out again. She didn’t wish that on anyone. Not even Topaz.

What was bothering her about the end of the year was that everything was going to change. It wasn’t so much about the uncertainty of the future-in fact Isla was pretty sure that she knew what the future would hold for her without the help of Divination-aside from the uncertainty over how often she would get to see her two best friends. Obviously, she had every intention of keeping in touch with her roommates, but they wouldn’t be sharing a room or be around each other every day any more.

And that was just..heartbreaking for her. Isla felt so lucky to have the roommates that she did, especially given the experiences of some of her family members. True, Topaz was Topaz and it hadn’t mattered who her roommate had been, they wouldn’t have gotten along. However, Sapphire had felt rejected by hers-as well as everyone other than Esme’s roommate so Isla was glad her cousin had a boyfriend now, despite the fact that beating Topaz in anything, even something that the Aladren alumna didn’t really even want put one’s life in danger-and now Amethyst had had a falling out with Iris. Isla felt terrible for the sixth year and it made her so glad that had never happened with her and her friends.

Speaking of her friends, Isla entered the Divination classroom to see Rosalynn waving her over. She grinned, glad that she was going to get to work with her friend today. She understood that sometimes the other Aladren wanted to work with Tommy and Isla was okay with that. She really didn’t mind working with others, but obviously she preferred her friend. Especially now, so close to graduation when every moment spent together seemed precious and vital.

“Oh I know.” Isla replied. Granted, she didn’t have it as bad as Rosalynn who took seven Advanced classes, which was…amazing. Even Ian Priory who wanted to be a Healer only took five, although despite that, Ros didn’t seem nearly as tightly wound over it. Isla herself only took four, but she was starting to feel the strain a little. And her RATS results were probably a little less…dire for her than anyone else, since Isla wasn’t really planning on a career. The benefits of being a pureblood girl of high status, she supposed. She still wanted to do well anyway though. “Do you think it would be irresponsible if we took a break and did something fun this weekend?” Isla asked.

Professor Duell introduced today’s lesson and Isla groaned a little inwardly. This lesson wasn’t all that appealing to her for a very different reason than her friend. As much as she knew that she should be looking forward to the future-and that she couldn’t exactly stop it from coming-she felt nostalgic and couldn’t help clinging to the present.

She wondered if that would be different had she not had the experience of great friendships. After all,Isla knew that Amethyst now couldn’t wait to get out of here and her sisters and other cousins had not seemed bothered by graduating. Actually, both Topaz and Allegra had been especially eager to leave, Topaz to get away from her roommate and Allegra to get at least some respite from Topaz. Allegra now was the safest that she had ever been from their cousin since her husband Josh did a pretty good job of protecting her. Isla really did hope she found a good guy like her sister had. But he must love puppets.

“Oh, I’ll probably use tarot.” She replied. It was her favorite and she’d been learning it since prior to coming to Sonora. Her second cousin Alessa did it as a hobby and had taught her some. “It’s unfortunate being that we’re in Divination and all but…I really don’t want to think about the future now.” Isla felt like she could be honest with her friends regarding how she felt. They weren’t the sort that she felt like she had to worry about offending or that would judge her.

11 Isla Brockert Same 1521 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

October 09, 2023 8:18 AM

That's good to know by Xavier Lundstrom

Apprently, Xavier and Connie had something in common. Sure, it was as small as a single deck of cards that they both felt drawn to, but given he was a Seer, such things held a lot of significance to him. Or perhaps it wasn’t the Seer thing, and was just the fact that he was frigging lonely. So much so that he’d take a deck of cards in common with a somewhat weird Aladren girl as like… the greatest social connection to happen to him since Christmas.

Especially when she followed it up with unexpected care for his well-being.

Not that he thought that most of his classmates would rather he was still hospitalised. It was a pretty low bar, he hoped, to not wish him that much active harm in his life. But not all of them had bothered to say it. It was long enough ago that he felt surprised to have Connie mention it now, but… well, yeah. They liked the same cards and she cared enough about him not being dead to mention it. So, she was probably his closest friend now.

“You should,” he replied, when she asked who ought to go first. “You were shuffling them with the intent of reading yourself, presumably, before I came along. I wouldn’t want to disrupt that energy.” Which still sounded really made-up and ridiculous when he said it out loud but which he was pretty sure was actually A Thing.

13 Xavier Lundstrom That's good to know 1529 0 5

Constance Melcher

October 12, 2023 3:51 PM

I like knowing things. by Constance Melcher

Xavier’s logic was sound. That was reassuring, if she was going to continue this conversation with him. She thought she might like to. Constance did not know her yearmate very well - or another of the others, really - but she was more than happy to learn. She liked learning. It was intrinsically harder to learn about people than subjects in school, because they were often unpredictable and had a lot more nuances like vocal tone and potential dishonesty. But she would try, if he would let her, to learn more about him.

He wanted her to go first, because she had been shuffling already with her intentions on her own future. That was the sound logic. But what did her future contain? She fancied the idea of going into the medical field, which was why she spent so much time with Miss Katey in the infirmary, but mostly she liked the idea because medical school was supposedly very challenging.

“I will just… pull three cards and try to see if there’s a pattern,” Connie stated, more to herself than Xavier. The first card she pulled out was the three of swords in the upright position. Next was the six of swords, also in the upright position. She was beginning to wonder if perhaps she had not shuffled well, but the final card was the lovers in the reversed position. She sat the rest of the deck down and grabbed her textbook that was sitting nearby and began flipping through it. “Any immediate thoughts?” she asked Xavier as she skimmed the turning pages.

OOC: Website I'm using to look at cards: https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list

12 Constance Melcher I like knowing things. 1523 0 5

Amethyst Brockert

October 14, 2023 1:08 PM

Waiting for the future to arrive by Amethyst Brockert

Amethyst still felt miserable and did not feel like doing anything, which included going to class. However, it wasn’t as if she could skip them as she would then be in real trouble and possibly not get on the Head Student ballot. She could not take that chance. More than almost anything, the Crotalus wanted to attain that honor. Maybe not everyone was her close friend, but at least that would mean that they believed she could do the job and more importantly, liked her.

Because it had to be both. You could be incredibly capable of performing a job, but if it was something that people were voting on,those people also had to like you. People, especially people around Amethyst's age, didn’t vote for people they didn’t like, and they were also inclined to vote for their friends. At the moment, she obviously felt short of those so she was a bit worried. Hopefully Alexei would vote for her though.

There was also the fact that most people were inclined to vote for themselves, so right there, Amethyst had to worry that if all the girls in her class did so, and also felt-as she did, so she couldn’t blame them for this-it should be one male and one female student regardless of what the new rules were. Even though she would technically be competing against Alexei, Hans and Xavier, she didn’t actually think too many people were going to just pick two boys.

So, the boys and the fifth years were the ones that Amethyst most had to convince. Although it was entirely possible that Lydia and Connie would either not want the position and/or not believe there needed to be both male and female representation in student leadership, especially when there were already male prefects and there would be at least one more next year, since Fortune Ardovini was the lone fourth year Pecari.

Lydia and Connie also didn’t seem to be friendly with the other candidates, as the former mostly seemed to only be friends with Christopher’s friend Verdillia and the people Amethyst had seen the latter around the most were a first year that the Crotalus thought was her brother and Professor Wright, neither of whom were voting in this election.

At the very least, her cousins would hopefully vote for. She had always had this way of getting Christopher to do what she wanted and Liesl…well, that mean nasty manipulative part of Amethyst that she’d cultivated to survive around Mother and Topaz and tried to suppress now, the same part that wanted to make Lydia think that being Head Student would be too stressful and that she should vote for Amethyst instead, that wanted to have Chris convince Verdillia of the same, thought that Liesl should take into consideration what the Crotalus had apparently sacrificed for her.

But, she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to be that person, the one that her ex-friend seemed to think that she was. Nor did she want to hurt Lydia’s feelings in order to get what she wanted. She didn’t want to be like Topaz, although her older sister was inclined to hurt much more than someone’s feelings.

Furthermore, sacrificing her friendship with Iris for Liesl’s sake was not even something that Amethyst had intended to do or wanted to do. Obviously. She had simply been honest with the other Crotalus. And actually not even that since she hadn’t spelled out that Hans liked Liesl. Although she hadn’t known that for sure at the time and still actually didn’t, signs pointed to yes Obviously, he hadn’t asked the fifth year because Iris was going with Henry since both those things had happened at about the same time.

Besides, she couldn’t exactly guilt her cousin into voting for her without actually betraying Iris, so even though she perhaps shouldn’t feel loyalty to her roommate now, she still didn’t want to do that.

Anyway, despite the fact Amethyst did not especially want to be here, one good thing about this class was that her former friend wasn’t in it so she felt that she could at least relax a little. Which was probably better for allowing whatever mystical forces that governed Divination to do their thing.

And she didn’t mind the assignment the bit. Unlike Isla, she couldn’t wait to graduate, for obvious reasons that were the complete opposite of why her cousin was less eager. Besides,if she didn’t like what she saw today, she would do all she could to prevent it. All that was left to figure out was what method to use. “What do you think I should use?” Amethyst asked the person next to her. “Tea leaves or tarot cards? Or something else entirely?”

11 Amethyst Brockert Waiting for the future to arrive 1532 0 5

Tommy Jamison

October 29, 2023 10:04 PM

I'm with you there. by Tommy Jamison

Truthfully, Tommy didn’t really know why he had decided to take Divinations this year other than maybe a whim. He knew he wasn’t going to need it. Soon enough, he would be graduating and moving onto his adult career as a potioneer. For that, all he really needed was, obviously, his Potions grade to remain high, as well as a pretty good mastery of his Charms and general spellwork to give his brews that little extra zest. Still, Divinations was pretty fun, so even though it meant a little more work than he strictly needed, he did like learning, so he had kept on with it.

That next step in his life was getting ever nearer, though, and he couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous about the future, even though he thought he had it pretty well planned. So a fairly free-range session of future-seeing did seem like an ideal way to spend an afternoon in class. He was just starting to weigh his options when a neighbor asked him what she should use.

Amethyst Brockert. He didn’t know her particularly well, but he knew she was a Crotalus in the year below him. And her name was Brockert, which meant in some roundabout way or another, she was probably distantly related to his nephews. Tommy felt weird sometimes, being an almost-relative with so much of the school, but his sister Sophie had sure married into a large family. Sometimes he was glad to be from his dad’s second marriage and not the first - he had a lot less pressure from Pureblood society on his shoulders.

“Let’s do tea leaves,” he recommended. “Those are pretty classic.”

12 Tommy Jamison I'm with you there. 1518 0 5

Amethyst Brockert

October 30, 2023 5:32 PM

I'm sure it'll be brighter than the present, by Amethyst Brockert

Amethyst did not know Tommy Jamison all that well. He was a Teppenpaw who was dating Isla’s friend, Rosalynn and she thought his sister might be married to some distant relation of hers.. Of course, she could never keep all of those straight, if she really cared enough she’d have to ask Father’s first cousin Alessa who seemed to find that all fascinating but the Crotalus didn’t think she cared that much.

She really had too much else going on right now to think about it, with her own…social issues. Honestly, Amethyst had never thought that she would have those . She wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet-she had nothing against shy people, obviously she was very protective of Sapphire despite her sister being four years older than her but it wasn’t part of her own personality-and nor was she odd like Isla or Liesl. Amethyst did very well in the society world.

Of course, success in one social setting didn’t necessarily mean success in another. Angelique was obviously proof of that. And obviously, right now her odd cousins were doing better than she was since Isla had her friends and Liesl had Hans. Amethyst had Alexei but she was also having conflict with someone who had previously been her friend and neither of her cousins was fighting with anyone. Well, actually, Liesl “had conflict’ with someone, the Teppenpaw just didn’t know about it.

And Amethyst couldn’t even tell her. Because she didn’t want to make matters between herself and Iris even worse than they already were. Why she had any loyalty left towards the other Crotalus at this point and why she wanted to salvage things was anyone’s guess, but she did still have to spend over a year as her roommate still.

Which she was completely certain would be utterly miserable as it was. If she told anyone, especially Liesl, the problem-and Amethyst had never been especially close to the fifth year, she’d been closer to Iris, she just…saw things for how they actually were-would just be worse. Iris would most likely see it as a betrayal. After all, Amethyst had done all that she could last year to spare her former friend’s feelings and it hadn’t been right. She didn’t need to actually do something wrong on top of it. Maybe if Iris was more like Topaz, she’d warn her cousin to watch her back but then Amethyst never would have been friends with Iris to start with if she was like Amethyst’s sister.

Fortunately, Tommy was a much easier person to deal with, as he wasn’t her ex-best friend who wouldn’t listen to reason and wanted to take her frustrations out on Amethyst because she wouldn’t just do what Iris wanted and tell her what she wanted to hear, her evil older sister or someone she needed to impress so that he’d vote for her for Head Student. Of course the Crotalus usually tried to be as impressive a person as possible, though maybe not in terms of Divination skill where she was no better or worse than most.

Still, her pride did not allow her to show how unhappy she was. How much things really were getting to her. Amethyst smiled at Tommy. “Sounds good to me.”

11 Amethyst Brockert I'm sure it'll be brighter than the present, 1532 0 5

Tommy Jamison

October 31, 2023 5:50 PM

It'll definitely be tastier. by Tommy Jamison

With Amethyst’s approval, Tommy nodded and went to gather the materials for them both: two tea cups, a teapot of water, a couple loose leaf teas in diffusing pouches, and a paper towel. For a moment, he wondered if the flavor of tea would affect the reading at all, and if selecting one’s own tea was necessary in order to accurately make a prediction. He didn’t want his kind gesture to affect Amethyst’s future.

Although technically, if he thought about it too hard, he might have realized that getting someone a drink and affecting their future was sort of his signature move, since it was way back at first year orientation where he had brought Rosalynn a drink, which he had, as an eleven-year-old kid, thought meant that they were dating now. It was silly now, looking back at it, that that was how he and Ros got their start, but, hey, it had worked out. Maybe that was what Divinations was really about. Maybe that was fate.

In any case, he decided not to think about it too much and instead just got two different ones so she could have her choice. “The nice thing about doing tea leaves,” he commented as he returned and began setting the items on the desk beside them, “is that you get a nice beverage out of it.” Tommy held up the two tea pouches. “Do you prefer jasmine or oolong?”

OOC: Operating under the instructions found here, which says, "Loose leaf tea is poured into teacups and drunk until only the dregs remain. Next, the cup is swirled three times with the left hand and turned over to drain. Then the shapes of the leaves left in the cup are interpreted by the diviner"

12 Tommy Jamison It'll definitely be tastier. 1518 0 5

Amethyst Brockert

October 31, 2023 8:41 PM

Tasty is good by Amethyst Brockert

“Thank you.” Amethyst replied. She was not a huge tea drinker, she was more of a fancy coffee type of girl, lattes and espresso and cappuccino. She mostly drank tea in Divination as prelude to reading tea leaves, or occasionally at a fancy tea party though she did like the beverage when she had it. “I think I’ll go with oolong today.” Oolongs often were on the fruitier, more floral side. She preferred sweet drinks to bitter ones. Even when Amethyst had coffee, she never had it black.

She considered.what Tommy said. “You’re absolutely right. I’ve never actually thought about it that way. You don’t get that with tarot cards, which is what some of my relatives favor.” Alessa, her father’s first cousin, had taken it up as a hobby at some point, seemingly as a party trick as socializing was…difficult for her. She was that kind of person, like Liesl or Isla, who were kind of strange. Although to be fair to Isla and Liesl, they did okay in settings that were more suited to them, just not so much at society balls

Like both of them had friends at Sonora. Isla had her two roommates and Liesl had Hans. Although the two Tepps clearly had a real connection built on similar interests and just a special bond that was indescribable and magical, Amethyst didn’t know exactly what the three Aladrens had in common since she knew full well that just being roommates wasn’t enough. Granted maybe that was all that she and Iris had before and it obviously hadn’t been sustainable. Maybe they wouldn’t have stayed friends after graduation anyway. Amethyst wanted to believe that she was the sort of person who would be loyal to her friends even if they were from a different background than her, that she would do everything that she could to keep the person in her life after they left the environment that threw them together. True, she wasn’t a soft fluffy type like Cory or even Isla but she had believed she was the type who’d make the effort.

However, Iris didn’t see Amethyst as loyal. But telling someone that the person they liked probably liked someone else wasn’t disloyal. Which, to be fair, she hadn’t even exactly said, in fact, she had avoided saying that to spare Iris’ feelings. She had said that Hans genuinely liked spending time with Liesl and that someone else would be interested in the other Crotalus, both things that turned out to be true so at least Amethyst had the satisfaction of being right if nothing else.

Even though it still didn’t really seem to be enough. Usually she took delight in that but this time not so much.Not really.

She sipped her tea until it was gone and then scanned her cup, spotting a falcon, the sign of a persistent enemy. Amethyst sighed to herself. According to her tea leaves, it didn’t look like things were going to get better for a while. Although she supposed it could mean Topaz, not Iris. Or it could be about the Head Student election. Maybe someone would resort to a smear campaign against her. Which truthfully also would point to her ex-friend since she didn’t think anyone else hated her.

The Crotalus turned to Tommy. “So, do you see anything good?” She honestly hoped that he had a lot to look forward to. Amethyst was sure that she would someday, but not for a while yet. Still, good things could not come soon enough for her, she hated how they were right now.

11 Amethyst Brockert Tasty is good 1532 0 5