Alicia Bauer
November 27, 2013 3:54 PM
Spectating from on high. by Alicia Bauer
As she picked one of the higher seats in the stands and then squinted down at the green, trying to see what was happening already, Alicia had a cheerful smile on her face which didn’t at all match the strain the knuckles on her gloves were taking as she clenched her hands in her lap. Today would have, she was sure, been a tense one no matter what – not only was Thad establishing himself as team captain, but he’d just had to name himself Seeker, too, putting every eye squarely on him when they were not totally sure that was going to be a good thing – but she thought it was worse than had been inevitable because of who they were playing.She wanted Cepheus to be happy and successful and make her brother look like even more of a fool than he usually did whenever Isaac was presumptuous enough to even mention the name of one of her friends. The problem was that for him to do so, especially now that they were both playing Seeker, Thad had to be unhappy and unsuccessful if Crotalus played Aladren, as was about to happen. This left her in an uncomfortable position.
Objectively, she knew this should have also all bothered her worse when Thad’s job had been to chase Cepheus around while brandishing a big wooden magically reinforced bat which could, if applied just so, crack a guy’s skull without any help from a Bludger, but somehow, it seemed worse now that they held the same positions, or near enough, a captain and an assistant captain who were trying to catch the same ball. If Cepheus, a Seeker of many years’ standing, lost to someone who at the very least hadn’t played Seeker in five years, then in the public mind, Arnold Carey might well stop being…well, at least quite as much of a freak of nature and Cepheus might just become a lousy Seeker. If Thad lost to anyone at all, however, then his time as captain got off to the worst start possible and the whole team lost all kinds of face, taking the House with it.
As for them getting hurt…well, she didn’t like it when it was them, but she had accepted that. She wasn’t quite to the point yet of telling Thad before a game to come back with his shield or on it, but she was more concerned that they take bruises and broken bones like men than that they simply not get a little banged up. If they were going to do something dangerous, she wanted to be proud of them for how they carried it as well as for doing it at all. Besides, maybe this would break Thad of whatever insanity had possessed him to take this position….
Well, maybe not that. She couldn’t really say anything – in his place, pushed into a position where caution didn't really work anymore, she suspected she would have done the same thing. Injury sounded better than being considered second rate, and the center of the stage really was the only place to be. They really were two of a kind in that way – ravens and crows, she though almost affectionately, despite this involving acknowledgment that the analogy at least gave Thad some poetic associations and left her as just a carrion eater. Someone had to do it, after all, and that wasn't the point. She thought she should be surprised, really, that she hadn’t seen this coming.
Still didn’t mean it was her favorite change to things ever, though.
She didn’t see the Quaffle go up from her vantage point, but she did notice all the players going up, and quickly picked out the two she thought were her friends…who promptly got together. Somehow, she doubted they were exchanging the pleasantries they might at one of her get-togethers, but hope was still in the jar, she supposed – little sense though that made. People felt Hope all the time, and while she had only read the story in translation and no commentary on it, it made sense that if diseases and evils were only supposed to wander the earth because the jar had been opened, then what was in the unbreakable jar should not be experienced. Though, it had been in a jar of evils - maybe there was hope and then there was hope, though even what they had could kill, she'd read. The story made no sense; she should look up what was supposed to make it do so, if anything did, sometime.
"At least the Beaters can't go after them right now," she muttered, squinting up, not really paying attention to the actual game.
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Alicia Bauer
Spectating from on high.
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