Current State of the Union on Labyrinth Gardens

Connor Pierce

August 15, 2005 10:10 PM

Current State of the Union by Connor Pierce

It can't be this hot this close to Christmas, Connor thought, blinking as he stepped out of the Pecari common room and into the Labyrinth Gardens. He came from a relatively dry part of the world, but Texas' climate couldn't hold a candle to the Painted Desert. It would have been easy to think it was the dog days of summer than to think that it was getting close to winter. It had been worse in September, largely due to the fact that he hadn't adjusted to the oddities of Sonora's weather patterns yet, but it hadn't gotten noticeably cooler.

Squinting up at the mansion, Connor was vaguely surprised to feel a kind of affection for the place. Weird, considering the fact that he'd come to Sonora Academy reluctantly and had intially dubbed the place federal prison. Changing his mental designation for it had helped. That and Gwen. Never in a million years would he have seen himself becoming friends with a girl, but Gwen was...Gwen. Or had been Gwen. Something was up with her - ever since that day when all the adults showed up, she'd been avoiding him and pretty much everyone else like they carried the plague. His normal strategy in such a case would have been to ask her point-blank what was up, but that involved actually catching up with her long enough to talk. She was as good at avoiding people as Anne was at confronting them, in his experience.

He'd written Beverly about a week earlier,and had finally gotten a reply back. He didn't know why, but he felt that there was something ominous about the letter. Could have had something to do with the fact that it was his mother's handwriting on the front (Rachel couldn't grasp the concept that she didn't need to include things like addresses and postage on owl mail). It was that sense of foreboding that had made him decide on impulse to read it outside rather than in. If something was wrong with Bev...he refused to let himself remember what it had been like when she was sick. The doctors in Houston had said she was better. They called it 'in remission', but it all came up to the same thing in his mind.

There were two letters in the envelope. The first and shorter of the two was from his mother. Her handwriting looked strained, for some reason.

Connor,

Just thought I ought to check up on you, sweetie. Oh, yeah. Something was wrong. Rachel Lowell Pierce never used words like 'sweetie' or 'honey' unless someone was on their figurative if not literal deathbed. She'd called him 'honey' for a month after his father died. Trisha and Jim stopped by the other day. Trish has declared unofficial warfare on your father's family for paying for you to go to boarding school but not doing the same for your brother and sister. Don't worry, I don't even know where they are, so she can't do more than mutter about snotty rich people.Your father didn't keep in touch with them very well. Connor suppressed a laugh. That sounded like Aunt Trisha, all right. He was looking forward to seeing her at Christmas.

Beverly has a mild case of the flu, but she'll be all right. I think she's going to write something to send with this, see? Paul introduced us to his friend Cyndi last week. Kristina is as well as can be expected. He frowned. Rachel never called Khrissy Kristina. 'As well as can be expected'. What was that supposed to mean?

I think I've managed to set the cornbread on fire, so I'll wrap this up before we don't have a house. Write back to me, honey. If not for the 'honey', she might have pulled off sounding normal. His mother was a notoriously bad cook. That was why Khrissy and Beverly had learned how.

Love, Mom

The second letter didn't carry the same deceptively cheery overtone. Beverly got straight to the point, which wasn't her usual style. Connor found himself remembering that old movie 'Freaky Friday' and wondering if his mother and sister had switched bodies or something. His stock of skepticism had gone down drastically since he got his letter.

How's my dearest darlingest big brother doing at boarding school? Hopefully better than we're doing here. You're not going to believe this, but Khrissy's in trouble. Bad trouble. She's - There were three or four beginnings, all censored out with scribbles of a black ink pen. Beverly's handwriting picked up again abruptly. Since it's you, I'll be blunt. If it were any other guy on earth, I'd talk about 'delicate conditions', but as it is...she's gone and gotten herself pregnant. Mom went ballistic, especially when she found out that Kris has been aware of this for about four months. I didn't know Mom could yell like that, honestly. Paul evacuated to go see his latest trashy girlfriend. I, being unable to drive for another six years, was forced to stay and hear it all.

If your fancy school will let you camp out there over Christmas, I would. They've forgiven you for being a wizard because of the whole Khrissy thing, but it's chaos here. Kris and Mom won't talk except to yell, which they do a lot, Paul spends every second he can somewhere else, and I'm stuck trying to keep everyone happy. It was easier when there were two of us to share the workload. I'm just glad that I've been doing pretty well lately.

I saw Doc Sailors again last week. He says I'm still all right. I know how you worry about me, though you shouldn't. I'm fine now, even Doc Morrison says so. Khrissy's the one you need to worry about. I don't know what she's gonna do, her boyfriend's skipped town. It's all a mess.

And I'm the worst person in the world to ask about friendships and crap, Connor. You know that. I'm the girl who had cancer and sees a shrink. People are not my specialty area. All I can say is to not get in further than you can get yourself out. You don't have to thank me for the advice, I know I'm the font of all wisdom.

Love, Beverly

Connor had to read Beverly's letter twice before it sank in. Well, it makes sense why Mom used Kris's proper name, he thought. He couldn't blame Paul for steering clear of it all. This was the first time in who-only-knew how long he could remember feeling sorry for Khrissy. Of course, it was her own fault, but still...'ballistic' had probably been Beverly's attempt to be diplomatic in describing their mother's blowup. He could almost hear it himself, all about how she'd raised her kids la-di-da...he loved his mother, but there was no questioning the fact that she had been stuck on her ideas about motherhood ever since Beverly got sick.

"And the current state of the union is that Chicken Little has a point," Connor muttered. "The sky really is falling down." Where had that come from? He'd been around Anne too much, that sounded like something she'd say. This was just great. It was the whole principle of the Greek gods: just when you think things can't get worse, they do. He thought he should have learned that by now.

OOC: Sorry if I'm in the way of the tour, I had to get this down before I lost it. I had Gwen and Anne's permission for the bits about them, so no worries. \n\n

0 Connor Pierce Current State of the Union 68 Connor Pierce 1 5

Dalila Bastet

September 04, 2005 10:41 PM

Current State of Boredom by Dalila Bastet

It was only a few days till the holidays and Dalila couldn't be more bored. All her homework had been finished that morning and packing was going to wait till the last second, so there was nothing to do but wander the school with her cat, Nut, at her heels.

She turned a random corner and on the other side of a particularly large bush was a boy with red hair. Dalila sat behind the bush and watched the boy read some papers and then mutter to himself. She had always been fond of people with red hair. Her first best friend - Gretchen - had had red hair, but she thought this boy looked as though he would rather be alone.

She was just about to leave and continue her walk, but Nut had other ideas. He walked jauntily around the bush giving Dalila just enough time to gasp and lunge for him before whipping over to the boy and rubbing against his ankles.

Dalila, now lying face first in the ground, lifted her head to the boy and gave a sheepish grin.

"Sorry, 'bout that. Nut can be a little too affectionate."\n\n

0 Dalila Bastet Current State of Boredom 60 Dalila Bastet 0 5

Connor Pierce

September 05, 2005 8:25 PM

Would you believe me if I said I wish I was bored? by Connor Pierce

Connor was still mentally debating over whether or not he should take steps to keep his mother from knowing that Beverly had filled him in on Khrissy's condition/crisis when a girl rounded the corner. He only vaguely registered her; he was sure she wasn't Gwen (she didn't abruptly hurry in the opposite direction) or Anne (she didn't have black hair and didn't carry the 'I-wanna-beat-you-up' air Anne had ever since Alumni Day, which seemed to have made the school money at the expense of the student's mental health)\n\n

0 Connor Pierce Would you believe me if I said I wish I was bored? 68 Connor Pierce 0 5

Connor Pierce

September 05, 2005 9:23 PM

Drat dysfunctional keyboards! by Connor Pierce

OOC:Sorry, Dalila. I hit the 'submit response' button on accident before I finished the post. Just ignore the earlier attempt. I think I messed up on how things happened, anyway. BIC:

Connor was still thinking about exactly how he should approach the demanded reply to his mother in regards to his knowledge of the Khrissy situation as, unbeknownst to him, Dalila entered the scene. She could have walked directly across his line of vision without getting much of a response, as he could have told fairly easily that she wasn't someone he knew and he wasn't really in a mood for attempting to make conversation with random passers-by. He had supposedly been talkative before his father died, but he didn't remember that and didn't particuarly want to. These days, anyone who didn't speak to him would, under normal circumstances, be ignored.

The best thing to do to encourage diplomatic relations with Rachel would be to evade the topic of his eldest sibling altogether. He didn't remember exactly when he had realized it, but it had been in the brief gap between his father's death and Beverly's diagnosis that he had figured out how his mother dealt with life. She pretended those things which she found unpleasant, uncomfortable, or inconveinient did not exist. This was hardly the tallest tale he'd ever had to tell because of his mother's unfortunate prediliction for ignoring the past; this was just not mentioning something he had a feeling Beverly wasn't supposed to have told him.

The subject couldn't be avoided forever, though. He didn't know if he could act shocked when he walked into the house this summer and saw Khrissy either pretty far gone or already with a kid. He was a pretty good liar, but that was pushing the limit just a tad far -

His mind was brought back to the present place and time as a cat came around the corner and began to wind around his ankles, followed promptly by a girl who had apparently decided that throwing herself facefirst onto the ground sounded like fun. It took him a minute to process what she said. Was Nut the cat? He looked from her to the cat and back again. "S'all right, Miss," he said after a minute, the first part of it coming out in a muttered jumble. He really did need to work on that and his habit of calling girls Miss, as some of them didn't seem to like it very much and the last thing he needed right now was to have a girl decide to take the law into her own fists..."Er - here," he said, a bit desperately, offering her a hand up. Then, because he could see no way out of it, "I'm Connor Pierce." That was perhaps the most he had said at one go all week.

OOC again: Out of curiosity, does Nut mean like something you eat or like the Egyptian deity?\n\n

0 Connor Pierce Drat dysfunctional keyboards! 68 Connor Pierce 0 5

Dalila

September 06, 2005 7:41 PM

Keyboards can be quite evil by Dalila

OOC: Nut as in the Egyptian Deity...I got a theme going here.

BIC:
An accent! And he called her Miss? It was odd, but in a good way. Dalila menatlly shrugged her shoulders as Connor(that was going to be hard for her to remember) helped her up.

Dalila dusted off her school robes and then held out a dusty hand. "Dalila Bastet at your service. And if you didn't already know, that's Nut," she stated, pointing to the black and silver spotted cat that was still encircling Connor's ankles. "She's got a mind of her own." The cat looked up at the two humans with a look of pure innocence on her face.

"So...(she couldn't remember his name)I guess we'll be going now...unless you want some company?" Dalila looked at Connor, trying to hide her silent hope that he'd want her to stay. This was the most exciting thing to happen all day.\n\n

0 Dalila Keyboards can be quite evil 0 Dalila 0 5

Connor

September 10, 2005 6:26 PM

That's what makes them keyboards. by Connor

"I reckon most animals do," Connor said in regards to Nut having a mind of her own, shaking Dalila's hand a little awkwardly. "Don't suppose they could survive if they didn't." There was something uncanny about the innocent look on the cat's face, but Connor had learned from Gwen that one of his new world's first rules was to never ask too many questions. More often than not, the answers would prove to be more than you ever really wanted to know. Of course, Gwen's "lessons" had all been based on what she had seen and learned in her own family, which he had come to think of as a nut-house factory, so maybe that wasn't the best point of reference in the world. A weird cat wasn't quite on a level with a grandma who talked to her dead husbands.

He wasn't quite sure how he should respond to the offer of company. He had loosened up some of his formalities around girls out of necessity - there were, frankly, few here who were not girls - so that wasn't the problem. The problem was conflicting desires. He didn't want to think about Beverly and her shrink or Paul and his girlfriends or Kris and her baby or his mother and her issues. Left to his own devices, his mind was almost inevitably going to go to those cheerful topics. On the other hand, he was hardly what most people would call good company even in the best of circumstances. Not making enemies was one of the good ideas Connor strongly suspected might be universal.

"You can stay if you want to," he said after a moment. "I ain't got anything to do, and I don't reckon you do, either."

One thing no one had ever accused Connor Pierce of was always having the best ideas. \n\n

0 Connor That's what makes them keyboards. 68 Connor 0 5

Dalila

September 10, 2005 8:32 PM

I thought it was the keys... by Dalila

"You can stay if you want to. I ain't got anything to do, and I don't reckon you do, either."

It didn't exactly sound as though Connor wanted her company - or any one else's for that matter - but, he did say she could stay, so she took him up on that offer. He was right - she had nothing better to do than stand in the middle of the Gardens and talk to the red-haired boy with the funny, yet undeniably cool accent.

She decided to start a conversation around that.

"I love your accent. Where are you from? The South, right? It souinds like it." She picked up Nut, who was still winding her way around Connor's ankles, and cradled her in her arms just to have something to do with her hands. She was more of an action girl than a talk girl, but a conversation was the best she was going to get at the moment.

Plus, you never know when talking could lead to to an impromtu game of Quidditch.
\n\n

0 Dalila I thought it was the keys... 0 Dalila 0 5

Connor

September 23, 2005 10:44 PM

True. That title was a pun only I get. by Connor

OOC: Sorry for long reply time, the dreaded RL always gets in the way. BIC:

Connor settled on neutrality when Dalila decided she did indeed want to stick around. She seemed nice enough. He had no reason to object to her company as of yet, and thus didn't do so. It was what Beverly called momentary reasoning, basing thoughts and actions alike on the circumstances of the moment. She, of course, considered herself above such behavioral patterns. Not even he could deny that Beverly was just a little bit stuck on herself at times, though he personally thought it was because she had been to New York City with their father's sister after she went into remission. Bev was the only one of the four siblings who any member of their father's family had ever deigned to meet, and, until he came here, the only one of the four ever to cross the state line, and it had turned her head a little. She was still better company than his two older siblings, though.

He wasn't prepared for Dalila's opening conversational remarks, and stared at her for a moment before answering. He had never given a second thought to the way he talked, except when his grammar completely disintigrated in moments of stress.Pretty much everyone he had ever known spoke the same way. He had noticed that his own dialect was a cousin to that of the Deep South soon after arriving here, but that accent, or at least the costal version of it, was softer and seemed to contain fewer vowel sounds and more syllables. He found a reply.

"Thanks, I guess," he said. "Most folks talk like this in Texas. That's where I'm from. Can't say I know too much about the south, unless you think of Texas as being sort of western and sort of southern. I'd never really thought about it before." There had never been any need to. The furthest from home he had ever been was Houston, and that hadn't been a fun trip, as he had thought his sister was dying at the time. After that, he had only left home to go to school. In hindsight, it hadn't been a half-bad way of life. \n\n

0 Connor True. That title was a pun only I get. 68 Connor 0 5

Dalila

September 23, 2005 11:19 PM

Inside jokes with yourself? by Dalila

BIC: Good. Something to do and someone to do it with. Dalila gave away an internal sigh as Cory? No...Connor! answered her inquiry.

"Texas? Wow, cool. I guess that would be like south and kinda west, but since I'm from Los Angeles, it's not saying much. I wish we had accents besides the stupid 'Valley Girl' thing I keep doing." She frowned at the thought of her copious use of the word 'like' and the fact that her voice rose to a sqeak, when she was overzealous for anything. Besides that and having actually grown up in "The Valley", there wasn't much else to give herslf to that stereotype. There's very few Valley Girls that would magick orange streaks into their hair for the fun of it.

She shook her head to rid herself of the useless thought and continued. "You're a first year, right? What house? You like it here or are you really ready to like steal a school broom and race home ASAP? Am I asking too many questions? Sorry, I do that a lot." She smiled rather than blushed at her incesant chatter and pushed a loose strand of brown and orange hair behind her ear.\n\n

0 Dalila Inside jokes with yourself? 0 Dalila 0 5

Connor

September 24, 2005 8:01 PM

That's it, exactly. by Connor

Connor hadn't noticed anything especially unusual about Dalila's word choice for one simple reason: Khrissy talked the same way except for the accent. He and Beverly and Paul had no end of fun teasing her about it, and she had no end of fun chucking things at their heads and then assuming the holier-than-thou air before delivering some derisive speech about their lack of sophistication. These "feuds" were the only things Paul was not one hundred percent on Khrissy's side in. Instead of splitting neatly down the middle by gender, the four Pierce kids had divided by age. Their parents had made a tactical error in having two children in quick succession, waiting several years, and then having two more in even quicker succession. Somewhere between the age differences and personality differences, people had come to think of Kris and Paul as a unit and of Connor and Beverly as twins.

Dalila managed to surprise him yet again with her rapid-fire list of questions, including a question about her questions. "It's - all right," he said. "I'm in Pecari, and yeah, I'm a first year. It's all right here, I guess." He laughed. "Even if it wasn't, stealing one of the school's brooms would be the equivalent of having a death wish. Both of my parents were cops way-back-when, and it wouldn't go over well. Cops are the Muggle version of Aurors." The last bit was added in case she was a pureblood along the same lines as Gwenhwyfar and didn't have a clue what he was talking about. He decided against mentioning what his parents were up to these days because of his father's current lodgings at the local cemetary. It wasn't something he liked going into, for what he considered obvious reasons. Not even Gwen knew about that, and he had no intentions of revealing it to anyone until he could find no way out of it. \n\n

0 Connor That's it, exactly. 68 Connor 0 5

Dalila

September 24, 2005 9:09 PM

Of course it is... by Dalila

Dalila giggled at Connor's explanation. She knew what cops were. She was one of the lucky few who grew up having known both the Wizard and Muggle worlds. Her father taught middle school history and her mother was currently in Egypt studying - of all things - the moon's affects on magical water creatures. Her grandmother was currently Dalila's main source of magical guidance in her mother's absence. And she told him all this.

"I know what cops are. I'm half and half, and I'd be in the same water with yuou on the broom thing if my grandmother found out. If she saw me on a broom, stolen or not, it would be my head. Not that that would stop me." She smiled sadly, for some reason missing her strict, crazy grandmother horribly.

"So both your parents are cops? That means your muggleborn, right? You must have thought you were dreaming when you got here. Sometimes I can't believe it myself and I grew up witrh the stuff." She punctuated the phrase by brabdishing her wand and tapping Nut, who had abandoned Connor's ankles and was now stretched out in a patch of sunlight, turing the cat's ears into little wings.

"Shoot! I just meant to turn them blue!" She wracked her brain trying to find the counterspell as Nut's ears fluttered uselessly on her head. Coming up with nothing, she shrugged and giggled.

"Well, I guess I can take her to the Healer later. No serious damage." Nut meowed pathetically.

\n\n

0 Dalila Of course it is... 0 Dalila 0 5

Connor Pierce

October 07, 2005 10:00 PM

Yes, I fully admit that I'm weird. by Connor Pierce

Finally, someone else who had the vaguest idea about how normal people lived. Even if her Muggle family was of the rich-and-snotty variety, they still had to be closer to his original world than to the people completely native to this one. It raised his opinion of her somewhat. He might have been growing fonder of the wizarding world, but he still thought it was weird in a lot of ways and supposed he always would.

"Yeah, my family's all-Muggle, as far as I know." That he didn't know any of them except the youngest of his mother's three sisters and her husband and daughter was a moot point, and not one he was overly inclined to examine. Like a certain other point... "Mom gave up the whole field work thing years ago, though," he said. "These days, she's just a mother-of-four housewife." Well, that was at least a half-truth. Rachel Lowell Pierce had never been, and would never be anything as stereotypical as a mother-of-four housewife save in name. Her often-bizzare approaches to giving up smoking were proof of that without anything further being added.

He blinked for a lack of anything more creative to do when the cat's ears suddenly turned into wings. He wasn't entirely sure if it was a charm or a transfiguration (the line seemed really blurry, sometimes), but it was clear that it wasn't the intended effect even before Dalila said as much. Of course, he couldn't wholly see the point of turning the cat's ears blue, either, but...

"Er...yeah, the doctor would probably be able to fix that," he said finally. "I would help you out, but Transfiguration isn't really my strongest area." Did he even have a strongest area? Knocking out the dummy in Defense Against the Dark Arts had been fun, but that would make for an altogether lame pun about genetics. Flying had been fun, until there was a midair catfight and near-death thing. "Yeah," he repeated, deciding that what he was good at was another subject that could remain unbroached.\n\n

0 Connor Pierce Yes, I fully admit that I'm weird. 68 Connor Pierce 0 5

Dalila Bastet

October 08, 2005 1:42 PM

I bet I'm weirder by Dalila Bastet

"You have brothers and sisters?" she asked quickly, ignoring Nut's wing ears smacking her hand. "I'm an only child...I've always wanted a brother or sister. What are they like? You must have so much fun!"

She stopped to catch her breath and stared at Connor with large eyes. Nut mewed pathetically over and over again. Finally, Dalila looked down and sighed.

"Maybe you could answer on the way to the nurse. Nut seems to be taking her wings harder than I thought."

Dalila stood up, lifted Nut, and gestured to Connor.

"You coming?"\n\n

0 Dalila Bastet I bet I'm weirder 60 Dalila Bastet 0 5