Asher Tallow (and brother Michael)
June 30, 2006 10:14 PM
Back after long absence! by Asher Tallow (and brother Michael)
It felt good in an odd not-so-good sort of way to be back. Asher and her brother had left almost immediately after the start of her second term- Michael’s first- and the courts had finally decided their fates well enough to allow them to come back. Joint-custody it was called, and it was exactly the same in the wizarding world as it was in the Muggle world: it sucked. Shared holidays, split summers, doubled birthdays, separate houses- there were so many new terms and conditions to learn that Asher had decided not to bother. She would be told where to go and with who when the time called for it.The divorce was finalized in July, and she spent the rest of the summer sleeping on a couch in her mother’s apartment in Montreal. Her brothers shared the extra bedroom, which had been almost entirely filled by the two bunk beds that slept them. Her mother had insisted the apartment was a great find: top floor, two bedrooms and two bath, floor to ceiling windows, and utilities fully covered by the rent. Asher had suggested charming the apartment to fit more rooms, but charms had never been much of a forte of Marguerite Sarto’s (formally Tallow).
She saw her dad again briefly before returning to Sonora. He seemed sadder, but his words were upbeat and he promised to come visit them at school. Asher had decided to not count on too many of her parents’ promises, as the courts seemed to change their mind rather easily. At least, for now anyway, she and Michael had a permanent place to stay, and no parents to argue over them, not visibly or audibly anyway.
Asher had avoided her dorm room as much as possible, as well as the Cascade Hall except for the required meals. She wasn’t avoiding people, or anyone in particular, of course. She wasn’t scared or anything. She just didn’t want to deal with the questions that were bound to be asked- not that it was anyone’s business. The Labyrinth Gardens had become, by exclusion alone, her haunt since returning to school.
Michael liked to follow her there, though, and that was becoming a problem.
“Go and make a friend,” she ordered her brother.
“I don’t like the people here,” Michael complained, his expression sullen.
“You don’t know the people here.” Asher pulled nervously on the tips of her now very short hair. She’d cut it back in March, after her first stay at her mother’s apartment. It had grown two inches since then and now hung just below her ears.
“I don’t see you surrounded by people,” he shot back.
“That’s by choice,” she explained, painfully patient so to make it painfully clear to her often painfully obtuse sibling.
“So I’m choosing to not know any of them,” Michael answered quickly, hastening his pace to keep up with his sister who was all but running down the Gardens’ central path.
“Then go somewhere else to not know them,” Asher snapped. “You like to read, go to the library or something. Go make one of your stupid planes. I don’t care, just go somewhere away from me.”
To further emphasize her meaning, she threw herself purposely down on the grass, beside one of the many statues that littered the Gardens. Her brother hated to get dirty, and by the way he stood fidgeting, the choice before him was an obvious quandary.
“Fine,” he finally muttered. “I’ll go for now. But I’m not going to talk to anyone,” he added.
Asher just nodded her head and watched as her brother shuffled his way back down the path. Finally, alone at last! Unfortunately, that was soon rectified by the entrance of the one person Asher least wanted to run into.
OOC: We're back, after so long of an absence. As explained in the post, Asher and brother were taken from school to deal with their parents' divorce. That knowledge, if known, would only be due to rumors, which, as rumors always are, would be sketchy.\n\n
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Asher Tallow (and brother Michael)
Back after long absence!
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Asher Tallow (and brother Michael)
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Gwen Carey
July 02, 2006 1:06 AM
Welcome back to the madhouse. by Gwen Carey
Gwen had been allowed to return to Rosamund's after the Five Year's Reunion ended, and they'd made a good last few weeks of it. Her aunt had begun teaching her how to sew, something Rosamund swore every pureblood girl who had the faintest hope of getting married had known how to do in her day, and had surprised her with a few new sets of robes as a belated birthday present. The materials weren't a high-end as she might have liked, but they fit and looked like something a Savannah Carey would wear so long as one didn't look too closely at them. She had promised to return for Christmas if she could and had been seen off to Sonora by Harold, Rosamund's grim old manservant.Never, in those few weeks, did either of them mention a word about the Reunion or anything that had happened during it. Gwen had found herself reluctant to divulge the information, and Rosamund hadn't asked. Whether this was because Rosamund knew she didn't want to talk about it or because Rosamund wanted to spare herself hearing about it, Gwen didn't know, but she was grateful for it just the same. Morgaine had started refusing to so much as yell at her because she'd befriended the family half-blood, and her father had been...civil. Almost pleasant, for him, on some occasions. They had run into each other repeatedly, as had been inevitable, and he had neither ignored her nor been overtly hostile towards her. He had been...normal. Not normal for him, but normal the way other people were normal. Normal like Uncle Roland. She'd been so unnerved by it that she still couldn't countenance discussing it with anyone, much less Alasdair's sister.
That this was going to continue to be a strange year had become apparent soon after arrival at school. Jordanna Howard was back, and Gwen was avoiding Crotalus House like it carried the plague. Her usual retreat was Avalon. Only Connor could find her there, but she usually didn't mind talking to him, so long as her family wasn't the topic of discussion. At the moment, however, she didn’t want to talk about anything, which was the reason the Quidditch Pitch and the library - Anne's hangouts - were out-of-bounds for the moment. The gardens were big and in the shape of a seemingly endless maze. There wasn’t much of a chance that she’d run into anyone who wouldn’t find an excuse to be elsewhere if they saw her, and the only person she could think of who she knew properly who might be out here was Cate Raines. Annoying Cate was always fun, if she got the chance, and she hadn’t got to do it yet this year. It was fun, but not worth starting another in-House war over because she was clueless enough to do it in front of Nicoletta and Jordanna.
Her immediate reaction to seeing a boy heading in the opposite direction from herself was to jump down the nearest path and wait for him to pass by. Coward, the voice in her head said bluntly. Afraid to talk, are we? We didn't used to have a problem with shooting off our mouth at the worst possible moment -
No. She wasn't going to stand here and go into an argument with herself. No, no, no, and no. However, the boy's exit from said area implied it was safe to go into. There was most likely nothing interesting there, since he hadn't been running. Gathering her dignity, she resumed her walk as if nothing had happened. This quickly proved to be a mistake, because the area she walked into was not, as she'd assumed, empty. Another person - another girl - was lying on the ground, apparently without a care for her robes or anything else. Gwen jumped, startled, and then froze. After a moment, she blinked. Then she bit down on her tongue hard to keep from laughing, though an odd sound still escaped the back of her throat.
"Oh, hello," she said, regaining her composure. "Lovely day, isn't it?" The words came on their own, with barely any inflection at all save for standard-issue politeness. Being stunned could do that to a person. \n\n
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Gwen Carey
Welcome back to the madhouse.
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Gwen Carey
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Asher Tallow
July 02, 2006 3:13 AM
Heh. I'll fit in like butter on rice, or. . .er. by Asher Tallow
This was typical. All her life, Asher tended to attract bad weather, small rodents missing paws, and the people she least wanted to see regardless of how she felt about it. Some might try to argue that it's against natural law to attract bad weather, but Sonora's weather had been fine until Asher showed up, and when she was nine, her bedroom spontaneously filled with snow despite the sunshine outside. Others might also attempt to reason that unless one goes about hunting small rodents, it'd be rather difficult to attract ones minus a paw. Those same people, however, would soon discover the town of prairie dogs that lived directly outside of and below Asher's bedroom; the town all share the singular trait of each missing a paw.As to the third item on that bad cloud of fatal attractions, proof of that had stumbled upon Asher, blonde and in the flesh: Gwenhwyfar Carey. Once upon a time, they had been friends, allies in the struggle against the Hens. Things had gone sour though- not that Asher was in any way to blame for that. Naturally.
She'd left Sonora so soon after the beginning of their second year that that rift had never been resolved, explored, or otherwise.
Asher stood up, knock-kneed and discomfitted. She would have preferred to save this particular meeting for never, an unreasonable preference admittedly, but still one wished. She smoothed down her short hair and unconsciously picked at some of the grass that clung to her school robe. Gwen's words registered as flatly as they'd been uttered.
"Lovely day?" she echoed, brown eyes immediately turning skyward. A blue sky, unblemished, stared downward. "Yeah, I guess. . ."
She shuffled her feet briefly, feeling unnaturally nervous. Asher didn't suffer from the usual insecurities of some her age: she held little regard for what others thought of her, had a quick temper that took care of the times she did happen to have a regard for what others thought of her, and usually could handle conversations with a bluntness that saved little room for other interpretations. However, her feet continued to shuffle and her hands kept to their now unnecessary grooming of her robe.
"So," she began, not knowing what words would follow. "Anything interesting happen last year?"\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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Asher Tallow
Heh. I'll fit in like butter on rice, or. . .er.
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Asher Tallow
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Gwen Carey
July 04, 2006 12:57 AM
Salt on popcorn? by Gwen Carey
Gwen had expected to be shocked if she ever crossed paths with Asher Tallow again. Now that it was happening, she was surprised, but not shocked speechless or anything ridiculous like that. Fortunately, she had already spoken the opening words, and so didn't have to test that theory until Asher said something back. That gave her about five seconds to brace herself for the shoutfest and work out if she was going to yell back or try to play the snob. Neither option was very appealing, but she'd learned from Morgaine over the previous year that those two methods were the only ones that worked. She was quite proud of herself when Asher standing up didn't inspire her to bolt before her pride could order her to hold her position.Expecting something more along the lines of being non-magically cursed at, she was caught off-guard by the awkward, unshouted reply. Her discomfort with the whole situation shooting up, Gwen wrapped her arms around her torso defensively and bit her lip anxiously, her eyes darting from Asher to the statue to the way out of the area they were in before returning to her ex-friend. She didn't know how to deal with this. Politely ignoring her wasn't an option at the moment, trying to pick a fight would probably be suicidal, and she couldn't think of anything else to do, since the result of any attempt she made at standard-issue pureblood tactics would most likely fall into the same category as that of the second option. This hadn't been covered in her lady lessons or gone through in any prior experiences.
If she had spoken to Asher at any point in the past year and a half and hadn't been so keyed up herself, Gwen might have noticed her former friend's nervousness, but she hadn't and so observed nothing out of the ordinary. If her memories of Asher showed the other girl as less nervous, well, they'd never been ex-friends who'd become enemies in less than an hour on any of those occasions, and they'd been first years who took themselves and everything going on around them far too seriously for any good to come of it during all of them. She was just considering working up the nerve to say something else when, for the third time, she was caught off-guard, this time by a question.
"Not much," she said, switching the direction she was looking in from ahead of herself to her shoes. "It was a quiet year, mostly. The only people left fighting in the dorm were me and Catherine, and we didn't do it in public. The Howards weren't here, and I suppose Nicoletta thought brawling with me was beneath her." She was talking too fast. "We got a few new teachers. Dione, Reiner, and Zephyrflame are all gone, now. The Headmistress is back, though. She turned up again during the holidays, I think. I was - " the hesitation was momentary, barely noticeable, but there - "at home." It was surprisingly easy to call Rosamund's home. She didn't like it. It was like apologizing - one of those things that shouldn't have ever become at all easy that had become too easy.
"Probably the biggest thing to happen was just before Christmas. This organization - W.A.I.L., I think it means Witches Against Immorality in the League - wrote to all the pureblooded girls they thought were politically okay or salvageable to get them to boycott Quidditch until women were removed from the game because it was turning us all into lesbians." A year earlier, she wouldn't have been able to say the word 'lesbian' without blushing and praying to die on the spot. Rosamund was going to be the death of her language. "I didn't get one, of course, but my sister and all my cousins did. I got what it was about from one of my cousins." She hesitated, eyeing Asher warily. They'd been eleven-year-olds when they'd last met properly, or near enough, and hadn't really discussed such things anyway. What kind of reception any further information would garner was beyond her. "I joined the Quidditch team not long after that, but I'm - er - not what they said that means I am." There were limits to how many times she could use words like that in one conversation. Quick topic change. "We lost our game against Pecari, but we scored first and almost scored twice before the Snitch was caught. Their Seeker was just a bit quicker than Jennifer - that's ours. I think she might have been Morgaine's roommate, but I'm not sure."
She was out of memorable things about the previous year, since she doubted Asher would want to hear play-by-plays of her fights with her sister any more than Gwen wanted to give them. "Um...how've you been?" She'd considered asking how Asher's daddy was, but had decided against it. The fewer remarks they made that alluded to that particular day, the higher the chances were that things could continue to involve the absence of open hostility. \n\n
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Gwen Carey
Salt on popcorn?
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Gwen Carey
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Asher Tallow
July 05, 2006 12:23 PM
Cheese on veggies! by Asher Tallow
Asher's fingers stilled themselves as she listened and absorbed the year that she had missed. The loss of certain teachers and the gain of others she knew of, but not that the Howards had been gone as well. W.A.I.L.? That sounded like exactly the sort of thing she would have liked to rebel against, just on the principle of the matter, not that she was much for Quidditch or lesbians playing Quidditch, although she did see something rather ignorant in labeling all females who play as such.She really didn't think that Gwen would need have worried about any misconceptions in that regard. Asher had never met a lesbian personally; she had only learned the term due to her older brothers, and for whatever reason they both rather liked the idea of girls being lesbians. Her shoulders shrugged unconsciously, pushing her forehead to the side, shortened hair swishing with the motion.
Gwen's final words, a question, caught Asher off guard. "Um...how've you been?" That was a loaded question, although, probably not intentionally so. There was a litany of responses she could go with. There was the one she gave her parents whenever asked: Fine. There was the one she gave the mediwitch assigned to their case: I'm happier with Dad. There was the one she gave her youngest brother Sams: Momma isn't happy with Dad anymore, but that doesn't mean she doesn't love us; 'course I'm sad, but I'm also happy they can be happy. There was the one she gave her Aunt Ciele: It's none of your business.
They were all honest responses, just not full ones. She'd avoided answering altogether to the ones who she knew she could only either lie or tell the full truth. If she ever told them the truth, the full truth, the answer would be far longer, far angrier, and as much as she would hate it, she would cry. She knew this because she'd made the mistake of asking herself that question: Asher, how have you been? Love, Asher.
But Gwen couldn't possibly want or possibly expect the sort of answers Asher had kept in her repertoire. "Really bored. God-awful bored. All I've been doing is reading and trying not to kill my brothers. I'm glad to be back at Sonora."
Her final statement, meant to be cursory and normal, ended with a faint question to it; Asher was happy to be back at Sonora. The truthfulness of those words surprised her enough to force out a smile, a natural one that helped smooth some of the latent sadness from her dark eyes.
"Yeah, I'm glad to be back at Sonora." She was still smiling, feeling suddenly much happier than she had in days, weeks, or even months, and entirely ignorant as to why. "Are you still friends with Earl Valentine? And Laura?"
With her shoulders feeling much ligther than they had in ages, her conscience also felt the sudden want and need to find all her old friends, the people she had unknowingly come to care about and miss during the past year. \n\n
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Asher Tallow
Cheese on veggies!
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Asher Tallow
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Gwen Carey
July 06, 2006 11:40 PM
Sprinkles on ice cream! by Gwen Carey
Gwen nodded acceptance of Asher's reply, then made an attempt to let her arms casually fall away from her waist, as if she hadn't even realized they were there in the first place. The action had the side affect of straightening her back a little, but her chin stayed where it was. Either of the St.Martin twins, had they been available, would have recognized the stance. Since the odds seemed to be against Asher going off on her and her fall from social grace would make any pretense at being the superior party hilarious, the situation was necessarily one of equal standing - sort of. If you looked at it from the right angle. Neither of them knew enough about the other's circumstances for either to know it was equal standing, but available evidence pointed to it. She felt herself smile back, a little surprised by the sudden lightening of the mood."I'm glad," she said, then left it. It was true, and it didn't get too close to home. She'd never much liked expressing emotional stuff, and she was no good at it, either, especially in delicate situations. This one wasn't as delicate as it had been, or at least it didn't feel like it, but she wasn't going to risk setting off any fireworks.
Her smile slipped a bit when she was asked about her friendships. There was no point in lying, because it wouldn't take much skill or effort to uncover it, not when this was the subject matter. "Ah...not exactly?" It sounded more like a question than the answer to one. She felt a flash of irritation towards herself and quelled it...but still found herself not quite able to meet Asher's eyes. "Earl's never forgiven me for the...falling out in our first year," she explained briefly. "I don't know what anyone else thinks about it all, really. Since the scandal started up, I've sort of - well - avoided the other Crotali." She sounded a bit stiff even to her own ears and tried for another smile. "I'm sure the old crowd'll be delighted to have you back, though." \n\n
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Gwen Carey
Sprinkles on ice cream!
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Gwen Carey
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Asher Tallow
July 09, 2006 12:36 PM
Now I really want a caramel apple. Badly. by Asher Tallow
"Scandal?" Asher immediately parroted, not equating anything that she remembered from her first year with an out-right scandal. Unless Gwen meant 'scandal' to be synonymous with what she had also termed the 'falling out.' "What do you mean?"As exceptional as Asher's memory was, the details of their 'falling out' had faded. She remembered the essentials, of course: Asher saying they were friends, Gwen saying she had no friends, and that was that. That was over a year ago, though. . . a whole year had passed in which inevitably they both had changed. The hurt that still flickered from thinking of that incident was more memory based than presently felt, but it wasn't in Asher to throw out the bygones card and openly square things away.
She didn't know how to say 'Let's start over' nor did she know how to say 'We were eleven years old- that was kid stuff.' She could feel the sentiments behind those words, but could not convey them verbally. It simply was not in her. The only way she knew how to deal with things that were both awkward and sensitive was to ignore the whole of it entirely. Pretend it never existed: never speak of it, never mention it.
And that was how she was able to brush off Gwen's admittance of no longer being in friendly terms with Earl Valentine or anyone from their crowd. She simply pretended the circumstances which brought such an eventuality never occurred.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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Asher Tallow
Now I really want a caramel apple. Badly.
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Asher Tallow
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Gwen Carey
July 17, 2006 1:00 AM
*checks pockets* Sorry, got none on me. by Gwen Carey
Gwen's expression changed rapidly from carefully over-composed to suspicious, and then even more quickly to relieved. Asher was no social butterfly - Gwen had a feeling the other girl would have been the first to laugh at the idea, or give somebody a good tongue-lashing over it - but she was a pureblood. If one pureblood didn't know about something, then it stood to reason that another might not. Her life, in short, might not be over if she dodged disownment. There was no question about any semblance of respectability vanishing if she was disowned, but if she wasn't...if she wasn't, and if push came to shove, she could always bluff it out in the far north among the more isolated families. She reverted to her original expression as quickly as possible."My father was - er - very displeased with me," she said, doing her best to sound as if she was reciting something about political theory to Aunt Rosamund. "It would have been bad enough if I'd just embarrassed myself, but I dragged him and the entire family into it, too. He'd already been forced to cancel the entire winter round of parties, so he was already worried about the family's reputation, and we didn't exactly choose the best location in the world..." She was babbling, presenting a large number of small supporting facts to make the meat of the story seem less significant. "Father sort of - well - tried to have me disowned." It was odd to realize she'd never said that out loud before.
"It didn't work then, but they - the other patriarchs, I mean, we have seven besides Father - aren't going to decide what to do with me until next Christmas. I was thrown out of the house, though, and my sister off and yelled that I was a traitor in front of the entire school during the Welcoming Feast last year, so I knew things were pretty bad, but the real confirmation came last year when they didn't sent me one of those letters." She kept her expression under control, but her eyes momentarily showed a flash of frustration. "I should have been on the list, you know. Morgaine was. Merlin, they even included Anne, and she broadcasts that she thinks the old order's stupid. Of course...some would say I did the same thing." She smiled grimly, wondering if Sarah was somehow involved with the W.A.I.L. business. "That was when I knew things were - really bad."
This was the first time she'd actually said any of this. She'd thought about it near-constantly for a year and a half, but she'd never said any of it. It was oddly liberating. Holding back laughter with difficulty, she shrugged inelegantly. "My life is a soap opera," she said, forgetting that she wasn't technically supposed to know what a soap opera was. She had a feeling she should say something else, but had no idea what it should be. It had been almost two years since she tried for diplomatic relations with anyone not a category unto herself or who wasn't someone she was helping adjust to the world they'd been dropped into, unless one counted the ingrained-from-infancy formality of the Reunion. \n\n
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Gwen Carey
*checks pockets* Sorry, got none on me.
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Gwen Carey
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