In the owlry. Unfortunately not at the stroke of midnight. on Labyrinth Gardens

John Umland

September 04, 2014 5:33 PM

In the owlry. Unfortunately not at the stroke of midnight. by John Umland

John eyed the owls warily. One or two of them eyed him back, though they looked more bored than anything. One blinked as though mildly surprised by him, a wizard born and more or less raised who was not terribly keen on walking into an owlery.

“Nice owls,” he muttered, hiding a very thick envelope behind his back. Not logical, of course – he’d have to take it out to tie it to one of the owls’ feet, and besides, owls did not have spells on them that let the staff use their eyes like webcams to spy on students’ mail and he was not going to entertain the thought that they did for a moment – but he thought he could find it in him to excuse himself for it. This wasn’t the first time he’d blatantly disregarded law and custom, but it was the first time he’d ever thought there was a serious chance of getting caught, so he thought he was allowed, or at least could be forgiven, some nerves. “I am a friend. I promise not to use any of you for ornithomancy. I won’t even cut you up for science – unless you just, you know, fall over on your own, but that doesn’t, that doesn’t count. I come in peace….”

According to the field guides John owned, owls were members of the kingdom Animalia, phylum Chordata, class Aves, and (usually) order Strigiformes. They had amazing senses and several unique physical abilities, qualities which all combined to make them very good at what they did, but actually weren’t all that smart. The association of owls with wisdom, according to what he’d read for last year’s project on the origins of the postal system, probably had something to do with first just how common and (being partially diurnal) visible Little Owls, Athene noctua, were around Athens and that the kind of crazy, tinkering pre-Statutes wizards they’d had back then had just run with that, one of them adding modification of the intelligence of owls to his résumé when he needed some down time from the man-eating monster projects one week. Then, since owls smart enough to carry the post weren’t quite as impressive to look at as, say, a chimaera or a hydra, would-be heroes had not killed them off so much as some of the more exotic monsters of antiquity, so they had reproduced at a respectable rate and spread across the world as wizards, like everybody else, got moved around in the vast overlapping network of empires that was history.

It occurred to him now, though, that there were probably more varieties of post owl on display here than there had been in ancient Athens, and that his source last year hadn’t really explained that: had they bred with ordinary owls somehow? If so, were there, like, owls in the nests who were like Squibs? And if not, what did that imply about owl genetics, or did it just mean the secrets of how to modify owl genes had been passed down for a while? If so, was that information still out there, and if it was, then….

His thoughts got tangled, trying to simultaneously figure out what that might mean economically and what might happen if someone tweaked the spells and put them on an amoeba, which was all for the best, since he remembered where he was and why he was there instead of running to the library to try to figure it out. Shaking his head, he picked an owl and walked over, glancing furtively over his shoulder every few seconds as he tied the package to its feet.

I am not going to get in trouble. I am not going to get in trouble. I am not going to get in trouble, he repeated, mantra-like, in his head. And he did have it all worked out. He had convinced his mom he should sort of stay in his book club by post, so he was just going to put letters to Lindsay, the club president, in with letters home, then enclose other, coded, letters (along with a decoy or two also about the book the club was reading to throw the other book clubbers off; he was pretty sure the school owls were all going to hate his guts soon) in the book club letters. Unless Mom was a lot more nosy than he thought she was, she would give the book club letter to Lindsay unopened, Lindsay would distribute the letters in the book club letter, and Mom would be none the wiser about any of them, much less the ones with stuff like microscope slides and dodo feathers in them, but he couldn’t help but worry….

A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying, he reminded himself sternly. He ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong. Besides, he was a scientist, not a philosopher. The worst that usually happened to scientists was going to jail….Which, admittedly, wouldn’t be much fun, either, but it was best to look on the bright side.

He finally got the ties in place and sent the owl off with a final silent prayer that his mom wouldn’t get nosy before turning wearily toward the exit, feeling like he had just had an adventure even though all he'd done was send a letter. He needed tea and left the owlery with little else on his mind but obtaining some. His feet had no more than reached the gravel of the path, though, before another person appeared right in front of him and he nearly walked right into them, jumping back at the last minute with a not-quite-dignified yelp of surprise.

16 John Umland In the owlry. Unfortunately not at the stroke of midnight. 285 John Umland 1 5

Katherine Procter, Crotalus

September 04, 2014 10:20 PM

Off the beaten path? by Katherine Procter, Crotalus

Kitty could not believe that it was her second year already at Sonora. It flew by so fast! Despite the purple skies and missing professors that marked the start of her life at Sonora, she managed to learn a lot about the world to which she now belonged. A world she was loathed to leave when it was time to board the covered wagon back to Salem, where she would travel north into New Hampshire to her family's estate near the capitol. Back to the lonely life she knew, where she was forced to sit through lectures on arithmetic, American history, grammar, spelling, and every non-magical subject her parents could think of. Back to etiquette classes over tea with Mother. Although, during that summer after her first year at Sonora, she was able to daydream about wand movements and the spells she had learned, which helped to pass the time when she would have been miserable before.

On the outside, Kitty still looked the same. The same dark brown hair was braided and coiled at the nape of her neck (although she decided to be festive and red and silver ribbons were braided with her hair as a show of House pride), and she had the same honey-colored eyes that were far too large for her freckled face. Whenever she looked into a mirror, she prayed to any higher power who cared to listen that she would grow into herself. Then again, she was in that awkward phase of life, and she did her best to live with it. While she was the same Kitty externally, internally she swore to herself that she would become less shy. For the most part, the students of Sonora Academy were an accepting sort, and she had no reason to be so meek. She set a goal for herself to become closer to her housemates (namely, her roommate, Daphne), and she hoped to achieve it by Christmas break.

In an attempt to push herself, she decided to head for the one location on the school grounds that terrified her for the entirety of the previous year: The Labyrinth Gardens. She feared that she would get hopelessly lost and trapped inside with whatever could possibly be hiding in there. This year, the new-and-hopefully-improved Katherine Sarah Procter will face her fears and enter the daunting maze.

In a facade that showed a carefree spirit she did not wholly feel, Kitty skipped her way down the gravel path toward the garden, humming her grandmother's favorite tune. When she turned around a corner that had a fork that led to the owlry, she nearly ran into someone! At the last moment he jumped back with a sound that Kitty barely heard over her own "Oh!" of surprise. In a characteristic show of "grace," she slipped on the gravel, landing on her bottom with an "oomph."

Looking up at the boy who was still standing there, she promptly recognized him from the sorting ritual at the opening feast (he had turned blue) and she tried to offer him a smile that was both friendly and welcoming, but her derriere hurt and she could feel the heat of a blush in her cheeks. Brushing away an errant lock of hair that was forever getting in her eyes behind her ear, she took a steadying breath and smiled again (although this was the more Kitty-like shy one).

She reached out a hand and hoped the first year would take the hint and help her up. "Welcome to Sonora," she said with a slight hint of irony (they did just have a near miss, after all). "I'm Katherine Procter, but everyone calls me Kitty."

0 Katherine Procter, Crotalus Off the beaten path? 0 Katherine Procter, Crotalus 0 5

John Umland

September 05, 2014 11:22 AM

Can't help wondering what's there. by John Umland

John caught his balance by grabbing a hedge, leaves and bark scratching his hand, and took a few quick, deep breaths to try to slow his heart rate back down to normal after its sudden spike. If it had seemed appropriate, that would have helped him either run from or fight the addition to his environment, but when he looked at the addition, neither seemed like the right thing to do. For one thing, it was just a girl, and for another, she was on the ground. Even if she wanted to attack him, he was in a stronger position than she was because he was still on his feet, so she really wasn’t a threat to run from or fight first at all. Just a girl he – well, he hadn’t actually knocked her down, he guessed, since he was pretty sure there had been no contact, but he’d had some part in her falling. Probably?

Then she started talking and he stared for a second. “Eh – what?” he managed in reply.

Then he remembered his manners and helped her up. “Sorry. I’m John Umland. People…pretty much call me John.” He wasn’t really the sort who attracted permanent nicknames. It went with having a name that only had four letters and one syllable, though he thought it might just be a matter of looks, too. He was only ever called ‘Johnny’ or ‘Jack’ in jest, and his older sister’s longer name was only consistently ever shortened by one of their older brothers. He and Julian just didn’t look like people who should have nicknames, he thought. Maybe it was because they had nearly the same hair color, which was, by chance, much darker than the hair colors of the rest of their family? But no; his brother Paul was fair-haired and nicknameless, and Kitty Procter here was dark-haired and nicknamed, though he wasn’t sure about bringing a non-Umland into the sample when he didn’t know much about nickname patterns across families other than his own….

“So, is – is nearly barreling into people, uh, really common around here?” he asked, a little worried about what her ‘welcome to Sonora’ might mean in context. “I guess a maze is kind of set up for it….”

16 John Umland Can't help wondering what's there. 285 John Umland 0 5

Katherine Procter, Crotalus

September 05, 2014 8:15 PM

A noble pursuit by Katherine Procter, Crotalus

"I guess it is," said Kitty in response to John's quip concerning the hedge maze. She dusted off her robes, mostly for an excuse to divert her eyes. Despite all of her determination to overcome her shyness, the old adage still rang true: Rome was not built in a day. "But, no, it is not common to nearly run into random strangers around every corner." She flicked her eyes toward the sky in thought, recalling the strange purple clouds that began the strange events of her first day of classes (and the weeks that followed). "Although, it does seem that strange occurrences are a Sonora way of welcoming its first years. I'm sure you heard about what happened last year."

Remembering that John had come from the direction of the owlry, Kitty pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and asked, "Were you in the owlry? Isn't it fascinating that they can deliver the mail to anywhere we ask? I want to have an owl of my own so badly, but Mother is against anything obviously magical in the house, and an owl flying in and out would draw attention. Maybe one day I could get one."

Kitty was aware that she was babbling, as she was wont to do when she was nervous (like she usually was when she was meeting someone new). She cleared her throat and gestured toward the maze nearby. "I was going to explore the maze. Ah...would you care to come along?"

0 Katherine Procter, Crotalus A noble pursuit 0 Katherine Procter, Crotalus 0 5

John Umland

September 06, 2014 4:30 PM

I like to think so. by John Umland

“Yeah,” said John when Kitty mentioned what had happened last year, grimacing as he did. He didn’t know all about what had happened last year because he hadn’t been here, but he knew a lot more than he wanted to because his sister had been at Sonora when it shut itself off from the rest of the world for a few months. Those months had not been fun at his house, and the last few days before they got Julian back, when he and his mom and his little brother had been sharing a hotel room on the edge of the desert, a whole country between them and everybody they knew and no idea what was going on, if a Dark wizard had taken over the school or if Julian was even alive –

Well, it was over and now he neither wanted to nor had to think about it anymore. “I, uh, really think this is a lot more normal than that, though,” he commented. He had, after all, run into people a few times before, but nothing like Last Year had ever happened when his oldest brother Stephen had been in school back home in Canada. There were stories about a hallway which had temporarily filled completely up with water and a clique that got busted dabbling a little too much in the dark arts, but John thought of those as fairly normal magical school things. At least Steve had been able to write home about them. They hadn’t gotten to hear Julian’s improbable school tales until months after most of them happened.

John considered fleeing when Kitty reminded him where he had just been, but realized that would just look…bad, especially as she babbled on, clearly not suspicious about what he had been doing in there. He frowned a little as she said her mother was opposed to magical things around the house, but – “Maybe. Depends on your neighborhood, I guess,” he said. “We don’t keep one of our own, but we don’t send that much mail.”

His dad did, actually, but that was work stuff and so went through work owls. Mom didn’t really have a lot of friends, Muggle or magical, and wasn’t close to her Muggle family, so she didn’t really have a reason to use either kind of post office that much – her main use of the mail was ordering books every now and then. John just thought the main advantage of owl post was how, if the books he’d read for his project before were correct, private it was – Muggle mail was a lot more tracked, though John assumed post office owls were tracked more than these, which were probably kept better track of than private owls were….

“I’d love to know how they…sense magic, though,” he said. “I read that last year, that even normal owls are…sort of attuned, you know? Normal ones just aren’t as smart. But it’s how they find people.” Which opened up all sort of questions about…a lot of stuff. He had a list. “I was just wondering, when I was in there, if there are ever, like, Squib owls, or what would happen if you isolated one from wizards….” He trailed off and shrugged. “I like birds,” he said to justify the ramble, since she had sort of justified hers.

He did like birds. He couldn’t help thinking of ways he’d like to study them (John was pretty sure there were very few things he was capable of looking at without finding something about them he’d like to study), but he enjoyed simple observation, too, and reading what others had already found out about them. He had learned to draw a little and fiddled a lot more with the cameras available to him than he thought he would have otherwise so he could preserve what he saw better than he could just in his head, and learned more about plants when he started studying migration and ecosystems for his Naturalist badge in Scouts, and had no doubt that yet more fascinating topics he might not have looked at otherwise would come his way through the study, all because his sister had had a random conversation with one of her classmates which had led to John reading a really old collection of Blackfoot lodge tales when he was nine.

John blinked, surprised (half because he couldn’t believe she had obviously been here for more than a year and made it sound like she was just now exploring, half because he would never have predicted two people at Sonora wanting to go exploring with him, much less two doing so in three weeks, both within minutes of meeting him), when Kitty asked him to come along in her explorations of the Gardens, but then shrugged again. “Sure,” he said. “I don’t have any of the supplies you’re supposed to have when you go exploring with me now – “ he had left his bag indoors, so all he had was what was in his pockets; what that was, besides the notebook and pen he never allowed to get out of his arm’s reach, he wasn’t totally sure, though there was a chance it included dried cranberries, which could be useful – “but I’ve been out here a lot since I got here. What’re you looking for? Or are you just looking to see what there is?” he asked, figuring that was a good place to start. He was still trying to figure out how many places of origin there were among the creatures of the Gardens and how they all managed to coexist in the environment of the maze.

16 John Umland I like to think so. 285 John Umland 0 5

Katherine Procter, Crotalus

October 04, 2014 10:42 PM

Off we get, then? by Katherine Procter, Crotalus

The corner of Kitty’s mouth turned up in amusement as John rambled on about owls and whether or not all were magical. He seemed a little embarrassed (Kitty could not be sure) by his short speech, and he shrugged. ”I like birds,” he said by means of explanation.

She was taken slightly off-guard when he accepted her invitation. It was not because she was not sincere in asking him to join her (safety in numbers, after all), but she thought he would have had more important things to do rather than go exploring with a coward of a second year trying to turn her life around.

Wait…did he say he did not have his exploring stuff?

Kitty’s mind caught up to John’s questions quickly, and she pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Heh, I did not realize that I needed provisions to walk through the maze. After what happened at the start of last year, I was afraid to go outside.” She cleared her throat to prevent nervous ramble. “I’ve never been in there because I have a horrible habit of getting lost, and this year, I decided that I was going to try something new as often as I can.” Kitty absently grabbed at one of the ribbons in her hair and twirled it around her finger, glancing toward the clouds in thought. “I have no idea what is in there, so I thought I would face my fears and dive on in.”

She brought her honey-colored gaze back to John’s face, dropping the ribbon. “I have my wand at any rate, and that should be all we need, right? Have you found anything interesting out there?”

0 Katherine Procter, Crotalus Off we get, then? 0 Katherine Procter, Crotalus 0 5