Avoiding the Quidditch game (Room Four) on Magical Arts Room and Sports

Jane Carey

February 12, 2011 11:56 AM

Avoiding the Quidditch game (Room Four) by Jane Carey

When Aladren and Teppenpaw played anyone other than each other, Jane went to Quidditch games. Mother didn’t strictly approve of that, since it might make people associate her with Things – Mother was vague on what these were – that she really should not be associated with, but since she only knew about the times Jane went to support her brother and not, as far as she knew, about the ones where she was supporting her House, it wasn’t forbidden. Neither the Teppenpaw team nor Edmond had ever said anything to suggest they were aware of her presence at games or that they considered it important to their success, and she wouldn’t be surprised to find that they had never really noticed, but it meant something to her to do it anyway.

When Aladren and Teppenpaw were playing each other, though, Jane stayed away from the Quidditch Pitch. Her first loyalty was to Edmond, but she wasn’t sure how the Aladrens would react to her presence on their side, or how the other Teppenpaws would take it if they found out, and it altogether seemed more diplomatic to avoid both instead of picking one.

For her first two years, that had meant going for long walks in the Gardens very early in the morning so she could avoid Kirstenna getting ready, but the recent addition to the school gave her more options. Once she was as sure as she could be that almost everyone who was going to go to the game had already gone in that direction, Jane left the Paths and made her way, feeling slightly uncomfortable in the nearly empty halls when she was used to them always having someone moving through them, toward the new activities annex, which, for some reason, people seemed to feel the need to refer to as either a planet or a Roman war god.

The foyer was empty, and she met no resistance in going into the art room. She considered the pottery wheel for a moment – she’d been thinking of making and painting a vase for Mother’s birthday – but went instead to one of the cushions around a low table, where parchments and paints were laid out, pausing to put on an apron over her robes before kneeling and picking up one of the paintbrushes. The hard part, since she’d stumbled across her mother talking to the strange men about the paintings Edmond made and had figured out what the words psychological state meant, was always choosing what to paint. It didn’t seem as likely that the teachers would somehow try to get their hands on her artwork to analyze it as it was that her mother would, but it couldn’t hurt to be careful anyway. She twirled the brush between her fingers, looking around at the paintings on the walls for some kind of inspiration.

They were murmuring amongst themselves, and Jane squinted to read some of the closer plaques beneath their names. Where had they come from? There hadn’t been an art room before this year, so while there might have been a few paintings of artists around the school somewhere if they were also major donors to Sonora, it was more likely that some of them had been ordered from somewhere else. How might they feel about that? Paintings were almost like people, they acted like the people they were of, and some could even remember things that happened after they were activated, but they were still legally defined as property and could be moved around however their owners wanted. Jane shuddered at the thought and resolved never to sit for a portrait. Or paint a person anywhere near reliably, since they might then be stuck in a slightly deformed representation of themselves.

Dipping her brush in silvery-gray paint, she began to make the outline of a vase on the blank sheet in front of her. A vase of flowers was always safe, and she could get down the basic idea of what she wanted to make for Mother.

She decided to come back to the decorations and do the roses in the vase first. The edges of the petals were a slightly darker red than the bodies, so they could be distinguished from each other, but that meant taking extra care with filling them in. She leaned forward to do that and felt her hair falling over her shoulder a second before it stuck to the outline of the vase. “Drat,” she said under her breath, sitting back slowly in the hopes of doing as little damage as possible as she pulled herself free.

0 Jane Carey Avoiding the Quidditch game (Room Four) 160 Jane Carey 1 5

Jethro Smythe

February 28, 2011 11:18 AM

Me too by Jethro Smythe

When Crotalus were playing Quidditch then Jethro went to watch the game just to support his House. He wasn't really sure that anyone cared whether he was there, but he went anyway. When Pecari were playing then he watched just in case Dana played, because his cousin was the reserve player for the Pecari team and she might have to play if someone else on the team couldn't for whatever reason. However, when Aladren and Teppenpaw played each toher then the fifth year had no reason to watch the game, and his interested in the sport was limited. At breakfast he'd heard lots of people say they thought it might rain, so he decided that he wouldn't sit in the rain to watch a game he didn't really care about, and instead he would find something more fun to do. He wasn't sure at wich point he'd thought of going to the new arts building, nor did he know how or why he'd thought of it, but it seemed as good a place to visit as any, and so whilst everyone else was making his or her way to the pitch, Jethro made his way to the recent addition to the school.

He ambled, equal parts by intention and accident, towards room four, which was the art room. When he was younger Jethro had enjoyed painting and coloring, and had only stopped when his parents had neglected to provide his materials. They seemed to think that once he'd started school he should be spending his time studying, not making pictures, and they were probably right; adults often knew what they were talking about. yet the school had provided a room whether Jethro could go and draw and paint whenever he didn't have class, and as the school had provided it then his parents probably wouldn't object - Jethro was sure his aunts and uncles had helped pay for the building, anyway. He was obviously entitled to make use of it.

Opening the door to the requisite room, Jethro saw that somebody else was already making use of it. There was plenty of room for him, too, but that didn't mean to say he would be welcome. "Hello, Miss Carey," he said, recognising the girl who was painting. "Would you mind if I joined you in this room?" he lingered near the doorway while he waited for her answer, in case he needed to leave again.

0 Jethro Smythe Me too 146 Jethro Smythe 0 5

Jane

February 28, 2011 9:57 PM

We both have company, then by Jane

Once she finished her vase of flowers, touching up the damage done by her hair falling in the paint as well as she could, Jane had started to paint in the background around it just for something to do: green grass, and blue sky streaked with white clouds. Mother would disapprove. Tall, very slim vases, at least some of the crystal ones, could be taken outside for a picnic, but one that shape should always stay inside.

It was unbelievably tedious, learning all the things she was supposed to know to be a lady. Mother seemed to think part of it was that she and Edmond had always been treated just the same, that learning the same things an heir to one of the branches needed to know had made her think she was a boy or something like that, but she disagreed. She liked nice clothes, enjoyed dancing much more than Edmond did, and there was a challenge in learning to make witty conversation and such, but Jane didn’t think anyone was capable of finding it really interesting that it was all right to have one kind of vase at a picnic and not another. Not when they were thirteen, anyway, even a tall thirteen than made people think she was older. Maybe it came with being married for a long time.

Think of the devil, she mused when, hearing her name – she was the only girl Carey here, the other four were boys, and she’d distinctly heard a ‘Miss’ – she looked up and found herself looking at Jethro Smythe. Technically, Mother had no more control over who she married than, well, she did, but she discussed the matter often, and this was one of the candidates she seemed to favor.

That wasn’t his fault, though, so Jane smiled as stood and curtsied properly, the way Mother had taught her to. She did try to be good, and while there were many times when she could get away with a certain lack of formality at Sonora, times when she was around other purebloods weren’t among them. “Not at all,” she said. “How are you today, Mr. Smythe?”

0 Jane We both have company, then 0 Jane 0 5

Jethro

March 02, 2011 9:42 AM

Two's company by Jethro

Jane Carey didn't mind him joining her, so Jethro left the door and walked over, both to see what she was doing out of idle curiosity, and to see what there was for him to do to pass the time. As he approached she gave him a properly formal greeting, and Jethro found himself frowning. he tried to stop once he'd realized he'd started, and hoped it wasn't too late. He couldn't help it that formalities made him nervous. He'd never been allowed to attend social events on account of him not wanting to embarrass his family, and when he visited cousins or had them come to visit, the younger generation were far less formal. He just didn't have the practise at it that he felt he ought. More than that, however, he got inexplicably nervous when people referred to him as Mr Smythe. His father was Mr Smythe, and his uncles, and his terrifying grandfather. He was just Jethro. "Please call me Jethro," he said, and if it sounded more like a plea than a polite offering, it's because it was.

"And I'm well, thank you," he replied to her question. He had been about to return the question to her, as was common practise, but he's ended up at an angle where he could see her artwork. "You've been painting," he commented as much to himself as to anybody else who might have been listeneing. "It's very pretty," he said, and because he thought it was, not because he thought that's what he should say. "I used to paint when I was younger," he said, picking up a paintbrush and looking at it as if it might hold the answers to all his unanswered questions. he stared at it for perhaps a little too long before he remembered that Jane Carey was there, too, and that staring at paintbrushes might be a little unusual. He tried his best not to appear too unusual, particularly to people with intimidating last names like Carey. In an attempt to cover for his slip-up, Jethro said, "Would you mind if I sit nearby?"

0 Jethro Two's company 0 Jethro 0 5

Jane

March 04, 2011 3:24 PM

So they say by Jane

Jane was a little surprised by Jethro’s invitation to use his first name. It was common enough to offer permission to use given names early in an acquaintance if there was no reason to assume hostility would or should exist, but the way he said it wasn’t what she would have expected.

She smiled again, though, instead of commenting on it. “I’m glad,” she said when he said he was well. This wasn’t a lie, polite or actual. Things worked better when everyone was well, and she couldn’t think of anyone she’d actually want to be unwell. One of the good things about Quidditch, she thought, was that it let people get whatever it was that sometimes made everyone want to fight out of their systems, so they didn’t actually do it. Though when she thought about that too much, she noticed that her brother – normally one of the calmest, most level-headed, least confrontational people she knew – was playing the most violent position in it, and that…bothered her, for some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “You can call me Jane, too, if you like,” she offered.

“Thank you,” she said when he complimented her picture. She had no more idea what he would read into a vase in the outdoors than she did what the psychologists Mother apparently kept on call would, so she decided not to think about it. “I enjoy painting.”

She wasn’t sure, either, what to make of his statement that he’d painted when he was younger. Was he saying he thought it was babyish of her, or just saying something? He was in the art room, and it was logical to assume he’d come without knowing she was here, which made it also logical to assume that he’d been planning to do something – well – artistic. So did taking and examining a paintbrush. When he asked if he could sit, she smiled again and took that as permission to sit again as well. “Of course,” she said, gesturing to the seat in question. “Are you thinking of starting to paint again?”

0 Jane So they say 0 Jane 0 5

Jethro

March 05, 2011 12:05 PM

And they are often right by Jethro

Miss Jane Carey said that Jethro could call her Jane, if her liked. The fifth year decided that he would like that very much, because for some reason he found her surname intimidating. He knew that logically he had no reason to do so, because there were several careys at the school and Jethro had never had a problem with any of them, but Cynthia sometimes said things about the Careys that made them sound like people he should be wary of. Jane was obviously not someone he should be wary of, so it was more pleasant if he could just call her Jane and take her for who she was and not her last name - that was by far a preferable situation to Jethro.

Jane said that she didn't mind if Jethro sat down, so he did so, in a seat facing diagonally towards her, that seemed to have been placed as such to enable conversation whilst two people painted. "Are you thinking of starting to paint again?" Jane asked. Jethro was sitting in front of a blank canvas with a paintbursh in his hand, so it seemed the next logical step would be to begin painting.

"Yes, I think so," Jethro said. He selected a palette from the extensive arrangement provided for students to use, and began mixing colors together. He hadn't painted in a very long time, so he didn't expect to be any good at it. Neither did he have an especially well developed imagination, and so he was only really good at painting something that was already in front of him. The thing that was directly in front of him was Jane, so Jethro started to paint her. He had never been taught how to paint, and therefore knew little about technique or shading, but this didn't matter to the artist who simply recreated exactly what he saw in front of him. Imitation was how Jethro got by, in social encounters and in his classes, why watching others and simply copying what they did. He'd once made a good impression of being able to speak German until his tutor realized he was only employing repetition with no deeper level of understanding. Luckily with his painting there was no deeper level of undertsanding - all Jethro had to do was translate exactly what he could see with his eyes onto the canvas before him by mixing paint, and that was easy.

After he'd made a start, Jethro recalled that Jane had said she enjoyed painting. He knew that this new structure hadn't been in place very long at all, and so it wasn't possible that Jane had been painting here for very long. Either, then, this was a recent discovery, or she had found somewhere else to paint before this space had become available. "Have you been painting long?" he asked. Then, because he realized this question was ambiguous, he expanded, "I don't mean here today, I mean as a hobby or leisure activity."

0 Jethro And they are often right 0 Jethro 0 5

Jane

March 08, 2011 10:49 PM

It seems to be working well just now by Jane

Jane was glad Jethro clarified his question before she had time to answer, because otherwise, she would have assumed he meant ‘today’ and answered accordingly, and then they both would have likely ended up confused. “For as long as I can remember,” she said lightly, cleaning the brush she’d been using when he came in. “I had a tutor, once, but that was only for a few months, and we took the lessons right after Greek, so it still felt like a leisure activity even then.”

Greek was one of those things she was slightly better at than Edmond was, though Mother often said the differences between them, at least in terms of skill, were all but imperceptible to the outside eye anyway. Jane supposed that was true, since at least one tutor, a victim of their parents’ habit of not telling tutors too much about who Edmond was if they could reasonably avoid it, had labored for a time under the misimpression that they were twins, but they were aware of their respective strengths and weaknesses, and that was an area where she was a bit stronger. That did not, however, meant it was an area she liked; if she’d really gotten as interested in it as Edmond had, she thought she might be speaking it as well and reading and writing it instead of just being at his reading fluency level. Anything would have felt like a holiday after those lessons.

She wondered if Edmond had been to the activities annex at all since it opened. At least three of the rooms would hold some charm for him, but he was so busy these days, always off doing something for Daniel or running through prefect duties or reviewing the finer points of etiquette or studying either a school lesson or a tutor’s lesson or making sure his schedule lined up in such a way that he ended up, by complete coincidence, walking to lunch at the same time and along the same route as Miss Cassandra at least twice a week. His idea of relaxing had always been double translations, which helped, but she still thought he was trying to do too much, and worried about that, sometimes, too. She had read some things which said too much stress could be very bad for people.

Sometimes she felt stress, too – she had just as many lessons as he did, both from school and sent to them from home, and had to remember to be a lady all the time – but nothing like that. Though it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been like that. They were Careys, and Careys did not complain about that kind of thing.

And part of being a proper lady was keeping a conversation going, moving smoothly between the participants. “How long has it been since you painted something?” she asked, resisting the temptation to crane her neck to see what he was working on.

0 Jane It seems to be working well just now 0 Jane 0 5

Jethro

March 10, 2011 5:09 PM

Still working now, too by Jethro

Jethro had never studied Greek, and assuming he was correctly interpretting Jane's statement, then he ought to be glad of that fact. German had been quite difficult and boring enough, and at least that used the same alphabet (which was a Greek word, incidentally). "I didn't have a tutor in painting," Jethro replied. He only learned a little, anyway, because his instructores always got bored and frustrated by him and mildly intimidated by Cynthia, according to their parents. Cynthia claims she already knew everything that anyone had ever tried to teach her, and Jethro was tempted to believe her - as he usually believed her in everything - but he couldn't help thinkng that she must have learned something at school. Even he'd learned something, and he was hopeless.

"How long has it been since you painted something?" Jane asked then. Jethro noticed that she was very good at keeping the conversation going, which was good, because he could never think of anything sensible to say when he had to talk to someone out of politeness rather than interest. So far Jane was being interesting, so Jethro didn't need to concentrate on that, which made conversing much easier. All he had to do was try not to say anything stupid.

"I haven't painted since before I came to Sonora," Jethro replied to her question. "I hope that's sufficient a reply, because I can't remember any more exactly than that," he added, sounding apologetic. He wasn't sure whether she's require him to be more specific, but he would guess that it wasn't important when he'd last painted, just that it was a long time ago. "I seem to have remembered how to do it," he commented. Not just that he remembered how to put a paintbrush to canvas, because that was fairly obvious even to someone stupid like him, but more than that, he seemed to be able to make his paintbrush do what he wanted it to. The picture he was creating looked more or less exactly like what he was seeing, only in paint. He actually thought he was rather better than he remembered, but then he had been quite young so it was difficult for him to be sure about events that had occurred that long ago.

0 Jethro Still working now, too 0 Jethro 0 5

Jane

March 14, 2011 12:03 AM

Think it will continue to do so? by Jane

Jethro hadn’t had a tutor in painting. Jane wasn’t entirely surprised. Girls were the ones Mother thought ought to learn that; if she and Edmond had been slightly less insistent about one never knowing anything the other didn’t, and if Mother hadn’t seemed to encourage Edmond toward quiet activities anyway, she didn’t imagine he would have taken those lessons, either. “I don’t think you missed very much,” she assured him. “It’s mostly just angles and history and philosophy.”

She was done with her picture, but the conversation was going well enough and she had no idea how long the game might go on, so she decided to just start another. A night sky, like the ones she occasionally slipped out of the house late at night to see at home. It was very calming, and didn’t require a huge amount of her concentration to work out unless she wanted to put it in, which was ideal for the situation here.

She was a little surprised by the idea that ”since before I came to Sonora” wouldn’t be an adequate reply. “That’s an adequate reply for me,” she said with a smile. “I’ve only really painted when I was at home since I came, too. I’m very glad they added this place, so I can do so while I’m here as well.” She painted a few strokes, in a dark blue bordering on black. “What are you painting now?”

0 Jane Think it will continue to do so? 0 Jane 0 5

Jethro

March 18, 2011 5:44 AM

I hope so by Jethro

Jane assured Jethro that he hadn't missed very much in art classes. From her description he thought he would have to agree. Angles he didn't know much about (and although he did appreciate it when things were at an odd angle, like when trees weren't quite perpendicular to the ground, or when theings were at precise angles, like when he laid out all his textbooks in parallel lines and equally spaced apart) but history was difficult and boring, and he didn't see the point in learning about things that happened years ago anyway, and philosophy was a concept that eluded him entirely. It was just thoughts and Jethro already had enough of those, thanks you. He didn't see what history or philosophy could teach to make you paint better, so he was glad to not have had classes.

Jane explained that she didn't paint at Sonora, but still painted while she was at home in the holidays. That made sense to Jethro, because he hadn't been able to think of a place in the school where one could paint before the existence of MARS. Of course he hadn't seen inside the other House commons, and Jane was in Teppenpaw, so perhaps the Teppenpaw commons provided some space for painting, but then she'd just said that she didn't really paint at Sonora, so that was unlikely. Jethro nodded to acknowledge her statement, while his mind wandered off to consider what the other House commons might look like. He thought they were probably all pretty much the same, but where Crotalus was decorated with red and silver, the other commons would probably reflect their own house colors. Which meant that Teppenpaw would be yellow and black, and that sounded like a strong contrast. Jethro decided that he didn't want to wake up to that every morning, and was pleased that he had been sorted into Crotalus (he had initially been pleased to be in his sister's House but since Cynthia had graduated that hadn't really mattered anymore).

He was drawn from his contemplative reverie as Jane asked him what he was painting. Jethro faltered just a moment. She had let him see her painting of the flowers, which had been very pretty, so it was only fair that he let her see his painting of her, which was also very pretty, but not finished yet. He'd noticed that there were things like shadows that he hadn't painted much before, but he was thinking about adding them to make his picture look even more like the subject. "I'm painting you," Jethro answered after just a second's hesitation. "I'm not very good at imagining things," he explained, "but I seem to do okay when I copy them." The possibility that Jane might have opposed to his painting her, had he asked, never occured to him. "It's not finished, but you can look if you like," he offered, because he had seen her flowers painting before it was quite finished.

0 Jethro I hope so 0 Jethro 0 5

Jane

March 19, 2011 11:07 PM

Me, too by Jane

Jane’s friendly, polite expression turned to one of surprise when Jethro said he was painting her, so it was good that he immediately explained why, or she wouldn’t have known what to think. She knew she was no beauty. Her own mother was constantly clucking her tongue over Jane’s height and her thick, unruly hair and the strength of her jaw, though Jane did notice that Mother didn’t do much to help. The only time she had pretty dresses or jewelry or anything like that was when she and Edmond were forced to attend parties with their parents, where he was just bored and any fun she might have gotten out of dressing up was ruined by being reminded, just before they arrived, to not actually say anything interesting.

Jane knew she was far from the world’s most fascinating person, but that order of Mother’s still seemed counterintuitive to her. She was supposed to be starting to get to know people. How was discussing the weather going to let her do that? A friendship based on a mutual dislike of Miss So-and-So’s dress robes was not going to be worth much in adult life, unless adult life was a great deal sillier and more pointless than she thought it was. Mother’s life wasn’t like that.

Though perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to compare to, since she didn’t think she really wanted to be her mother. Julia Carey was constantly present in Jane’s life, as or more involved than anyone could ask a parent to be, but she had been emotionally distant just as long. Jane couldn’t remember her mother ever once behaving affectionately toward her when it was just them, without Father and Edmond there to be her audience, and even then, though Edmond at least didn’t seem to notice it, it often seemed somehow….forced. Even when she was with them, she sometimes wasn’t.

Then Jethro offered to let her see his picture of her, and she quelled thoughts of her mother, moving over to look at the portrait and bringing her new piece with her. The reproduction of her while she was painting was more accurate than she’d expected. “You do copy what you see very well,” she said, then proffered her just-started night sky for examination. “I just started this – it’s the sky at home. So I’m sort of copying what I saw at the end of the summer.” She paused. “You aren’t planning to try to animate that one of me, are you?” she asked. "When you finish it?"

0 Jane Me, too 0 Jane 0 5

Jethro

March 24, 2011 4:27 AM

This is fun. by Jethro

Jane didn't show any signs of disastisfaction upon viewing Jethro's painting of her, which he thought was a good thing. She also said that he did copy things very well, which was a sentiment with which Jethro agreed but he was not in the habit of finding himself to be good at anything so he didn't really know how to handle it. Luckily Jane didn't seem to expect a response and instead offered to show him her new picture. Jethro gladly accepted the offer and viewed the picture that was in its early stages. "You must have a good memory to paint something real that isn't here," he said. It was different from imagining something completely because the details were already in existence, so to get them correct one must remember them completely. Jethro himself had a good memory, and it was the only way he'd managed to get by in his classes. His sister had explained that remembering wasn't quite the same as learning, but so far Jethro hadn't found the difference to cause a hindrance.

Jethro was planning on finishing his painting and had raised his paintbrush again to do so, when Jane said something about animating the picture. She said it in a negative sort of way, that while voiced as a question felt more like an instruction. "I hadn't thought about it," Jethro said honestly. "I won't if you don't want me to." She hadn't sounded like she'd wanted him to, but then Jethro wasn't the best at picking up on conversational signals and he'd certainly been wrong many times before. "You can have the picture, if you like." Jethro didn't know what he would do with it - in his past he'd given his paintings to his parents, who'd said they'd put them up but by now Jethro suspected they had been disposed of. It was okay, he didn't really have any emotional attachment to them; he only painted to pass the time, and he'd had fun in the process so nothing was lost by the pictures being thrown away. He didn't know what Jane would do with the picture, either, but it was she who was featured, so she probably had more of an attachment of any nature to it than Jethro did.

"I haven't quite finished," Jethro said as he raised his brush again to continue, "so I hope you don't mind sitting there a little while longer." She probably wouldn't mind, as she had started a new picture herself, but she had stopped to show him so Jethro wasn't sure if maybe she wanted a break. It was always better to check when he required someone to do something for him. Usually they declined, unless it was partnering in class (and even then sometimes they declined) but it was always much better to ask than to assume someone was content to do whatever it was he wanted them to, even if it was something as simple and unassuming as remaining seated so he could finish copying how they looked.

0 Jethro This is fun. 0 Jethro 0 5

Jane

March 25, 2011 10:28 PM

Super fun by Jane

Jane lifted one shoulder at Jethro’s comment about her memory. “I suppose so,” she said. “I’m not as good at remembering things I’m supposed to remember,” she added with a smile, remembering the long lists of what was an appropriate behavior and what was not. If she knew it was coming ahead of time, she could look back through Mother’s lists and remember what was on them long enough to recite it when asked, but if Mother surprised her, she inevitably made at least two mistakes. She was assured by everyone else that this didn’t make her bad, but she still disliked it.

Almost perfect. That was the best she could ever do. She knew that was still something very good, and she could never be perfect everywhere, but – just one thing. She’d like to do just one thing, and look at it again when she was done with it, and not immediately think about how she could have done it better. Just once. She wanted to know what it felt like.

Jane realized how silly she must have sounded when Jethro answered her and blushed. And then he offered her the portrait, and she wasn’t sure what the etiquette lists would have her do. Telling him to keep a picture of her seemed awfully arrogant, but…

A solution came to her. “Thank you,” she said. “You can have this one, too, when I’m finished.” That worked well. That way, a gift was given and reciprocated. That was proper and polite. “And I don’t mind sitting here longer.”

She started to paint again. “I was thinking, before you came…how awful it might be to be in a painting, like those,” she said, inclining her head a little toward the wall. “If I knew I was me, but that I was a painting.” And most likely dead, since most people who had portraits were and she wasn’t sure what would happen if someone alive were in a portrait, but that was too morbid to mention in company. “And everyone I knew was outside, but I couldn’t get out.”

0 Jane Super fun 0 Jane 0 5

Jethro

March 27, 2011 9:42 AM

Super duper fun by Jethro

Jane said she would keep the picture, which made more sense to Jethro than if he kept it. It was a picture of her, so it sort of belonged to her, anyway. If Jethro had painted something that wasn't a person, like a chair or other piece of furniture, then that would have been a different matter, because furniture didn't generally have personal possessions. However he had painted Jane, and Jane did have personal possessions, and as the picture was of her it made sense for her to own it. She was kind enough to offer her own picture to Jethro in response, and although that picture wasn't of him, it was of the night sky: another entity that had no personal poessessions and therefore could not be angry that Jethro would have its picture. "Thank you," he replied to her offer. He thought maybe he could put the painting up in his commonroom and then it would be like he was looking at the night sky even in the day time, which sounded like a fun thing.

Jane clarified that she didn't mind sitting there a little longer, which was good news. Jethro continued to paint her as she sat there, his mind now at ease that she was comfortable with the situation. He started adding some of the shadows he'd seen on her face, created by her hair and natural contour lines blocking the light in different levels. It was a painstaking process to get the colors just right because some of the shadows were very slight and some were more noticeable. Light was interesting like that, how it could be blocked a little or a lot and make a shadow. Jethro sometimes liked to play with shadows, using his hands to make images of animals and the like on a background.

Jane began a new conversation about being a portrait painting, which was sort of a continuation of a previous point they'd hit upon about the potential for Jethro to animate her picture, but they'd moved on since so Jethro decided to count it as a new conversation with recurring themes. She was doing what Jethro knew was known as abstract thinking, which was thinking about things you had not yet (nor might ever) experienced. He found that very difficult. He could formulate theories on experiments that had yet to be conducted, but he couldn't imagine what it would be like to feel something that he had never felt; he found it difficult enough to imagine something he did have an experience of having felt. "It doesn't sound like it would be very much fun," Jethro said uncertainly, hoping he'd understood what she'd said correctly. "Though none of these portraits seem to be especially unhappy," he added, because a reasoned argument had to consider both sides.

0 Jethro Super duper fun 0 Jethro 0 5

Jane

March 27, 2011 10:57 PM

We're fun people by Jane

“You’re welcome,” Jane said, glad that the point of propriety had been resolved without either side being offended. Or at least, if Jethro was offended, he wasn’t behaving as though he were offended, which was good. There wasn’t going to be a conflict right now either way.

It was a short-sighted view. She knew that. If he was offended and pretending not to be, then all sorts of things she wouldn’t like might happen in the future: other people hearing bad reports of her conduct, her mother hearing bad reports of her conduct, and so on. But there was nothing she could do about all that since he didn’t look like he was only pretending to not be offended, so she couldn’t see the point in worrying about it right now instead of continuing to enjoy her painting.

He had a good point about the paintings. Jane had never seen many outside of Sonora – her parents were from a minor side-branch of the Virginia Careys, Father was descended from a first cousin of Anthony Carey II, not, as most Careys, including the others at Sonora, were, Anthony II himself, and while they were neither impoverished nor without dignity, they had better things to do generally than paint themselves – but the ones here and at other family homes she had visited didn’t show any signs of being displeased with the position they had found themselves in. They even seemed to have their own little society, and only a few were generally less than pleasant to the students.

“That’s a good point,” she said. “Maybe it’s something about the charm.” Limited memory, maybe, or something in the personality translation process to make them accept it. Or just an acknowledgment that it was sort of like being still alive, which was more than most people could say after their bodies died. Those things were still a little disturbing, but maybe not as bad as her first thought. “Maybe I’ll use that as my summer research project.” She looked up at him curiously, a thought striking her. “What do you do over the summers?” she asked. She and Edmond did their lessons and special research projects, but she had a vague impression, gathered from school, that this was not common. Especially the research project part.

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