Just because I've never posted on this board before... on Pecari Commons

Tawny Brockert

August 26, 2009 4:16 PM

Just because I've never posted on this board before... by Tawny Brockert

Midterm had rather sucked for Tawny. Sure, she had gotten many fantastic presents but all that family togetherness crap just killed her. All that cooing and whatnot over her cousin Angus's son Duncan sort of made her want to puke. He wasn't even little and cute anymore, being nearly a year old. Plus, Duncan kept getting into things, some of them her things. Before Tawny had really just thought of him as a disgusting creature who cried and spit up and pooped. Now she would rather have that back, because at least he stayed in one spot. When she had gotten angry because Duncan touched her stuff with fingers that he'd previously had in his mouth, and accidently set his new teddy bear on fire, using accidental magic that she couldn't help, Tawny had been the one yelled at and Angus's wife, Meredith seemed to think Tawny was some kind of monster.

This was why she didn't like to spend time with her family much. Everyone got favored over her. Everything was always her fault.

Of course, Pippa had cooed over Duncan more than anyone, which naturally led to everyone saying how good Pippa was with kids. It was altogether nauseating.

Plus, naturally, Pippa had gotten overall better grades than Tawny, except in Potions, which Tawny had done better in. It wasn't even as if Pippa got all O's. Her grades weren't anything special, they were just better than Tawny's.

To make matters worse, Melora had been made an RA at her school so naturally, her father was proud of that as well. Even her mother, who wasn't Melora's mother, was.

Not to mention, nobody exactly seemed that thrilled that Tawny was sorted into Pecari. Her maternal grandmother looked at her like she was some sort of insect (a look she usually reserved for Melora, the child of Tawny's father's first marriage, or non-purebloods) and told her parents that it would be harder to find Tawny a husband some day.

Only Grandpa Royce seemed to pay her any positive attention at all. If Tawny didn't know her grandparents' marriage had been arranged, she would have wondered how they ever got together. Grandpa was rather laid-back and mellow and Grandmother was proper and uptight, the worst sort of pureblood.

Tawny slumped on the sofa in the Pecari Common room. After a few moments, she felt someone sit down next to her. She glanced over at the person "What?" Her tone was casual, not angry but it was still a rather crass way of greeting someone.

She didn't have to have manners. This was Pecari. Pecaris didn't care about manners. It was actually a very freeing feeling after the holidays around her family.

11 Tawny Brockert Just because I've never posted on this board before... 148 Tawny Brockert 1 5

Jose Hernandez

August 26, 2009 5:56 PM

Welcome to the board, then. It's a cool place. by Jose Hernandez

Jose was exhausted. In recent years, the California Pierces had spent most winters within spitting distance of the Mexican border in a California town called Canyon City, which had a road, a couple hardy trees, what might have been a canyon, and Jose's grandparents and non-Pierce cousins. It was by no means a city by any definition of the word, even if you weren't comparing it to Los Angeles, San Fransisco, or San Diego, which Jose was. But what it lacked in buildings, tourism events, and population, it made up for in warm temperatures and even larger than normal family gatherings.

Half of them didn't speak English. The other half didn't speak Spanish. It made conversations interesting, to say the least. Jose's Dad was just about the only person who could talk to everyone there.

The Pierces and Hernandezes had evolved a new language that was half Spanglish, half Charades, and half Pictionary. Which came to three halves of a language, and they needed that extra half or nobody would be able to figure out what the flapping hands, the improvised vocabulary, and the random pictures meant.

All in all, it was a relief to get back to Sonora where, even if the students came from all over the world, at least they all spoke English. If he'd been there much longer, he would have started thinking sentences like 'Yo am mucho hungry, tienes tofu enchilladas?' was an acceptable form of language. He'd already caught himself thinking he was understanding the Spanish his grandparents were using when they said goodbye, until he realized they'd been speaking broken English.

To re-acclimate, he headed down to the Commons and dropped down onto one of the couches, just to listen to the English conversations going on around the room. The first English word presented to his ear was a "What?" from directly beside him.

Jose turned his head to look at the girl he'd joined on the couch. The voice belonged to Tawny, one of the girls he'd meat at the Welcoming Feast. "Hey," he returned cheerfully, his accent as un-Hispanic as it had ever been. "Don't mind me. I'm just here to learn to speak English again."

He was pretty proud of himself. Not one Spanglish word in there, he hadn't felt the need to draw anything. On the other hand, he had waved when he said 'hey', shaken his head when he said 'don't', and he'd pointed at himself when he said 'me' and 'I', at the floor when he'd said 'here', and at his mouth when he'd said 'speak'.

The charades would take a while to go away, probably.

"Spent the holiday Not Speaking Spanish," he added in explanation. He itched to draw a Christmas tree, but this time he'd grabbed his one hand with the other and managed to keep his gestures to a simple shake of the head at the word 'not'.

1 Jose Hernandez Welcome to the board, then. It's a cool place. 149 Jose Hernandez 0 5

Tawny

August 31, 2009 3:33 PM

Thanks by Tawny

Oh good, it was Jose. Tawny had met him at the feast and rather liked him. He was one of the few people in her year that didn't strike her as a goody-goody. She didn't like goody-goodies, like her sister. They weren't fun at all. Unless she was teasing them. Tawny occasionally enjoyed that.

She gave Jose a small smile. "I...didn't speak any Spanish on my vacation either. In fact, I've never spoken a word of it in my life." Her grandmother would have been horrified if she had. Grandmother Royce didn't approve of any language being spoken are around her except English, (and only proper English at that.) Grandmother distrusted foreigners though not as much as non-purebloods.

"My older sister, Melora speaks it sometimes, as well as Portugese, French and Italian." This was mostly because Melora liked travelling and had spent two years after graduation from Sonora doing so. Melora also did this at home occasionally to annoy Tawny's grandmother. It also annoyed Tawny, because she didn't know what her sister was saying. "She's not fluent really though."

"If you didn't speak Spanish, then why do you have to learn to speak English again? What did you speak?" Tawny was vaguely aware that she sounded a little like Quentin, from her classes. He was her third cousin or something, but she wasn't in a hurry to claim him given how...incredibly weird he was. Still, she couldn't help wondering since what Jose said seemed a bit odd to her.

11 Tawny Thanks 148 Tawny 0 5

Jose

September 01, 2009 9:35 AM

You're quite welcome by Jose

Jose grinned back at her when Tawny said she spent her vacation also not speaking Spanish; only her 'not speaking' wasn't capitalized. Jose could tell. It lacked the right emphasis. What Jose couldn't say - and, in fact, most of the California Pierces couldn't say anymore - was that he'd never spoken a word. A word was easy. It was the full sentences that got difficult.

He was duly impressed by Melora's command of four languages in addition to English, even if it wasn't fluent. Jose's Spanish was far from fluent and a full half of his relatives were Mexican-American.

Apparently Tawny hadn't picked up on Jose's own capital letters, though, because she asked what he had been speaking. "I was trying to speak Spanish. Or, at least, the whole familia - ah! Family! The whole family was using a bastardized mix of enough Spanish and English words that both the Hernandezes and the Pierces could understand más o menos - arg! - more or less what everyone was saying, if supplemented with enough charades and quick sketches. Anyway, whatever it was we were using, it wasn't English, either."

Jose's hands still gripped each other to keep them gesturing too unusually, but suspected that might have distracted him from keeping all of his Spanish vocabulary out of his dialogue. Of course, his accent was atrocious enough that even when he did use Spanish words, they sounded nearly as English as the rest of what he was saying. The Hernandezes were the same way about their English, so even when they did speak mostly English words, it was still hard to understand them.

"I'm fifty percent Mexican," he added, just in case his name and appearance didn't make that obvious enough. "But I'm probably only a little better at understanding Spanish than, say, Saul is." He used Saul primarily because the prefect was probably his only relative that Tawny might recognize, rather than because Saul was particularly bad or good at languages. "Actually, I think Yoko knows more than I do, and she's only four." But then, they'd been going to Canyon City for nearly as long as she'd been alive. It was still a new development as far as Jose was concerned.

0 Jose You're quite welcome 0 Jose 0 5

Tawny

September 04, 2009 6:40 PM

Family and heritage. by Tawny

It sounded like Jose hadn't necessarily had the best holiday either with the language barrier and all, at least in Tawny's view. The other first year didn't seem all that displeased about it. Perhaps that was why it still sounded like it was better than her own.

Or perhaps the reason was that Jose's family didn't seem to like his siblings-if he even had siblings- and cousins more than him. Granted, if they couldn't understand each other, Jose probably wouldn't be able to completely tell whether they liked him or not.

Tawny nodded. "I figured you were at least partially some sort of hispanic, I mean, because of your name and coloring. My family is just white and magical all the way back." Not that she had researched these things herself, Tawny wasn't all that into researching anything unless it really interested her, but her grandmother bragged that her family was that way and Tawny couldn't imagine the Winslows arranging a marriage that wasn't so the Royces had to be as well, and certainly Grandmother wouldn't have let Tawny's mother marry her father if the Brockerts weren't. "I'm not even sure what nationality the name Brockert is."

She paused. "I don't usually understand Spanish when my sister speaks it. Or any of the other languages she speaks. Except English, of course." Tawny looked at Jose. "Is Yoko one of your cousins?" She only had one first cousin, Angus but her extended family appeared to be quite extensive.

11 Tawny Family and heritage. 148 Tawny 0 5

Jose

September 09, 2009 11:35 AM

Cousins and Customs by Jose

Jose shrugged as Tawny said she didn't know what nationality the Brockerts came from, as if to say it probably didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. He had no clearer picture where the Pierces were from. He put them down as American and left it at that. They were probably as mogrelized in that respect as they were in the magical lines, if not more so.

"Yeah," he confirmed her guess that Yoko was his cousin. "The littlest one, at least on the Pierce side, at least for now. There's talk that Maria might have one soon." He shrugged and grimaced. "Succession issues and all that."

He wasn't quite taking it for granted that Tawny was aware that Aunt Regina died a couple weeks before break, but it wasn't really a discussion he wanted to go into. There'd been enough talk about the future of the California clan enough over break. That was why he'd tried so hard to spend most of his time with his Spanish speaking cousins. He didn't want to get into it here, too. He condensed the biggest problem down into one sentence of explanation: "The California Pierces have very few actual Pierces left."

He made a wave like gesture, as though he were brushing the topic away, but it still felt incomplete. "It kind of freaked out most of us to find out Aunt Regina was mortal after all. And the problem with a communist dictatorship is that when the dictator dies, the equal masses aren't sure who's supposed to take over. Fortunately, I'm a Hernandez, so I'm not in any danger of being made Patriarch ever. But Saul is." He shuddered. "Which is why people want Maria to have kids."

He shook his head, hopefully really done with the subject now. "Sorry. That's the other thing that was going on all break. So I was trying to blend in with the Spanish kids and keep out of all of it. How was yours?"

0 Jose Cousins and Customs 0 Jose 0 5

Tawny

September 23, 2009 4:12 PM

Re: Cousins and Customs by Tawny

Tawny considered what Jose said about the California Pierces having few actual Pierces left. She honestly didn't think there was much danger of her own last name dying out anytime soon. There were Tawny and her sisters and of course and her first cousin Angus and his son Duncan and Adam and Chelsea and their siblings and if she was correct, Great-Uncle Gus's descendants were almost exclusively male.

"Odds are, I won't become the matriarch anytime soon either." Tawny replied. So many of those people, including several not having the last name Brockert were ahead of her in the line of sucession. There would have to be like a gigantic catastrophic accident at a family reunion for it to even be possible. "Eventually, I'll probably end up in some arranged marriage but I haven't given it much thought." And that would mean acting proper all the time. Of course, it could also lead to increased power depending on how good the guy's family it was. Naturally, Tawny hoped to marry better than Pippa did and naturally, nobody in her family thought she would. She also hoped it wouldn't be to anyone too controlling. Tawny didn't like being controlled.

"What would be wrong with Saul being patriarch?" Tawny inquired, not missing Jose's shudder. She really didn't know Jose's cousin and given the different last names, would have in fact, not realized they were even related had Jose not mentioned it. In most cases, Tawny didn't have the same luxury. Chances were, people would know that she was somehow related to at least three of her four relatives attending Sonora. Thankfully, she could at least deny Quentin.

She couldn't help making a face when asked about her own break. "It quite honestly stunk."

11 Tawny Re: Cousins and Customs 148 Tawny 0 5