<strike>Spring</strike> Fall cleaning? on Pecari Commons

Sammy Meeks

June 15, 2015 3:00 PM

<strike>Spring</strike> Fall cleaning? by Sammy Meeks

Several days had passed since the Opening Feast (What day is it anyway? Tuesday? Did I have homework?), and Sammy had still not unpacked. She picked clean clothes out of her suitcase and dropped the dirty ones in a small pile that made her feel sufficiently lazy without occupying and dirtying too much of the shared bedroom. It wasn’t a huge area, so even though Sammy rather liked living in a messy room, an “organized mess” as she’d purport her bedroom at home to be, but she didn’t really want to be that roommate, the one who ruins all the fun for everybody else with their filth.

Upon returning from a very satisfying dinner, the brunette waged a battle inside her: to unpack, or not to unpack? That was the question. She probably should have done it before now, given the nice dressers the school provided for everybody, but she was pretty lazy when it came to that kind of thing. And while she now felt that bubbling sleepiness that often accompanies a good meal, she kinda felt like maybe she should get things neatened up anyway. The struggle was real.

The lazy streak won out in the end, but the universe seemed to have other plans; no matter what Sammy did, she simply couldn’t seem to fall asleep. Her nap plans were cosmically ruined. Taking it as a sign from the Beyond that she ought to pick up, she crawled out of bed and over to her little mess. She handled the dirty pile first because, if nothing else, it was probably the most irritating to her roommates. Half of the stuff she had no recollection of wearing, but then again, she must’ve worn it all sometime. She wasn’t one to change her clothes eighty billion times a day, so there was about one outfit per day she had been back to school.

Once that was done, she started transferring the contents of her bags to her drawers, most of her stuff folded roughly but folded nonetheless. Sammy wasn’t too picky about a few wrinkles because if nothing else, they usually fell out once you wore the clothes a little while, not to mention the fact that it was way too much energy to meticulously style every piece of clothes you owned. She needed that energy for more important things, like swimming in the MARS room, running through hallways, getting lost in the Gardens, or stuffing her face.

Toward the end of her laundry adventure, she heard the door open, grey eyes turning curiously toward it to see which roomie had joined her.“Hey hi hello,” she grinned, identifying the addition as Gia. Sammy was pretty fond of all of her roommates, but she especially liked this one. She thought that Gia was always such a good sport about the often outrageous questions Sammy asked about the magical world, and it was nice to have somebody around she could comfortably ask the particularly stupid-sounding ones without feeling like she’d be judged or something. “I decided to be a slightly less crappy roommate and pick up after myself some. What do you think? Like new, right?”

Subthreads:

Forgot to actually tag [Gia] (nm) by Sammy Meeks

It looks nice! by Gia Donovan with Sammy

12 Sammy Meeks <strike>Spring</strike> Fall cleaning? 310 Sammy Meeks 1 5

Sammy Meeks

June 16, 2015 1:17 AM

Forgot to actually tag [Gia] (nm) by Sammy Meeks

12 Sammy Meeks Forgot to actually tag [Gia] (nm) 310 Sammy Meeks 0 5

Gia Donovan

June 17, 2015 10:27 PM

It looks nice! by Gia Donovan

Gia was still adjusting to the return of school. She had already written her mother three separate letters, written several times over because her homesickness was taking over each time she began to focus on her mother. It was really quite strange because Gia liked being at Sonora, she really did. Everything about Sonora was like a life of someone she wished she was. She felt that was a common fantasy amongst those who were nomads without a choice. Gia was very close to her mother as close as she was to her brother and she often worried about her mother when they weren’t around. Her mother constantly told her that it wasn’t her job to worry but rather to just have fun, but Gia wanted to make sure her family was taken care of and happy.

While Gia was dealing with her homesickness, her brother was dealing with the upcoming change. He was irritated and weak. Gia tried to always be extra cautious around him during this time because she didn’t want to upset him. He always got a little angry at her whenever she mentioned their mother because he felt that being the man of the house, he ought to be doing more to help her. Because of his attitude towards the conservation, Gia did not mention her missing their mother.

After leaving the owlery to send off her third letter, Gia made her way through the garden back to the common rooms. She stayed outside a little longer than was necessary, however. Gia loved the gardens. They felt free and safe. Back in Greece, they often lived in the dirtier, poor parts of the towns or countryside, but never in places of beauty and wonder. Sonora held such wonders and Gia was so happy to be able to be in a place like this. Being in the gardens made her homesickness a little less prominent.

With a deep breath, Gia continued on her journey back to her dorm where she shared living space with a group of girls. As soon as she entered the dorm room, her roommate, Sammy, addressed her.Gia blinked at her as she tried to understand her. Gia still, on occasion, had trouble with some of the phrases that Americans used. “Less crappy?” She repeated, looking dumbfounded by the term. “Oh, the mess!” Gia said suddenly when she had given Sammy’s area a look. “Yes, yes, it’s very nice.” She complemented with a grin as she flopped onto her own bed. Gia liked Sammy because she didn’t seem to judge Gia in any way and Gia rather enjoyed some of the questions that her thrown her way.

“Is it cleaning day? Or were you trying to find something so you put other things away?” Gia asked, wondering if she should straighten her own area up, which wasn’t at all messy, but could use some sprucing.

6 Gia Donovan It looks nice! 308 Gia Donovan 0 5

Sammy

June 25, 2015 2:06 PM

Yay! by Sammy

At first, She felt kinda bad that her casual slang seemed to confuse Gia, but fortunately, she figured it out quickly. Sometimes Sammy still forgot that Gia was foreign and had a different understanding of language than she did. Being a good old American gal, her world was fairly America-centric in view, so it was hard sometimes to step away from the expectation everyone would understand her slang, although it was becoming more and more clear here, with not only different nationalities among students but with this crazy new blood status thing also apparently playing a role in people’s diction and stuff.

The blood status thing, she had learned, was pretty important to a lot of people, too. Most of the magic-blooded ones (Sammy wasn’t fond of the term pureblood, mostly because of the way it seemed to imply there was something wrong or “impure” about Muggleborn people like her) around here seemed to care an awful lot. But not Gia, though. Sammy appreciated that.

“Cleaning day,” the brunette smiled. “I got kinda sick of looking at the mess, I guess,” she added with a light laugh. She was nearly done folding and filing now, and she was actually quite proud of how much work she’d done. If only her moms could see her now, they would have been so surprised. Sammy was, to phrase it gently, a bit of a messy child at home as well, and cleaning up after herself somehow never seemed to make it onto her agenda.

“Plus, I mean, this school’s so fancy and nice. I probably ought to try and not wreck it, right?” Sammy’s family had a steady income, but she had never seen anything like this before coming to Sonora. It was a luxury, and she knew it, so she figured she probably shouldn’t squander the opportunity or whatever.

As she folded the last article of clothing and stashed it in her drawer, her smile slowly grew, and her hands moved slowly to savor the moment of completion. Carefully sliding the drawer shut, Sammy couldn’t help but hold her breath, as if expecting her clothes to explode back out because how was this even possible? But nothing happened, and she threw up her arms happily. “Hooray, I’m done! Victory!” she exclaimed. She glanced at her roommate, her grin lingering. “So that’s my little success of the day. How’s yours going?”

12 Sammy Yay! 310 Sammy 0 5

Gia

June 26, 2015 6:05 PM

Cheers! by Gia

Having spent all of last year in a room full of girls, Gia was getting used to the different personalities. Sammy was a very outgoing person who always seemed to be in a good mood. Her good cheer could often times be infectious as it was currently for Gia. Having spent the better part of the day missing her mother and worrying for her brother, Gia was happy to feel something other than the heavy feelings she had previously been having. She was beginning to believe that this was the whole reason people had friends.

“I see.” Gia commented when Sammy admitted to getting tired of her own mess. Gia had also had a year to adjust to sharing a room with girls who weren’t like herself or her family. Because they lived in a tiny one bedroom apartment and Gia had to share her room with her brother, she had learned to keep her things in their rightful place at all times unless she was using it. If any of them were messy, there would be room to maneuver through their living space. Being basically Nomads had also kept their actually possessions rather small, which helped to keep their tight spaces from becoming cluttered or messy.

“Yes, I don’t think the school would be too kind to you if you destroyed their structure or furniture.” Gia commented with a laugh. She definitely agreed that the school was quite lovely and much more luxurious than anything she had been able to live for a long time. Summer had felt so claustrophobic having only her tiny bedroom to escape too and that was never for very long since her brother was usually always there. “I love this school; let’s try not to destroy it, agreed?” Gia suggested with a grin.

Gia watched her roommate with fascination as she packed away the rest of her clothes. Gia did not have a large wardrobe, so it fit easily into the dresser without any issues. Some of the girls had so many outfits that Gia wasn’t sure if they ever wore them more than once. The idea of the amount of wealth some of her classmates had sometimes made Gia feel self-conscious and so she was grateful that the robes covered up her clothing. Her mother bought her previously owned clothing every year. The only item of clothing that was ever new were her shoes. Gia tried to never feel like she was left wanting when she was around others because that wasn’t fair to her mother.

“Oh.” Gia stuttered, not expecting to have a question thrown to her. “My day has been okay.” She stated. “I was missing my mom earlier, so I wrote her a letter and then I was just hanging out in the garden for a while. That was basically all.” She said, feeling no reason to deny her homesickness to Sammy.

6 Gia Cheers! 308 Gia 0 5

Sammy

July 08, 2015 2:46 AM

We make a pretty peppy pair. by Sammy

One of Sammy’s favorite things about Gia was that she could make jokes with big words. Maybe it was part of her English being a second language shebang, as in she might not have known a ton of smaller words, but it was pretty cool to hear ..destroyed their structure as a joke. That in and of itself actually made her laugh harder than the joke itself. “I suppose I can compromise on that,” she returned with a cheeky grin.

Sammy listened to Gia talk about her day and was a bit saddened to hear that it hadn’t all been great. Her smile faded a little bit as her roommate expressed her sadness, but she couldn’t help but relate. Being away from home was still weird and sometimes felt wrong, especially when she thought about not the big, extravagant things but the little things like family dinners. Her brother was like sixteen or something now, so he definitely didn’t appreciate time spent at the dinner table with their moms, but Sammy missed that more than anything.

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” she admitted. “I should probably write to my moms too. I’m pretty bad at letter writing, but I mean, we don’t have phones here to call them, so I guess that’s what we got, right?” Sammy offered a crooked smile, a little sad now thinking about her moms, but she brushed it off quickly enough.

“Anything exciting in the Gardens today?” she asked, her chipperness returning. “Did Bigfoot come for you?” Sammy paused briefly, glancing around as if for a camera to look into on an office sit-com. “Bigfoot’s real, right?”

12 Sammy We make a pretty peppy pair. 310 Sammy 0 5

Gia

July 11, 2015 7:29 PM

My brother would hate us. by Gia

Sometimes Gia felt that there was some underlying meaning to some of the things that she was saying that she was unaware of just because of the reactions that Sammy gave to her. Gia didn’t think what she had said was funny enough to enlist the hard laugh that Sammy provided, but she didn’t think that Sammy was making fun of her either. So, the only logical thing she could come up with was that there was some language barrier that was preventing her from understanding the full meaning of what she had said and thus, she was missing the whole picture and the joke.

Gia felt guilty for mentioning missing her mother because the generally all smiles roommate that Gia had grown used to, dulled slightly when Gia mentioned her being homesick. She hadn’t meant to make Sammy sad or anything like that. She was only being honest with her and Gia’s homesickness always passed without too much of an issue. This time around was only difficult because Jax was in one of his moods and when he was like that, she couldn’t talk to him about anything. He was so frustrating sometimes. He was older than her, but he could behave like a real child when he wanted.

She stared blankly at Sammy when she discussed some form of communication with her mothers (Gia was aware of lesbians, but had never known any coupling in her own life, so she was always a bit fascinated by Sammy’s home life for various reasons). “Fone?” She asked. “There are fire calls that people make, but I don’t think the school allows for those.” Gia stated, wondering if that’s what Sammy meant. “So, Owl Post is really all we have. How do you communicate with others back home if it’s not with owl post?” Gia was aware of things like cars because she saw those often enough, but everyday Muggle life was not something she knew much of.

Gia laughed at the question, “Of course Big Foot wouldn’t be in our Gardens, the Headmaster wouldn’t want any of the students to be eaten.” Gia advised. “We call them Yeti as well, but Yeti’s are typically the ones in Tibet or wherever it is and Big Foot is the American version of them.” Gia only heard stories about these creatures, but the most important information that she knew about was the fact that they do eat humans. They eat anything, but humans are no exception to that. “I mean, can you imagine if one got on school grounds and ate someone? It would be terrible for the school.” Gia said, giggling at the idea of a Big Foot wandering around.

“I did not see anything very exciting today.” She commented. “Sometimes though, I feel like I’m being watched. I think it’s all the space though. Like, I’m alone but all the sounds and space make it feel like someone’s with me.” She tried to explain, but uncertain if she was thinking of the correct words. “It’s okay during the day though. After dark feels different.”

6 Gia My brother would hate us. 308 Gia 0 5