Happy birthday to me... on Cascade Hall

Jane Carey

July 21, 2010 11:12 PM

Happy birthday to me... by Jane Carey

Somehow, maybe just because she was used to being woken up to the information every year and now her family wasn’t here to do that, Jane forgot that it was her twelfth birthday until the first owl arrived while she was busy slicing an orange into neat equal slices. Once she opened the card attached and worked her way through the stiff, formal labyrinth of Edmond’s prose style to get to the ‘happy birthday, Janey’ part, though, she began to smile.

It wasn’t proper to think so, since it indicated the flaw of selfishness, but Jane had always liked her birthday better than any other day of the year. She excused herself on the basis that the thing that made her like it so wasn’t the presents, though she did enjoy and appreciate them all very much. It was that, by some unspoken agreement, it was the one day of the year when she was never scolded for being too unladylike, or looked at askance for mixing the kind of books Edmond should have been reading with her stuffies and dolls and tea sets. Everyone praised her and her alone, too, without adding in slightly superior commendations for her foster-brother, and that was usually considered to be bad because it made her forget her place and not show proper humility.

Her birthday was her day, the one day each year where she was really Jane and not just Edmond’s foster-sister. Which he didn’t, almost to her annoyance, ever seem to hold against her even a little bit. In fact, as she opened the present, it became clear that while he’d ordered the book as was proper, he seemed to have made the bracelet himself, an unseemly display of sentiment that she felt very like more than matching once she recognized it.

She looked over to the Aladren table, but he was speaking to someone and didn’t see her. Before she could get up to thank him, her parents’ owls arrived with more presents, distracting her just long enough for another to arrive.

Her family had never skimped on presents, but after a few minutes, she began to notice that she was getting far more than usual, and thought she would have noticed even if she had known who half the people sending them were. Which she didn’t. Their signatures indicated that they were Careys, but she had never met most of them, and was becoming genuinely puzzled as to why they were sending her gifts. Her parents would have told her if they had secured her a very good betrothal, and surely she was not doing that well in her classes….

When she looked toward Aladren again, this time more to avoid the stares of her housemates, she found herself looking straight at Edmond, who looked embarrassed as he held up his hand. Jane nodded shortly, recognizing the signal. One summer, one of the earlier summers that she could remember, they had found the sign language alphabet in a new tutor’s Updated, Multi-Cultural dictionary, and had used it to spell out messages they didn’t want anyone to overhear ever since. They usually only did so in private, not at the table, but if Edmond thought whatever it was was important enough to ignore manners for, then she would take him at his word. Taking out a quill as well, she began writing the letters on a bit of wrapping paper, feeling too surprised to put them together herself, especially since he was spelling very fast.

myfault

Jane frowned. His fault? What was his fault?

Apparently recognizing her continued confusion, he sent another message. myplace. Familyhead. Yourfavor.

Oh. That.

She had almost started to forget that Edmond was now, technically, Head of the Savannah Careys, not least because he had spent almost all spring in an unusually spirited and very improper campaign to act as though he weren’t. She had, before she started letting him win her over, thought about all the unfortunate implications of that for him, and for their family unit, but not that it might touch her any further than not being able to talk to him anymore after he graduated from Sonora. It had never occurred to her that, as his foster-sister, certain people might think she had influence over him that would endure once he took over from Morgaine and that she was therefore a good person to get on good terms with now. It seemed that half the family, she suspected most of it among the younger members, was trying to buy her off.

She nodded, then looked away, not wanting to draw further attention to the two of them by spelling out a reply. It would cause him concern, since he would think she was angry with him about this, but it did look odd, and the room was crowded enough that she couldn’t be sure the message would get across clearly anyway. She’d talk to him later, once she had time to decide just how she did feel about just being his sister was making her important in a family where , if even the edited family histories were anything to judge by, that was a very dangerous thing to be.

She realized she was being looked at by someone else and smiled guilelessly, the way Mother had shown her how to when she didn’t really want to smile. “Good day,” she said. Then, to explain the packages and a few pieces of jewelry still showing, “It’s my twelfth birthday today.”

0 Jane Carey Happy birthday to me... 160 Jane Carey 1 5

Neal Padrig

July 23, 2010 1:06 AM

I would've brought a cake if I knew that by Neal Padrig

Sitting at the Pecari table everyday was something Neal was used to, but it was high time for a change. Even if it was just for the day, it didn’t seem like a bad idea to try something a bit out of the ordinary. Besides, by this point in the year Neal knew the names of all the other Pecari but still had a weak idea of many of the other people in the other houses. And it’s not like they were going to approach him, so he had to approach them.

After spending much time considering doing just that, he went into Cascade Hall absolutely determined to keep himself from dropping himself off with his housemates. He looked at the other tables curiously, eyeing them to see which one would be the most welcoming. Crotalus was automatically out. He had heard rumors of The Ladies and didn’t think he’d feel up to risking a chat with them if he could help it. So it was Aladren or Teppenpaw. Annoyed with how much thought he was putting into something that was supposed to be spontaneous, he sat down in the nearest seat he could find at the closets table he was at.

It was, he noticed from the light tones, the Teppenpaw table. Though his colorblind vision used to give him some trouble telling apart House colors, he was used to the tones enough to figure them out with ease. He was across a girl he saw in some of his houses, and considered talking to her but thought against it when he saw her scribbling notes to herself, looking distractedly toward the Aladren table every so often. He shrugged to himself, letting her to it while he got out a book he picked up and started to read through it. So, plan Sit Somewhere Else and Meet New People seemed like it’d be a bust. Next time, he’d just try the Aladren table then or something.

His bloodshot eyes looked back up at the girl, trying to convince himself to make a better effort at branching out, but she spoke up first to his surprise. And on top of that, she told him it was her birthday.

“Cool,” he commented, taking a look down at the package she had. He hadn’t really noticed it before, what with his own mission on his mind, but it cleared up any questions he would’ve had if he had saw it right away. “Happy birthday then! Have you got any plans to celebrate it later?”

0 Neal Padrig I would've brought a cake if I knew that 0 Neal Padrig 0 5

Jane

July 24, 2010 12:20 AM

It's the thought that counts by Jane

Jane had heard the expression a few times before since she began the year at Sonora, but her immediate, split-second, interpretation of the word 'cool' was that the boy she had spoken to was cold. That wasn't very likely in even a very temperature-regulated building during Arizona May, though, so she decided he must have meant that he found what she'd said to be good, interesting, or something that he was not very concerned with, but that he saw she had some positive interest in.

Truly, English was a remarkable language. She had found the basic study of its history fascinating, and hoped she could learn more when there was time and her tutors believed that she was ready. She was very interested in learning how they had come to have the terms her classmates used that all her tutors did not.

"Thank you," she said. She recognized the boy from class, which meant he was a first or second year and she thought it was first like her, and a glance at his robe confirmed that he was a Pecari. Interesting, then, that he was here and not at the Pecari table. Perhaps he was a good friend to Brian or Dimitri. "If I were at home, I'd be permitted extra dessert at supper, so I think I may have that here, too. To celebrate."

Sweets. Oh, sweets. How she loved them. If she was not sure it would come across as mocking her tutor, which was a very serious thing, Jane thought she might have composed some of her required poems on the candies she'd been given when she was younger and did something right. Now that she was older that wasn't proper - learning and polite behavior should be things she did and exhibited for their own sakes, not for a piece of taffy or a hard peppermint - but at Sonora, if she had an assignment she didn't feel like doing, she found she had a much easier time with if she promised herself a treat afterward.

"My name is Jane," she said, hoping he didn't take offense to her assuming he wouldn't have learned her name already. She did try to speak to people, and to speak up as much as she could in class without seeming vain, but there were an incredible number of noisy people here. Mother would never have stood for it in their schoolroom, or even during free time. "Jane Carey, of Virginia." She had noticed that most of her classmates did not introduce themselves the way she had been taught to, so she had come up with that as a sort of compromise. Any pureblood would almost certainly deduce that she was a Virginia Carey from that, and non-pureblood classmates...well, actually, she wasn't sure what her non-pureblood classmates would do, but she understood that she seemed very formal to them anyway, so it would likely pass without much mention. "I don't think we've spoken before."

0 Jane It's the thought that counts 0 Jane 0 5