Raine Collindale
June 02, 2017 4:43 AM
Attempting to multitask (tag Ben) by Raine Collindale
Kyte had neither informed her beforehand, nor explained now, why Ben had joined their evening practise holding a large book. Raine loved her twin very dearly, but had always had the feeling that one day she might brutally murder him, and the feeling that that day was getting closer and closer had only increased with their teenage years. She liked Ben fine, and had greeted him perfectly politely, and offered for him to at least join their warm up, but she needed to focus on practising, and she wasn’t sure she could do that with someone reading at her - nor could she concentrate well enough on the class material for it to actually be really useful, and she felt sort of bad that he was wasting his time on them. Then there were other things, things that showed Kyte just really didn’t think.One such thing was the clothes. It wasn’t like Ben hadn’t seen her in something revealing before, he’d come to some of their shows, after all, where she mostly wore spangly leotards. But then he was one anonymous audience member amongst many, and a good deal further away. She had worn leggings and a crop top for this evening’s practice on the assumption that it was only going to be her and Kyte. She’d had a loose sweater over the top for her walk down to MARS which she had initially vowed to keep on, but it slipped up and got in her way every time she went upside down, so she had abandoned it and hoped that Ben was going to be polite enough to at least pretend not to notice that he could see a large amount of her torso on display. Raine wasn’t usually very bothered about her body (which, for the most part, was actually pretty awesome, as she could make it do whatever she wanted, with enough practise) but then she wasn’t usually waving it around in someone else’s face quite so directly, and she felt the full force of teenage self-consciousness at having to do so now. Raine didn’t exactly think of herself as attractive - attractive girls had this kind of… shininess, mostly in their perfect, flicky hair, which her own mess of wavy, mousy locks failed to hit on several counts. She was also rather too naive to register the fact that teenage boys might be able to imagine some creative uses for the fact that she could do the splits and pretty much fold herself in half. Had she realised this, she might have felt rather guilty. She’d heard rumours that Ben was dating Tess, and Tess was one her best friends… Given that she was working on her aerial hoop tricks, the phrase ‘dangling herself in front of his face’ was rather startlingly literal right now.
There were limited days when they could use the pitch, which was the only space big enough for Kyte to actually practise on his broom and at speed, but he was currently working through a handstand sequence on a bar in the corner. Raine’s hoop was in the middle of the room, and she worked through the choreography her mother had suggested, whilst Ben read. With one leg hooked over the top of her hoop, the other stuck straight out behind her, she arched her back and stretched her arms out at a diagonal through the hoop. Bringing her hands around to grip the frame, she carefully dropped herself a few inches so that her previously hooked leg was now out straight, her torso hanging below the lower rim of the hoop, and let go with her hands, stretching them out to the sides and trusting in the counterbalancing positions of her legs. She regarded Ben upside-down, a quizzical expression on her face. She held the pose for a few seconds before pulling herself up to sit like the lady in the moon.
“Say that last part again please?” she requested, now that the blood was not rushing to her head.
OOC: The first 22 seconds of this video is what I’m attempting to describe above. I’m aware that Ben already mentioned doing some practices with Kyte in COMC, so if this would change his thoughts at all, we can assume that Kyte and Raine only do some evenings together, and one of those hadn’t happened yet, although mostly it would be both of them around.
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Attempting to multitask (tag Ben)
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Ben
June 07, 2017 10:23 AM
Playing it cool by Ben
Ben tried not to stare when Raine arrived. He assumed Kyte had been similarly lax in telling her than Ben would here as he'd been in telling Ben that she would. He figured he was supposed to have guessed it on his own, as he knew Kyte and Raine generally practiced together, but she probably should have been given some warning. "Erm, hi, Raine," he greeted her and told himself she was like a sister to him since Kyte was basically a brother, seeing as they shared a room and stuff, so by extension, Raine was family, too, so if she was comfortable being dressed like that around Kyte there was no reason Ben being there should be any different.He did join the warm up, because she invited him to, and because he didn't think that would slow them down any, and because, well, he was going to spend a lot of the next couple hours sitting and reading aloud, so the chance to be active, if only for warming up, was appealing.
After that, though, he settled down nearby and picked up the first of the textbooks he'd be reading from. Care of Magical Creatures, chosen first because he found the material a bit more interesting and therefore slightly more likely to keep him on task than just watching a circus lesson and cheering at all the awesome things they were trying to learn to do.
This got more difficult than expected when Raine took off her sweater. Like a sister, he reminded himself and took a moment to study the picture of the Augurey in his book, "And then there's a picture of one. So, it's kind of bird of prey looking," he added, so it would seem like he'd been looking at it so intensely for study related purposes,"with a longish down-curved beak and greenish black feathers. Anyway, it goes on," and he carefully kept his eyes on the words in front of him instead of his roommate's exposed midriff.
As they continued to practice and he continued to read, he did find his eyes drifting up now and then, drawn to Raine initially, but then going over to Kyte as well, so it looked like he was just interested in how they were progressing, before returning to the next sentence. He'd chosen a mat equidistant between the twins so his voice would carry equally to them, so while he was closer to them than he would have been as an audience member, he was well enough back that he wasn't in the way or too likely to be more of a distraction than reading aloud about Augureys was by its nature distracting.
"Its diet consists of insects, fairies and flies, which it hunts for in the heavy rain. Intensely shy, the Augurey lives in a tear-shaped nest in thorn and brambles," he continued to read aloud, then looked up in time to see Raine dangling upside down in what looked to him like a very precarious position on her hoop before she pulled herself back upright and asked him to repeat that part.
His mind blanked completely on what he had just read, stuck mostly as it was on the vision he'd just seen, but luckily his finger was holding his place and he reread it silently to himself before answering, "I said the Augurey lives in a nest of thorn and brambles and hunts mostly during rainstorms because it's very shy. It eats bugs and fairies. That looked really cool," he added, trying to play cool on his staring.
He glanced over to see if Kyte was paying any attention at all (more to gauge how likely his friend was to have noticed Ben looking at his sister in a way that was probably not as sisterly as Ben wished it was than to see if he was learning anything) then looked back down at his book and started reading the next paragraph.
OOC: As in COMC class, the information about Augureys is taken from http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Augurey
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Playing it cool
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Raine
June 08, 2017 10:15 AM
You're doing very well by Raine
As she had suspected, Raine found it hard to focus, even when she was sitting upright in a relatively neutral position, her mind was already skipping ahead to the next trick. Ben was telling her that something ate bugs and fairies. And that that had looked really cool. She smiled shyly, biting her lip as if letting a full blown smile out might be considered too egotistical a way to receive a compliment.“Thank you,” she said, with sincerity and a slight blush. Raine wasn’t very used to compliments. Her family praised her, when praise was due for a hard day’s work, or when she got a move just right, but they were used to all this - they expected this from her. Ben always sounded much more in awe of what she and Kyte could do, and it made her feel happy and special, especially when it was contrasted with school, which so consistently failed to make her feel anything except varying degrees of below average.
Kyte didn’t particularly register the exchange between them - he noticed that Ben had stopped talking in favour of Raine talking, but he wasn’t giving either of their words a lot of attention, and as his head had been upside down and back to front, he had noticed neither Ben’s cautious glances at him, nor his admiring glances at Raine. There was a muffled swear word as he missed a handhold and had to fumble for his position but he recovered.
Rained continued her routine, working through a few easy poses, including the mermaid, which was one of her favourites, bringing herself back into the hoop with her back to Ben so that she could be facing him during the next section, which again involved a large amount of hanging upside down.
“Hey, Ben?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder. “Uh, sorry to interrupt,” she added cautiously, as she still wasn’t totally sure how this arrangement was meant to work, but as Ben had broken off for small talk earlier, she figured it was probably ok. “Can you watch this and let me know if I keep my legs straight - just on the first and last move, they’re meant to curve on the others? My mom’s always nagging me…” She gripped the top of the hoop, pulling herself upside down with her legs (more or less) straight up in a pencil. She curved them to the side before flexing at the knees, and finally bringing one leg either side of her arms, slowly spreading them in a straddle. It was a tough sequence to hold, and she could feel the sweat beading on her arms and chest. Whilst Kyte tended to be a swearer, Raine was a moaner, and she groaned a little as she held the final position. She brought herself back to sitting, slightly breathless, and pretty sure that she was already glistening - Merlin, she must look gross. “How did that look?” she asked.
OOC - Sequence from 1:58 (link should start there) to 2:08, but then going into this position before returning to seating.
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You're doing very well
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