Headmaster Brockert
August 18, 2017 3:55 PM
Opening Feast by Headmaster Brockert
This year Mortimer was a bit more interested in the incoming students than he was last year as another of his granddaughters, Ruby, was going to be attending.She would be among the first students who would be trying out their new sorting method. Honestly, Mortimer didn't understand why it needed to be changed. Generations upon generations had been sorted this way and had grown up to be just fine. He never did undestand why things needed to change when the old ways worked perfectly well. Tradition was important. However, apparently, people had complained about the lack of sanitation regarding sharing a cup which was ridiculous. Even Annabeth hadn't raised a fuss over Owen doing so and she was incredibly overprotective. Honestly, kids were too soft now what with all the special diets that said everything with any flavor was bad for you. All that gluten free organic sugar free nonsense. Conspiracy by the blasted vegetable industry if you asked him.
They would change the food over his dead body. They could have those items too but they weren't taking away his steaks! After all, the kitchen elves had only just perfected steaks the way he liked them. Practically still mooing.
At least though, the year was off to a better start. No dealings with student altercations. Probably because after last year, Mortimer had wisely decided to stay in his office until the feast.
The first years arrived and Mortimer stood, placing a Sonorous charm on himself and began the usual spiel. Honestly, whatever he said at the Opening Feast was practically the same every year. Of course, now he would have to change it just a little. "Welcome to Sonora for the new first years and welcome back for all older students. First years, you should have recieved a blank badge at the end of Orientation." At least they hadn't gotten it when they first got there, some were liable to lose it. "You will dunk the badge in the Sorting Potion and it will turn the color representing your house which are blue for Aladren, yellow for Teppenpaw, red for Crotalus, and brown for Pecari. Afterwards, you may join your house table."
He watched as Ruby joined the Teppenpaw table along with two boys. Sorting might have been done by the potion and not him specifically,but so far he was four for four on guessing his closer relatives.
Once the first years had settled , Mortimer began his next announcement"Would Owen Brockert and Samantha Meeks please come up and get your Head Student badges? In addition I'd like to call up Nevaeh Reid, Joseph Umland, Angelique Brockert and Theresa Whittaker to recieve their prefect badges. Congratulations." He was pretty satisfied with Angelique and Owen being awarded the badges. That meant their parents would be happy and when others were happy, it made his own life easier and while Owen was incredibly soft, he was at least better than John Umland. On that note,Joe Umland's promotion, did not thrill him.
After they returned to their seats, Mortimer made one last announcement. "This year's Midsummer Event will be the bonfire. Now we shall sing the school song." And by we , he meant them .
Every day we strive
Learning to survive
Life’s hardships and to solve its mystery.
Learning to defend
Our honour and our friends,
Flying high to meet our destiny
We will stand and face those who want to harm us.
We won’t let the world transfigure, jinx or charm us
I won’t fight alone, as long as you are with me.
Sonora be my home, my tutor and my spirit
Vasita quoque floeat; Even the desert blooms.
Once the school song had been sung, Mortimer dug into his steak.
Ahh, juicy, just the way he liked it.
Subthreads: Enthusiastic by Ruby Brockert with Dorian Montoir
Back in the Swing of Things by Kit Reid with Jennifer White
A new man by Louis Valois with Florence Newell
Of French fools (or one in particular) by Sébastien Évreux with Lily Spencer
Not my day. by Peyton O'Malley with Jasmine Delachene
Stewing by Dustin Newell
One for the road. by Sammy Meeks
On to my next challenge. by Tatiana Vorontsova with Parker Fitzgerald
Exhausted already by Wu Peizhi
Worthless by Kira Spaulding with Daniel Fintoc
This is definitely an improvement. by Joe Umland with Jozua Sparks
I made it! by Gary Harper with Jehan Callahan
Alright, let's get this over with. by Loren Aalto with Salali Bly
It wasn't supposed to go like this (tag Owen) by Jemima Wolseithcrafte with Owen Brockert
Not bad being back [tag: Isaac Song] by Luke Powell with Isaac Song
Looks like it's just you and me [tag: Kelsey] by Alistair Johnson with Kelsey Atwater
The prefect year by Nevaeh Reed
Not the only Callahan [Tag Simon and/or Winston] by Victor Callahan
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Headmaster Brockert
Opening Feast
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Headmaster Brockert
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Tatiana Vorontsova
August 21, 2017 8:39 PM
On to my next challenge. by Tatiana Vorontsova
Graceful carriage, Mama always said, was one of the most important traits a girl could cultivate. A sense of poise and refinement could distract the eye from any number of physical flaws, making girls whose photographs clearly showed them to be fairly plain but for a nice pair of eyes or the like seem like beauties in person.Tatiana did not consider her own photographs overly plain, but she was aware that she was not, by Mama’s standards, making the best of her advantages as she entered the Cascade Hall. She did not, however, consider this her own fault. How was she supposed to have known that there would be no-one on hand to take her gloves and hat from her when she entered the building for the tour, obliging her to carry them around in one hand like a ninny while handling the blank badge thing Professor had given her in the other? She knew she looked stupid, but it wasn’t her fault. She did wish there was somewhere she could put her things down before it was her turn to stick the badge into the potion, though….
She did not know what to expect when her turn came around. She had read the brochures for school, looking up words she didn’t know in the dictionary, but she had not been sure enough of her reading to have much of an idea where she would land. If she had been forced to gamble, she supposed she might have said Aladren, but it turned out she was lucky she had not wagered anything on her prediction because the badge turned brown and gold instead of blue and black. Pecari, a word that sounded like it could almost be a word to her, unlike the other Houses. She hoped that was a good sign as she went to sit down among the others.
Of course, sitting down proved more complicated than she might have liked because of all the things someone should have been in place to take from her. She had to awkwardly put her hat in her lap and her gloves in her pocket before sitting down, then not crush her hat with her elbow or the edge of the table as she pinned the badge to the front of her green robes. That done, she folded her hands on top of the hat and sat there as though this was perfectly normal behavior.
She listened to the Headmaster’s speech, trying to understand as much as possible. All the people who went up for some reason (to receive badges? Didn’t they already have some badges from when they were first years? No – these were authority badges, not House ones. These people were important) were unknowns to her, but she did notice that two of them seemed to be Pecaris as well. That was good, she assumed; only Pecari and the yellow House, the one with the stupid name, had two. The red House and the blue House only had one each go up. She applauded when everyone else did, but stared in consternation at the page of music which appeared in front of her.
Many of the words looked familiar enough, but there were some that threw her. ‘Strive’? ‘Survive’? ‘Hardships’? She sang along several beats behind the tune, giving up when everyone else finished in favor of looking instead at all the food which appeared on the tables before her.
What to pick? Tatiana was not used to meals like this. At home, she and her siblings had food put before them and were expected to eat it. On their birthdays and namedays, the parties centered on the honoree’s favorites, but still – there was not a wealth of choices like this. Tatiana looked from dish to dish, only looking up when she heard a voice beside her.
“Po – sorry. I didn’t heard,” she said apologetically, pointing to her ear. The room was noisy! So much chatter. “What said you?”
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Tatiana Vorontsova
On to my next challenge.
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Tatiana Vorontsova
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Parker Fitzgerald
August 22, 2017 3:48 PM
Someone I know! by Parker Fitzgerald
Parker Fitzgerald walked into the great hall gawking, or at least that is what his mom would have called it. He stared straight up trying to take it all in. The ceiling felt as if he were standing in the middle of a grove in a forest, but the waterfalls coming down the walls made it feel like he was in a bathing pool somewhere.The room was obviously inside, but also felt like it had taken parts of nature and brought it in. He was fascinated as he walked along holding the badge that Professor X had given him and was unclear of what it was for.
After he had taken the room in a bit he realized that everyone was separated into different tables that seemed associated with houses. Suddenly Parker remembered that Sullivan had told him he would have to drink something that turned you into your house colors. He immediately regretted eating that second plate of food after talking with Jasmine. He was a bit worried because from what he gathered he might throw up all he had eaten.
When he saw the first kid take the badge and dip it instead he was relieved. When he dipped his they turned brown and gold, he looked around the room and saw the table. Pecari, great! From what he knew about the house it seemed like it would be a good fit.
He looked to see if anyone else was a Pecari and saw Tatiana's badge was also brown and gold. Great! I already know someone! he thought. Then realized he might have to learn some Russian to talk more with her.
He walked over to Tatiana as the Headmaster called up people for Head Student badges and something called a Prefect badge. He wasn't sure what either of those meant, but he did notice that two of the other Pecari students went up, one of them being the Head Student.
Parker tilted his head slightly to the side, she reminded him of someone, but he couldn't place it. Another girl from his team was called up. Apparently Pecari girls were either great students or highly respected, thought Parker, either way it seemed to be a good house to be in.
Suddenly a page of music appeared in front of him. Parker sat back startled a bit and looked around. Other students were picking up the music or noticeably ignoring it. Parker looked at the words as people started to sing. It actually was quite a lovely song and he especially liked the last bit about even the desert blooms. It made him smile in a sad way, remembering the desert mountain side where his sister and parents were. He wasn't sure if his brother was still in the house or if he was at the military academy yet, but either way Parker was not sad about that.
After the singing everyone seemed to begin eating, and though Parker had eaten two plates of food, or closer to one and half, he put some more on his plate and turned to Tatiana next to him trying to go slow again.
"There's so much food." He felt there was no time like the present to learn a few words to communicate with her better, he held up what he thought was a chicken wing and asked, "How do you say chicken in Russian?"
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Parker Fitzgerald
Someone I know!
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Tatiana
August 23, 2017 12:17 PM
Getting to know you better. by Tatiana
So much food. Tatiana understood that well. ‘So much noun’ was one of the first constructions she had reliably mastered in English, as she used it to complain to Anton Petrovich about the existence of articles a lot. Articles were stupid and Tatiana did not see their purpose no matter how many times Anton Petrovich tried to explain it to her.“We say kuritsa,” said Tatiana when Parker asked her what the thing he was holding was really called. “I like chickens that they are – not like that? Alive,” she volunteered. “I with Anya go get eggs in summertime. Chickens are funny.”
They had names, but Tatiana was at a loss for exactly how to translate them – they were named after specific flowers that they reminded Anya of, all except Tsveta, whom little Lyoshka had named – and so she did not offer that information to Parker. “Anya is my sister,” she remembered to offer further, as she had just named someone he did not know. “Three sisters – Anna, Sofiya, Katerina.” She counted them off on her fingers to make sure he kept track of what to him probably did not sound like names any more than his name sounded like a name to her. “Only two brothers. You have the brothers and sisters?”
Anton Petrovich said her family was larger than most of her classmates’ families would be, but then, it was not small by village standards, either. Mama said she liked a big family – for what did one get married if one didn’t want children? – but Tatiana had been just old enough when Alexei was born that she had realized the grown-ups were worried about Mama during much of the time before Alyosha actually arrived. Some people said, too, that Papa was very unfortunate to have so many daughters, though he laughed and asked who would want a garden with few flowers in it? And besides, it was good, Mama and Papa agreed, that each girl automatically had a built-in best friend in the sister closest to her own age, though in fact the four of them grouped more according to other factors: Tatiana and Sonia were both stronger than Anya and Katya, Anya and Tatiana both loved being outdoors and reading more than Katya or Sonia did, and so forth. The formal photographs they took every summer took forever to complete as they had to keep regrouping for different shots Mama wanted, and that was before their parents and brothers got involved. Tatiana had the album of photos she had put together for an art lesson project with her, an album that featured nearly all her favorite people and things – she had even stuck in a picture Anya had taken of her and Katya having lessons with Anton Petrovich - but she had dithered greatly still over which framed photographs to bring with her to decorate her space her in the dormitories. It was going to be strange not to be surrounded by years and years of accumulated memories of her family for so long here.
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Tatiana
Getting to know you better.
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Tatiana
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Parker Fitzgerald
August 24, 2017 12:33 PM
Siblings can be good ... or bad by Parker Fitzgerald
"Currytsa", Parker said outloud trying to remember the word. He remembered that Jose enjoyed it when people made an effort to speak in his language. Jose said it made him feel welcomed.Parker felt that he might as well make Tatiana feel welcomed as he was also hoping to be welcomed as well and they were the only two first years in the house.
She mentioned that she didn't like cooked chicken and so Parker, who had still been holding the peace put it back on his plate. He thought of the live chickens he had seen and laughed when she mentioned how funny chickens where, they were funny.
Tatiana then mentioned three sisters by name and two brothers, without names. Parker could relate a bit, he wasn't sure he wanted people here to know much about John Junior.
"I have one brother and one sister. My sister's name is Lyssa." Parker responded. He had noticed that there were people that looked like family in the hall and wondered if Tatiana's family was here as well.
"Are your brother's or sisters here at the school?" he asked.
He thought that maybe she was also Muggle born, but he wasn't sure. He was trying to ask without asking, since the way Jasmine had mentioned her mother being muggle born, it sounded like it could be a rude thing to ask out right, and though normally Parker wouldn't care very much, Tatiana seemed to be someone he'd want to be friends with and so didn't want to offend her during their first meal together.
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Parker Fitzgerald
Siblings can be good ... or bad
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Parker Fitzgerald
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Tatiana
August 24, 2017 2:28 PM
I think mine are all pretty good. by Tatiana
Tatiana smiled kindly at Parker’s attempt to say ‘chicken.’ It needed more emphasis on the first syllable, but considering she was not the best at pronouncing words in his language, either, she couldn’t really say anything.“Yes, kuritsa,” said Tatiana, nodding. “That is how we say it.”
Lyssa. That almost sounded like a name, or at least a diminutive. Tatiana nodded to let him know she had understood that was his sister’s name. “No,” she said of her own brothers and sisters. “Katya and Alexei – little brother – they are too….” She searched for the word. “Short,” she said, holding her hand about level with her own shoulder. “They are eight, three. Little. Anya and Sophie and Grisha – they went to the school which in Russia. They are bigger.” Tatiana raised her chin slightly as she proudly announced, “Papa said for me to go here because I learned to speak English with Grisha.”
It was more complicated than that, of course. Tatiana had begun by just wandering into Grisha’s lessons because she liked being with her brother, and then she had realized he was getting to learn something she wasn’t. She had not liked that and had complained and picked up as much as she could from Grisha’s lessons until Papa relented and started letting her learn English formally, a program which had abruptly intensified a year and a half ago when Anton Petrovich had joined their staff and had begun teaching her almost exclusively in English. However, saying as much as she had in English, thinking through how to make things go in the right tenses and in more or less the right order and with so many extra words in place, had made her head awfully tired and so she did not feel up to telling that whole story at the end of a long day. “Your brother, sister – they are here?” she asked, moving the talking back to him.
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Tatiana
I think mine are all pretty good.
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Tatiana
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Parker
August 25, 2017 10:52 AM
No Siblings here either by Parker
"Coritza" Parker said again."Coritza"Parker repeated. Once his mom realized that Parker was not the sort to sit still for things he wasn't interested in learning about, she constantly talked about how you need to do something three times to truly begin to remember it. So now Parker usually tried something three times, and if by the third time he didn't remember it Parker just felt he wasn't meant to know it. It worked well with math, not so well with spelling.
As Parker listened to Tatiana he was more than a bit amazed. She had learned to speak English with what Parker was assuming was her older brother, which probably wasn't easy. He thought of being in any classes with his older brother and it sent a few shivers down his spine.
Tatiana seemed so...graceful, might be the word he was thinking of, but he now imagined she could be forceful when she needed to me. After all how else would she have gotten into classes with her older brother that her sisters hadn't. He immediately realized he might just assuming again since her sisters weren't here.
"My brother and sister aren't here either. They have no magic, just like my parents."
Parker actually wondered if that was true. No one had told him that only there could be only one child with magic born to muggles. He had gathered that his older brother wasn't one though, since he would have already been accepted into the school. But his sister might still show it. It would be nice to have his sister at school. He knew that she would love the garden as she already spent much of her time currently in their parents garden planting seeds and playing with the bugs she found.
Parker quickly replayed Tatiana's conversation in his head. "Your older sisters and brother are in Russia. Are you from Russia?" Parker asked.
He was wondering where someone who only spoke Russian would live in America, but maybe she was an international student like his father had talked about from college.
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Parker
No Siblings here either
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Parker
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Tatiana
August 25, 2017 3:30 PM
That could be good or bad. by Tatiana
No magic. Tatiana still could not get her head around that no matter how many times it was explained to her, kind of like all the extra words in English. How did people function with no magic? Nadezhda said there were millions – millions! – of them in the world who did, so many more than wizards, and that some of them were even rather good at it, but it sounded too bizarre to be real.She shook her head when Parker asked if she was from Russia. “No, no, no. Mama is from Russia, but now we all live in Volshebnaya Derevnya.” Tatiana bit her lip, trying to think how to explain it without a real map or her full vocabulary. “Look – here’s the water,” she said, picking up her goblet and putting it in front of him. “Here is Russia,” she continued, lifting her left hand and putting it on one side of the goblet, “and here is the land with home on it - Alaska.” She put her right hand on the other side of the goblet so they were separated by the ‘water.’ “It used to be Russia, but they tell me in lessons that Americans bought it before Papa was born,” she added as an afterthought. “That is why boys learn English – they must talk to Americans sometimes.” She laughed a bit. “Mama and Anya tell me, Tanushka, you will never use English, is silly to learn, but – “ Tatiana spread her hands and shrugged. “Here I am,” she concluded.
So she was. “Maybe Katya and Alyosha will come here too,” she added. “My family – all wizard. We say volshebniki. We say your family - Maggly. Where are they?” she asked, paying attention and trying to tune out as many of the other English voices talking around them so she could hear his answer and remember it so she could look it up in her atlas later. If she was going to live in the south for most of seven years, she thought she ought to get to know the layout of the place a little better.
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Tatiana
That could be good or bad.
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Tatiana
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Parker
August 25, 2017 4:59 PM
Food Maps by Parker
Parker heard where she lived and picked up Vole- something - aya and Dare something-a. He wasn't sure if that was a place that was somewhere he had learned about in class and missed, but he felt it might be a smaller community. Also, it seemed to him there were a lot of a's ending words in Russian. Then she started explaining and said Alaska Parker jumped up a bit. Parker knew Alaska. It was on most maps in classrooms down in the corner, and he liked looking at the maps when he got bored or antsy. He did not know about it belonging to Russia before it belonged to the United States. He wondered when the US bought it. Obviously soon enough that the women in Tatiana's town don't speak to Americans though. But if she was from Alaska. But wasn't she American having been born in Alaska? Maybe the wizard world had different boundaries.Tanushka... Parker wasn't sure who that was, but from the way Tatiana was saying it like her family talking to her even though that didn't sound like a nickname at all. JJ shortened John Jr. Tanushka was just as long as Tatiana.
"Who is Tanushka? Is that you?" Parker asked. If she was called Tanushka he wanted to make sure he called her that and not Tatiana.
Then she said the Vole word again, or something similar and Tatiana (Tanushka?) said it meant wizard so Parker tried to say it as well.
"VoleSHEDnicki" He then repeated it again two times. That one he might have to practice more than three times. Maggly he got, it was close enough to Muggle.
"My umm Maggly family lives in Nevada, near Lake Tahoe." Parker took the goblet and held it up, "Lake Tahoe in California". He then grabbed a plate with bread on it placing it to the right of the cup "Sierra Nevada Mountains". He looked around the table and grabbed two shakers that he figured were salt and pepper (or at least like salt and pepper). He held up the Salt shaker,"Reno, Nevada" he said placing it to the right of the plate with bread on it. Then took the other shaker "Sheridan, Nevada" and placed it closer to them away from Reno shaker, and a bit closer to the plate of bread.
"That's where my mom, dad, and Lyssa live," Parker said. "JJ is going to live in Oregon somewhere. I don't remember where." He started moving the things back to where they were on the table before he realized he had not mentioned JJ before.
"Oh, JJ is my older brother. Short name for John Jr," Parker said,"Umm... I probably won't talk to him while I'm here."
Parker hesitated before he spoke again, but something had been on his mind since their first encounter, something that he hadn't asked Sullivan who was also Muggle born.
"So you come from a wizard family, is being Maggly a bad thing to other VoleSHEDnicki?"
Whether it was or not, Parker was pretty sure he was going to have to prove to others that he belonged here, not just himself.
Parker took a bite of the chicken that was still on his plate as he looked to Tatiana(Tanushka), leaning close to his plate to make sure none of it fell in his lap.
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Parker
Food Maps
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Parker
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Tatiana
August 28, 2017 10:37 AM
...Can be almost as hard to follow as Russian nicknames. by Tatiana
Tatiana could not decide exactly what to make of Parker’s attempts to use Russian words. If he had been in her village, this would have been proper, but they were here. Did he want to visit the village? It would take a long time for him to learn enough to make himself understood, but one did have to start somewhere….“Of course,” said Tatiana, a bit puzzled, when he asked about one of her pet names. “Sometimes. They are bigger than me, we are family. Do you always use full names?”
That sounded dreadful to her. How did one know if an occasion was formal or if the speaker had affection for the addressed? Mama usually called her Tanya or Tanushka, Papa liked Tatianochka, and her siblings usually called her Tatya, but there were other according to situation and their moods - when she was small, Papa had often called her Little Hummingbird instead of her name or any of its derivatives, and Katya was as often ‘Sunny’ to him or ‘Little One’ to Mama as she was ‘Katenka’.
This did remind her of something, though. “Book said that the Houses are families here,” she said, trying not to laugh as she imagined ‘Pecari’ being used as a familiya. Tatiana Pecaria…she would keep Vorontsova, she thought. “So you can say Tatya.”
She could not follow his attempt at a map, but did gather that the word ‘Nevada’ was important and so nodded politely. “I see,” she said solemnly, though she really didn’t. Of course he would not talk to his brother while he was here if he was here and his brother was in Oregon. Oregon wasn’t here, was it? Here was Arizona, and while she had no idea where Oregon was, she was pretty sure it was another state. He could write all his family, but unless mainlanders got to visit home on weekends or something, how could he talk to any of his family?
His question about Muggles gave her pause, and not just because of the difficulty of composing a response to it in English. “I do not know,” she said frankly after a moment’s thought. “Sounds very bad to me, but there are no Magly in my village. There is one old woman….” She searched her memory but could not find the word she needed. “She not Magl, I don’t know English the word. No magic, but not a Magl. This happens sometimes. The vrachi, they say people with this v sem’ye should not marry. It is very - “ she floundered over trying to remember the word for grustnyi, sure it was something that sounded like a Russian word for something gardening related but wavering over which word it was. “Not happy. Very not happy. Has to take charity. But Nadezhda - my nurse, mine and Katya’s - she has met - you say Magglez, yes? Not Magly? - she has met them v place called Noo Ork, she says they do things even with no magic, they are not like Serafima Semyonovna - they are used to it. So maybe not so bad. I don’t know.”
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Tatiana
...Can be almost as hard to follow as Russian nicknames.
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Tatiana
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