Happy 17th Birthday, Zevalyn! on Cascade Hall

Kir McLeod

August 09, 2018 9:47 AM

Happy 17th Birthday, Zevalyn! by Kir McLeod

Kir made his way down to the hall, feeling a mix of excitement and nerves. He was looking forward to celebrating Zevalyn’s birthday with her. He had put a lot of effort into choosing and making the various things he was now carrying, and he couldn’t wait to give them all to her. That was the exciting part, and it easily eclipsed the small amount of nervousness he felt that he had chosen poorly, or not executed the homemade elements as well as he would have liked. She would still be happy, he was sure. There was one non-birthday related element of stress and that was just what she and Ness had talked about at the feast last night. Kir did not embarrass easily, and he wasn’t even sure he could pick any particular childhood anecdotes that he could hope with all his soul had not come up. It was just… the first time his sibling met his girlfriend, he would have liked some degree of supervision over the meeting. Mostly because Ness could be kind of odd or annoying, although he was never sure if that was really the case, or he just thought so because that’s what older brothers always thought. He still thought it would have been good to have the option of telling her to shut up and go away regardless though.

On the way to the hall, he had a slight debate about where he might sit, in the event that Zevalyn wasn’t already there. On the one hand, it was her birthday, and he felt they should sit at her house table. On the other, he was pretty sure that nothing would get Ness to relinquish her stake in said table and sit elsewhere, and he really thought it might be preferable not to have her haunting their every interaction. He was, however, spared on two counts - Zevalyn was already in the hall, but Ness was not. He hoped she remembered the way and what time breakfast was… And Zevalyn was a prefect in her house, so he could check on her by asking but… He would do if she hadn’t turned up in the next ten minutes or so. That would give Zevalyn time to open her presents and for them to enjoy each other’s company a little. And Ness was probably fine, he told himself, pushing aside the slight guilt that his absent sister wasn’t his top priority.

“Happy birthday,” he greeted Zevalyn, sitting down and carefully placing a large tin on the table on his non-Zevalyn side (a tin which he had nursed anxiously throughout the wagon ride the previous day before carefully storing in his room). He placed an envelope and a small box-shaped parcel wrapped in blue paper next to her, “First,” he tapped the envelope, “second,” the parcel, “third,” the tin. He did not necessarily feel that this was saving the best bit for last, nor the most surprising, as the thing that was Clearly A Cake Tin did, in fact, hold cake. However, he thought that breaking out a birthday cake was likely to attract others (indeed, he hoped it did because there was plenty to go around), and he wanted the birthday girl to himself for a while first.

The envelope contained a shop bought card. He had tried several times to draw their D&D characters or, when that had proved too hard, various other symbolic things, like a lute and a broadsword, before concluding that he really couldn’t draw for toffee and that any of the things that were within his limited capability just looked plain weird on a birthday card (the broadsword having been the only thing that came out recognisable). He had browsed the cards in the stores more intending to get inspiration than anything, but had found one that he liked and been forced to (somewhat grumpily) conclude that anything he could produce would look shoddy in comparison. The card featured a vintage pocket watch against a light, swirling pattern with a glittering ‘17’ in the top left corner.

“It’s tradition to give a magical person a watch when they come of age - at seventeen,” he explained, when Zevalyn had opened the card, “And… well, your parents seem like they’re the type to do as much research and reading about a subject as they can. So I didn’t want to tread on any toes if they had had access to that kind of information. But I didn’t know if they could, so…” Inside the card read

‘To my dearest Zevalyn - the most amazing person I know,

Wishing you the happiest 17th birthday

Amin mela lle

Kir, xxx’

Inside the little parcel, Zevalyn would find a necklace. The small round pendant was half occluded by a bronze disc. At present, the half on show depicted a blazing sunrise. As night fell, Zevalyn would find that the disc spun, displaying instead the moon and the stars.

The clock theme was echoed in the cake, the design of which he had come up with before giving up on his home drawn cards. The chocolate sponge, sandwiched together with cherry jam, was covered in chocolate buttercream, and the face of a clock picked out in white water icing. Royal icing would have made for a smoother finish, but Kir thought buttercream was much tastier. He would have liked the whole thing to look a bit more professional - it had done so in his head - but at least there would be no mistaking the fact that it was homemade, which he felt counted for quite a lot. He had never shown his talents off at Sonora by joining the baking club, but it was something he did quite often at home with his Aunt Catriona, and he was pretty sure that the cake would be delicious, even if the icing wasn’t smooth and the numbers were a little shaky.

13 Kir McLeod Happy 17th Birthday, Zevalyn! 366 Kir McLeod 1 5

Zevalyn

August 15, 2018 1:48 PM

Thank you by Zevalyn

The worst thing about having a September Second birthday at Sonora, aside from being older than your whole class even when you do finally catch up to the right group, was that you basically had to celebrate it in August. September first was too busy with last minute preparations and riding the wagon and then settling in to do anything (though she usually had a piece of cake as her dessert after the feast and pretended the whole thing was in her honor for a moment or two), and her actual birthday was either the first day of classes or the weekend before classes began but either way, it was at school and much too soon since arriving to go home and see her family again already.

So she’d had her party on August 31st and got most of her presents then. She expected a card and maybe a token present from her parents today, maybe something from her friends, but for the most part her seventeenth birthday was just going to be another day.

As she arrived for breakfast, she didn’t even see any of her friends yet, so she headed over to Aladren and got herself a birthday waffle. That cheered her up a bit. Sure, she could have waffles for breakfast whenever she wanted them, but this time the elves must have remembered her from past years because after she sat down, sprinkles and powdered sugar showed up at her place and it wasn’t anything like being at home but at least the birthday waffle was right.

While she was still admiring the waffle, Kir showed up, providing her with a present and, unless she was very much mistaken, a cake! She smiled broadly, her mood buoying even higher. She still would have liked to see her parents, but perhaps Sonora birthdays weren’t so bad after all.

“Thank you,” she said and opened the card.

As he explained wizarding customs - which she actually hadn’t known about and found quite interesting, and while her parents were the type to do exhaustive research, it probably hadn’t even occurred to them to look into traditional coming of age gifts for a seventeen year old witch; they (and she) still had some American muggle biases and blind spots which said formal adulthood still had some time yet in coming - she read the card and smiled at the (presumably) Elvish line.

“What does it mean?” she asked curiously, tracing her finger over the words. This wasn’t like the ball so she didn’t feel there was a magical bubble that would pop if she asked for a translation and she was an Aladren. She liked knowing things.

After he told her, she opened the gift. “Oh, that’s pretty!” she said as she pulled out the necklace and examined the sunrise on the disc. It kind of reminded her of Kir’s dress robes at the ball. “Help me with the clasp?” she requested, lifting her light colored hair and turn slightly to let Kir have access to the back of her neck so he could fasten the necklace on her.

Finally there was the cake, which she opened and admired, but first, “Here, I haven’t eaten my birthday waffle yet. Eat some.” She put another waffle on a plate, smothered it with sugar and sprinkles, a twin to her own, and put it in front of him. “We’ll cut the cake after waffles. Georgia should be down soon, so that’ll give her time to get here. She should have cake, too.”

1 Zevalyn Thank you 380 Zevalyn 0 5

Kir

August 20, 2018 8:36 PM

Three big-little words by Kir

So far, he had a smiley Zevalyn, who seemed to be enjoying her birthday. He watched her face carefully as she opened the card, he watched her fingers running down the words inside, pausing over the elvish and asking, as he had hoped she would, what it meant. Because there was something that had been on Kir’s mind. Something he had sort of planned to say at the ball, but then… Then before the prefect dance there had been all the greetings and telling her she looked wonderful, and then after the dance it hadn’t felt like a significant enough moment, and then Teppenpaw had taken control of the jukebox and the night had rapidly shifted gears from being intimate and romantic to friendly and raucous, with him and Georgia and Zevalyn dancing like crazy people to their jukebox selections. Well. He danced like a crazy person. A crazy, fabulous person with sweet, sweet moves, and he wouldn’t have changed the way that evening had ended for the world because it had been a lot of fun, but it definitely had stopped being about him and Zev. And then all too soon, it had been over, and then the fluster of everyone saying goodbyes on the wagon was just… busy. It was part of why he was glad that Ness was not here yet. For all that he had told her to give him a moment with Zevalyn and wait until they were onto cake he was glad that she wasn’t hovering expectantly at the otherside of the Aladren table, or worse ignoring this request all together and getting in his way. And he was glad Zevalyn had asked this time, given that she hadn’t at the ball. That definitely made it easier. Not that he thought that it was a very difficult thing to say. Just… making sure there was the right moment to say it in, which had proved somewhat tricky at the end of last year.

“I love you,” he told her. And, for all Kir had been raised to talk about his feelings, and didn’t think it was a difficult thing to say, it was still a big thing to say, and he found that his heart was thumping against his ribcage and he thought he might actually be holding his breath.

(OOC - I know you gave her reactions/ideas on the other things and we can skip back to those after. I just wanted to have a smushy moment to focus on this).

13 Kir Three big-little words 366 Kir 0 5

Zevalyn

August 29, 2018 11:27 AM

Two only slightly smaller ones by Zevalyn

For a moment, Zevalyn froze in surprise. She couldn’t have said what she expected Kir to say in translation, but clearly not that. She looked up from the card to his face. She could see that he definitely wasn’t just teasing her; he really meant it.

He loved her?

She felt a flutter in her chest and a small fond smile slipped into her startled expression.

He loved her?

Nobody other than her parents and grandparents had told her that before, and while she never doubted they meant it, it was different, really different, coming from Kir, who wasn’t obligated by genetics to feel that way.

But then a little bit of panic crept in. What was she supposed to say back? I love you, too, was her standard response to parents and grandparents, but did she feel that way about Kir? Well, obviously not the same kind of love she felt for Mom and Dad and her grandparents, but did she return Kir’s feelings? Just last year they had barely known each other and now . . .

Now he loved her.

She couldn’t even pull a Han Solo and say ‘I know’ because she hadn’t known. Besides, that was crossing genres. You just can’t make a Star Wars reference in response to an Elvish translation. That wouldn’t be right.

So instead of answering in words, she hugged him. As she felt him close to her, smelled his Kir-smell that she hadn’t quite realized she had been missing all summer until just then (or even known that there was a Kir-scent to miss at all), she realized she knew the answer after after all.

“Me, too.” She wasn’t quite brave enough to say the three words he’d just used, not when they were still so new to her understanding, but now she knew they were there.

1 Zevalyn Two only slightly smaller ones 380 Zevalyn 0 5

Kir

September 02, 2018 8:45 PM

They work just as well by Kir

Zevalyn seemed to react in slow motion. At least her response took long enough that Kir had time to feel a little anxiety about how she was actually going to react. But then she put her arms around him, and he squeezed her close, the smell of her shampoo making him feel happy and at home, and tingle with excitement all at the same time, reminding him as it did of being close with Zev - which meant hugs and warmth, but also meant kissing, pressed up against the Potions shelf after D&D.

Me too.

Technically, grammatically speaking, that did not make sense, as it implied that Zevalyn also loved herself. Which, of course, he hoped she did, but right now he was more interested in how she felt about him. But one of the differences between Kir and Ness was that he recognised that there was a time and a place to be a grammar pedant, or make a language joke. And this was not it. Zev meant that she loved him too and, though he still looked forward to the first time he would get to hear her actually say that, he was elated. He loved her, and she loved him. Everythig was perfect.

"Permission to kiss you at the breakfast table?" he whispered in her ear. He did not ask every single time before kissing Zevalyn - there were things he regarded as regular, established ground rules about their interactions, where they both knew that the other one was comfortable. But kissing over breakfast was unusual. Admittedly, they had engaged in some fairly enthusiastic snogging in this very room at the end of last term, but that had been at the ball. This was decidedly different, in terms of atmosphere.

13 Kir They work just as well 366 Kir 0 5