Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
December 20, 2019 11:18 AM
First Things First [Beginners, I-II] by Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
Beginners potions. Mary loved teaching beginners potions. To be fair, she loved teaching every level, and for very different reasons, but there was something about Fall term beginners classes that were particularly special. She loved being there to witness schema shifts in her students, particularly in those who had not experienced much magic prior to Sonora. Also, first and second year students were super easy to impress.With her new, cropped hair left down - it was too short to put up now! - Mary was feeling confident about the new day. She had also selected today's lesson very carefully. She'd selected everything about today very carefully.
Today was the first day of classes.
She chose something lighter than her usual velvet outfits, as it was still quite warm outside, and she was afraid her more buttoned look might frighten new students. Today, she wore a simple blue linen dress, with her buttoned sleeves loosely rolled up to her elbows, and a green hat to match the green embroidered flowers and things around the hem of her dress, where it brushed the floor and tops of her feet. It was comfortable, but it was also light. Today, she was determined to be light.
As the first and second year students made their way into class, Mary thought of everything else she'd been so careful about. Bookshelves lined one wall, with labels indicating what the subject was, but also what language the book was in. Most books were in English, but there were others - particularly copies of the textbooks - which were in Spanish, Russian, Chinese, French, German, and various other languages. She always said a silent word of gratitude for Dorian having sorted them all a few years previously.
The rest of her classroom was intended to be welcoming as well, with ingredients in neat cupboards and shelves, mostly locked away in the ingredient closet where they could not be accessed without her being there to allow it, and sturdy desks set around the room with tall stools so students could sit or stand as they preferred. A large window let in natural light, but overhead lanterns could be lit if students needed more light to see by as well. Also, magic.
"Welcome to Sonora," Mary smiled, once her students had selected places around the room. "And welcome to potions class. I am Professor Brooding-Hawthorne, although Professor Brooding is perfectly fine, and we will be working together over the next several years to explore the theory and practice of potion-making, ingredient collection and maintenance, and various other topics. I am very excited to work with all of you."
As she did with every beginning class, Mary began with a brief overview of what potions were, what was defined as a potion, how it was different from a solution or mixture, etc. These were all things to be found in their textbooks as well, but sometimes it helped to go over them together. Then, finally, the part she knew many students were waiting for.
"Today we are going to be working on the Antidote to Common Poisons," she said, waving her wand to encourage a bit of chalk to take notes for her on the board. She also sent around a stack of scrolls, each marked with the language that they were in so students could choose, and each with the recipe they would be using on it. "However, this potion takes much longer than we have in class today, so we will be working in pieces. First year students, I would like you to complete the first half of this recipe. Second year students, since you have made this before, I would like you to complete the second half. I have potions for you to work with that have finished their time in different types of cauldrons. I want you to take particular care on your wand work. For homework, first year students will write about bezoars, the first ingredient you'll be using, and their various applications. Second year students will write about the use for different types of cauldrons and why it's important, what they do, etc. We'll talk more about these topics this week as well, and that'll be due the beginning of next week."
Mary had selected this potion because it was helpful - many beginning students worried about how dangerous potions were and she liked to remind them that it could also be lifesaving - and because it didn't have anything sticky or slimy in the ingredients, particularly the first half. Bezoars were a little gross feeling, but she hoped powdering it wouldn't cause problems for anyone. Plus, the point was for first year students to get used to the classroom, where to find ingredients they didn't already have, how to measure and prepare ingredients, etc., not to really dig into potion-making just yet. That would come.
"As always, students with concerns about using animal byproducts, students with allergies, or students with other concerns about the ingredients or work can let me know and we will work together to figure out appropriate accommodations for you. Feel free to work in pairs, but not more than two please. You don't have to be in the same year group, though. If you have any questions, let me know! Second years, let me know where you're sitting and I'll get your cauldrons to you. Go ahead and begin."
OOC (Out of Character) - Welcome to Sonora and welcome to potions! Today's potion is from this site: https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Antidote_to_Common_Poisons. Feel free to assume that the halfblood prince version and the original textbook version are both offered as alternatives to this potion, and talk about whichever ingredients you prefer.
Classes at Sonora are graded based on the writing, not the student's performance. Posts with more realism, creativity, and engagement will earn more points than posts that are less realistic, less creative, or do not provide opportunities for classmates to engage. If a student has a question from Professor Brooding or does something that she may interrupt because it would be dangerous, feel free to tag her, just like I tagged beginner students in the title of the post. If you have any questions as an author, feel free to ask in an OOC message like this, or in the student chatzy, or on the OOC board.
Have lots of fun!
Subthreads: ...This is a change from the chemistry I'm used to. by Mara Morales with Alexander Pierce-Beales
It's all so poetical. by Morgan Garrett with Ellie Alperton
Always a step ahead... kind of by Joanna Rose-Turner with Leonor De Matteo
For all kinds of poisons? by Jezebel Reed-Fischer with Josephine Clyde
22
Mary Brooding-Hawthorne
First Things First [Beginners, I-II]
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Mara Morales
December 21, 2019 12:01 PM
...This is a change from the chemistry I'm used to. by Mara Morales
Mara was trying to reserve judgment on the fantastical classes she was now enrolled in, but if she had had to give a judgment, she would have said that Potions sounded the most promising. On one hand, sure, there was the possibility of chopping up baby corpses and stuff like that, but on the other hand, Jessica had not died yet, which made it sound like the beginners, at least, might have more innocuous material to work with. In that case, it was really just chemistry, of a sorts, and chemistry was something Mara could wrap her head around.Walking in the room, she looked around, taking it in, and stopped to blink in surprise when Spanish abruptly jumped out at her from a bookshelf. Going over, she noticed there were several books in Spanish, plus some in what she thought looked kind of like French, and other languages she couldn't guess at. German was probably a decent guess, she thought, remembering her first Sonora dinner companion, but her first guess for one was that it was Greek and some of them had scripts that barely looked like writing to her = something from east Asia, she guessed. She knew Jessica's old school had offered Mandarin classes, but had gathered that Japanese and Korean were fashionable at the moment, so she couldn't begin to guess any further there.
She could, though, half-smile at a memory: herself and Jessica and their dad in the living room of the apartment at home, talking about trends. Dad thought the Korean skincare craze was, well, crazy - that for one thing, Americans were never going to buy into such large-scale and packaging-waste-heavy programs long term, and for another thing, that it didn't even sound good for skin anyway - that all the double-cleansing and exfoliation stood a decent chance, in many cases, of stripping the skin so thoroughly of its own protective barriers that it would make it easier for infections and congestion to occur.
"Yeah, but they do have really good complexions, Dad," said Mara. "And isn't that part of the world, like, the most polluted place on the planet?"
"That would be India, if I recall correctly," said her father. "Beijing's a disaster too. Seoul's not bad compared to them, but it's still pretty bad."
"See? It must be doing something right," said Mara.
"Yeah, but our air quality here is different," said Jessica. "Maybe - the amount of stuff you need to do in worse air quality is different than what you need here? Plus, Daddy's right that most people here aren't going to put that kind of time in it."
"Why do you put in time to draw your eyebrows on every day?" said Mara, jumping at a chance to argue, even though Jessica's point was decent.
"Because I look like a rabbit without them," said Jessica. "What's your point?"
"I looked at our website - you know that link to the history of beauty website?" Jessica and Dad nodded. "In the middle ages people took their eyebrows off on purpose. People will buy whatever you convince them to buy." Mara took a sip of her hot chocolate. "Though they'll buy more if it works," she conceded.
"Oh! There's skin types, too," said Jessica. "Just because something works on me doesn't mean it's going to work on Em, or Mommy, or anyone else."
She had always enjoyed it when they did that. Mara knew all too well that she was only giving back mostly lines that she got from reading, but Dad approved even of that. He had been so pleased when Mara had sold out of homemade lip glosses at her school's Market Day activity - a week-long thing that involved developing a fake 'business plan' and advertising to their classmates before they all tried to sell each other stuff - that Mara had been briefly afraid and/or hopeful that he would try to hang up the certificate of achievement in his office, the way he used to with some of Jessica's awards. It was a thing where she knew she had had a major advantage over her classmates, having a father who worked in business to provide her advice from behind the scenes, but she had ultimately done the work herself, aside from Jessica writing a two-line advertising slogan for her. She'd been kind of proud of it even before Dad had been so pleased with it, so when he had made such a fuss over it...well, she'd been embarrassed with herself with just how pleased she was about that, honestly.
Whether the books were in Japanese, Korean, or Mandarin, however, was largely irrelevant to her, as she couldn't read any of them. Market Day was also in her past, along with cozy business chats with her father and sister. Instead, she had potions to contemplate.
She was sort of comforted by how very similar, in a lot of ways, the room looked to any other science classroom. If she paid attention, she could see things that deviated pretty sharply from the laboratories in the middle school she was supposed to have attended, but...easy enough to tune those things out. For now.
Her dark eyes watched the pretty lady in the almost-too-witchy clothes intently as the lady - Professor Brooding; what a name - spoke. She took a few notes here and there, usually with a slight nod as she did. It was only when they got to the lesson of the day, however, that she stopped, her eyes widening in disbelief.
Antidote to common poisons? What kind of place was this, where the first thing you needed to learn was how to get un-poisoned?!
Shaking her head slightly, now, sending her black braid swaying against her back, she tried to look at it rationally. People did poison themselves by accident all the time, after all - that was why they had television announcements about calling Poison Control at home. Just because she was dealing with witchy people didn't mean that 'poison' had to mean something like it would in an old book, or in a new book about witches and wizards. Poison could just mean anything you consumed that you should not have consumed. That line of reasoning, however, did not answer the first question, which was why they were doing this themselves...
Okay, so she had made lip balm, and a couple of people who'd done Market Day when she had had done stuff like dipping marshmallows in chocolate fountains or mixing up milkshakes. Those were things they were all, more or less directly, feeding people. It was why Dad had made sure to remind Mara, when she was looking for recipes, to check for common allergens, to use several formulas, and to label everything clearly. Still, though - this sounded like far more specialized stuff than that. Except that, well, apparently it wasn't, as here they were, doing it...
She shook her head slightly again and decided that since there was nothing she could do about it right now, and no reason for her to do anything about it right now, that she would simply shelve this question for later. She glanced up at her nearest neighbor. "Want to pair up?" she asked.
16
Mara Morales
...This is a change from the chemistry I'm used to.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
December 21, 2019 10:02 PM
Same though. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander would never have come up with any of the things that were happening around him at Sonora, which was definitely the only reason he was sure he wasn't comatose someplace. He might have believed he was in a car accident or something if not for the fact that this stuff was just too crazy to make up. Plus he had Barnabus with him and he never had Barnabus in his bad dreams. The little horse had seen better days, as the trip to from Seattle to Sonora and the proceeding time stuffed into the pocket of Alexander's dress thing - robes were what fancy people wore after they got out of the shower, and he just couldn't call this thing a robe - but he was still Alexander's best friend. That meant he was really awake and really alive and really experiencing this place.Some of that was good. Alexandra seemed nice, and he really liked having his own bed and stuff, and this class seemed like it might not be horrendous, but also poison. Maybe she meant potion? It was potions class. Antidote to common potions? The teacher seemed like something he might makeup if he were asked to draw a picture of what a witch looked like without ever having seen one, so it was a little bittersweet to find that it was an accurate mental image. She seemed nice though, and while Alexander only spoke English, he was pretty used to being around kids who didn't know English as well, and who weren't always accommodated for. So this was good. It was good.
He stuck his hand in his pocket to give Barnabus a scratch, trying to convince himself that it was good, and tried to think about how he'd draw it all.
Alexander would draw the potions room in grey scale, and the contents in brighter splashes of colors. They'd be clashing, just like the jar of bugs next to one of feathers, and the . . . were those eyeballs? . . . those gross things next to some sparkly stuff. It was a room that made questions come to mind, and the teacher seemed like she could have popped out of a storybook, hidden among the texts on the shelves. Everything was organized. Everything was in its place. But this was a room for making things - terrible things and beautiful things - and there was something sort of amazing about that.
He was just debating whether to begin sketching his ideas when the girl next to him spoke up, reminding him that this was not the right time to be sketching. Still, maybe he could get a few concept drawings done.
He recognized her as a first year though, so at least they'd be working on the same task. He didn't really know what that task was, but it had some cool names for stuff on the little flying papers. Confusion in the midst of order, chaos in the midst of fantasy. If he really wasn't imagining it all, this was a beautiful world.
"Sure," Alexander agreed. His voice was light enough, but he didn't smile. Alexander didn't smile very often, and certainly not before he knew whether he could trust somebody or not. So far, he hadn't met anyone he could trust for very long. "I think we have some of these ingredients in our kits, but probably not all of them. Should we start there?"
22
Alexander Pierce-Beales
Same though.
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Mara Morales
December 22, 2019 10:53 AM
Guess we’ll just have to adapt as we go. by Mara Morales
“Seems like a smart place to start,” agreed Mara when her partner suggested beginning with figuring out what was and what was not inside the kits of ingredients. She did not think too much of his failure to smile; with new people, her smiles tended to be brief and businesslike, born mainly of being chided for not being nice when she didn’t smile at all. Niceness was all-important at home, after all; even dudes were expected to smile some, but girls were expected to be extra nice, and Dad laughed when Mara talked about stuff she saw online about how one shouldn’t ask women to smile so much.”That’s some Yankee talk there, Emmy-Lou-Who,” he’d say. ”Yankee and out west. Nothing to do with us here.”
That was stupid, of course. They were not hicks from the depths of Mississippi or anything like that. They were from Atlanta. Atlanta was at the front of all change in the South, and while that was still often kinda behind the curve generally, it was still not...Mississippi or Alabama or Kentucky or somewhere like that. Jessica and Mrs. H. were part of a dying breed; one day, there probably wouldn’t be Southern ladies at all. Dad had to see that on some level - why else would he want Jezi to know how to not be a lady when she did business? Mara couldn’t understand, in light of that, why he seemed to want to cling to the old ways so much of the time.
“I’ve got everything that was on the list of things to get, and some extras,” she said, hoisting the kit onto the desk and opening it, looking over the many little labelled compartments. “I don’t know how many of those will be any good, though - my parents are what people here call Muggles, so they could have totally ripped my dad off when he just asked them to recommend any other kits that might be useful,” she said, unperturbed. She preferred that people do business honestly, especially with her family, but she had grown up just close enough to the world of business to know how things went. “I’m Mara, by the way,” she added.
16
Mara Morales
Guess we’ll just have to adapt as we go.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
December 26, 2019 9:40 PM
If there's anything I'm good at... by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander didn't stare. If anything, his expression became more neutral. He was torn on a number of things, and neutrality was safer. On one hand, this girl was clearly well off. His own potions kit had been provided by the school since he couldn't afford it, or anything else for that matter. He certainly didn't have any extra ingredients. That was both frustrating and helpful to know. Some weird sense of pride sort of made him feel a little better about all this, because at least he was meeting cool people so far. Or helpful people. Or both.On the other hand, this girl was also from a Muggle (ugh, what a gross word) background. He didn't know whether his parents were Muggles or not, but he himself hadn't known about magic until this all happened. Now he was here, and maybe - just maybe - he and Mara were equally alone. At least, he liked to think so.
When he was younger, he'd played a lot of pretend. He had pretended his parents were a prince and princess who had been lost at sea somewhere wonderful. He had pretended Barnabus was alive and talking. He had pretended the other boys and girls in state care were getting homes before he was because some cosmic force knew he was stronger and braver and could tough it out, when they really needed homes. Then he got older and kept playing. He pretended his parents had ever loved him. He pretended Barnabus was enough. He had pretended he was worth getting a home anyway.
But then he had gotten a letter, and a magic person who told him all the things he'd wanted to believe. It was hard to accept, but what choice did he have? He didn't want to stay where he'd always been, and it wasn't like he was missing out on any placement opportunities by going to boarding school out of state; he didn't have any placement opportunities anyway. For the most part, he'd given up on making friends as a result. He was going to be too far away to keep up friendships with any of the people at the house, and none of them had ever wanted to be his friend anyway. In some ways, Barnabus was enough because Barnabus was all he had anyway.
Maybe, just maybe, he could have Alexandra, and Nathaniel, and maybe a few others if he was lucky. Maybe Mara.
"I'm Alexander," he said. "Good to meet you. I don't have all those ingredients, but I've got the ones on the list I think." He bit the inside of his cheek as he considered his next words carefully. They seemed paramountly important. "I didn't know about magic until I was told to come to school," he said quietly. "I guess that means I came from Muggles too."
22
Alexander Pierce-Beales
If there's anything I'm good at...
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Mara Morales
December 27, 2019 5:49 PM
Then we should be good to go. by Mara Morales
"I guess so," said Mara when Alexander, fairly logically, concluded that not knowing about this magic stuff until he got his letter meant he was probably also of Muggle origin. "Fun club to be in, isn't it?" she joked, thinking of how her parents had both freaked out when Jessica had turned out magical, and how Mamá had freaked out when Mara had. "I think my folks thought they were losing their minds. I wondered if I was a few times, but Dad - man did his college minor in chemistry," she said, as this was absolutely true. Business was Dad's main focus, but he thought it was important to know a bit about what the company made as well as how to run the company, which made sense to Mara as well. "He had no idea what to even do with all this," she added, gesturing at the room but meaning the whole magical world.The chemistry, after all, just did not work, at least not on any model that Arvale Cosmetics used. Matter could change, that was true - growth and decay and transformation - but not to the point of turning something organic, like wood, into something inorganic, like a sewing needle. People could not just appear in and out of thin air, not without tearing holes in the fabric of the universe or weird stuff like that. It just wasn't possible. Except that it was.
She opened her book and looked over the list. "Okay, so we only have two ingredients we have to work with," she said. "Bezoars and...standard ingredient?" She shook her head. "I'm pretty sure from the name that we can assume we have the second one," she added, completely deadpan. "Whoever named that was a genius, clearly. I think that's the one that looks like potpourri." A look into her kit proved that yes, the stuff in the container with the ambiguous label was the stuff that looked like potpourri. "Bezoar...I know I've seen that word before. It was in a story. It was like a hairball from a goat's stomach or something. Wow, I hope nobody ever gives me any common poisons, because I do not want to drink potpourri and goat hairballs," she said.
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Mara Morales
Then we should be good to go.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
December 28, 2019 10:53 PM
I'm not holding my breath. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander didn't comment on Mara's information about her family. He had thought he was going insane as well - and still wasn't totally convinced otherwise, despite what he'd tried to believe at the start of class - but that wasn't something he was going to share with basically a stranger. Why on earth would she share that with him? Did she really live such a cushy life that such things weren't dangerous to share? One wrong word and he was out of the chance to ever have a home; he wasn't going to risk that, no matter how low his odds were anyway.The topic turned to the potion at hand and Alexander relaxed. He wanted to get along with his classmates, he really did, but it was just too risky right now. He would need to be good at something, to have something to offer, before he'd really feel comfortable approaching his peers in any meaningful way. Sort of a bummer since there was a Ball this year. He'd like to go, but he didn't think he would want to go with a girl.
"I think you're right," Alexander agreed, watching as Mara confirmed her own hypothesis. He wrinkled his nose at her recollection about a bezoar though. "I've never heard of that. Maybe we should . . . " He flipped his textbook open to the index and searched for bezoar, flipped to that page, and then scanned the text until he found it. "You're right," he told her, making a disgusted face. "That's nasty. I don't want to drink this either."
He looked up at his classmate. They were both in the same boat when it came to magic experience. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to share about that? To commiserate? Barnabus would certainly want him to make a friend. Or at least a co-sufferer. "Do you think the magic makes it taste okay? The bit they do with their wands in the second part?"
22
Alexander Pierce-Beales
I'm not holding my breath.
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Mara Morales
December 29, 2019 9:21 AM
You might want to, at least for the next minute.... by Mara Morales
"I hope so," said Mara, wrinkling her nose at the very thought of, if the magic didn't make the potion taste better, what this literal witch's brew must be like...Her stomach was, she thought, pretty strong, but apparently she now knew where its limit was, because it twisted and lurched just at the thought of what consuming that would be like if the magic didn't make it taste better. "I don't know how anyone could get that stuff down otherwise."She thought back, trying to remember anything about this class' products which Jessica had ever told her. She couldn't come up with any details about that topic, though, and shook her head.
"I know one of the older students here from home," she said, and then hesitated a moment, remembering that she was supposedly allowed to tell the truth here, and weighed pros and cons, before adding, "She's, uh, my half-sister, actually. I thought knowing her was going to be a lot more useful when I was still at home," she admitted. "She never said anything about what potions taste like, though. My guess is that she never had the nerve to try any," she concluded.
She shook her head again. "I don't even know how you grind up something made of hair, but I guess we have to do it," she said grimly. "Want me to go get some for us? It doesn't look like those are parts of our standard kit. You can get the potpourri measured out."
Volunteering to do the grosser of the two tasks was second nature to her, growing up with Jessica. Jezi really did not have any nerves. Mara had nerves, but she nevertheless got out the gloves which had also been part of the school supply list before she made any further moves and put them on. They felt like far too nice a pair of gloves to wear for this kind of thing, but it was apparently their entire purpose, and she was now wary enough of the whole class to be grateful for the thickness and sturdiness of the gloves. "Now I see why they wanted us to get these," she remarked.
That, however, was the last of the stalling. Jaw set, she approached the supply area. At first, she was confused by the abundance of labels, but then some words leapt out at her in Spanish and she realized that the ingredients, too, were labelled in multiple languages. They were, she thought, all the same languages that were represented in the bookshelves. She managed to put off actually touching bezoars a moment longer by checking the label to see if the word was different in Spanish (it seemed they were the same word) but then came the moment of truth: touching the weird little rock things and holding them far, far away from her face as she marched back to Alexander.
"Ugh," she remarked. "I don't know if they really stink or if I'm just imagining it, but...ugh." She dropped one into a bowl and picked up a pestle. "Guess we're going to find out for sure now. How's the...not-potpourri?"
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Mara Morales
You might want to, at least for the next minute....
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
January 02, 2020 10:46 PM
Ugh. You might be right. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
"I guess maybe if you'd been poisoned, you wouldn't mind so much," he offered with a shrug, not entirely believing it. "Although dying of poison might be better than this." Another thought struck him and he looked at Mara with wide, horrified eyes. "If this is what good potions are like, can you imagine how awful the poisons must be? Ugh."Oh. Mara had family here. A sister. Half-sister was still fifty percent more sister than Alexander had, as far as he knew. Wouldn't that be rich? Come to magical school and discover family? His mind reeled back to square one, where Mara was a source and a network and couldn't be his friend because they were too different. She wouldn't want to be his friend because he'd never had a friend and wouldn't be any good at it. But she really was nice and maybe he could just keep trying?
She offered to get the bezoar and even made a joke, which earned a small, flat smile from Alexander. He was surprised by the offer and watched her walk away with a sense of fear; hope, he knew, was much more dangerous than any poison they'd learn about in this class.
Following directions was second nature to Alexander and he carefully measured out the requisite scoops of 'potpurri'. It seemed odd to just dump stuff in what was essentially a giant bowl and expect a liquid out of it, but everything seemed odd and Alexander didn't have a lot to lose, so he went on with his task until Mara returned.
He wrinkled his nose, both at her comment and at the horrifying little hairy thing she was holding. "Yeah, I'm glad you wore the gloves. I can smush that up if you want to figure out how to heat something to 'medium' for 'five seconds'. And then . . ." He ran his finger down the recipe and stopped at the step they were on, stumped. "Why on earth would you need to switch out the cauldrons in forty minutes? Do they do different things?"
22
Alexander Pierce-Beales
Ugh. You might be right.
1475
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Mara Morales
January 18, 2020 8:51 PM
For whatever it's worth, I wish I wasn't. by Mara Morales
Mara’s expression twisted with disgust when Alexander made a very logical statement about the poisons. “Ugh,” she echoed. “Nasty. Though I guess it’s...if they’re as nasty as all of this, maybe we would know if we had poison in something? I’m pretty sure that I’d know if something any worse than all this was in something I was eating,” she said, and grimaced again.She returned with the bezoar and was relieved when Alexander offered to smush it up. She did not want to smush it up. It was nauseating enough like this. “Sounds like a deal,” she said gratefully. She was slightly concerned by the imprecise language being used in a chemistry context – she would have felt a lot more comfortable if they had had temperature in degrees to work with; it was a lot harder to mess up this kind of thing when there were precise measurements to check before she did anything – but figuring it out as she went along sounded far, far better than the...smushing.
Plus, well, it was good practice for entrepreneurial endeavors, she guessed. According to the family history on the Arvale website, Ariana Hayles had had no real training in chemistry, much less precise equipment. She had figured it out as she’d gone along, and look how well that had worked out for her. Mara was not mentioned in that family history, did not have her picture anywhere near any of Ariana’s faded sepia remainders, but Mara was as much Ariana’s great-granddaughter as Jessica was. If such traits could be passed along genetically – which Mara doubted on the whole, but whatever – then Mara had as much claim to them as anyone.
“I have no idea,” said Mara, shaking her head. “I mean...I know there’s...in regular chemistry? You have to clean vats for mixing things in certain ways, and there’s some materials that are more reactive than others – usually you want to use something that doesn’t react to whatever you put in it, so you’re totally in control of exactly what’s in the product, and how much of each thing. So I’d think you would have to be careful with metals, though...oh. Oh! I think I’ve got it,” she said, excitement entering her voice. “I think different metals would conduct heat differently. So maybe it’s easier to keep one at the right temperature longer than another, and it needs different temperatures at different times for the ingredients to...fix together?”
She shrugged. “I’m just guessing,” she added. “Trying to make it make sense. I’m not sure that’s really the thing around here, but I tried,” she joked.
She flipped open her book to find the page she remembered seeing with diagrams about how to work the heat source. “This looks pretty much like a Bunsen burner,” she said, more or less musing out loud. “And there’s this...I’m assuming it controls how much exposure the flame has to the bowl, and how hot it is?” she theorized. “Ah, sorry – thinking out loud,” she apologized to Alexander, who had enough problems with dealing with the bezoar. She decided to just go for it and try to turn the burner on. She held her breath the whole time, but managed to get a flame going. “Whew. Now to get it hot enough and keep it there for five seconds.” She shook her head. “Five seconds. That’s a heck of a reaction time. Do you think we heat everything together, or get the cauldron and the water hot and then add everything all at once for five seconds?”
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Mara Morales
For whatever it's worth, I wish I wasn't.
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