Grayson Wright
August 22, 2021 7:39 PM
Orientation for First Years by Grayson Wright
As the wagons landed and began to unload, all but the tallest students were slightly overshadowed by an adult figure, a tall, dark-haired wizard in glasses. To most, he was a familiar figure – it was, he had been startled to realize at breakfast, his tenth year as a teacher, longer than any of the students had been here. It was to those who did not know him, though, that he repeatedly called out."Hello everyone," he said in a well-trained ‘teacher’ voice, projected just so, as students began to disembark from the wagons. "First years! First years gather here, please! Everyone leave your luggage with the wagons, thank you…."
He had mastered the trick of making himself heard over chattering crowds without damaging anyone's eardrums or his own throat too badly, but he still had, as usual, backed himself up with a large banner over the entrance to the Labyrinth Gardens: ‘Welcome to Sonora. 1st Year students here.’ The use of the numeral ‘1’ instead of the word was hopefully a clue to anyone who had difficulties reading English, and the size hopefully enough to attract the attention of even the most distractable of eleven-year-olds. He couldn’t say for sure that either made the task of gathering the first years any faster, but he was relatively sure that, at the very least, they didn’t hurt anything.
"Hello, again, everyone," he said once the majority of the student body had moved away from the wagon landing site, leaving him with the first years. He made the effort to smile, but the effect did little to prevent him from looking slightly anxious; 'slightly anxious' was one of his three general facial expressions, along with 'faintly amused' and 'as if the salt cellar directly in his line of sight had done him a personal wrong.' The first one was the most common."And welcome to Sonora Academy. My name is Professor Wright. I will guide you through your Orientation today. Follow me, please, thank you..."
Beneath the banner was a gap between two dense hedges, taller than any first year who didn’t happen to have a giant among their recent ancestors. A neatly gravelled path lay between them, and a short way along, it opened onto a hedge-walled courtyard, in which there was a central fountain and several stone benches which were permanent fixtures of the area and several long tables which were not. On one of these tables, there were a number of dark green folders, equal in number to the students present. On another, there was a sort of finger-and-snack-food buffet, with lightweight plates and paper napkins available so the students could gather a few refreshments in one trip if they wished. On the third, there were several large apparatuses, each topped with a clear (and unbreakable) glass bulb which showed the color of the drink within, though they were also distinguished by written labels on their sides above the spigots which, when turned, would dispense the contents into glasses: pumpkin juice, apple juice, grape juice, iced tea, and plain water. There was also a box of ice (charmed not to melt) with a scoop in it and a number of clear cups.
"Come in, everyone, and please take one folder," he instructed them. "I'm sure many of you will want some refreshments after your journey, but if you can give me your attention for a few minutes first..."
Once everyone had a folder and was more or less still and quiet, he began near-reciting the same introductory remarks he had given to each new set of first years for several years running now.
"Welcome to Sonora," he repeated. "As I said before, I am Professor Wright. I'll be one of your teachers for the next few years. Sonora is a seven-year school where you’ll be introduced to most of the major sections of magical theory and practice. Tomorrow morning, you will all start taking seven classes - Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, Potions, Transfiguration, and flying lessons. I'll be your Charms teacher. You can drop flying lessons in your second year and begin taking elective classes in your third year. In your fifth year, you’ll take your first set of major exams, the Critical Assessment of Talents and Skills, or CATS, as we usually call them – at least if it’s not in a setting where we’re likely to mix them up with anyone’s pets.” He didn’t really expect even solid chuckles from the children for that one, though he'd thought it had been funny when he'd come up with it the previous year. “After you take your CATS, you will be allowed to drop some subjects if you want to, so you can better focus on your strengths and the requirements for careers you're interested in, though you’ll need at least two classes to graduate and three if you want to pursue your education in the magical arts further after you leave Sonora.
“We know that you all had different educations before you arrived here today,” he said, because this was true. Some might have gone to Muggle elementary schools while others might have had one tutor, a series of tutors, or been taught by a parent, while a few might have very little formal education at all. “Your professors all have office hours when we can give you extra help in our subjects if you need it, and Professor Skies, our Deputy Headmistress and your Transfiguration teacher, runs special sessions for anyone who needs help with reading and writing English, or who needs other general academic support. You can see times for those sessions in the schedules inside your green folders.
“Outside of classes, you can choose between a few options for how you spend your time. We have several student-run clubs and a school-wide Quidditch team here, and you’ll see notices about meetings posted around the school when those groups are ready to start up for the year. Breakfast is from 6:30 to 8:30 a.m, lunch is from 11:00 to one, and supper is from five till seven, but you can find snacks and drinks in the Cascade Hall – our main dining area - between those times as well. Curfew is at ten p.m., and at that time, you’ll need to be inside your Houses – those are parts of the building where your dorms are. They're all attached to a common room you share with all the students from all seven years who were Sorted into the same group as you . Sonora has four Houses, and tonight, at the Welcoming Feast, you’ll be Sorted into one of them by dipping the blank badges you have now into a cauldron. If your badge turns blue, you’re an Aladren – the House that values learning and problem-solving.” He might have sounded a little proud there; he was a former Aladren as well as the current Head of the House. “If it turns red, you're in Crotalus, the House for people who like to be well-prepared for everything. Yellow means you’re a Teppenpaw, the House for our diplomats. And last but not least, if your badge turns brown, that means you’re a Pecari, the House for people who always land on their feet and are always willing to take a chance. All the Houses have other traits, though, so don’t worry if you don’t think any of those things sounds exactly like you – there’s a place for everyone here at Sonora.
“The four Houses each have a set of usually three prefects, a fifth year, a sixth year, and a seventh year, who can help you out in a lot of circumstances, and a Head of House, who is an adult and a staff member – I’m the Head of Aladren House, for instance. They’ll all look after you while you’re here – some people like to think of their Houses as an extended family. Your House can earn points based on things you do – excelling in class or in sports, or showing responsibility, or helping the school community in some way, or showing general leadership. The House with the most points at the end of the year earns the House Cup, and sometimes other privileges.
“If no-one has any questions about all of that, you can talk for a while and have some snacks until we begin our tour of the main building. If you do have any questions, feel free to come see me before we begin our tour – and welcome again to Sonora.”
OOC: OOC: Welcome first years to Sonora! You can post a reply here to ask staff questions or meet your new classmates. This thread is intended for first year students to have a chance to try out posting and get acclimated to the site before we throw you into the big Opening Feast, which is open to the entire school population and can be a bit overwhelming.
Now, go forth, new first years of Sonora! Post, enjoy, have fun! Everyone here is happy to help out, so if you've got a question, put it on the OOC board or try to catch somebody in the Chatzy and we'll try to get you an answer as quick as we can. Have fun and we’re glad you could join us!
[Credit to Nathan Xavier's author for the content of this OOC notice]
Subthreads: This is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, right? by Phil Carson with Eben Sosna
Here goes nothing. by Claire Osbrook with Tissena Randall
Ever so magical by Verdillia Scurlock with Liesl Brockert
Leaving home ain't always easy by Antonia Guter with Christopher Brockert
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Grayson Wright
Orientation for First Years
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Claire Osbrook
August 24, 2021 10:15 PM
Here goes nothing. by Claire Osbrook
When the wagon landed, Claire pushed herself to her feet immediately, doing her best to ignore the way her mild motion sickness had just combined with a spinning, crushing mass of nervous jitters in her stomach. Before her brother could say or do anything, she had already forced a smile, said, "later, loser," and started hurrying toward the exit.Part of her was tempted to invoke little sister privilege, but there were a couple of reasons Claire had decided before she ever left home that she was going to ditch Graham as quickly as possible today. For one thing, she didn't want to look like she needed someone to hold her hand on the first day of school in front of her new classmates, or for that matter in front of her new classmates. For another thing, deliberately talking to customers in the stationery shop both when her father and grandmother were around and when they were not had led her to the conclusion that even though it didn't really make a lot of sense, she was less nervous around strangers by herself than she was when her family was with her. And for a last thing, although she knew Graham would have been cool about it now, she was just as confident that he would have made fun of her later. It was their way, and then she would have had to find some way to knock him back down a peg in turn, and it would just have been a whole tedious thing. Definitely better to just storm the castle on her own today, at least, even if she did feel more than a little lonely as she joined the other first years for Orientation.
A lot of information was given to them, and it felt - wrong, somehow, not to take notes, even though there was honestly no practical way to do so out here right now. She settled for folding her hands behind her and keeping her eyes fixed on the professor as firmly as possible, so he'd know she was paying attention properly if he bothered to notice any of them (unlikely, but adults always saw the exact one thing you didn't want them to, so it was better to just avoid such things if there was one within eyeshot). She thought she did a pretty good job, on the whole, but still felt a flash of relief when they were dismissed to their own devices, at least until she remembered the context of those devices.
She had been around people all day now - Mom and Dad and her grandparents had been all clingy all morning since she was going away, and then she'd been on the wagon for what had felt like a lifetime. If she was to be honest, all she really wanted to do right now was find somewhere to sit down so she could read for a while. Unfortunately, she could practically hear her gran telling her to act like a little lady and be nice, and Dad reminding her that she'd only get one chance to make a good impression on most people. Neither Gran nor Dad was here, of course, but they still managed to have a point, which seemed unfair somehow. Fair or not, though, she steeled herself for the experience of joining a buffet line.
"Hi," she said to someone about halfway down it. "Do you think you know what kind of cookies those are?" she asked, pointing at random. She didn't actually care, but having a reason to say something made it easier to talk to people, too. At the shop, that was being-the-adorable-precocious-kid-asking-to-help-you; knowing that they saw her as something she more or less was not was strangely comforting, somehow. Here, it was...grabbing onto any excuse possible, she guessed, in this case cookies. In both cases, though, it definitely felt easier than even thinking too much about just marching up to someone and announcing who she was and just expecting them to respond with anything politer than so what?
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Claire Osbrook
Here goes nothing.
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Tissena Randall
August 25, 2021 12:04 AM
And everything. by Tissena Randall
The ride to school put Tissena and Winston next to each other, which meant her most immediate company was boring at best and annoying at worst. While he anxioused (she was pretty sure being anxious was a verb for her older brother), Tissena kept occupied by sketching out her thoughts on how this flying wagon must be working if it were doing so mechanically, what couldn't be mechanical and must be magical, and what she would do if she were to change things up. Of course, since she'd grown up without any real knowledge of the muggle world, this was not terribly hard for her to do and didn't occupy her nearly as long as she would have liked. Still, it kept her hands busy and kept her mind from picking up on Winston's contagious anxiousing.When they landed, she and Winston parted ways with only a tight smile on her part and a grimace on his. Needless to say, they were on as friendly terms as ever. Tissena followed the other students, got her folder, and tried really hard to listen to the professor but there was so much else to think about and look at and she really wished there was someplace easier for her to set her notebook against so she could take advantage of some blank space here and there to make some more diagrams. She also wanted to annotate the map she suspected was amidst the other papers in here. Still, she was supposed to be listening, so she did manage to catch most of the speech. Then there was food. Food was important because nutrition (whether it was the right nutrients in the right quantities or not) was important for brain functioning. With so much excitement pumping through her veins, Tissena doubted she really needed any sugar to keep her awake but she thought that it may help her sleep because she'd inevitably crash in a few hours.
Of course, she could stay up all night and get to know her roommates if she had any, and take over the walls with her ideas if she didn't. . . .
She blinked, having forgotten where she was for a moment when a blonde girl interrupted her to ask about cookies. Tissena picked one up, not caring that much what sugar she put in her body so much as that it was delicious and effective, and inspected it before taking a bite. Her eyebrows furrowed with surprise before she gave the universal, noncommittal shrug of 'meh, not bad'.
"I think it's like . . . pumpkin cranberry maybe? I've never had a cookie like this. Here." Without a thought about why it might be weird to do so, Tissena responded to this new person in her life the way she would have any of her siblings (except the one that she wasn't going to count and definitely hadn't looked around for as they landed) and shoved a piece of it into the girl's open mouth. "Not bad, right?" she said, licking a bit of cranberry off her finger when she pulled her hand back. "I'm Tissena."
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Tissena Randall
And everything.
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Claire Osbrook
August 25, 2021 9:35 PM
Goodness, I hope not. by Claire Osbrook
Pumpkin and cranberry. That was an interesting combination, Claire thought. In her mind, 'pumpkin' actually meant 'all the spices that went into a pumpkin pie' rather than anything to do with gourds, so it made sense that it might be used as a cookie ingredient for autumn themed cookies, but she was equally used to cranberry being paired either with vanilla or with turkey, not pumpkin pie directly.Not, of course, that it mattered much - not when it was just a pretext for saying something. Claire opened her mouth to thank the other girl for the information and then to introduce herself, but before she could get further than "tha - ", things were suddenly being shoved toward her face.
Caught off-guard, with her tongue totally in the wrong place for having a cookie in her mouth, she immediately raised her hands to cover her mouth while her face tried to remember what it was supposed to do with crumbly dry things that appeared unexpectedly. In the process, she dropped her plate and the quarter of a sandwich already on it, but she managed to catch her paper napkin before it could fall to the ground too. She coughed the piece of surprise cookie into the napkin and looked in consternation at Tissena.
"Yeah, not bad - from what I could taste while I was tryin' to process what just happened," she said, her slight southern twang a little more pronounced than it had been before. "I'm Claire. Please never do that again," she added pleasantly.
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Claire Osbrook
Goodness, I hope not.
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Tissena Randall
August 29, 2021 3:56 PM
Well, it's a start. by Tissena Randall
Tissena had stooped to pick up the girl - Claire's - sandwich as it fell and was surprised to see The Look on her face. It was the look her mother gave her, and her mother was also named Claire. It was also the look Winston gave her, although he looked much less confident about it. She pushed the sandwich back into its owners hands and dipped her head."Yeah, I get that a lot. I think I must be sort of weird," she said with a shrug, pretty much accepting that as fact at this point in her life. "I won't do that again though. I'm adaptable," she grinned. "My mom's name is Claire. She doesn't talk like you though. Where are you from?"
A sudden idea struck her and she looked around to find her stuff so she could write it down real quick. It was on the ground, where she'd put it down to retrieve the sandwich, so she stooped again to pick it up, sitting on her knees since this way she had a hard surface to write on. She was drawing a picture of a globe (really, it was just a circle since she knew it was a sphere and didn't need to draw that detail and since she didn't know a map well enough to draw out all the countries), with little flags pinned into it. She thought it might be nice to have a sort of projection that students could tell where they were from and it would pin them on in the right place so they could all see where it was from. Maybe even get ideas about what those places were like. Now that she was going to properly be able to do magic, she should be able to make it work with some charms work . . . maybe potions to get some memories of places from the students?
She had entirely forgotten that she had asked Claire a question to spawn this whole thing, so she looked back up at her and asked again, curious as to her new friend's placement on this global map. "Where are you from?"
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Tissena Randall
Well, it's a start.
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Claire Osbrook
August 31, 2021 9:55 PM
Exactly, that's why we can't bet everything up front. by Claire Osbrook
There was no reason, Claire thought, to feel bad about apparently making Tissena the Cookie-Shover feel bad - but she did, almost as soon as she had finished telling Tissena that her behavior was unwelcome. She flushed, feeling as though she was the one who had done something bizarre and kind of inappropriate."It's - it's okay," she mumble-lied, dropping her brown eyes to a neutral spot over Tissena's shoulder. "Just...Yeah," she concluded lamely.
Tissena, she observed, seemed determined to prove her point about being adaptable, if by 'adaptable' she meant 'completely and utterly unpredictable.' She asked where Claire was from, which was reasonable enough, quite expected - and then promptly dropped to the ground to get out paper to draw on before Claire could answer. Bemused, Claire just watched this in silence for a moment before she remembered that she might pose an obstacle to someone else wanting over here and stepped to the side, just about the time Tissena elected to notice her again.
"Texas," said Claire, and then, slowly, she sat down on the ground, too, folding her legs up under her as she studied the other girl with a mix of wariness and interest. "East Texas, more specifically," she added. "My mom's from Louisiana, so I've spent a lot of time there, too. What about you?" she asked, hypothesizing both that Tissena's response would involve some kind of kinetic element and also have nothing whatsoever to do with what Claire had said.
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Claire Osbrook
Exactly, that's why we can't bet everything up front.
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Tissena Randall
August 31, 2021 11:08 PM
You want to be . . . careful? by Tissena Randall
Tissena returned her gaze to her drawing after an appreciative smile at her new friend. It was nice that Claire sat down. Most people wouldn't have sat down. But now she'd also gone and said something interesting because Tissena hadn't accounted for the fact that where a person was 'from' wasn't necessarily where they were really from at all. Perhaps there would be a way to color-code things . . . or make different sizes maybe? Better yet, Winston had explained a little bit about the MARS rooms at Sonora; maybe they could just turn one of those into a life-size map exploration type game. Ooh, they could even fashion some trebuchets to stick giant pins into a giant map. Or catapults to launch the students themselves into the map! That would be a fun way to dive into each other's hometowns. Hmmm..."No," Tissena mused, responding to Claire's question after what felt like a very long time but actually hadn't been at all. Time was funny that way, which was nice, because you could go adventuring and building and creating and still have time to experiment with all of it before it was dinner time or bed time or whatever. Adults always liked to do things on a schedule but Tissena was more interested in how watches worked and why time was even a thing at all. If you weren't tired yet, why go to bed? Just because everyone agreed that they should get up early the next day? That was silly. "I've never spent time in Louisiana."
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Tissena Randall
You want to be . . . careful?
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Claire Osbrook
September 17, 2021 8:09 PM
Something like that. by Claire Osbrook
...No? What was that supposed to -Oh. Claire's mind stopped halfway through the process of speculating about funny little towns with peculiar words for names when Tissena elaborated a little further on that statement. She had not, it seemed, understood the question, which was an interesting thing to observe in and of itself. Claire would not have thought the question was easy to mistake the meaning of, but then, she had felt it was reasonable to assume Tissena might give an answer that was totally off-topic altogether. This, she thought, was almost perfectly in between an off-topic answer and a relevant answer, which was suspicious enough to make her wonder if the other girl had done it on purpose.
"Ah - I'm sorry," she excused herself, then contemplated again the knotty problems that would arise if Tissena somehow was as literal-minded as she seemed to be. "That I didn't ask that question correctly, I mean," she clarified. "Not that you haven't been to Louisiana before. I meant to ask, where are you from?"
Surely there was no ambiguity left at this point. No way to incorrectly answer the question while acknowledging its content at all. Therefore, she would soon have A Clue about whether or not Tissena was scatter-brained or if she was making fun of Claire for reasons unknown and, as far as Claire could tell, unfathomable. One Clue wasn't enough to decide on, but she supposed she had to start somewhere.
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Claire Osbrook
Something like that.
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Tissena Randall
September 21, 2021 12:41 AM
Doesn't that waste time? by Tissena Randall
Tissena grinned at Claire when she took the time to clarify because honestly not enough people did that. Tissena herself rarely thought to but people always seemed to appreciate when she did. She supposed she probably wasn't very clear most of the time but then neither was anybody else. Claire seemed like great best friend material and she made a mental note to look for her in their first day of classes and see about sitting together."You can be sorry that I haven't been to Louisiana too if you want. I am. Maybe I'll visit your mom some day," she decided. If she and Claire got to be best friends, then that would make visiting her mom easier. But she could probably do it either way. It was sort of brain breaking to think of visiting 'Claire's mom' and not meaning her own grandmother. "I'm from Washington though," she added, since Claire-who-wasn't-her-mother had asked a question. "The state, not the city, since everyone always thinks I'm from there. If I was, I would say 'Washington, DC' but no one seems to think that DC is important. I think it's very important. There's no Seattle in the DC one and I like Seattle. So yeah, that's where I'm from." Maybe they could pick really tall monuments for the globe thing. Space needle, Washington monument . . .
"What's a really tall thing in Louisiana? Or in Texas? Any big pointy stuff?"
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Tissena Randall
Doesn't that waste time?
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