Coach Pierce
January 11, 2013 11:28 PM
Flying Lessons by Coach Pierce
Coach Amelia Pierce had given basically the same first lesson for the nine years she had been employed as Sonora's Quidditch Coach. There had been a few students who had never fully (or partially) mastered broom riding but, for the most part, the class was considered one of the easier ones taught at the school. Second years who had gotten less than an O were permitted to take it again to improve their performance, but most didn't need to. In a handful of cases, some students who had earned Os took the course again anyway, just for the extra flying time. She had no age limit for how long a student could retake their flying lessons, but she had yet to have anyone older than third year join the first years. It was, after all, a beginner class.She saw little need to change the curriculum; flying basics were fairly, well, basic and there was not a lot of variation possible. She also saw no reason to subject students who already knew how to fly to the tedium of those basics. So today's class started very much the same as every first flying lesson had for the last nine years.
"Hello, and welcome to flying lessons. I am Coach Pierce. Flying lessons are required for all first year students, so everyone will be participating. If you already know how to fly, you do not have go through the basics with the beginners, but you do need to arrive promptly and spend the period on a broom. Every class will begin with a roll call, and then the experienced players may break off for Pitch laps or various broom games. We have Quidditch balls and other equipment for your use." Muggleborn students would recognize several varieties of other sports balls. She had a few Quods in her shed that were available upon request outside of classtime, but the explosive nature of Quodpot was not conducive for the lessons going on with the less experienced fliers. "As long as you are not disruptive to the beginner class, you may play whatever you like in the air."
"So, I will take the roll now, then we can split into those two groups. "Ambrose, Rajid," she began. None of the names were particularly notable to her, though she recognized several surnames from possible older relatives. 'Boxton-Fox-Reynolds,' she expected, was not a particularly common one and must surely be Henny's younger brother. There was a Hernandez that she tried not to pause over, though she felt sure someone would have told her if a California Pierce was starting this term, so she was probably not Jose's sister. Perhaps a cousin on his paternal side? Squib families did sometimes produce magical heirs.
"We have brooms, here," she indicated the collection of brooms she had arranged before class began. "If you already know how to use one, go ahead and take one if you don't have your own. If I have to interrupt my lesson for any reason, the responsible parties will serve detention and spend the rest of the month down here hovering. So nothing dangerous or disruptive. Otherwise, go have fun. Everyone else, line up."
Once the experience fliers had launched and moved away, she turned her attention to the remaining group. "As I said, this is a required course. You need to complete it to graduate. With any luck, you will leave it knowing how to use a broom to transport yourself. With better luck and some interest on your part, you may be able to get a spot on your House Quidditch Team. Particularly this year, I encourage anyone interested in playing Quidditch to sign up when you get back to your common rooms. Due to the challenges taking place this year, there are no formal games, so your captains will be training you in how to play for a full year before you have to go up in a real match." As she spoke, she handed out brooms, one to each student.
"We begin simply. Place the broom on the ground beside you. If you are right-handed, put it to your right. If you are left-handed, put it to your left. Hold your hand over the broom and command it, Up! Be firm and confident or it won't work. If any of you have dogs or elves, use the same tone of voice as you would use with them."
She held her hand out over her own broom and demonstrated, "Up!" The broom leapt easily into her hand. "It may take a few tries so do not get discouraged. Keep trying. Once you have your broom in the air, please try a low hover. Either put one leg over to straddle the broom, or sit side-saddle. Please let me know if you plan to side saddle your broom. I'll have to adjust the cushion charm."
"Please begin."
OOC: Welcome to Sonora and to Flying lessons. You earn house points for your character by attending classes such as this one. The better your posts are (in both quality and quantity), the more points you will earn. Please be wary of writing for other characters (god-modding) without permission. For example, if you toss another player a ball, it is up to them to decide if they caught it or not, though you can qualify that it was a good throw or entirely off-mark so they know how difficult it should be. That said, you do have my permission to have Amelia change your charm to side-saddle if you raise your hand and ask her for it. Now go forth and write long detailed creative posts and have fun with it!
Subthreads: A pre-emptive strike by Francesca Wolseithcrafte with Malcolm Carey, Pecari, Mal Carey, Mal Carey, Pecari
Quaffle Toss Anyone? by Adam Spencer with Percival Everett Waterford II, Adam, William Casey
Flying around by Keme RunningBear, Aladren with Charlie B-F-R, Jeweliah Dyste, Keme, Omara Hernandez, Omara Hernandez, Pecari
Side-Saddle is uncomfortable. by Virginia Bellrose, Crotalus with Gemma Bennett, Teppenpaw, Ginny
Riding solo by Rajid Ambrose
I'm not really off to a stellar start. by Julian Umland, Teppenpaw with Jude Butler
I have to be confident? by Analea Thornton
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Coach Pierce
Flying Lessons
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Coach Pierce
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte
January 13, 2013 8:50 AM
A pre-emptive strike by Francesca Wolseithcrafte
School, thus far, was neither really here nor there. A Pierce had spoken to her at the feast, and had continued to speak in spite of seemingly recognising her last name. That was a more positive reaction than she had hoped for or been led to believe would happen. Her roommates though were dreadful. Neither had any heritage. She would have to be civil to them for seven years, even though every word she spoke to them was a waste of breath. That was a crushing disappointment. It also sat uneasily with her that her first lesson was to be flying. Mother had told her not to compromise her beliefs but she had also told her to try to make friends. It was easy to ignore some ranting stranger, harder to ignore someone with whom one had made a connection already. She had not had a chance to speak to anyone in her year yet who counted, or to make a positive impression – how irking that her roommates were so useless in this respect – and now she was being put in a situation where her behaviour would distance people from her. Loyalties could not be tested before they even existed.She thought through the options available. The thought of sitting side saddle and feigning delicacy at the idea of flying made her sick to her stomach. Yet would she be immediately an outcast if she did anything else? Was there any flexibility in the way these people thought about others? She felt the weight of the moment hanging on her so heavily that she wasn’t sure she would be able to become airborne anyway. If she turned everyone against her on her first day, there would be no point to the next seven years of her life. But she had principles, and had been brought up to believe that sticking to them, even in the face of adversity, was the mark of a good character. Was it possible, she wondered, to be herself and justify it? These people were so fixed in their views – in spite of the fact that they had only been Wizarding Kind’s views for a handful of decades - that it would be difficult. She couldn’t exactly give them a full lecture and time for it to sink in.
She tried not to noticeably react to her own name being called, except to confirm her attendance. Was it paranoia, or did she feel one or two curious eyes on her back? A Wolseithcrafte. In a flying lesson. Was it true what they said about the family? Was she like the rest of them?
“Up!” she commanded of the borrowed school broom. She hoped it counted for something that she did not appear to have one of her own. However this small point was likely to be strongly counteracted, and the curious stares answered, by the ease with which the unfamiliar instrument leapt to her hand and by the fact that she threw one leg over it, sitting astride. She looked up, finding someone looking at her. She met their gaze unblinkingly and with absolute self assurance and defiance of anything they might be daring to think about her. She was a witch, from a good family that was proud of its magical history – of course she knew how to fly.
“I’ve never understood what’s supposed to be so wrong with this,” she declared, not troubling to keep her voice down so as to answer the unspoken question of anyone else around her who was staring. “I think to read something dirty into this, the person in question must have an incredibly filthy mind.” She had seen her mother use this line to good effect when receiving judgemental stares of even open criticism. It seemed to back people into something of a corner, response-wise, or simply made them too embarrassed to speak. That was not necessarily a victory as she was sure their minds weren’t changed and that it did not stop them from gossiping afterwards but it was a useful defence. She didn’t fully understand it, having always assumed that girls were supposed to sit side-saddle just because. Because society insisted that girls and boys did things differently, to mark girls out as doing things properly (or not). When she had asked her mother what was rude about sitting on a broom this way, her mother had blushed somewhat and told her she would understand it better when she was older.
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte
A pre-emptive strike
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte
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Malcolm Carey, Pecari
January 14, 2013 10:27 AM
Well done! by Malcolm Carey, Pecari
Mal prided himself on being able to keep his thoughts to himself, but as he entered the Quidditch Pitch, he couldn’t help but look around the great space with some interest, since he had never seen a real one before. He had seen diagrams and pictures in books from time to time – very much from time to time, not regularly at all; Mother believed deeply that the Carey women in particular had bad blood and had tried to keep anything she thought might ever tempt his sister to go astray out of the house as much as she could – but going to games, along with learning to fly properly in the first place, was one of those things which he’d never really gotten to do.It would, his mother had often sighed, have been different if his father had lived. If his father had not died, then the one time Mal had ever been on a broom, at the Reunion a few years ago, would not have been a three-minute stretch that ended with a nasty concussion and no real memory of the event, as it would not have involved the South Carolinians just throwing him on a broom and assuming he knew how to use it because they’d needed a seventh and they had only had six underage males actually named Carey in their branch. Father would have taught him properly, as was the usual way, and then he should have been a proper boy when he came to school. It was, Mother liked to say, very tragic, but proof of what “they” always said, about how bad people got their just reward. His father had been a bad man, a liberal man, and he had died not as a result of being involved in some complicated politics but really – deep down, Mother would stress, when it came down to the cosmic order, the real reasons why things happened – for that, and now he was dead and they were all still suffering for his sins and would continue to suffer until Mal was a man and could make up for it all.
Mal, for his part, thought it was just possible that Mother simply wanted another reason to rant about sin and terror, because he had done perfectly well without a father in every other circumstance which would normally require he had one after the family either hired him a substitute or just sent someone from another branch to do it, but he did not say so. He thought Mother got more pleasure out of working herself into a state than she did from anything else in the world, and he guessed he was already being unkind enough by refusing to make her even happier by acting like a nervous wreck, as his sister did, during her fits.
“Present,” he replied when his name was called off the roll, watching, as he had during the Sorting, the Deputy Headmistress for any signs that a demon of liberal politics and personal abandon was about to burst out of her skin and eat all their souls, but once again she disappointed him. He had, though, bigger issues to think about at the moment. As a boy, he ought to be with the group playing Quidditch, but he was faced again with the much more practical problem of not knowing how to fly without ending up unconscious, or at least with a good chance he had it. He supposed a Bludger could have contributed to what had happened the last time, but he wasn’t sure if he had dreamed that part, while he was clearer about the part where it had tried to go away with him and he’d at least started to slip.
He sighed slightly, then stayed with the beginners, refusing to count to see how many were girls. It was not his fault his father had somehow – Mal had never figured out the details – ended up with a sudden and terminal case of having more brains on his shirt than he did in his head, most people who counted would know that his father had done that, and Mal had no desire to succumb to the same malady today. Spending a day learning properly was not, he was sure, sufficient to crush his social life forever.
“Up,” he ordered his assigned broom, then frowned when it just gave a funny little jump. “Up!” he repeated sharply, and this time, it made it to his hand. He rubbed the right side of his jaw with his free hand, not comfortable with having been so loud, and then got on the broom without a catastrophe. He wondered where the stadium full of applauding admirers he should have had for the accomplishment was.
Since he had nothing better to do until they arrived, he looked around to see how his fellow beginners were doing and then continued watching one girl just because she made a point, when they happened to look at each other at the same time, of staring and he wondered what he had done to provoke that. Mal knew he could inspire feelings in people, when he wanted to, but he hadn’t been trying then.
Then she made her declaration, and he supposed he knew what this was about. Girls and brooms; he’d forgotten. His sister had been a nervous wreck when she had to take flying lessons, sure after Mother’s many speeches that she’d somehow be corrupted by twenty minutes spent sidesaddle, as though it were any different from the horseback riding she did all the time without anyone saying a word about it, but being a nervous wreck was Lucille’s default state and Mal had never found that issue very interesting anyway. “The world is full of them,” he replied pleasantly to her declaration. “Though to be fair, the world is full of dirt to make them that way, too. See?” He pointed at the ground, which was, of course, dirt under the grass covering.
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Malcolm Carey, Pecari
Well done!
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Malcolm Carey, Pecari
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
January 14, 2013 1:13 PM
Thank you? by Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
Francesca’s lips twitched into a small smile at the boy’s comment about the ground. It was really a fairly silly joke but it was still a joke, and one in a rather unexpected situation. She schooled her face back into a serious expression again, although she didn’t look nearly so stern as before. She pondered whether to say anything more on the subject. His comment that the world was full of dirty-minded people she could certainly think of a few replies to – that it wasn’t her fault and that, by that logic, girls should aim to be actively unattractive lest they put ideas into peoples heads, and that one had to draw the line somewhere and that she drew it this side of girls being allowed to sit astride a broom. But that seemed heavy handed in comparrison with the response he had given her. He was being lighthearted about the whole issue and, whilst to her the matters at hand were deadly serious, she wasn’t supposed to be in full on fierce and fighting mode yet. She was supposed to be herself. Whatever that left, once you subtracted caring about all the political issues she’d been raised to believe in.The boy, still standing on the ground in front of her, was an intriguing prospect. She could have sworn that he had answered to the name of Carey during the roll call and yet there were a number of things that didn’t fit with that. The first and most obvious being that he was still down on the ground and hanging about with beginners. The second was that he didn’t seem put off by her. He was joking with her about the fact that she was sitting astride a broom, for Merlin’s sake. If she had had to guess, she would have thought those things added up to indicate a Mudblood but she was convinced enough by her own observations of the roll call to not risk that assumption. That left the possibility that her behaviour was not an automatic death sentence amongst the rich and influential, which was a somewhat better outcome than she had really dared to hope for.
“All the more reason to make sure you have a nice, stable purchase on your broom,” she countered, in reference to his assertion that the ground was dirty, “I would not wish to fall from grace.” She could have gone into the statistics on how many more accidents there were in side saddle riders but it did not seem necessary. Not unless he criticised her and she needed to defend herself.
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
Thank you?
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
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Mal Carey
January 15, 2013 8:57 PM
You're very welcome by Mal Carey
Mal had half-expected the girl – who had an expression, he thought, not unlike his mother’s, one that took itself too seriously and was just beginning to have a pin stuck in it to deflate it a little – to blow up at having her attempt at making a grand statement basically mocked to her face, but instead, she smiled for a moment. He blinked, not sure what to make of that, but thought he kept from reacting much further than that. Now they were back where they had been, looking at each other with what he guessed were their default faces.People could, after all, look so different depending on their expressions. Sometimes, it could be like they were completely different people altogether, almost unrecognizable, at least for him. Some people, he was sure, were better at recognizing people anyway than he was. Everyone had their talents.
The phrase fall from grace, though, reminded him of his mother. He kicked off carefully, rising a few feet in the air slowly, not wanting to zoom away and fall again, as he thoughtlessly had the last time he was on a broom. “I’m more worried about falling from the air,” he said.
He, for his part, did not have a clue who she was, since he had not paid much attention during the roll call, and he did not really care. He was going to guess by her feeling the need to make a statement about flying that she was wizard-born, because why would Muggles know anything about it, but either destined to be a scandal or at least from different circles than he was familiar with. Not that he was familiar with circles in general, since he was almost never allowed to leave the house, but he had learned the names, and had no reason to suspect the Careys sent from other branches to teach him about society were lying to him.
Well...not much of a reason, anyway. They had, after all, he thought, deliberately picked Virginia scholars for that duty, most of whom could barely care less which branch was in power as long as they could afford books and parchment and ink. Some people did say it never paid to be too sure, though.
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Mal Carey
You're very welcome
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Mal Carey
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte
January 17, 2013 12:22 PM
This is going suspiciously well. by Francesca Wolseithcrafte
“Well, from this height you really won't even bruise. Nothing except your pride, of course,” Francesca quipped when the boy mentioned being worried about falling. He really was a curiosity. She wasn't sure most boys, even from non-wizarding families, usually admitted to being scared of what would, at its most serious, amount to a slight grazing of the knees. Boys were supposed to be tough and strong. But he wasn't being mean to her and was almost managing to make playful banter, even if his comments were a bit slow or obvious. She would go so far as to say that she did not actively dislike him.“Whilst I don't suggest attempting to break any records for speed, it really is easier to keep your balance if you're moving,” she advised. She leant forward, pulling the broom handle at first away but then back around towards him so as to bring herself around in arc and pull up alongside him. “Lean about as far forward as I do, it should take us forward at a jogging speed, which is a good speed for...” she hesitated, not wanting to call him a beginner, seeing as – if he was a Carey – he logically should not be, “balancing,” she supplied, pleased with how quickly she had thought of a way out of the sentence.
“Am I correct that you answered to Malcolm Carey in the roll call?” she asked, “You will have to forgive me, my memory for branch affiliations has never been perfect...” she added apologetically. She had wanted to bring up the subject in a way that forced him to declare branch affiliation as, although most people did this without asking, some people were more casual, especially in a situation like this. There was every chance he simply coincidentally shared a last name with a prominent family and was really just a Muggleborn or halfblood – although she was sure that The Careys had a Malcolm. If it was the case that he was a Coincidental Carey, he would probably not understand her question regarding branches and thus be exposed. If he was an actual Carey, it would not explain what he was doing hovering with the beginners but at least she would know him to be acceptable company.
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte
This is going suspiciously well.
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte
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Mal Carey
January 17, 2013 11:00 PM
Suspicion isn't very becoming, you know by Mal Carey
“How bad that is depends entirely on who you’re talking to,” Mal said, in the same agreeable tone. Most of his family, he knew, boys and girls alike, would much rather bruise their bodies than bruise their pride. Everything was about some kind of pride – pride in being Careys, pride in being wizards, pride in being blond-haired, for all he knew. He, personally, tried not to worry too much about it except when it was helpful. It could pay for a lot of other useful things, such as worming his way out of the worst trouble when he did get in some and keeping Mother doting on him.She offered him pointers on how to make the broom go without it doing him an injury, and Mal classified her accordingly. Half-blood, most likely, but she had done him a favor. He could stop trying to annoy her, though he wouldn’t be surprised if he succeeded when he wasn’t trying.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” he said as he copied her gesture. He had a gift for mimicry, or he had always believed. “I’ve never jogged.”
His eyebrows rose in surprise when she knew his name, and he didn’t bother hiding it this time. “You’re quite forgiven,” he said when she apologized for not remembering where he was from as well. “As the Deputy Headmistress and I both failed to mention it. Malcolm Carey, North Carolina Careys.” He couldn’t help but watch, a thin and not entirely pleasant smile on his lips in the moment, for a reaction to that information. It was a close race, after all, between them and their more literal than usual cousins in Georgia for the most scandalous branch; at present, Mal thought Georgia was still winning, just since their old patriarch had evidently been spectacularly insane while everyone seemed to agree Father had just made it to gibbering and their heir seemed to have absolutely no interest in taking power away from his sister now that he was out of school, but it was always close. Things had a way of balancing each other out. Georgia’s patriarch, for instance, had been crazier, but before that, he’d just had a daughter run off with some Mudblood and get killed for it where Father had run off with an actual Muggle once and had lived.
Well, at least for a while. Everyone, after all, died sooner or later. Father's luck had lasted longer than most people's would have, though, so that was something the old man could feel proud of, if the dead truly did have a lingering consciousness. Mal, for his part, rather hoped that they didn't.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, though,” he said. "I didn't pay as much attention during the roll call as you did. May I ask who you are?"
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Mal Carey
Suspicion isn't very becoming, you know
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Mal Carey
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte
January 18, 2013 12:22 PM
Oh, so you are holding things against me? by Francesca Wolseithcrafte
“True enough,” Francesca smiled, in response to his quip about pride being, potentially, of great value. He was consistent enough at responding in this way that it could not just be dumb luck, and she decided that 'mildy witty' was an appropriate accolade to award him. She wasn't going to go quite so far as to wonder why he wasn't in Aladren instead of Pecari but she would definitely acknowledge that he had a brain in his head.“Nor have I,” she replied, when he stated that he had never jogged, her tone still light and neutral, “But I am still familiar enough with the general concept to estimate its approximate speed.” A lack of personal, direct experience implying that one would have a complete lack of knowledge on the subject... It was a fairly common mistake to make and a fallacy which came up time and time again in debating. She supposed that answered the question of his house placement.
“Ah, thank you,” she replied non-committally when he stated his branch affiliation. Had she been struck out of the blue with the information that he was a Carey, and a North Carolina one at that, she might have reacted differently, although she did tend to pride herself on her inability to be phased by things, and her ability to maintain a poker face on the rare occasions where she was. But she had known in advance which family he came from, which gave a one in five chance that he was from any particular branch of it, and a two in five chance that he was from one the insane, disreputable or whatever else you wanted to call them branches. Or made it a dead cert, if one was feeling catty and uncharitable to the Carey dynasty as a whole. From what she knew, backstabbing and insanity were the less desirable traits in the less desirable Carey branches. Whilst it would be worth keeping an eye on him for any such signs of treachery if their association continued beyond this encounter, she doubted he was about to immediately leap from his broom and inflict either of them upon her at that particular moment. “It would probably be taking formality a little far to answer the roll call in such a fashion,” she jested, smiling at his comment, “'Yes Miss, of the North Carolina branch,' is possibly overdoing things a little.”
She considered asking him how many of the different branches were represented throughout the school but she was worried that would make her seem ignorant. In society, most people judged your family's respectability by how many facts about theirs you had memorised; you were proper if you knew who else was proper. She preferred to reserve her brain for actual thinking. The Careys could, however, easily be researched further and she could answer her own question. She reasoned that the higher the number of different branches, the more diverse the views of the school Careys might be. It would be important to know, as certain links would or would not be implied by any Careys who were sympathetic to her view point.
“Francesca, of the Wolseithcrafte family.” Interesting that he had not noticed this during roll call, unless he was bluffing, presumably for politeness' sake. She supposed her name was so far beneath his, speaking strictly alphabetically, that his attention may have drifted by that point. Still, she thought her name was poisonous enough to shock most people back to their senses. If they knew it. Perhaps her name had not registered with him because his family had chosen to protect him from the knowledge that there were such dangerous, political people, who championed the right of girls to play Quidditch. She snuck a sidelong glance at him, trying to assess the effect of this announcement.
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte
Oh, so you are holding things against me?
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte
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Mal Carey
January 20, 2013 6:36 PM
Just making an observation by Mal Carey
“Good for you,” Mal said, also agreeably, when the girl said she knew about the approximate speed of a jog.Beneath the tone, he was beginning to feel a little irritated – with her superior tone there, with his own deficiencies, with his mother for being the cause, he was sure, of most of them – but he had expected to end up feeling that way during flying lessons, and to have to deal with that. He had grown up surrounded by women, and Mother, the one who had the most day-to-day control over him, had not been considering his social life compared to other males when she decided he, unlike his sister, couldn’t even go outside unsupervised, much less engage in any activities she thought were dangerous. He had heard her arguing about it with his stepmother more than once, but in the end, Stepmother hadn’t been able to overrule her, Morgaine and Thomas and Anthony IV had never seemed to even notice, and so things had stayed the same.
Mal took her non-reaction to his branch and family as a reaction, but laughed at the quip about responding to the coach with his full designation. “I would guess so,” he said. “Especially since I can’t imagine she possibly cares.”
That was as close as he wished to come to acknowledging the teacher’s…social problems. Mal was not afraid of disowned people the way his sister was – logic said they were not likely to want to cause themselves more problems by attacking him in public unless they were paid an awful lot of money to do it, and he thought a teacher was probably safe enough from that kind of thing, or at least smart enough to skip the ‘in public’ part – but he recognized that a certain amount of cognitive dissonance was necessary when dealing with one who was in a position of authority over him, and didn’t want to think about it more than he had to. It was simpler that way, and while normally he enjoyed thinking on the contradictions of life, he didn’t want to put that much energy into it when he needed to be concentrating on not falling and, at the very least, making a fool of himself. Pride was expendable, but he did like to keep some in his pocket when he could.
“That’s a lovely name,” he said noncommittally when she told him who she was, even though he really thought it was much too long. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with your family, that I can remember – there are so many to learn, after all.” His mother would have added a ‘these days,’ but he thought it was more diplomatic to leave that out. “Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?” If he had heard and somehow forgotten something, putting her on a map would, he was sure, help him remember, if only because of the likely connections to other families in the same area. Most weren’t like his family, which had intermarried with most of the region at one place or another and had the impossible tangle of the Georgia and North Carolina branches to consider at at least three points, but they did tend to have some kind of relationship to surrounding families, he thought.
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Mal Carey
Just making an observation
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Mal Carey
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
January 21, 2013 8:31 AM
Are you sure you're not supposed to be in Aladren? by Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
'Good for you.' The bitter cry of someone who knows they've nothing to come back with and is irritated by that. Whilst Francesca liked winning, especially in debates, she felt a little bit rueful that she might be annoying Malcolm. Even though he would probably be alienated once he found out about her politics, there was no sense in turning him against her before then. Especially as most of the things she thought about him so far weren't negative. She resolved to not point out his stupidity unless it was absolutely necessary, and only hoped for her own sanity that that was the only slip up he made this lesson. The prognosis on that was good. After all, he'd seemed relatively intelligent up until that point.She smiled as he seemed to enjoy her little quip about the roll call, relieved that things had returned to jovial air that had previously been the predominant mood of their encounter. She wondered whether it was true that the coach didn't care. She was very unlikely to be able to lure Purebloods over to her side so in that sense it was probably true – but perhaps she wanted to know her enemy. If none of them cared about WAIL and being all “proper” and riding side saddle, then she could assume she'd won and pack up shop. She rather suspected the coach kept a very close eye on Purebloods during the flying lessons but Francesca kept this notion to herself.
“Thank you,” she said, trying to sound genuine and not as thoroughly suspicious as she felt at his compliment. It was relatively easy to fake as she liked her own name. She took pride in it. Even to those who had not heard of her family, she felt it struck the right note. It sounded old. If he had heard of her, he was clearly being sarcastic. Whilst making one's points with subtlety was something she admired, if it was beyond the perceptive skills of someone acute, such as herself, then it was not subtlety but failing to communicate effectively. Therefore, if he was trying to be sarcastic, he had failed. If he genuinely had not heard of her, she doubted his appreciation of her name would last once he had looked it up. “We are from Chicago,” she informed him.
“As we approach the corner, I suggest we bear right, otherwise we will be doing a very tight U-turn,” she added, as the neared the end of the side of the pitch which they had been flying along. Turning right also meant she was on the outside, which she had deliberately chosen. If Malcolm Carey under-steered, she could get out of his way easily enough. If he over-steered, he would take himself further away from her. “You want to sit back slightly to slow a little going into it, and look round at where you want to go. That will naturally cause you to bring your broom around. You can lean into bends if you wish – it helps maintain your speed and make it smooth but is not necessary to complete a corner successfully,” assuming that success meant moving oneself to face the desired new direction, rather than accomplishing the movement in the most efficient manner. As this was a beginner's lesson, she felt the former was an acceptable definition to be working under. “At this sort of speed, a twenty-two-point-five degree angle is the maximum that is safe without risking overbalancing – that is, half way to the point where you would be leaning out sideways from your broom,” she added. It was sometimes hard to envisage angles and do mathematics when concentrating on other things, and she had just given Malcolm an awful lot of information on a subject with which he was not familiar. Hopefully she had given him sufficient detail but not so much as to overwhelm him, although she prepared herself to shout 'Sit up/lean back – BRAKE!' if it looked like he was going to under-steer to such a massive degree as to take himself headlong into the stands.
OOC – and, if he does do that, feel free to mention her screaming said instructions at him.
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
Are you sure you're not supposed to be in Aladren?
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
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Mal Carey, Pecari
January 24, 2013 11:22 PM
It's certainly where I expected to be by Mal Carey, Pecari
Mal nodded when Francesca said she was from Chicago. It had, after all, been one of the three most likely places she could be from; he didn’t quite understand why Chicago and New York had both become such large magical towns when they were so far apart and California, the third, was so far from them both, but they were what they were. “Chicago,” he repeated. “I’m afraid I haven’t had the pleasure of ever visiting it, but I’ve heard it’s a very interesting place.”More interesting, anyway, than North Carolina, which he suspected would have been completely overlooked by almost everyone if his branch had not been so very scandalous there for the past two centuries. He thought the state might have had more of a variety of families anyway, though, if Virginia had not been right on top of them; they were not a very aggressive group, according to the family histories he’d had to learn, just badly behaved sometimes, but they were right next to the largest branch. It loomed over them, threatening them into staying within the lines, promising to take their children away if they ever misbehaved too much until his father had come along and left even more chaos than usual in his wake, not to mention a few dead people who’d made the Aurors stick their noses in where they had no right to be. Now, Mother assured him, they would take him away and make his life even more unpleasant than she did if any of the few of them left ever misbehaved at all. She seemed to think this would make the prospect of behaving badly less appealing instead of more.
Not that he would ever do anything, of course – well, at least not that he thought he might be caught doing – but the more she warned him away from it, the more appealing it did sound sometimes. It wasn’t smart, but feelings usually weren’t. That was why he found them more annoying than useful to have.
Francesca offered Mal a lot of information about how to manipulate a broom around the curve of the Pitch, which he listened to, then hesitated for a moment as he thought through. Then he followed her directions, minus the one about angles and degrees, and watched her closely to see exactly how she was doing it. He didn’t take the curve perfectly, since they weren’t exactly the same size and mimicry could only go so far under those conditions, but he didn’t crash into her or the stands or anything else, either, so he was prepared to call that a success for the first day of lessons.
“You do this very well,” he said, thinking it was only appropriate to acknowledge the person whose success was the reason for his. “I have to admit, I’m not sure why you’re with the beginners, Miss Wolseithcrafte.” Her name did sound familiar for some reason he couldn’t place – probably a pin on his map, he felt like her name should be linked to a shade of teal and that could have been why, but he wasn't sure – so he was going to remain properly polite until he was sure what he was dealing with, anyway.
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Mal Carey, Pecari
It's certainly where I expected to be
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Mal Carey, Pecari
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
January 31, 2013 10:20 AM
I don't think you would have been entirely misplaced by Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
“Yes, there's usually something worthwhile to see or do. It suits us very nicely,” Francesca nodded regarding Chicago. She felt the city was full of the most fascinating people. However, her family did have a tendency to seek such people out and she suspected interesting people were a feature of most major cities. However, she couldn't imagine living out in the sticks where she didn't imagine most people bothered to have opinions. Or, if they did, where they had nothing very constructive to do about them. The idea of a life in the country sounded like a painful sort of exile to her. How long could one really suspect anyone with brains to be satisfied by the fact that something was pretty?“Thank you,” she said, not managing to keep the slight tone of hesitancy out of her voice when he told her how good she was at flying. In her book that was a compliment but, coming from a Pureblood male to a Pureblood female it could just as easily be a rebuke. It hadn't sounded too chastening but it still may have merely been an observation rather than praise. She squared her shoulders and sat up straight, or at least would have had she not been on a broom. Mentally she did so. She was from a magical family and therefore supposed to ride. She would be taking it as a compliment whether or not he had meant it that way. “You are taking to it very admirably,” she responded. She was not a naturally effusive teacher – Malcolm would not be getting constant cries of 'well done,' or 'excellent' or 'now you're getting the hang of it!' but his own praise prompted her, and he really was doing rather a good job. He had navigated the corner and was still upright, for example. Not something everyone achieved.
“We aren't really with the beginners any more,” she observed, wondering whether he had intended that as a loaded question or whether she was merely paranoid. The rest of the class were still hovering and making their way through the first few manoeuvres under the direction of Coach Pierce, whilst she had lured Malcolm away – corruptive influence that she was – and seemed to be privately tutoring him. “I chose to wait and see what the options were. Before any of the more experienced fliers began anything that particularly piqued my interest, I somehow managed to acquire you,” she explained with half a smile. She didn't go so far as to gush and say how very glad she was of that but her tone definitely implied that she was not sore about it.
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
I don't think you would have been entirely misplaced
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Francesca Wolseithcrafte, Aladren
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5