Eden Manger
March 13, 2019 9:01 PM
A walk to forget by Eden Manger
Eden kicked a rock and watched with sullen eyes as it bounced along in front of her, highlighting the path - albeit with more altitude - that her aimless wandering would soon take her as well. She caught up to it with relative ease after its momentum had subsided, and once again sent it rocketing ahead of her. She had been making this circle with her small pebble companion for a while now, looping around the outskirts of the Quidditch pitch, unusually grounded when compared to her normal route.She didn’t sign up for Quidditch this year. What was the point, really? It just threw too much back in her face again. Mostly with her dad. Her dad who somehow sent her brooms every year, like he knew or had known or was out there somewhere. But he wasn’t, and as of last New Years, she knew exactly why. It was more details than she had ever wanted, and to say ignorance was bliss was a major understatement; Eden wanted her innocence back.
Still a letter came, with her father’s handwriting clearly addressing her on the outside. It had no package attached this year, no new broom like she’d always received, like he’d sent Jake before her. But this year, it was simpler.
It’s okay, it read. I love you. I am always here.
Furious at whatever force in the universe played these hurtful tricks on her, she crumbled up the parchment and tossed it in the trash can. Why did her father have to die? Why was he such a different person with her than with her siblings? How could he have attacked Sally? How could Jake have….? And, perhaps the culmination of it all, and the greatest twist of the knife in her back, how could everyone have known and lied to her about it for so long? She hated them all for it. But after everyone else had cleared out, she went back to the trash and fished the letter back out. She couldn’t let go yet, just in case.
In case of what, she really wasn’t sure, but the crumbled paper now resided in her hoodie pocket, her tucked-in fingers brushing it with every forced movement as her legs swung to kick the rock. The blonde almost let a single tear trickle down her cheek, but at the same time she felt her defenses weakening, she spotted someone in the distance, and that put a stop to it. “What?” she asked defensively, accompanied by a preemptive swipe at her tear ducts.
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Eden Manger
A walk to forget
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Tatiana Vorontsova
March 16, 2019 11:39 PM
A flight to remember. by Tatiana Vorontsova
A year ago, Tatiana had been happy. She had felt like she was part of things. She had not thought much about this, however, until now, when she no longer felt like that at all.It had never occurred to Tatiana, despite Dorian alluding to the idea a few times in conversation, that there were really bad people, or that people could really dislike someone, specifically her, simply for how they were – Mama chided her for impertinence and roughness and greed at times, but in the same way she chided Sonia about laughing too loudly or flirting too much, or Grisha about running in the house or swearing. It was really just a sort of impulse, like kicking if someone hit the right bit of her knee. Mama was still fond of them. Even Anton Petrovich – he sometimes told her she sounded like a Siberian peasant when she spoke English, but this was to inspire her to work harder, and she thought he liked her well enough as a person, when she wasn’t being too sulky or exasperated with something she should have already understood.
This was why she had been unable to comprehend what was going on at first, when she had realized someone was accosting Dorya in his own home. That simply didn’t happen in her world, not now that they were all too old to pull hair over a doll or the like. This was why she had been unable to quite understand what was going on with Simon Mordue until it had become glaringly obvious, plus Dorian had explained it. This was also why she had realized that sweet, brave, dear Dorya, whom she thought was generally one of the most excellent people on the planet, had had Dreadful Things happen to him in life and that there was nothing she could do about this. And that was how she had discovered she was, for all intents and purposes, powerless.
Once, Tatiana had taken pride in learning things, in feeling she understood things better than she had before. That, too, was becoming a thing of the past.
Last year, she had happily signed up for the school-wide Quidditch team, eagerly looking forward to seeing more of the country when they traveled to play against other schools. She had also enjoyed spending time with her classmates in a forum where her irregular English mattered less, and in a big noisy group – she could shout if she felt like it, most of the time, in Quidditch, and fly about fast, and generally burn off energy. This year, though, she had noticed Simon and his cousin (who admittedly she had never really had a problem with, and who had always been perfectly polite and pleasant to her on the Pitch, but…Dorya didn’t trust him much, and there was that time he had accidentally knocked Dorya down) on the list and had recoiled at once. It was easier to just avoid it, and she almost wished she could just hide in her room and sleep for a thousand years beneath a hill and wake up when everything was back on its head.
Since that wasn’t an option, though, she instead took advantage of a night when she was fairly sure Dorian and Jehan were having one of their private discussions to slip out to the Quidditch Pitch, assuming she would find it abandoned and could do as she liked. As she stepped onto the Pitch, broom in hand, though, she noticed Eden.
”What?”
Tatiana tried to think of a way to ask what the rest of that sentence was supposed to be, as ‘what’ was a question word. However, she was not at all sure she could render anything comprehensible in English. “I come to fly,” she announced, pointing to her broom. “Do you also?” she asked.
She didn’t know the other girl well, but she had also been on the Quidditch team, the Seeker – and the best. However, Tatiana didn’t think she had seen her name on any rosters, either. On the other hand, though, she had not made an effort to study it closely, so she didn’t know if that was true, and hoped she was not about to have to explain herself, or else have it assumed that she was stupid.
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Tatiana Vorontsova
A flight to remember.
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Tatiana Vorontsova
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