A Chill Rolls In Solo Completed November 2019

It was incredibly early in the morning, this Saturday as Elspeth crunched over the frozen grass toward the edge of the school garden. Normally she wasn't much of an early bird, but this morning she woke just before dawn, made herself a bag with snacks, a camera, and a sketchbook, and set off. She hadn't thought it was quite cold enough yet to merit her full winter cloak, but as she stepped out in her lighter cloak she immediately realized her mistake. The Ravenclaw Tower was so far behind her, though, that she couldn't imagine herself going all the way back up again just to change. She may miss her chance at sunrise if she did that anyways. And so, she soldiered forth to the patch of trees just behind the groundskeeper's hut.

Earlier that week, while studying for Transfiguration, she'd heard some older students talking in the library. They said that it was easiest to spot bowtruckles just after the first frost, because the beetles don't get frosty and so stand out more against the bark of a tree. Elspeth had never seen a bowtruckle before, what with their being relatively uncommon creatures. And so, here she was, at the crack of dawn spewing mist with her exhalations and leaving a trail of melted footsteps on the grounds behind her. There was a moment, as she pushed past low lying brush feeling the scrap of dead stalk and cold sting of frozen buds push against her legs, when she realized she should have looked this up to make sure the upperclassmen weren't just goofing around. As she looked around at her situation, she gave a dejected sign, knowing that she was too deep in to get out now.

She pushed forward, the bramble continuing to scrape at her legs above her sock line. It seemed obvious now that she should have worn pants or jeans to do this job, but she hadn't been thinking about that when she rolled out of bed wearing the clothes she fell asleep in. There was only another ten feet or so until she made it to the outcropping of trees. But her legs were stinging from the cuts and cold, and enough ice had melted against her skin that a trail of water was slipping down into her shoe, making her socks and feet soggy and chilled.

Elspeth was tired, and hurt, and lonely, and cold. Soon enough, warm trails of tears silently fell down her cheeks as she began crying about her whole situation. She missed her home, her routines and her parents. There was this constant looming feeling that everyone around her knew she didn't really belong here and should be thrown out. Although she'd made acquaintances with a few of her peers they never managed to connect and so Elspeth had been spending most of her time alone in a foreign space. And here she was, at sunrise, in pain, freezing, alone and following a rumor from kids she didn't even know that she was realizing every footstep forward was almost certainly wrong.

A small tree had fallen down just before the clearing, and as she rested weight on her leg up over the sapling's trunk it snapped sending her falling to the ground. The dirt was hard and cold, with nothing to break her fall now that she was past the bramble. She yelped as she hit the ground like a animal whose tail was just stepped on. And then she didn't do anything. She just laid on the ground, face down, dirt on her school uniform. And she cried.

It started as quiet tears that turned into gentle gulps for air that turned into full on sobs. Elspeth grabbed fistfuls of grass in each hand as she sobbed uncontrollably into the ground between two tall fir trees. Everything felt so much harder now than it had before. Like she was walking with shoes full of cement and a backpack full of bricks. Reading books meant reading everything two or three times so it would stick in her head. She was eating half as fast as she used to, not having much of an appetite and spending most of her meals just swirling her spoon around in circles on an empty plate.

Pushing herself up off of the dirt felt like trying to lift a bus. The tears had stopped on their own, and she'd laid in the dirt listening to the birds sing their morning messages to one another. There was nothing else to do but get up. Her legs felt sore, at least the places that weren't numb from cold. Her arms had a number of small scrapes on them. And her school uniform was covered in muck. She leaned over to pick up her backpack - this adventure was over and she needed to just go back to bed.

But as she was standing back up she saw it. About a train car's length away, right in the middle of a giant fir tree trunk, was a bowtruckle. It's bright green skin stuck out against the frost on the tree, just like the upperclassman had said. Her eyes opened wide and her muscles froze, terrified that anything she did could frighten the bowtruckle away. After a moment, she reached into her bag to pull out her sketchbook and a pen.

She drew with the kind of harsh, thick lines that eleven year olds possess the confidence for. Everything was slightly angular, because she was pushing down so hard and her wrist hurt when she tried to make curves. As she finished the drawing she put her things away as silently as she'd gotten them out. Could she make it any closer to try and take a picture? The bowtruckle hadn't seemed to notice her, it could have been sleeping. The idea of waking up a sleeping creature didn't sit well with Elspeth. Her job was to observe and document animals, not annoy them. She nodded her head in thanks to the creature, and turned around to leave the clearing.

Thankfully, her miserable journey that morning had left a trampled enough path in its wake that she was able to get back without being scraped nearly as much as she had on the journey in. A small amount of runny snot began to pool in her nostrils, and she sniffled a little bit, swallowing back a frog that had lingered in her throat since she broke down. The sun was high enough now that she was sure she'd run into students waking up and on their way to breakfast. She didn't need anyone to know about her breakdown.

One very soggy and sore foot at a time, Elspeth trudged back up the hill toward the school. Even with all that had happened, the only thing in her mind was that the older kids had been right. And now she'd seen a bowtruckle, in person! And wouldn't that be so cool, to mail her mom and dad an update about how she was finding creatures on the grounds outside of class! She was practically a magizoologist now. The fears melted away, as they always did, in the warmth of something she was passionately excited, and even proud, about.