beneath a borrowed sky
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| ───── | The day had been gentler than most—mild sun and a breeze that carried only the faintest chill, the kind that lipped at the edge of comfort rather than disturbing it. A Saturday without any lessons or obligations, a sky patched with soft white clouds, and the wide stretch of the Great Lake glimmering gently as if it'd been polished for the occasion. Stella had wandered down after lunch without much thought, book in hand and a light cloak around her shoulders, seeking the kind of quiet she'd been unable to find in the castle. (The library had provided that for a few days, but the unwelcome intrusion from last week had shattered her illusions of sanctuary—and even with Evpraksiya coming to her rescue like a godsent angel, Stella found herself skirting the library all the same, unease clinging tight. Here, at least, in the open air by the lake, she couldn't be cornered.) The grass was cool beneath her as she settled into her chosen spot, legs stretched out in front of her and book falling open in her lap. She read in uneven stretches, letting her gaze drift out past the shore whenever her mind began slipping from the words. The voices of picnicking students carried faintly from across the grassy slope, not close enough to intrude but near enough to remind her that solitude at Hogwarts was never quite complete (at least, never when you wanted it to be). In spite of this, Stella felt the tension in her shoulders ease as the afternoon dissolved gently into itself, the world shrinking to the pages in her lap and the shimmer of sunlight on water. Alas, it appeared that her undisturbed afternoon of calm would be ending soon. The sky dimmed almost imperceptibly at first, as if someone had drawn a thin veil across the sun, and then much more obviously as shadows gathered across the grass and lake like a slow tide of grey. Around her, a few of the students had started to pack up, chatting idly and glancing upwards at the increasingly cloudy sky as they meandered back toward the castle. Yet Stella had been reading so intently by this point that she noticed the change in weather only when the breeze blew in her direction again—much cooler than it was before and heavy with the sharp smell that only ever meant rain. Frowning, she looked up to see that the light had shifted, sunlit gold dulled to a silvery glaze reflected over the lake. A single drop fell squarely on her open page, followed by another that landed cold against her wrist. She blinked at it, unhurried and still processing... and then the downpour began in earnest. The remaining picnic groups scattered like startled birds almost immediately, laughter turning shrill with complaint as students scrambled for their belongings, cloaks flapping and arms flailing as they fled in the direction of fireplaces and hot soup. Staring open-mouthed at the darkening sky, Stella lingered just a moment too long, caught between the practical instinct to run for cover and her reluctance to let her moment of quiet end so easily. Perhaps it'll pass quickly, she thought, absurdly imagining herself waiting it out right where she sat even as her clothes grew increasingly heavy with water. A line of thinking that was quickly cut short when the rain began hammering down with even more force, each drop a sharp punctuation that left her no choice but to move. As she stood up and prepared to run back to the castle, though, the thought of returning to the confines of its stone walls suddenly grew increasingly (and irrationally) unbearable even as the rain pelted hard and cold against the back of her neck. The fragment of peace she'd found here today had draped itself over her senses like a soft veil, rare as snow in July, and she was not going to relinquish it for the loud din of the Gryffindor common room, warm as it was. With a sudden flicker of stubborn determination and a flash of inspired thinking, Stella turned on her heel and made for a nearby oak, its broad branches promising a small pocket of shelter. Her shoes slipped against the slick grassy slope as she ran, book clutched tightly to her chest, hair already soaked through and plastered to her neck. Behind her, the lake glimmered like liquid moonlight beneath the storm, each wave reflecting blue and silver as droplets punctuated the water like scattered diamonds. Reaching the tree, she pressed herself against the rough bark, letting the canopy above shelter her from the worst of the downpour. Rainwater ran down the leaves in small rivulets, dripping onto the grass at her feet, and the scent of moss and damp earth rose sharply around her as the rain continued to beat insistently down. Taking a deep breath, Stella wiped her face dry with the inside of her cloak and ran a hand through her hair in a futile effort to give it some volume. The ridiculousness of her decision to stay by the lake was beginning to hit her; with no way to get into dry clothes and no sign of the rain stopping any time soon, she was practically inviting a cold to take up residence in her chest for the next week. And then—a soft rustle from the other side of the trunk. Drawing Stella from her thoughts to turn and meet a pair of wide green eyes already peering at her between the branches with equal parts curiosity and caution. Another student who'd had the same idea to run for a tree instead of the castle, evidently—although judging by the slightly less wet quality of her hair and clothes, the other girl had been under the tree longer. Stella blinked back at her, utterly lost for words as the storm hammered its relentless rhythm around them, the lake a tumultuous grey mirror, the pair of them poised like twin souls carved against the silver backdrop of a rain-soaked tableau. | ───── |
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| ───── | TAG..@CLAUDIA KERR......NOTES..MENTIONS EVPRAKSIYA VINOGRADOVASTA 5 EVA 9 STR 0 WIS 7 ARC 4 ACC 10.../ / /...SEER & WANDMAKER .ACTION..:..REACTING TO RAIN ; RUNNING UNDER A TREE ; MEETING CLAUDIA | ───── |
a nameless girl in the freshest summer greens, a saint, an angel;
beneath a borrowed sky
@stella bianchiClaudia sat by the lake, and she was alone. With no cares for those that past her, noticed her and then moved along. The water seemed so calmon a regular Saturday. So reflective. Gazing into the pools of liquid rippling in front of her, it reminded Claudia of her own life so far, waving by without thought. Unable to stop pouring, gushing into every available crevice. Easy to manoeuvre. Her reflection glanced back at her, and she watched it eagerly. Facial features morphed and changed in the water but she didn’t care. She liked it. Claudia was who she was. And she couldn’t change that, no matter how much she hated it. Her hand moved up and slowly into a slight wave, and she noticed her reflection do the same back, a mirror image.
The day had been as uneventful as the story so far, a mere chapter of filler. Claudia had moved around the castle like a ghost after a late awakening, forgetting the names of all of the students she past in the halls on the way to breakfast. and found herself drawn to the same lake she had been spending the most of her time around now that she was back at Hogwarts. She wasn't even aware of how long she'd been sitting there on the grass, watching her reflection. At certain intervals her head would rise and green eyes would be directed to the vast body of water around her, and the dense forestry in the distance. Brief nightmarish scenarios would then play like adverts in her mind, starring supernatural creatures, and her head would shoot back down. With her eyes glazed over, she never noticed the sky turning grey, or the shadows closing.
When the first droplets hit her shoulder, the girl simply blinked. Her (albeit short) time in Scotland had prepared her for the flip-flop nature of the weather, but she hadn't prepared herself for what to do if a cloud was brought around to rain on her parade. And it was raining. Heavily. As the downpour splashed down around her, Claudia stood up (farewell, lake) and looked around behind her, scouting out the quickest route to safety. She could simply pack up with the rest of the students and make a wild dash for the castle, but by the time she got their her clothes would be soaked through and her mood worse. With escape out of the picture, she began to get creative. She spotted a large tree nearby, its branches caving and bending over to make the perfect temporary shelter.
She made her way quickly towards the oak, with the rain getting worse and worse around her. There was no way she was making the climb back in this weather, it was stupid. Reaching the tree, Claudia received a mad burst of energy that flung her towards the bark, tripping over her own feet and diving towards the tree, scratching her legs all over the mud and moss that clung to it, but she didn't mind anymore. At least she has got to safety. She closed her eyes and began to regain her breath, shaking herself off as she went.
It was only when her ears pricked up to the sound of light movement that she realised she wasn't alone. Moving around the side of the tree, Claudia caught herself thrust into the gaze of another girl her age who looked absolutely soaked. She had seemingly had the same idea as her. An awkward silence followed, pierced only by her own slight cough.
"Hiya. Did you... Tree?"
| sta • 5 | eva • 7 | str • 1 STATISTICS (yup) wis • 7 | arc • 5 | acc • 5 |
beneath a borrowed sky
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| ───── | For a moment—an embarrassingly long one—Stella could only stare back. Her mind, already half-numb from the cold and the abrupt end to her fragile patch of peace, fumbled gracelessly for some semblance of an appropriate response. The other girl's expression seemed caught somewhere between sheepish and amused, green eyes wide and searching, fawny hair dripping rainwater that clung to her eyelashes before falling in sporadic drops. There was a spatter of dirt along one knee, a smear of mud along a thigh that had arisen from what was likely a misstep along the banks of the lake. She looked equally ridiculous and equally startled at the other's presence, which, in a strange and unexpected way, pushed gently against the soft space between Stella's ribs. The word—Tree?—echoed light and uncertain in her head, hanging between the pair liked a dropped stitch in the fabric of time. It was not the sort of question Stella had ever anticipated being asked in her lifetime, and yet here she was, a shivering, waterlogged creature pressed against rough bark, faced with precisely that inquiry. Fighting the inclination to laugh at its absurdity, she smiled instead and cleared her throat to answer, her voice having gone thin and strange from the rain. "Yes," she said at last, the syllable somehow clear over the downpour. "Tree. That is, I did. It seemed the best option at the time..." Stella briefly turned her head away from the other girl—Claudia, although she didn't know it yet—to stare out past the shelter of the tree at the storm, consistently growing in its intensity. It seemed the best option, she had said. Had it, truly? "...Though I see now I may have been wrong," she admitted, bemused even as her brows knitted together in a frown. The rain looked as though it had swallowed the grounds whole, the sky looking like a great grey bruise inflicted by lightning and thunder. The canopy of the oak provided shelter from the worst of it, but water still slipped through in occasional, inevitable rivulets, tapping against her shoulders, her head, the open ground where her feet stood uneasily on saturated grass. "I didn't really think this through. I don't see how either of us," she gestured to her new acquaintance with a small, white hand, "are to make it back to the castle without catching our death now." Suddenly remembering her novel, she pulled it from inside her cloak, running a hand over the cover to check over it with a critical eye. "My book, at least..." Almost absentmindedly, her fingers curled tighter around the spine of her book, feeling dampness creep cool and stubborn into the edges—but fortunately no water damage. "...well, that's good," she murmured—then realised she was talking in fragments to herself as much as to the girl under the tree. Habit. Her thoughts always seemed to come out in pieces when the beautiful, comfortable order of her world was disrupted, even by something as ordinary as a rainstorm in September. "I apologise," Stella amended with a smile, determined not to let the two of them lapse into awkward silence, not when the weather they were waiting out showed no sign of setting them free from their shelter, "I don't mean to ramble. How impolite of me." The other girl shifted slightly, a faint scraping against the grass where she'd rearranged her footing to avoid the worst of the drip line. Up close, the green of her eyes was almost startling; even displaced from ordinary lighting, they held a bright, certain stillness, like coins at the bottom of a dark pond. Stella found, unexpectedly, that she wanted to verbally catalogue those details, as if speaking them aloud would give her authority over the strangeness of the situation. She caught herself and resisted; it felt selfish to dwell like that on someone else's edges. Instead she folded her admiration into an introduction, tucking a sodden strand of hair behind her ear with her free hand before extending it outwards in a handshake. "I'm Stella." | ───── |
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| ───── | TAG..@CLAUDIA KERR......NOTES..LIGHT GODMODDING OF CLAUDIA APPROVED BY WRITERSTA 5 EVA 9 STR 0 WIS 7 ARC 4 ACC 10.../ / /...SEER & WANDMAKER .ACTION..:..RAMBLING ; INTRODUCING HERSELF TO (AND LOWKEY ADMIRING) CLAUDIA | ───── |
a nameless girl in the freshest summer greens, a saint, an angel;
beneath a borrowed sky
@stella bianchiTree? Who just says the word tree? Maybe Claudia shouldn't have spent all that time staring into a singular body of water, because it felt like she'd forgotten everything she'd learnt about human interaction. Not like she was even human. She didn't think her 'people training' had covered this scenario, so she racked her brain for what to say next, how to possibly convey what she wanted to say. What did she want to say? Comment on the type of tree? An oak tree, judging by the leaves.
She stared into the other girl's eyes, with a look almost akin to a lost sheep, or a young child caught with their hand thrust into the cookie jar, searching for some way to redeem herself in pools of dark brown. This was a face she recognised, having made it out amongst the sea of blank, nameless faces she passed by everyday without a care. Her unique features, this also nameless girl, her sea of hair that could hide secrets, her aforementioned eyes, all of it, it seemed to charm Claudia, enough for her to actively seek it out when spotted. It seemed like fate, to have met her again in such strange circumstances, and she didn't have the faintest idea why it had been her that her mind had chosen to remember.
Watching as her companion looked out from underneath their canopy of branches, she too turned her head to peer out at their enemy, the torrential rain that enveloped the surrounding area, plummeting down to the ground around them. If anything, it reminded her of home. Of the happy(ish) memories she still had left, her daily trips in and around the trees and grass, the deer and the eagles. Watching as the rain poured down but she knew she was safe with her parents. Oh, how she was wrong. They weren't here to save her now, if a wild animal jumped out from the cover of the rain, who would be there to save her and her friend? She had no protector, so she would be the protector of the girl with the lovely hair and brown eyes. "Hey, at least we tried. You never know, the rain may stop any second now." She paused for dramatic effect, looking out past the tree again, only to frown when the rain wouldn't bow to her will. "Boo."
If it was fate that had brought them together, and not the improbability of the weather in Scotland, Claudia would have to thank those handling her luck, because they had brought her such an interesting girl. She wanted to reach out and grasp the book she held, read all down the front cover, the spine and the blurb, and speed through every single chapter, taking every single word in, just to be able to talk about it with her. To say a witty line, and hear what her laugh sounded like. Was this what friendship felt like? She wouldn't know, but she hoped it was always as crazy as this. Claudia reached for Stella's hand almost too quickly after it was extended to her, forgetting for about six seconds what a handshake was, before shaking it politely.
"Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Stella. Fun name. I'm Claudia." Her rural American accent accentuated her pronunciation, almost disrupting the nature around them. "What's the book about? Do tell all, I wanna know. It's something to pass the time, whilst we wait out the storm?"
| sta • 5 | eva • 7 | str • 1 STATISTICS (yup) wis • 7 | arc • 5 | acc • 5 |