To Know No Peace PV A. Darragh

Credit to Tabitha Murrey

@Taliesin Annwyn

The nice weather wasn't going to last forever--it didn't in Ireland, and Hogwarts was a fair ways north of her home--so Aislin was soaking it up while she could. She expected the winter months to be miserable, and what could be categorized as a winter month to stretch for longer, and then most of the animals would be hidden away, replaced by snow, and she'd have to sacrifice mobility for coats and scarves and gloves. Right now, though, was perfect. Aislin was comfortable in a pair of shorts that hung down to her knees and a bright green t-shirt over a brown-and-white striped long-sleeve.

She was walking around, no destination in mind but with a goal of making a mental map of the grounds. Her commitment to that goal was half-hearted; it was the goal, but she kept stopping when something caught her eye and losing track in the process. The latest thing to catch her eye was what looked from a distance a little like a hanging scarecrow. From closer it looked a lot less like that, really just a hung-up school robe, but the initial comparison had been enough to draw her off her path and over to the tree.

Between the robe on a branch and the bag resting by the trunk, it was clear there was someone around here, a conclusion confirmed and clarified by the balled-up paper raining down from above. There was someone around here in the tree. What a brilliant idea! She hadn't considered it, since her grandparents didn't want them climbing the trees for wand wood on their farm and those made up most of the climbable trees she grew up around. She'd climbed one, once, after her cousins, and it had been slightly scary and mostly fun. The ground looked different from up there.

The paper ball rolled to a stop just to the side of the bag, and Aislin considered it for a minute. Maybe the person in the tree had dropped it? It would be a pain to climb all the way back down to retrieve it, and then all the way back up to their perch, so she walked the rest of the way over to the tree to pick it up, her mental mapping forgotten. "Hello?" she called up, craning her neck to see the person in the tree. She could see, more or less, a girl with curly bright red hair. "Did you drop this? I could try to get it back up to you." Not that she knew the Levitation Charm yet, but throwing existed as a spell-free alternative.

Taliesin stared off towards her view the of Great Lake, though it was slightly impeded by a few stray branches. At least for a moment she could convince herself she was looking out at the sea, like when she was home -- just for a moment, while she wallowed in her own anxiety as she ticked through the list of possible reasons her father might want a private audience with her.

It really was only for a moment before she heard someone calling for her from below. With a confused expression, she peered over the side of her little perch to see a girl with dark hair staring up at her, holding the discarded letter from her mother in hand. Taliesin felt her cheeks flush a little, "Oh...um n-no? Its just a letter. I-I was done with it. I just was... throwing it at my bag." she explained nervously.

The snake really wasn't very good at talking to her peers yet. She was getting better; or at least she liked to think so. She just was never quite sure what she was suppose to say to them. Part of her had expected it to be more like how her mother and governess had painted it; especially with the emphasis they had put on how to behave while she was at school. Not that now was a particularly good example of her following those expectations. Mother and Madame Daaé certainly did not approve of climbing trees.

It was a bit more how Nanny Morgan had described Hogwarts, especially when she would tell her young charge stories of her days as a student. However, the posed a totally different dilemma where she wasn't entirely sure how to behave when the majority of those she was interacting with were going against every rule she'd been drill on her whole life. The rules were different here compared to home, and she was still having trouble catching onto them.

Or one could argue she was having trouble adjusting to the abundance of freedom she was offered here, having no need to actually adhere to said 'rules'; at least not on the regular.

Credit to Tabitha Murrey

@Taliesin Annwyn

Or she hadn't dropped the paper and so didn't need it back (probably for the best, paper-throwing physics were not ideal). A more socially conscious person might have faltered, unsure where to go now that they'd barged in on someone and started a conversation that was going nowhere. Not Aislin, though. She said, "Ah, I see," and squatted down to place the crumpled-up paper--a letter, the girl had called it--neatly on top of the bag, where it was meant to be.

Then she sat fully on the ground and tipped her head back to look at the person perched in the tree in a way that could not be comfortable for her neck, sitting this close to the tree trunk as she was. "Are you a first year?" she asked after a minute of trying to determine how old she looked through the leaves and if Aislin had seen her in any classes. Her conclusion was no, she didn't remember seeing her, but she had not been very good at looking around at her classmates either.

Always a beat late, she remembered her manners and introductions, things her mam valued but had never been more important than curiosity and learning in her childhood home. "I'm Aislin Darragh." In place of shaking hands, since that would currently be a very silly and impressive feat to pull off, she waved. Would the average witch know that family name? Maybe, if they had ever turned to a relatively small Irish wand business instead of the likes of Ollivanders. Aislin just knew that her mam was always telling her to introduce herself with her full name. "That looks like a good spot up there, can you see anything?"

Craning her neck like this was, it turned out, pretty uncomfortable. Aislin moved her head back to a more normal position for a second, staring at the bark of the tree trunk, before deciding the clear solution to this was laying on her back. This way she could look up and the tree girl could look down. She folded her hands over her stomach in a way that was vaguely reminiscent of a corpse in a casket, not that she would draw that comparison herself. For a minute she was mesmerized by the light coming through the leaves, alternating shadows and golden lines across green and limbs, and she forgot to say anything. It was really very pretty. It occurred to her that crumpling up letters wasn't the most normal thing to do to them.

Aislin lifted her head, briefly, to observe the letter where she'd left it on the bag. This could just be an effort to combat the aforementioned paper physics that would make a flat sheet drift much further from her targeted bag. It would be nicer for rereading to have folded the paper, but maybe she really was done with it completely and folding sounded like too much effort while up in a tree. Or the letter was upsetting. Or tree girl just found crumpling up paper fun, and it did look fun. "Would you recommend reading letters in trees?" That could be a sort of test question, to see what might be behind the crumpling. And it was a genuine question, maybe she'd have to consider doing this herself.

Taliesin watched the other girl curiously from her perch as she gently placed the wadded up letter onto her things. That... was certainly kind. The redhead, thus far, hadn't been able to count up too many of her encounters with other students that didn't end with her in tears (or close to it), much less a small act of kindness to kick it off. Except maybe the Hufflepuff that had helped her when she'd gotten lost trying to find her way to Transfiguration.

"Are you a first year?"

She heard the other girl ask as she made herself comfortable on the ground below, staring up at her through the leaves and branches. Taliesin gave a small, hesitant nodded; though quickly deciding it was impolite (and maybe difficult to see), she responded, albeit a bit awkwardly, "Yes..."

For all her own awkwardness, the girl below her hardly seemed fazed as she introduced herself. For a short moment, Taliesin searched her memory for the name Darragh, but, for the moment, came up empty. So she returned down, "I'm Taliesin Annwyn." though she wondered as well if her name ever rang any bells for people. She knew the influence her name had in society, but if she was honest, she had very little understand why beyond being an 'ancient family'. Such things were hardly the business of a child, as her governess would often remind her if she ever asked.

"That looks like a good spot up there, can you see anything?"

Taliesin's attention shifted, turning her gaze out towards the lake. It was a pretty view. She truly could, if she really put her imagination to it, convince herself she was looking out at the sea. Though if she were honest, hazily she could see the opposite shoreline of the lake. That wasn't nearly as lovely though. Her imaginings always were better than her realities. When her gaze returned down to the girl, she noticed the other -Aislin- had changed positions. Laying down certainly did seem like a more comfortable solution than craning her head back the way she'd been.

She swung her dangling leg slightly as she looked back towards her view, "I can see the sea." she joked, resting her head back against the tree's trunk. Of course she wasn't serious, obviously all she could see was the lake, the castle, and miles upon miles of Scottish hills; but she liked what she imagined she saw much better.

The snake smiled a bit to herself as Aislin asked for her recommendation of letter reading in trees. A breeze shifted the branches, causing the leaves to flutter in and out of obstruction of her view, "I recommend doing everything one possibly could from trees." she decided, before tacking on, "As long as the weather is nice."

Taliesin could feel the nerves eased with the bit of chatter back and forth. Maybe it was because the questions at hand were so simple, or perhaps because of the easy contentment the other girl displayed in turn eased her. Or maybe she could do all her socializing from the safe support of a tree. Either way, it was taking her mind away from the contents of the letter she wished she knew the spell for in order to burn it and forget it ever arrived.

Credit to Tabitha Murrey

@Taliesin Annwyn

Aislin collected little bits of information from Taliesin's answers, idly more than intentionally. She was indeed a fellow first year (Aislin needed to pay more attention in her classes), her family name didn't ring any bells but possibly should (she wasn't very good with those things), and she had nice black leather boots. This was what she meant when she said she liked learning: she liked the accumulation of it all, facts to pull out later and the slow piecing together of a better picture of the world, not so much the narrow demand of school. She liked lying under a tree and noticing things.

I can see the sea, came Taliesin's report from her vantage point, homophone-filled and clearly false. Hogwarts did have its very own bordering body of water, but not at that magnitude. Aislin giggled, deciding to go along with it. "Are there any pirate ships on this sea? Or sharks?" Hogwarts' lake was far bigger than the creeks and ponds she'd grown up around, so if she closed her eyes she could pretend it went on forever, or as far as the sea usually did.

Another fact to collect: Taliesin really seemed to love being up in trees. Her recommendation was earnest, broader than Aislin's inquiry about letter-reading, and enough to take her mind off her weak attempt at detective work into the nature of the letter's crumpling. Maybe even bunching up paper was better with tree limbs under your legs. "I'll have to try it," she agreed, voice lighter around a sliver of wonder. Hogwarts didn't yet feel as real as home did, not because she'd never seen magic before but because this was a place with so much of it, enchanted without purely practical reason. In that moment, Taliesin made trees sound like another body of unexpected magic.

But she was also a child used to hearing her mam's warnings, to following her cousins a few steps behind in case their eagerness went too far and tumbled past pure fun into bruises and skinned knees and scolding from concerned adults. The trees sounded wonderful, but they also looked high, and they weren't indestructible. After a few beats of contemplative silence on Aislin's part, she asked, "Have you ever fallen?" She wasn't sure how common it was, and maybe it was uncommon, barely worth blinking at next to the reward of being up there, but that itch for knowledge demanded she know.

A warm fuzzy feeling rose in her chest when the other took her silly imagining in stride. It seemed to always be a hit or a miss how people reacted to strange and sudden, blatant falsehoods; but it was all in good fun. And in her own odd sort of way, it was Taliesin's way of trying to gauge people, and whether or not they had some sense of humour or imagination about them. Aislin going along with her little fantasy, she'd decided, was a good sign.

Taliesin chuckled, leaning forward a bit as she looked out from her perch, squinting her eyes a bit and raising a hand to her brow as though she were studying the fantastical scene as closely as possible, "No sharks that I can see." she reported, "But I think I might see the Mary Celeste!" the girl called, refencing the ghost ship of legend, before pointing out, "There! On the horizon." she grinned down to the other, "Do you want to come see?"

The look on Aislin's face didn't seem like one of someone who had much experience scurrying up trees like a it was second nature. Especially when she sent up her inquiry, asking if she'd ever fallen, "Loads of times." she answered honestly with a casual shrug, "Can't really get good at something if you don't muck it up a few times first." you get real good, real fast, learning how to distinguish what branches can hold you and which will give after the first couple tumbles. Not that she'd ever gotten hurt in any really serious way. Then again, this was the Wizarding World, so 'serious' could be quite subjective. She'd never died, so that had to count for something.

Shifting a bit in her place, swinging her leg over the branch and finding her footing before Taliesin started her easy decent towards the ground, "Its really not very hard, this tree. Its oak, so the branches are strong, and there's plenty of them for hand and foot holds." she explained before positioning herself the lower branches, still a small drop from the ground, but much closer then she'd been before, "I can show you exactly where to step... if you like. The lower branches are much stronger then the ones high up, so we can stay low until you get the hang of it."

Credit to Tabitha Murrey

@Taliesin Annwyn

For a moment, Aislin was a little kid again -- a really little one, because eleven was a kid but not in the way her little cousins were -- and she was running through her grandparents' tree farm, playing out some story about magical creatures. She always insisted on being something winged, flapping her arms as a substitute. But Daphne had stopped wanting to play pretend even before she left for Hogwarts, so it had been years since she'd had someone to go along with her, and now she giggled as Taliesin called out the name of a ghost ship.

Then Taliesin invited her up to join her, whether to point out more pirate ships or just to try it, being up in a tree. She squinted up at the branches. There was a reason she had no intention of signing up for Quidditch, and it wasn't a fear of heights, exactly, but rather an apprehension of something she didn't know. She hadn't climbed trees with her cousins, probably because they'd already received the lecture about staying off the wand-quality wood, and by herself at home she tended to stick low, to the dirt and the creek.

But Taliesin looked like she was up in a crow's nest, if one with a very blocked view, and Aislin decided falling didn't really sound that scary. Scraped knees had never stopped her from running across slippery stones after some water-skating bug. "Okay," she agreed, quietly at first. She pushed herself up on her elbows, then rolled over to her feet. "Okay, I want to come up."

She shuffled up to the tree, pressing her palm against the familiar feeling of bark. Trees had always been something she'd known, but here was a whole side of them she'd been missing and Taliesin to show her, sure-footed as she climbed closer and with the conviction that everything was better up in tree branches. Eyeing the branches closest to her, she pointed to one: low enough for her to pull herself up, thick enough that she thought it would support her weight. "This one first?" With a grin, to show she wasn't nervous (or only a little nervous) and to continue the bit from earlier, she added, "Your call, Cap'n."

Taliesin couldn't have suppressed her grin, even if she'd wanted to, when the other agreed to climb up with her. Even if the agreement had seemed small and meek at first, as if the other was trying to convince herself of her own bravery. Taliesin could certainly sympathize on that front. Sometimes it felt that she was convincing herself on the daily to be brave enough to do even simple things that seemed so far outside her comfort zone. This time though, someone was coming into her comfort zone. After all, outside of the occasional tumble, Taliesin couldn't recall a time when something bad ever happened in a tree. Trees were about the safest place she could think of. So in that way, it was odd realizing that that simply wasn't the case for everyone else.

This really was the year of worldview expansion for Taliesin.

She watched the other closely, ready to be a guide onwards and upwards as Aislin seemed to size up the tree and consider her options before picking her branch.

"Yes, perfect." she nodded, "Grab it close to the trunk. Branches are always strongest close to the trunk. Grab tight and give it a little hop, there's a knot you can get your foot on just there," she pointed to a relatively low, well worn knot that might've one day become a branch, had it not otherwise been removed who knows how long ago. At least it served a purpose now, "Then you just pull yourself up and you should be able to sit right here!" she explained, patting the main fork in the trunk where the branches started to extend out from.

Taliesin wiggled in her place a little, this time less from anticipation and more to make sure she was secure where she was in the event her new friend might need a helping hand, as well as to make sure she wasn't in the way from the other's destination, "I'm right here if you need a hand."

Credit to Tabitha Murrey

@Taliesin Annwyn

Taliesin could be a tree fairy, Aislin decided. The Muggle variety of fairy, specifically, like in the books Christine lent her sometimes as a kid, because real fairies were pretty but otherwise rather dull. Taliesin was hardly dull; she was radiant, effortlessly traversing the heights, haloed in red curls, explaining everything so clearly so Aislin would know exactly how to join her in her gravity-defying realm. Aislin took care to listen closely and nod along, trying to not let the instructions slip in one ear, shake around a bit, and fall out the other (they did that rather often in her classes). It wasn't so hard to follow these physical directions, though, present right in front of her eyes: grab close to the trunk, step up on the knot, hop and pull.

The only part of her hand-me-down boots that was relatively new were the purple laces, but their traction was still good enough to grip the knot, and she was far too used to dirt-covered hands to shy away from gripping the bark fully. She hopped and pulled and... well, underestimated the force needed for either of those things. Her booted feet landed back on solid ground. "Hang on." Aislin gave it another go, hopping with more purpose this time. There! Now she just had to push herself up more than pull herself, straining a bit until she could hook her heel around the branch, too, and shimmy to a seat. Ungraceful as it was (it was a good day for shorts), she got herself up and beamed at Taliesin, who was now much closer. "Hello again. I like your earrings." They were visible from here, little mushrooms, mostly but not entirely hidden in her hair.

"So I just sit there?" She jutted her chin at the spot Taliesin had picked out, hands still braced on the branch, then glanced up at the forking tree continuing above them. With a shrug, she added, "Or do you want to go higher, to where you were before?" To go higher didn't seem so scary. But she was with a tree climbing expert, so maybe Taliesin knew it wouldn't support both of their weight, or that she was far too amateur to attempt it.