Lie For A Day solo fin

This is part of Aly's Cast the Bronze storyline. You can find other portions here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

If you're still unsure, let me lie for a day

Koldovstoretz was treating Aly wonderfully, if she had to be honest about it all. Between getting to tent (er, yurt, sorry) with her best mates, make new friends, cover the entire event for the Headliner, and, of course, see the handsome boy from Tenūsa once more, this journey to the wintry shores of a previously-unbeknownst-to-her Russian lake was turning out to be more fun than expected. Safer than her last journey abroad, too. The young Ravenclaw hadn't once had to use her Animagus form to save herself from a height-based certain death here (though, considering how flat the valley was, she didn't expect that she would have to do so in this locale as she had in Omah Geni).

On the rest day in between events, Aly took some interviews and snapped some photographs of the banyas, which seemed to be essentially the Kazakh and Russian version of a small wooden sauna. The enchanted shapes in the steam were cute, but Aly was not necessarily feeling a beachy, warm sort of vibe today; to be honest, she quite enjoyed the cold, or at least the opportunity for fashionable layering with which it always provided her.

Plus, it had been an exhausting few days already with more to come for the final two days of events and the awards ceremony. Even the eaglet who was so uncomfortably sociable to many of her classmates and peers occasionally needed a day of rest. Some time away from it all.

It all was particularly in reference to the journalist being on the other side of the camera. Even here, thousands of miles away from her home, she could feel prying eyes on her, soaking in her every move; Aly could only think of how others might be reporting back to the Livingston clan of every wrongdoing, every lock of hair out of place, every crooked button. Koldovstoretz had banned non-school-affiliated adults from attending the International Magical Olympic Games (or IMOG), but even still, Aly could not shake the feeling that she was being watched every second of every day. She was tired of perfection, if such a thing was even possible. And why would she want to live up to the standards set for - no, foisted upon her by a family of that calibre, anyway? Over the past months, it had become increasingly clear to Aly that the Livingston life was not one which she wanted to lead. But with few to no options as to any other life she could choose, it would have seemed that the Salinger girl was stuck at a crossroads with no crossed road.

And as such, she slipped away after her final interview in the mid-afternoon, enjoying a sunray that seemed to break through the heavy cloud cover and shine down upon her like a spotlight, leading her to a secluded spot by the rocky shores of Lake Bear. It was on the far side from all the commotion, where the banyas had been set up near the three permanent shoppes of the academy (a brilliant idea, if Aly was being truthful) and upon the practical fields that, she'd been told, were used for lessons out-of-doors when the weather was not in murder mode. She could still see the little wooden constructions across the frozen expanse of the icy lake, though her view was partially shrouded by the island in the centre and its huts and trees scattered across it. More classrooms, or so she heard. It seemed that Koldovstoretz had enough for triple its small population, though granted, she could not fault them for having such low enrollment. Likely the fault of the many deaths that had befallen the Russian students on their trips oversees, and the ever-growing memorial copse of trees on the southwestern side of campus, though Aly had no knowledge of that part.

Luckily, even with the added student body of multicultural children having descended upon the tundra-esque valley, this portion of the lake was quiet and calm, away from prying eyes and listening ears. She tugged at the pins holding in her curly bun as she sat down, allowing the two braids that had been looped and wrapped around each other dozens of times to form the knot at the nape of her neck to string loose and dangle down, one on either side of her head. Her camera already in the bag at her side, Aly slowly took a seat right where the hard pebbles of the shore met the sheet of ice that was the lake's surface, stretching out her gloved fingers to brush across its hard, rough finish.

"Oh, Dad," she whispered under her breath, allowing her body to finally sink into the slouch she'd been holding in all day. "What am I supposed to do?"

Aly's father, the girl was sure, would never have let any of it get this far. When the little eagle had been growing up, Benjamin Salinger had never spoken ill of his wife's estranged family, per se, but had always been very clear to Aly that if they were people who didn't want the Salingers in their life, that they were better off without them. And now, to be at Koldovstoretz of all places wondering what to do with her life, wondering how to escape their long-clawed clutches - well, it certainly seemed to be a bit of a full-circle moment, but life was full of those these days when it came to Aly's father. She absent-mindedly tinkered with the silver watch upon her left arm, a reminder of him every second it ticked away and a habit she had picked up for whiling away the long hours. Benjamin had had a friend at Koldovstoretz, once - a man whose name Aly could hardly remember, but who had been mentioned in the journal she kept even to this day back in the Ravenclaw dormitories. A pen pal of sorts. He - Aly's father, not the pen pal - had written of wanting to visit this friend, someday. Aly wasn't sure if he ever had gotten to come to Koldovstoretz, or to meet the friend, and now she would never know, for it was not written down and Benjamin no longer around to write about it. But his daughter was here, in the snow and frost and biting wind.

Her mouth ached with dryness, and she reflexively swiped her tongue over the top of her teeth, trying to rid herself of that strange, parched feeling. The tent - yurt, Merlin's beard - with refreshments was all the way across the lake, and Aly felt not like having to trudge back over there and put herself back in an extroverted state of mind. The silence was nice, for once. And she was a witch, after all.

Aly pulled her wand from her bag, pointing it at the sheet of ice over which she had just run gloved hands. "Aer Calidus!"

x

A few more well-placed Hot Air Charms, and soon enough Aly had melted away a decently-sized hole in the shore of the lake, just enough for the trapped water underneath to come rippling through, having finally been freed from its prison (at least temporarily; Aly wasn't stupid enough to think that the ice would

stay melted once temperatures dropped quickly overnight). But still, like her, it was free for now.

She dipped her hands into the freezing water, which had been warmed only slightly by her spells, and cupped a small puddle to bring to her lips; unfortunately, the gloves covering her fingers soaked through to the bone almost instantly, the liquid dripping away through the fabric and her fingers long before it could reach her mouth. With a groan, Aly took a quick glance around - just to make sure no one was looking, after all - and pushed herself to her knees, leaning down to simply take a sip directly from the lake. Reasoning to herself that this one must be cleaner than the Black Lake at Hogwarts - after all, she'd not heard any rumours of any creatures living in this one - the Ravenclaw leaned closer and closer... and then, as if Koldovstoretz itself had decided to laugh in her face, a huge gust of wind swooshed by from behind. Aly lost her balance with a shout, splashing face-first directly into Lake Bear.

Now she was cold and wet, and to top it all off, still thirsty. At least no one was around to see that, I suppose.

But when the eaglet tried to pull her head out of the lake, she found herself quite unable to do so. The back of her head thunked painfully against the bottom of the ice, her hands scrabbling uselessly at its top surface. She knew how to cast neither wandlessly nor without vocals, and for a moment, all she could hear was the pounding in her head, horribly contrasted against that terrible deep silence one can only find from being completely immersed underwater. Her eyes clenched tightly closed against the blackness of the lake, the cold seeping into her very being through her scalp and the nape of her neck, Aly tried to jerk her head back, but her bearings felt completely scrambled. Which way was up? Which way was down? And most importantly, which way was out?

She began to panic, most of her air escaping her in an agitated scream that sounded all too loud in her head and all too quiet to the rest of the world. Her soaking-wet gloves meant that there was very little sensation already in her fingertips, and oh, where had her wand gone? Had it dropped, too, into the depths? Her lungs began to burn as she struggled, and for a moment, all she could think was, I'm going to die here. I'm going to drown in the lake all because I wanted a sip of water and was stupid enough to let a strong wind stick my head underneath a sheet of ice. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

But then - a miracle. Her palm hit against the edge of the ice sheet she had melted earlier, and Aly used that sudden understanding of direction to push herself hard out from under the sheet. Her head threw itself back, a hard jolt in the back of her neck causing pain to shoot through the shoulders - a mild case of self-induced whiplash, most likely - and the force of her sudden movement caused a wave of water to slosh, cold and icy, from the hole in the ice to all over her front. Her braids, now limp wet worms dangling by her ears, were also dripping freezing droplets onto her shoulders, but Aly could not have given a single whit about the fact that she was now soaked and shivering, because she was alive. Lear's fears, she was alive.

And in that moment, Aly Salinger learned that someone can laugh with their teeth chattering.

Her wand was nearby; she'd dropped it when she had gone for the drink of the lake, which she remembered now that she was not in immediate danger. Some more Hot Air Charms alleviated the fear of frostbite, drying out her gloves and coat and hair in a few quick waves of the aspen stick. As the wind buffeted her again from the back, pushing her to lean forward - Come on, it seemed to be saying, you survived it once, let's do it again - Aly could only continue to let out a wheezing chuckle. "What a tale that would have been to tell," she muttered under her breath. "Student journalist eclipses Olympic games by stupidly drowning in the frozen lake on the day off."

Yet the wind wasn't entirely wrong. There had been something about it... not about the near-drowning bit, necessarily, but the water itself. The cold, the silence. The peace. It was unlike what could be found above ground in so many ways Aly couldn't explain, and even as she got up and walked away to go find her friends - having had quite enough of being alone for the day - she could not help but feel the call.

Come back to me.

before you formally announce me dead...

Lake Bear | February 18^th, 2026 | outfit | #C47DDB