Comparing Notes
Place: Hogwarts Campgrounds
Date: Sunday, August 2, 2026
Time: Morning
As part of his daily routine, Strike would wake early each morning and go out to complete the training regimen his parents had made for him ever since he had been old enough to complete it. He would swim, run, jump hurdles, do pull-ups, and parallel bar dips. The last was a little tricky since he didn't have parallel bars, but his mother had given him some lengths of rope to tie from somewhere up high in order to gradually lower himself down before pushing himself back up and repeating the activity.
Strike had a little difficulty figuring out where to tie the ropes. He hadn't wanted to disturb Henry, his roommate, with his training, nor any of his other cabin mates, so tying the ropes to the rafters of their cabin was out of the question. Eventually, he found a decent tree not too far away from where he did his other training and tied both ropes from one of its thicker, straighter branches. As he did so, however, he didn't realize that one of the folded up pieces of parchment from his pocket fell out and landed on the ground.
On the parchment were the names, faces, and information of other pureblood kids from the United Kingdom and Ireland that he had been told to memorize before the start of the school year by his parents. Fortunately, he had already memorized most of them, but because of that, he didn't realize his parchment had been dropped because he hadn't needed it and thus hadn't had reason to discover it was missing. Furthermore, since he usually trained early in the day, it tended to still be dark outside, so he didn't have the light of the sun to see the folded piece of parchment. Being preoccupied with his training didn't help matters, either.
@Alfie Owen
2nd Gen PC: Strike Allen
1st Gen PC: Jack Burnett | iNPC: Ginyami Midorimori | Former staff account: Kit Paine
Comparing Notes
Alfie also rose early, but for entirely different reasons. He hadn’t slept well with his mind still spinning from all the new experiences of the day before. He kept waking only to realize he couldn’t check the time as his cell phone didn’t work here and he hadn’t thought to bring an old-fashioned alarm clock. He drifted in and out of sleep until the faintest traces of morning light began to filter through the room’s closed curtains. At that point, he decided to give up and call it a night.
He was eager to get out of his room for two reasons: the first was to sneak away before his odd roommate woke up, and the second was to do the writing in his journal that he hadn’t done the night before because his odd roommate was looking at him funny.
Alfie’s writing wasn’t a creative outlet for him and it wasn’t one of those “dear diary” situations that he assumed girls went in for. Rather, Alfie’s writing was a tool and a habit that he had adopted fairly recently with Hogwarts in mind.
Alfie had never been a popular boy. He made friends easily but never seemed to keep them, both for reasons beyond his control and for other reasons he didn't fully understand. He was determined not to let the same thing happen at Hogwarts and decided to be proactive in figuring out a solution.
Naturally he went to the library and, after a bit of browsing, checked out a book that sounded like it was all about making friends. The book turned out to be written for adults, and adults who had lived about a hundred years ago judging by the weird things it had to say about husbands and wives. Despite that, the major points seemed sound enough. Alfie focused especially on the parts about how to make people like you. According to the book, this involved a lot of smiling, which he had already adopted, but also learning a lot of stuff about people so that you could bring it up again in conversations and act like you cared. Alfie had come to the realization that, since he didn’t care a lot of the time, he hadn’t been retaining a lot of details people told him, like birthdays and family members, or what they liked to do when they weren't with him. This made it impossible to bring stuff up later and let them talk about it and to act like he was interested too. Apparently that was a key to being liked. It seemed counterintuitive to him, but supposedly people like you better when you make it all about them instead of trying to make sure they know interesting things about you.
What this had to do with writing was that keeping all that crap in your head was hard. It wasn’t just going to come to him later unless he wrote it down and committed it to memory. So for the last month he had been trying out that method on people he was around, and since it was summer he’d had to resort to people at church and the lady who runs the comic shop, and the like. In other words, he started with people whose boring interests he couldn’t have cared less about. Alfie had been amazed to discover that it worked like a trick. Not only did the people seem happier than usual when he spoke to them, they were more eager to see him again, and even to say what a polite young man he was to Alfie’s mom. Granted, Alfie wasn’t sure it would work as well on people who weren’t ancient, but he thought it was worth a try, and in any case a lot of the stuff magic people said was pretty incomprehensible so he thought it important to write down things he didn’t understand so he could try to look them up later.
All this was to say that Alfie was eager to get up and start writing before all the stuff he’d heard the previous day faded from memory and was lost forever. He was so eager that he didn’t even take the time to dress. He just bundled up everything he would need and then slipped out of the room bare footed taking care not to make any sound that might alert his roommate Demo Chatura to his presence. It was possible Deco had no interest in Alfie, but since the boy was still an enigma, Alfie hadn’t wanted to take the chance that what Demo was truly interested in was following Alfie around all day staring weirdly into his eyes.
Alfie had just congratulated himself on closing the door to their room silently, when he heard the sound of another door closing. Looking around the cabin's main room he found it empty, which, while a lucky circumstance considering his present state of undress, was a bit of a mystery that he couldn’t help but want to investigate. He looked out the front window and was able to make out the recognizable back of Strike Allen, dressed for exercise and presently moving away at a jog. For reasons past explaining Alfie felt the need to follow and see where the boy went. He also felt the need to be wearing clothes while he did it, so in a haste he traded his boxers and t-shirt for slacks and jumper, crouching behind a sofa just in case the one girl in the cabin chose that moment to leave her room. Once dressed, he was at a loss to know what to do with his sleep shirt and boxers. Considering the strop that had been thrown the previous day about a trunk in the wrong spot, leaving his knickers laying about was no go. Between his haste to catch up to Strike and his reluctance to wake Demo, he ended up shoving them into the same satchel that held his journal and bringing them along.
Considering the delay, Alfie was not at all certain he could find Strike. He jogged aimlessly about for a bit until he spotted at a distance a boy with the same halo of golden hair. Strike was in the process of leaving the clearing and entering a wooded area, which, if he had wanted to lose Alfie, would have been the perfect place to do it. Alfie didn’t suppose that was Strike’s intent, but it was still a likely result if he couldn’t catch up to him. So Alfie found himself running across the camp clearing and making his way into the woods.
He became lost almost immediately, or at least he was unable to see which path the other boy had taken. The first path Alfie tried led to a dead end, but with the second try Alfie had better luck. He could see the boy ahead and was about to shout out a friendly greeting when he saw that Strike was doing something incomprehensible with some rope. It was strange enough that Alfie slowed, and without even realising that he had made the decision, he found himself creeping up on Strike and hiding himself in some bushes so he could figure it out.
The rope thing turned out to be fairly mundane. The only surprising bit was how diligent Strike was being with his exercises. Alfie was a very active boy himself, having spent most of his free time rambling around the island, cycling and climbing and running against the wind. For that reason he was fairly fit, and according to the coach at the local boxing club, he had excellent endurance and a well developed core. That didn’t mean he wanted to do all the exercises the coach recommended, not if he didn’t have to and no one was standing over him making him do them (and so ended what might have been a brilliant boxing career). Alfie couldn’t now understand for the life of him why another eleven-year-old would be devoting his free time to this.
Strike finished the rope exercise and it became clear he was leaving, which should have been the perfect opportunity for Alfie to "accidentally" run into him. That had been more or less Alfie’s plan, and he would have followed it had another mystery not presented itself first.
What was on the paper that Strike had dropped in the dirt and would he notice it before he left? ‘It's probably something dumb,’ Afie thought. A list of his exercises with the number of repetitions and sets. Or perhaps a half finished letter to his folks.
‘The last bit might actually be interesting,’ Alfie realized. Especially if Strike had written anything about his first day at camp. His opinions of his cabin mates? That would be great! More than ever now Alfie wanted to see that paper and see what secrets it contained.
He was lucky that Strike was so completely focused that he wasn’t any more aware of his surroundings. Not only did he fail to notice the dropped paper, he also passed right by Alfie’s shrubbery without a glance. Alfie waited until he was sure that he was alone before retrieving the folded parchment. He made a silent wish as he unfolded it that his stealth would be rewarded with something worthwhile. He could not have anticipated, had he been given a hundred guesses, just how rewarding a sheet of parchment could be.
The pictures were moving. That in itself was not a shock. Alfie had seen that before. The shock was that he recognized some of them. Even if he hadn’t recognized them, the names were written conveniently beneath the pictures, along with a host of other data. There were the two posh boys, with a brief summary about their family. “No wonder they were so full of themselves,” Alfie thought. He also recognized the shoved boy, and he thought he saw the boy who did the shoving. The latter was harder to confirm since the person within that picture had skulked away the moment Alfie looked at him, leaving an empty rectangle over the name Declan Blackwell. He looked for the rest of his cabinmates, the girl, the liar, and especially Henry, who he’d felt certain would be there, and was disappointed not to find them. There were plenty of others though, more than he could easily identify. He could not, for the moment, figure out what they all had in common. The even bigger question was why was this list in little Strike Bach's pocket? It seemed more thorough than a mere directory would have been, more bloodless than the annual brag-sheet that people put in Christmas cards. This was more like a dossier of the kind that spies and detectives have in tv shows. ‘Was Strike some kind of spy?’ Alfie dismissed the thought instantly. Strike was a kid. Nobody was going to pay a kid to be a spy. Not that a kid wouldn't be good at it. Alfie thought that he himself would be great.
Alfie tucked the parchment into the journal in his bag and set off to find an even more secluded spot where he would not be observed. He might return this to Strike later, if only to ask him some pointed questions. He would not be doing so, however, until he’d had the chance to study it and commit the facts to memory. Better yet, he would copy everything into his journal so that he would forget nothing. He only wished that he had a working phone so that he could make a copy of the pictures as well.
Hours later, Alfie emerged from the wood, feeling a bit more enlightened, but still with more questions than answers. He had decided that he would return the parchment, and he would make a friend of Strike Allen. He would bide his time though and wait for the proper moment.
The moment did not present itself for the rest of the day, and feeling that he could not hold his anticipation any longer, Alfie decided to engineer a moment the following morning. He rose early yet again, and as anticipated, he found Strike diligently following the same routine as on the previous day. This time Alfie was also dressed for exercise, in his old school’s uniform of white polo and black shorts. As Strike jogged past the semi concealed place where Alfie had stationed himself, Alfie stepped out and joined him, easily matching Strike’s rhythm.
“Morning,” Alfie said cheerfully. “I didn’t realize you were a runner too. Hope you don’t mind some company.”
He was eager to get out of his room for two reasons: the first was to sneak away before his odd roommate woke up, and the second was to do the writing in his journal that he hadn’t done the night before because his odd roommate was looking at him funny.
Alfie’s writing wasn’t a creative outlet for him and it wasn’t one of those “dear diary” situations that he assumed girls went in for. Rather, Alfie’s writing was a tool and a habit that he had adopted fairly recently with Hogwarts in mind.
Alfie had never been a popular boy. He made friends easily but never seemed to keep them, both for reasons beyond his control and for other reasons he didn't fully understand. He was determined not to let the same thing happen at Hogwarts and decided to be proactive in figuring out a solution.
Naturally he went to the library and, after a bit of browsing, checked out a book that sounded like it was all about making friends. The book turned out to be written for adults, and adults who had lived about a hundred years ago judging by the weird things it had to say about husbands and wives. Despite that, the major points seemed sound enough. Alfie focused especially on the parts about how to make people like you. According to the book, this involved a lot of smiling, which he had already adopted, but also learning a lot of stuff about people so that you could bring it up again in conversations and act like you cared. Alfie had come to the realization that, since he didn’t care a lot of the time, he hadn’t been retaining a lot of details people told him, like birthdays and family members, or what they liked to do when they weren't with him. This made it impossible to bring stuff up later and let them talk about it and to act like he was interested too. Apparently that was a key to being liked. It seemed counterintuitive to him, but supposedly people like you better when you make it all about them instead of trying to make sure they know interesting things about you.
What this had to do with writing was that keeping all that crap in your head was hard. It wasn’t just going to come to him later unless he wrote it down and committed it to memory. So for the last month he had been trying out that method on people he was around, and since it was summer he’d had to resort to people at church and the lady who runs the comic shop, and the like. In other words, he started with people whose boring interests he couldn’t have cared less about. Alfie had been amazed to discover that it worked like a trick. Not only did the people seem happier than usual when he spoke to them, they were more eager to see him again, and even to say what a polite young man he was to Alfie’s mom. Granted, Alfie wasn’t sure it would work as well on people who weren’t ancient, but he thought it was worth a try, and in any case a lot of the stuff magic people said was pretty incomprehensible so he thought it important to write down things he didn’t understand so he could try to look them up later.
All this was to say that Alfie was eager to get up and start writing before all the stuff he’d heard the previous day faded from memory and was lost forever. He was so eager that he didn’t even take the time to dress. He just bundled up everything he would need and then slipped out of the room bare footed taking care not to make any sound that might alert his roommate Demo Chatura to his presence. It was possible Deco had no interest in Alfie, but since the boy was still an enigma, Alfie hadn’t wanted to take the chance that what Demo was truly interested in was following Alfie around all day staring weirdly into his eyes.
Alfie had just congratulated himself on closing the door to their room silently, when he heard the sound of another door closing. Looking around the cabin's main room he found it empty, which, while a lucky circumstance considering his present state of undress, was a bit of a mystery that he couldn’t help but want to investigate. He looked out the front window and was able to make out the recognizable back of Strike Allen, dressed for exercise and presently moving away at a jog. For reasons past explaining Alfie felt the need to follow and see where the boy went. He also felt the need to be wearing clothes while he did it, so in a haste he traded his boxers and t-shirt for slacks and jumper, crouching behind a sofa just in case the one girl in the cabin chose that moment to leave her room. Once dressed, he was at a loss to know what to do with his sleep shirt and boxers. Considering the strop that had been thrown the previous day about a trunk in the wrong spot, leaving his knickers laying about was no go. Between his haste to catch up to Strike and his reluctance to wake Demo, he ended up shoving them into the same satchel that held his journal and bringing them along.
Considering the delay, Alfie was not at all certain he could find Strike. He jogged aimlessly about for a bit until he spotted at a distance a boy with the same halo of golden hair. Strike was in the process of leaving the clearing and entering a wooded area, which, if he had wanted to lose Alfie, would have been the perfect place to do it. Alfie didn’t suppose that was Strike’s intent, but it was still a likely result if he couldn’t catch up to him. So Alfie found himself running across the camp clearing and making his way into the woods.
He became lost almost immediately, or at least he was unable to see which path the other boy had taken. The first path Alfie tried led to a dead end, but with the second try Alfie had better luck. He could see the boy ahead and was about to shout out a friendly greeting when he saw that Strike was doing something incomprehensible with some rope. It was strange enough that Alfie slowed, and without even realising that he had made the decision, he found himself creeping up on Strike and hiding himself in some bushes so he could figure it out.
The rope thing turned out to be fairly mundane. The only surprising bit was how diligent Strike was being with his exercises. Alfie was a very active boy himself, having spent most of his free time rambling around the island, cycling and climbing and running against the wind. For that reason he was fairly fit, and according to the coach at the local boxing club, he had excellent endurance and a well developed core. That didn’t mean he wanted to do all the exercises the coach recommended, not if he didn’t have to and no one was standing over him making him do them (and so ended what might have been a brilliant boxing career). Alfie couldn’t now understand for the life of him why another eleven-year-old would be devoting his free time to this.
Strike finished the rope exercise and it became clear he was leaving, which should have been the perfect opportunity for Alfie to "accidentally" run into him. That had been more or less Alfie’s plan, and he would have followed it had another mystery not presented itself first.
What was on the paper that Strike had dropped in the dirt and would he notice it before he left? ‘It's probably something dumb,’ Afie thought. A list of his exercises with the number of repetitions and sets. Or perhaps a half finished letter to his folks.
‘The last bit might actually be interesting,’ Alfie realized. Especially if Strike had written anything about his first day at camp. His opinions of his cabin mates? That would be great! More than ever now Alfie wanted to see that paper and see what secrets it contained.
He was lucky that Strike was so completely focused that he wasn’t any more aware of his surroundings. Not only did he fail to notice the dropped paper, he also passed right by Alfie’s shrubbery without a glance. Alfie waited until he was sure that he was alone before retrieving the folded parchment. He made a silent wish as he unfolded it that his stealth would be rewarded with something worthwhile. He could not have anticipated, had he been given a hundred guesses, just how rewarding a sheet of parchment could be.
The pictures were moving. That in itself was not a shock. Alfie had seen that before. The shock was that he recognized some of them. Even if he hadn’t recognized them, the names were written conveniently beneath the pictures, along with a host of other data. There were the two posh boys, with a brief summary about their family. “No wonder they were so full of themselves,” Alfie thought. He also recognized the shoved boy, and he thought he saw the boy who did the shoving. The latter was harder to confirm since the person within that picture had skulked away the moment Alfie looked at him, leaving an empty rectangle over the name Declan Blackwell. He looked for the rest of his cabinmates, the girl, the liar, and especially Henry, who he’d felt certain would be there, and was disappointed not to find them. There were plenty of others though, more than he could easily identify. He could not, for the moment, figure out what they all had in common. The even bigger question was why was this list in little Strike Bach's pocket? It seemed more thorough than a mere directory would have been, more bloodless than the annual brag-sheet that people put in Christmas cards. This was more like a dossier of the kind that spies and detectives have in tv shows. ‘Was Strike some kind of spy?’ Alfie dismissed the thought instantly. Strike was a kid. Nobody was going to pay a kid to be a spy. Not that a kid wouldn't be good at it. Alfie thought that he himself would be great.
Alfie tucked the parchment into the journal in his bag and set off to find an even more secluded spot where he would not be observed. He might return this to Strike later, if only to ask him some pointed questions. He would not be doing so, however, until he’d had the chance to study it and commit the facts to memory. Better yet, he would copy everything into his journal so that he would forget nothing. He only wished that he had a working phone so that he could make a copy of the pictures as well.
Hours later, Alfie emerged from the wood, feeling a bit more enlightened, but still with more questions than answers. He had decided that he would return the parchment, and he would make a friend of Strike Allen. He would bide his time though and wait for the proper moment.
The moment did not present itself for the rest of the day, and feeling that he could not hold his anticipation any longer, Alfie decided to engineer a moment the following morning. He rose early yet again, and as anticipated, he found Strike diligently following the same routine as on the previous day. This time Alfie was also dressed for exercise, in his old school’s uniform of white polo and black shorts. As Strike jogged past the semi concealed place where Alfie had stationed himself, Alfie stepped out and joined him, easily matching Strike’s rhythm.
“Morning,” Alfie said cheerfully. “I didn’t realize you were a runner too. Hope you don’t mind some company.”
People mentioned: @Strike Allen, @Deco Chatura, @Clayton Lamont, @Gyle Lamont, @Josephine Byrne, @Declan Blackwell, @Henry Holbrook, @Owen Lockridge, @Jeremy Slater
Comparing Notes
After his swim and during his run on the third day of summer camp, Strike was surprised to find himself joined by none other than one of his own cabin mates, Alfie. He hadn't realized Alfie was a runner, either; especially because he hadn't seen him the previous morning. However, he guessed he must have probably been too occupied trying to figure out how to complete his training regimen in a new place and by also actually doing it. Regardless, he was glad to see a familiar face and even more glad to be able to spend some time participating in a common activity with him.
"Good morning, Alfie!" he greeted with a huge smile on his face as he ran. "I don't mind at all! It's nice to be able to run with you!"
He tried not to speak too much as they ran, not wanting to get out of breath too quickly. But once he was finished with the set number of meters he was supposed to run, he stopped to catch his breath and waited for Alfie to do the same. Leaning forward as he braced his hands on his knees, he panted lightly before finally reclaiming enough breath to speak again. His grin had not left his face the whole time.
"Do your parents tell you to run every day, too? Is it just running, or do you do other training also?""
His curly blond hair was still damp from the swim he had taken prior to his run despite his having done his best to dry it. Still, the wind that blew while he was running served to help dry some of his locks as well, so they had started to curl again as they had begun to dry.
@Alfie Owen
2nd Gen PC: Strike Allen
1st Gen PC: Jack Burnett | iNPC: Ginyami Midorimori | Former staff account: Kit Paine
Comparing Notes
Alfie returned the smile genuinely. You’ve got to love it when a plan comes together. Also, Strike had seemed surprisingly pleased to see him and Alfie liked how that felt. Except that then Alfie had to wonder if Strike was only pretending to be pleased. If Strike were a spy, that was precisely the sort of thing he’d be good at. Not to mention it was the sort of thing that Alfie himself would do.
Alfie did not spend the run strategizing. He’d already done that the night before. Surprisingly he had decided that the best strategy with Strike would be no strategy at all, or more correctly, his strategy was to let Strike make the first move and see where that led. Alfie had come to this less than proactive conclusion when he realized that Strike held all the cards in this instance. Alfie knew far too little about magical society to begin to guess what Strike’s dossier could be about, so formulating innocuous-sounding side questions was next to impossible. Alfie had considered the direct approach, but had decided that was unlikely to work. Unless the information was a lot more innocent than Alfie thought it was, then Strike would mostly likely lie, (that was what Alfie would do) or if Strike were more confrontational he could end the conversation abruptly and never speak to Alfie again. Either way, there was no advantage to the direct approach. Alfie thought there rarely was.
He preferred the indirect approach anyway. Alfie was patient and in no hurry. If nothing else, the morning was bright and cool and the run was pleasant. Alfie hadn't done all the exercises Strike had already completed, so he was still fresh. When Strike slowed to a stop, Alfie had barely broken a sweat and his breathing wasn’t labored.
Strike's question confused him though, and before Afie could decide if lying would be more advantageous, he found himself telling the truth. "I don't think anyone's ever told me to run,” he said honestly. “ I just like it, I guess."
Of course, he would like it a lot less if it was something he'd been told to do. As it was, Alfie considered running less of an exercise and more of a habit for getting from one place to another quickly. So many of the places he wanted to go were far apart, and cycling wasn't always an option, either because of the island’s rocky terrain, or because the winds off the Irish sea were sometimes strong enough to knock a cycle over and push it into traffic (or worse). He'd found it easier and more practical just to run. And what with all that running against strong winds and running uphill, Alfie had accidentally developed strong core and leg muscles and given himself the cardiovascular endurance that was the reason he hadn't gotten winded during this morning’s run
"I don't think my folks care one way or the other," he said seriously, but on second thought he added, "Well, maybe Taid does. That's my grandad. He wants me to train at boxing, because he says my arms are 'llipa'1 and 'mor wan â brechdan'2." Alfie smiled and shrugged before translating. "Mor wan â brechdan means as weak as bread and butter." He didn't translate 'llipa' because it was the sort of word that gets a boy teased.
"I took Saturday kids classes at our boxing club all last year. This year I would have joined the youth class and been able to compete." Alfie hadn't been sure that he wanted to do this. It would take a lot of work to ever be good enough to win against older boys and Alfie hated doing anything when he couldn't be the best. It had been important to his grandfather though, and Alfie hadn't wanted to disappoint him. It was a moot point now, Alfie realized a bit wistfully. Magic school had taken priority over what his grandfather wanted.
Alfie pushed that aside. He needed to remember the mission.
"So, your parents-- " Alfie wasn't sure what was the best way to ask the question. "They must care a lot about physical fitness?" It wasn't a question, but Alfie's inflection indicated otherwise. “What other kinds of things do they want you to do?”
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Alfie did not spend the run strategizing. He’d already done that the night before. Surprisingly he had decided that the best strategy with Strike would be no strategy at all, or more correctly, his strategy was to let Strike make the first move and see where that led. Alfie had come to this less than proactive conclusion when he realized that Strike held all the cards in this instance. Alfie knew far too little about magical society to begin to guess what Strike’s dossier could be about, so formulating innocuous-sounding side questions was next to impossible. Alfie had considered the direct approach, but had decided that was unlikely to work. Unless the information was a lot more innocent than Alfie thought it was, then Strike would mostly likely lie, (that was what Alfie would do) or if Strike were more confrontational he could end the conversation abruptly and never speak to Alfie again. Either way, there was no advantage to the direct approach. Alfie thought there rarely was.
He preferred the indirect approach anyway. Alfie was patient and in no hurry. If nothing else, the morning was bright and cool and the run was pleasant. Alfie hadn't done all the exercises Strike had already completed, so he was still fresh. When Strike slowed to a stop, Alfie had barely broken a sweat and his breathing wasn’t labored.
Strike's question confused him though, and before Afie could decide if lying would be more advantageous, he found himself telling the truth. "I don't think anyone's ever told me to run,” he said honestly. “ I just like it, I guess."
Of course, he would like it a lot less if it was something he'd been told to do. As it was, Alfie considered running less of an exercise and more of a habit for getting from one place to another quickly. So many of the places he wanted to go were far apart, and cycling wasn't always an option, either because of the island’s rocky terrain, or because the winds off the Irish sea were sometimes strong enough to knock a cycle over and push it into traffic (or worse). He'd found it easier and more practical just to run. And what with all that running against strong winds and running uphill, Alfie had accidentally developed strong core and leg muscles and given himself the cardiovascular endurance that was the reason he hadn't gotten winded during this morning’s run
"I don't think my folks care one way or the other," he said seriously, but on second thought he added, "Well, maybe Taid does. That's my grandad. He wants me to train at boxing, because he says my arms are 'llipa'1 and 'mor wan â brechdan'2." Alfie smiled and shrugged before translating. "Mor wan â brechdan means as weak as bread and butter." He didn't translate 'llipa' because it was the sort of word that gets a boy teased.
"I took Saturday kids classes at our boxing club all last year. This year I would have joined the youth class and been able to compete." Alfie hadn't been sure that he wanted to do this. It would take a lot of work to ever be good enough to win against older boys and Alfie hated doing anything when he couldn't be the best. It had been important to his grandfather though, and Alfie hadn't wanted to disappoint him. It was a moot point now, Alfie realized a bit wistfully. Magic school had taken priority over what his grandfather wanted.
Alfie pushed that aside. He needed to remember the mission.
"So, your parents-- " Alfie wasn't sure what was the best way to ask the question. "They must care a lot about physical fitness?" It wasn't a question, but Alfie's inflection indicated otherwise. “What other kinds of things do they want you to do?”
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Welsh Glossary
Reducio
1llipa Welsh adj.(LHLEE-pah) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Limp, flacid, droopy, floppy
Describes something soft, drooping, or lacking firmness, such as wet clothing, wilted leaves, or a weak handshake. When applied to people, it implies someone sluggish or lacking energy.
x x 2Mor wan â brechdan Welsh idiom(mor WAN a BREKH-dan) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Literally: As weak as a bread and butter sandwich
Used to describe someone or something that is exceptionally weak, fragile, flimsy, or lacking physical strength.