CL Unexpected Arrival PV Aly Salinger

@Zykeal Lane
mentioning @Dealla Prince

Aly was, surprisingly, having an excellent first few days at camp. She had made some new friends already, but perhaps more importantly, old ones had shown their faces too - her tentmate Manu, from Castelobruxo, for instance, was here once more, and furthermore, Aly's best friend from Hogwarts was even in the exact same cabin as the young Salinger herself. She and Dee had claimed top bunks right next to each other so that they could pull their old nighttime routine of whispering gossip at each other over the slats of the beds; it was almost like being in the Ravenclaw common room, though being at the castle campgrounds, it wasn't like they were too far away from their normal Scottish living space.

As for those "new friends", perhaps it wasn't quite right to call them friends. More like acquaintances. There were plenty of people in her cabin, and some decent folk to meet at mealtimes. Familiar faces, both from last year's camp and from her native school just on the horizon, dotted the crowds of campers, and though Aly was by no means the cheerful blabbermouth she had been this time last year, she still was loath to refuse a friendly nod of the head or a two-fingered wave. To be quite honest, Aly hadn't really made a single new friend at camp thus far.

Then again, she was less than two weeks in. The days of July weren't even yet in the double digits. She had plenty of time, if she wanted to build mates here - though it would take some effort. It wasn't like new friends were just going to fall out of the sky and into her lap.

Until, suddenly, one fell out of the sky and into her lap. (Well, more of a letter than the friend itself. Now that would have been awkward.)

"What the hell?" the Ravenclaw muttered under her breath, unfolding the paper airplane with careful fingers.

She took stock of the (somewhat legible???) handwriting, a sharply-angled Z emblazoning the end. Someone out to make a friend... or a foe. That much brought a chuckle to Aly's confused and usually somber face, and was enough to warrant a response back, in her opinion.

Dear stranger... or should I call you Z?

You'll be quite happy to know that I am still in possession of both of my eyes, and your letter fell into my lap instead. They say that opportunities won't do that, but look who's laughing now! Watch your eyes when this one comes about, though. I can't make any promises. Never enchanted a parchment before.

With that being said, why in Merlin's name would you be looking for a foe? You just wander around picking fights with people or making them your enemies? Awfully odd way of going about life. I suppose I could do with a good enemy, though I'm inclined to say anyone who throws a random letter into the ether is more interesting than hated in my book.

Don't take that as a compliment yet. I may still turn out to be a foe. You never know.

Camp has been all right for me thus far. I've been able to avoid some people I'd rather not see, and I got bunked with my best friend, so those are some positives. It's been awfully boring here, though. I could use a bit of mystery in my life, wouldn't you agree, Z? What about your camp? Must not be too interesting if you're chucking letters into the abyss and hoping you get a response.

Can't say I've heard of this Seuss fellow, but then again, Muggle Studies has never been my best subject. I'd quote something back at you if I could think about anything off the top of my head, but I think you'd rather hear my words than some old and probably dead bloke's, yeah?

How about this? "A good bit of mystery never hurt anyone."

So what's your mystery, O opposite of the alphabet?

-A

Chuckling at her own wit, for most of the letter was teasing if not outright satirical, Aly did her best to fold her new parchment into the same general shape as the first one had held, following its crease lines. Being pureblooded herself, she'd never learned to fold a paper airplane, nor did she know what one was or how to throw it. She had written her letter on the back of the original, though, and tossed it into the air about as gracefully as one would chuck a Quaffle, hoping that the enchantment was strong enough to bring it back to its original owner.

A friend or foe, indeed. Only time would tell which this letter would bring to her.

With a nip to his ear from the orange bearded dragon that sat upon his shoulder, he snapped out of his surprise and nearly shouted aloud, "Twitchy, look, someone actually wrote back!" he exclaimed, a hand shifting up to stroke the back of the lizard as he knelt down to inspect the parchment-folded letter. As he was headed back to his cabin for some lazy Sunday rest and relaxation, he scooped up the letter without any hesitation. If it was jinxed, he'd deal with it, a sneaking suspicion it wasn't led to his rash action and he felt a smile play across his features as he walked with a bit more pep' in his step back towards his colorful cabin.

After a few minutes he had arrived, shooed off any annoying distractions as he entered and directly went into his private room. Twitchy knew better at this point to fling herself off as he tossed himself onto the bed, she'd always land safely onto the pillow before he plopped his head onto it and sent her flying onto the comforter next to him. The teen didn't know why he had such a smile upon his face, he supposed it was the sheer surprise of the return letter that he honestly figured he'd never get. Hastily, he opened the letter and started reading it as fast as he could. It didn't take long, this wasn't novel writing, but a friendly interaction between two strangers. Once he did a quick analysis, he took his time to read the letter in depth once more and couldn't help but offer a twitch of a smile to different parts of it.

"Alright A'," he smirked, obviously noting her wit on their initials, "seems like it'll be a fun little experiment indeed," he said to himself as he set the letter to the side of his bed for now and dozed off for an afternoon nap on the summer day.

It wouldn't be till the next day that he'd actually write a response, that Sunday evening was filled and he couldn't get out of the commitments he had set for that time. Oddly enough though, the letter would pop into his mind throughout that evening and he was already pre-writing it in his head without even thinking too much about it. That morning though, after a lil bit of an Irish breakfast, he went and sat out underneath a nearby tree that was close to his cabin and wrote a response to the mysterious 'A'. Zykeal figured he'd write it how he normally would, even though she was much more proper in her writing, he wasn't going to try and be someone he wasn't.

Ya' know... I don't tend to walk around and pick fights.. they sort of just happen upon me and sometimes they actually can be a bit of fun! Nowadays' I'm findin' it harder to distinguish who the enemies are though... turns out a fight is sometimes a way to make a new friendship funny 'nough.

Hell, even my bro right now was made from a good ole' face punchin session in the dorms of our first year.

Foe is a funny word though, even havin' used it, it's still kinda funny. I don't particularly think it's a good word to have for an enemy... a foe? Where does that word even come from?

Sometimes I think of that ya' know? Where the words we say actually come from. Depends though, sometimes I gotta speak right still cause my own townspeak isn't strictly speakin' quite normal to some of the folks at the school. I've gotten used to it over the years though.

Well damn! I also got into the same cabin as my best friend. We got private rooms to ourselves though, betcha' jealous on that ay? Not a big fan of the design of the place though so I do keep to wanderin' the campgrounds quite a bit. Even managed to bump into some silly lil' firsties from time to time.

Fun seeing them bounce around... first year was really fun when I did it.

Watcha do for fun, by the way? I'm kinda artsy myself I think and love muggle sports. Not much into the whole broom stuff, rather keep my feet on the ground.

My mystery? Can't just ask that outright, gotta get to know me a lil' first, ya know?

Okay okay, no more quotes... how about just a sayin'

... opposites attract?

-Z

It wasn't till the moment the letter left his hand and sailed back into the sky that there were so many questions that he wish he had written down. Where they were from, what school did they attend, how old were they... maybe he didn't want to know all the information, maybe he did... it was a mystery after all and he'd deal with that if the person continued to respond. Who knows where this would lead of course, but, it had started and that's what the smile upon Zykeals face showed as he sat under the tree and looked to the sky, watching it sail away. "Opposites attract?" he laughed to himself, over his own dumb saying, "Zyk you're an eejit'," the boy would mumble happily to himself.

@Zykeal Lane

It had been quite an interesting few days for the Ravenclaw soon-to-be fifth-year since the first anonymous letter had so ceremoniously dropped right into her lap, and that wasn't even counting the letter itself. The biggest event since that, of course, having been the Spin the Bottle game on the eleventh. Aly hadn't necessarily been intending to walk in there to make her ex jealous - well, perhaps a little bit, but the main ideal had been to get back out there, make friends, and perhaps get in a good snog or two.

She hadn't expected the first of those "good snogs or two" to end up becoming the talk of the camp, but Aly wasn't particularly mad about it, either. So what if people finally knew her name again, after a month and a half of her being back in the Hogwarts social scene? All right, maybe it wasn't exactly for something that the old Aly would have liked being known for - but the old Aly couldn't come to the phone right now. (Why? Because she was dead.)

In truth, because of all the fuss and jabber about her most interesting Spin the Bottle appearance, Aly had honestly completely forgotten about the anonymous letter from the first week of summer. She didn't get one all throughout the second week, and between the lack of correspondence and Spin the Bottle, it was really not too much at the forefront of her mind by the time the third week of camp rolled around. However, that just made for more of a surprise when another letter made its debut into her lap at the beginning of the third week, on Monday morning.

Rather, it missed her lap by about two feet and went nose-first into the damp grass nearby as she lay on a blanket in the morning with her nose immersed in a riveting book on Quidditch manoeuvres, but she wasn't going to nitpick that.

The letter wasn't even addressed to her this time - not that the correspondence had been addressed to her the first time, either, but at least it had had a "Dear Stranger" and not just gone straight into the note. Still, she recognised the handwriting and the tell-tale Z at the end, so she knew it was a letter from the same person as last time. Whether a bloke or a gal, Aly couldn't tell, but it was nice to know they'd written back. Nice to know that a six-month break from school hadn't broken the charm she'd always had, which had always prompted her father to tell her that she could make friends with a brick wall.

Still, the writing brought a smile to her face as she dropped the book, now forgotten, onto the dewy ground and turned her attentions to reading her newer material. In the end, she responded not right away, but that Monday evening after dinner, curled up by candlelight atop her top bunk in the Thestral cabin. She had spent the day doing some poking around and trying to find a list of all of the people attending camp, but could only find the roster for her cabin, which didn't have anyone with a first name beginning in Z on the list. So what if she was curious? Mysteries like this were in her nature, as a Ravenclaw.

Dear Z,

Well, you won't be getting a fight from me. I don't think I'm a very violent person - it's always been more like me to clean folks up after the fact than to participate in the fight itself. If you ever need a couple of plasters or a quick healing spell, I'm your gal.

That being said, I've been doing a lot of research on Quidditch fouls recently. There's over seven hundred of them, and most of those aren't even released to the public, probably to avoid people like me learning about them and wanting to try them out. Purely for academic purposes, you know. Honest, I'd really never try to hurt anyone if I could avoid that mess. Though I did get punched in the face last month. I didn't punch back, but does that count as getting in a fight? I ended up in the Hospital Wing afterwards and they fixed my nose, so all's well that ends well.

And it was by my best friend, so normally I'd say that's an awfully strange way of making mates, but it seemed to work for both of us, eh? You've got to promise me that you'll never punch me in the face, please. I've had enough of that for one lifetime.

You write like you must speak, did you know that? I think my writing's a bit more formal than the way I talk - I was raised quite traditionally, in a family that was very big on being proper and all that bloody nonsense. Trying to learn to be more normal now, of course, but Merlin, sometimes I look back on letters I wrote when I was eleven and I cringe at myself. I think that if your way of speaking is anything like your writing, you must be a very interesting person, indeed.

As for the cabins, I actually don't mind being in a group setting like the dorms. I'm an only child, so I've had my whole life to have my own room - I like being around people anyway. Though I can hear someone snoring right now as I write this back to you, so maybe that part's not so nice. And yes, there's so many firsties round this year, aren't there? I'm - well, maybe you're right and we should keep a bit of mystery, but let's just say I'm a bit older than a first-year, that's for sure! (Yet, somehow, still shorter than some of them...? I don't quite understand that part.)

Sounds like we're opposites on the fun bit, since pretty much all I do is broomstick-related. I was actually just reading a Quidditch book when I got your letter this morning, and I'm going to try out for my House team again in the fall. I don't really know much about Muggle sports, but if they're anything like Quidditch, I'm sure I'd love them. But I suppose I'm rather boring. I sort of lost all my hobbies this past winter, other than reading. I mostly just focus on my studies nowadays... if I'm not trying to fly or learning about the places in Hogwarts I've been missing out on for the past few years... hypothetically, of course. For legal reasons, I'd never do anything to break the rules, obviously...

I'm going to assume you're a Hogwarts student, then - you could be from another school, but I'd like to think you're the same as me. So what's your favourite place at our pretty castle, then? Maybe you can teach me about one of these places I didn't know about before.

Or you can tell me about your other favourites. Colours, foods, subjects, you know, the usual getting-to-know-you stuff. Unless you're too scared to become a bit less mysterious.

-A

P.S. Opposites attract, do they? I guess we'll have to wait and see...

Aly was still enjoying writing in this joking, playful sort of way, with heavy-handed sarcasm and... dunno, was that a bit of flirting on Z's part? Well, she had her own romantic matters going on at the moment, and plus, the stranger could have been anywhere from a second-year to a seventh-year, so she wasn't about to outright reciprocate that sort of coquettish tone.

Still, though, this was fun. And maybe she'd get not just a new friend out of it, but also some new places to explore round Hogwarts, if Z answered her question. She was getting the feeling that they weren't a narc, but it was still very proper of her to include a disclaimer that of course she'd never do anything illegal.

(That was totally, completely untrue, by the way, in case you didn't get her drift on that.)

Folding up her letter, Aly placed it in the front cover of her Quidditch book, which she closed and laid carefully atop the trunk at the foot of her bunk. She would send it in the morning...