6 Aug 2023, 18:04
Unfortunate Matches
Silky strands stretched out between Draven's splayed fingers. Black webbing tangled across his right hand, the beginnings of an intricate pattern developing above the boy's palm. A long-legged spider sat atop his wrist, purring softly as he worked. Deimos was, in his own way, a cute creature. Heavy and covered in dark hair, slender limbed with a cluster of shiny eyes at the front of his face. Draven stroked him absentmindedly with the tip of a trembling finger, scratching along Deimos' back. There was not much else to do.
The classroom was, for the most part, still. Every few minutes, someone's chair would creak, or a quill would roll off a desk. But the teacher's voice was nice. Professor Aarden's was soothing. He had a certain way of holding himself, with patience and understanding, a glimmer of something shining in his eyes as he spoke. The drone, the cadence of his words, they made Draven's eyes droop heavily. He'd even managed to unclench his jaw sometime in the past thirty minutes, realizing how much it hurt only after he'd parted his teeth and slipped his tongue between them.
His fingers were slack, head buried in the crook of his arm. The door, which he'd spent the first ten minutes of class observing, now went unattended. He glanced at it from the corner of his eye occasionally, but for the most part he let Deimos worry about it. The spider had nothing else better to do either way, as evidenced by the giant black web stretching between Draven's fingers.
It didn't look like it, but Draven had done a thing that morning. A humongous thing. A thing which had taken dedication, and resilience, and grit. Blood, sweat, and tea-...who was he kidding, he'd made his bed. Which wasn't much, but it was more than he'd done in the past week. Bunking in the Snake Den meant he actually had to care about things like that now.
He wasn't sure whether he resented or loved Wyatt for it. He felt...something. Toward the older boy. And putting a name on that something wasn't something he cared to do in that moment, nor any moment anytime soon.
Unfortunately, making his bed had used up all his energy for the rest of the day. It was too much for him to pick up his wand now, even as Professor Aarden paired people up for a project of some sort. His head lolled to the side as a younger girl slid into the seat beside him. For a brief, ridiculous moment, Draven's stomach clenched. She was very put together, her hair perfectly done up and her lips glossed over. She was pretty, he noted distantly. Like a flower or a sculpture, not a flaw against her skin or a crack in her voice.
Draven's fingers twitched, a half-assed wave of acknowledgement. And then his head dropped back in the crook of his elbow. Deimos ceased his work to watch the girl wearily.
@Twyla Whittaker-Flores
Last edited by Draven Mirador on 7 Dec 2023, 20:10, edited 1 time in total.
ITS STILL RAINING. WHY IS IT STILL RAINING? sta • 13 | eva • 8 | str • 1 | wis • 15 |arc • 7 | acc • 9 |
13 Aug 2023, 14:03
Unfortunate Matches
☆ ☆@draven mirador
One couldn't exactly call Miss Whittaker-Flores a transfiguration nerd, but it would be a lie to say that she had no care for the class. She always made sure she directed all her attention towards her professor in each class equally, but still kept time for notes and passive-aggressive staring. She had a homework plan that assured she would get all her work done as fast as she could in the evenings in order to spend more time for herself, and despite these deadlines she put on herself, she still forced herself to churn out the best results possible. However, she did not base her whole life around her studies, she simply wanted to achieve what her parents would want, and what would put her at the top.
Twyla strained herself in order to keep her attention on Professor Aarden. It would be quite unnerving to have such a girl pierce her eyes into your face, but every so often her gaze would falter due to the breaks in silence. The noise around her was at a vacuum standstill, she could hear her breath trapped inside her small body going up and down, moving like the horses on a carousel in time to the professors words. Every so often, a chair would scratch against the floor, and the noise would reverberate inside her, cutting her off from the string of words emerging from Aarden's mouth. Twyla's perfectly folded hands would scratch into the wood of the desk, and her head would ever so slightly twitch towards the source of the noise, before snapping back into the routine of listening and learning.
This continued for the time being until a partner project was announced. Her head snapped around the room like a particularly engrossed meerkat, trying to fathom and bet on who she would be partnered with. The nerdy Ravenclaw next to her seemed like a good pick, yet his hair proved to be a natural deterrent to Twyla. A cute Slytherin a row back was her next option, but she looked the type to take all the credit for her work and leave her hanging. She began to spend too long of her time picking and choosing that Professor Aarden had already chosen for her: a Slytherin boy that looked remarkably old to be simply a first year, sitting by himself.
Letting out a breathy sigh, Twyla stood up out of her seat and began the short journey to the boy's desk. She visibly bristled upon the sight of the black, fur-covered spider sitting upon his wrist. For a brief moment, she wished she had Nyssa with her, her chocolate brown feathers providing both a therapy and a warning to all the spiders out there who may not possess.. boundaries. Her eyes scanned the Slytherin as she edged over, taking in his dark hair and bored demeanour. Professor Aarden had surely made a mistake pairing them together, or maybe he possessed hidden talents. Whatever talents those were, he seemed to hide them particularly well.
She watched his head turn to face her as she sat, and they made brief eye contact, if only for a second. Twyla pulled out her best practised smile that always made photographers swoon and matinee-goers smile, but here it seemed to do nothing of the sort, so she pulled her focus back to the professor as he explained the requirements of the project, actively writing down everything she heard in her loopy cursive. Once finished, she read over her notes as if to familiarise herself with the words, before sitting back up and clasping her hands, waiting silently for her partner to speak up.
Twyla blinked, casting a subtle look over to the boy next to her, his head down in his elbow. Really? The only thing really interested in helping her seemed to be his spider. There must've been a mistake.
She coughed politely, casting another look over.
Silence.
"Excuse me." She extended a manicured hand across the desk "Twyla Whittaker-Flores. You don't have to applaud."
Silence, yet again.
"I'm supposed to be your partner. Are you going to do any partner-ing today, or should I just leave, or get the professor?"
making rain, i'm taking names from london to meguro
14 Nov 2023, 23:30
Unfortunate Matches
Little Miss Perfect sat beside him primly, taking notes. The Professor's voice blurred into nonsense the longer Draven sat there. Underneath his arms, the desk was cold and hard, wooden grains running up and getting lost in the shadow cast by his too-long, too-skinny form. The webbing between his fingers almost seemed appropriate, he thought sullenly, eyes half-lidded as he watched Deimos work. He was a skeleton, unpleasant and bony, with reddened knuckles and dirt underneath his fingernails. If he sat there long enough, perhaps dust would begin to accumulate on him, and he'd become like one of the gargoyles in the marble halls.
"Excuse me," a shrill, unpleasant voice said. Draven looked up lazily, finding himself at the business end of a sharp set of nails, extended directly toward his eyes. She could have scraped them across his face, he realized distantly. She just needed to lean forward a little. He imagined it. The blinding flash of pain, the warm trickle down his cheeks. And the world going dark.
Draven inched backward. She wasn't insane. Nobody at this school was insane. That was the point.
But his tongue wasn't moving anyway, made of lead. Words fizzled and popped away from Draven's throat, disappearing. She'd said something. Something to him. The arch of her brows, the displeased pull of her lip, the expression on her face like she'd just been force-fed a whole lemon. She was looking at him like he was something dirty she'd discovered on the sole of her shoe and was unsuccessfully trying to scrape off atop asphalt.
"Will we be doing any partnering?" Partnering. Was that a word? She seemed to think so, back straight and righteous fury in her voice. And he couldn't-...he-.
He was stuck. He was stuck.
"Get the professor," Draven said, slowly. He enunciated each word, focusing on making the words roll off his tongue. The professor was good. The professor would- he'd- yes. The professor would know. At least, Draven hoped so.
The professor would understand how Draven's whole body was made of lead. He'd understand the way thoughts had halted, words sticking to the inside of his throat. He wanted to talk. He wanted to talk so bad. But something was blocking- blocking him.
He opened his lips and nothing came out but a pathetic gasp for air. The room was melting before him, blurring, dissolving. Merlin. Draven thought quietly, as everything went black.
@Twyla Whittaker-Flores
ITS STILL RAINING. WHY IS IT STILL RAINING? sta • 13 | eva • 8 | str • 1 | wis • 15 |arc • 7 | acc • 9 |