29 Oct 2023, 01:16
Wallflower
Date: October 6th, 2023
Night of the Fall Ball...
¤ | Ω | ¤
"Italiano. Italian."
"Russian."
\ Fingerless Glove on Right Hand, Bite Scar on Forearm /
| Lichtenberg Figure on Right Arm and Down Back |None; Valentin Schnell
@Aida Mòrsgor-Ama EllwoodWell, the weather tonight was nice enough for the event. Most of the Durmstrang students that had been housed with me were already dressed or at least clothed for the night before them. As for myself, I was dressed in a pair of plain grey sweatpants with an elastic waist and a very large hooded sweatshirt. This was a pajama set of mine... though it had quickly become only of my only outfits that had been able to stretch and adapt to my growing the past few years. I had... no plans to speak of, as it were. While some of the younger boys teased one another over a girl that one had been seen frequently around, and some of the older boys jibed and yanked on one anothers' fine robes just to elicit laughter from their compatriots, I found myself laying on the lower bed of the bunk I had chosen with a book over my face so that I could see nothing but the dancing lights behind my eyes in the darkness that obscured sights of the real world around me.
It was a good book. It was a very good book, and one that I had been analyzing and mulling over for the past few months, at least. I was trying to commit everything in its pages to memories, all the prose and all the knowledge that I would use someday. Wand woods, their natures and the effects upon their cores; knowledge of the cores themselves and how to handle many of them safely and efficiently. I was already drawing interesting conclusions on my own, even without the book telling preferred arrangements and combinations that were known to be powerful and effective. I wanted to draw some of my own conclusions, admittedly, and despite myself I was finding myself analyzing the people that I had been around recently. I was trying to determine what kinds of wands would fit them, how well their current wand served them and if there were any frictions between them because of their natures... or perhaps in some cases I reconsidered the nature of the person themselves...
In the darkness, in the quiet as the laugher began to fade away and the crunching of leaves underfoot vanished, I sighed heavily before slowly raising the book away from my face and peering around the room to make sure that at least for the moment I was alone. I waited a second, then two, the book held in the air as I stared at the door to the cabin that led towards the place of celebration for the night. I blinked. I blinked again, and then I pinched the bridge of my nose as I put the book aside with another low groan and then resigned myself to rubbing my face slowly as if it would somehow wake me up. I wanted to sit up and reach for the wand on the bedstand beside me, or for the whittling knife that also lay there currently freshly shined and cleaned... but even that seemed to take too much effort for me to do at this moment. All I had the energy to do was stare at the gilded words on the cover of the book of wandlore, to stare at those elegant golden letters and to imagine the tip of my finger tracing them in a cursive handwriting so very different from my own.
And to wonder, of course, if Valentin had also gone to the ball... if he would have a better time this year compared to last. How how times had changed in even such a short span as a year; in a year how things had unfolded, had been complicated, how things had been beautiful and then transformed into a nightmare into mere seconds, of adventure and of dreams...
And of another, how I had smote that thought from Valentin's mind with a blow easily powerful enough to kill... how I had not killed him will forever remain a mystery to me. I had lost control, I had lost control like I always had; I had done as such so frequently in the past... I had done such a thing to so many... so, so many...
I covered my eyes again, watching lights popping behind my eyes again like flashes of lightning that transformed into the fire of the northern lights. "You just wanted him to be happy, didn't you Romino?" I whispered quietly into the eavesdropping dark. How greedy those shadows on the walls could be... "You knew this a long time ago, idiota. Idiota!" The second snarl was accompanied by a chastising strike to my own head before I returned to the dark. "Idiota..." More of a hum now... a bit of a keen.
"Happy, happy... you wanted him happy... You wanted to be happy too, you idiot! You knew that he wanted to make you happy! You both wanted to be happy! You both... wanted to..."
And yet I still turned down the bargain. I turned it down. I turned it down and I can't go back. I can't go back unless I truly want to do something I might regret, to do something that would ruin me if not the one that I wanted to protect the most. I couldn't let that happen... I couldn't... Not when I loved him enough to tear my own heart in half; I couldn't falter now, couldn't be untruthful, couldn't abandon my post and my sword and shield for even a moment. I couldn't do that... I couldn't...
Not while that sword was buried deep, and not while it had the blood of its imprisoned demons fresh upon it; no matter how much it twisted, no matter how much it festered.
I felt my face flushing red with the efforts of choking down the knot in my throat and the slow, steady burn behind my eyes slowly coming to the front.
No. No.
With a sudden and deep breath, I sat up and snatched my wand, turning it in my hands and feeling its subdued, sad magical presence as it tried to reach for my own magic in return. The magic that came from it was even weaker than it was before, withering and drying up just a tad seemingly every time it was handled by me. I knew the moment it had started to happen too... The moment that I had not been able to control my own emotions anymore as I started to destroy the ones that were closest to me, starting with Piérre. His emotions, his magic, had lashed out against me and my own; the damages that came with it had shook both me and my implement so intrinsically connected with Piérre and his own, so violently and suddenly... One could have almost called it almost like a brother killing his own brother: a twin causing the death of its twin.
Hand tightening on the wand once more, I stuck it into my sweats pocket and then snatched the knife instead, storming for the door and then opening it so that I could let the heat out of the cabin and let the fresh air run rampant through my senses. I needed to clear my mind. I needed to find some way to shake myself out of this... this slump. This... loathable frame of mind that I had sworn to myself not to feel if I could help it. I wasn't deserving of feeling these sorts of things, not in this way and not around others, and certainly not for something as trivial as this. This was pathetic.
"You are being pathetic, Romino." I hissed at myself, flicking the knife open and closing it repeatedly as I watched the boats on the lake pushing off and heard the sounds of faraway talking and muffled, indistinguishable conversations that everyone--yes, perhaps even Valentin--were having.
I stood there in the shade of the cabin, the whistling of branches in the air; the woods around and the lake before, and the party full of people that I didn't want to see nor--as I had good inclination to believe--wanted to see me.ReducioStats:
Ω Stamina 9 | Evasion 9 | Strength 17 Ω
Ω Accuracy 18 | Wisdom 10 | ArcPower 0 ΩAbilities:
Ω Obnoxiously Strong | Perfectionist I | Martial Artist | Healing Sage I Ω
Ω Muggle Condition ΩNote About the Thread: This thread is being updated in 'canon' time to the moderation posts of the main thread (and it is happening at the same time as the ball). While Romeo will not be present at the ball, I am considering this thread to serve as a personal tracker for him and it will adhere to the ball's actively unfolding events.
Last edited by Piérre Marchonné on 23 Dec 2023, 06:37, edited 7 times in total.
10 Nov 2023, 23:16
Wallflower
Wallflower ~ Whittler ~ Warning ~ White Knight ~ Wrestler ~ Wartime ~ Wrath ~ Whelm
¤ | Ω | ¤
"Italiano. Italian."
"Russian."
\ Fingerless Glove on Right Hand, Bite Scar on Forearm /
| Lichtenberg Figure on Right Arm and Down Back |NoneFlick, fold...
Flick, fold...
Flick... fold...
"Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic..." I grumbled under my breath as I turned the whittling knife in both hands and tested the edge of the blade with a thumb. Razor sharp, the way that it was supposed to be. Good. "Who the hell do you think you are, feeling bad for yourself. You chose this, you pazzo. Crazy person.. You chose this..."
Oh but how it had felt like it hadn't been a choice of mine to make at all to begin with... damned if I did, damned if I didn't and only one way to win; a painful way at that. Surely I had to try to convince myself that I was doing this the right way, that what I was doing was right and not a cruel disillusionment that would further break me down and be the cause of further regrets and a sense of aimless drifting in my already partially aimless and confusing position in life. Surely there was something that I could hold onto, some light at the end of the tunnel that I would find myself able to aspire to, some way to somehow feel satisfied with my choices while also not feeling the deep and rending regrets that constantly plagued me after every decision that I made. So frightened of doing something wrong, so petrified that I would make a mistake; I made the same mistakes over and over again seemingly without learning from them in the slightest.
This was the way that I was going to end up all alone, wasn't it. Alone and with nobody else who really cared to pay me any mind. Perhaps at least I would have my brother, but even he had a life in front of him; even he had aspirations and things that he wanted to achieve that I would be nothing but a hinderance towards. Such lightness and fleetness that I was likely weighing down. He had somewhere he wanted to be, a destiny that he had picked out for himself long ago and had had the ability to put his mind to it in such an unshakable way; and I was simply... drifting.
I had wandered slightly out and away from the overhang of the cabin on bare feet until I was on the grass underneath the weepers of a willow, and with a strong tug I tore down one of the branches and immediately began to shape it in both of my hands. I broke away the soft parts, stripped it of leaves, and flicked the blade of my knife open as I started to peel away the external bark and round off the rough edge that I had created by tearing it directly from the larger branch. There wasn't enough wood to actually make anything else other than a highly whippy piece of almost flaccid wood, but it was keeping my mind preoccupied, and that was infinitely better than being entertained with the other things that could have been whipping through my mind instead. Still they did their best to press in on all sides, as I had figured that they would.
Glancing up every now and again to observe the boats on the lake, I sighed once as I sliced deep on the branch, nearly cutting my thumb in the process before I caught myself and readjusted my hand before continuing the cut.
What in the world was I doing here? What in the world was I doing here like this? Blowing off the remnants of the loose wood, I ran a finger down the shaved sides, feeling pieces of roughness before making mental notes of where I needed to shave the wood and to smooth it further. Bloody brilliant. Just... just brilliant. What a perfect mess you are, Romino. Perfect, perfect mess.
More curls of wood fell to the ground at my feet, my thoughts now mostly a messy spiral as opposed to anything coherent.
"Bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody, buffone, buffone, buffone, buffone..."
The blade caught in the wood again, and after safely placing my fingers I tore through the catch and cleanly sliced the branch in twain. Blinking at the two pieces as if they were some foreign entities, I sighed heavily again and then chucked them away from me as far as I could.
I sat down. The blade flicked in my fingers once more.
Flick, fold...
Flick, fold...
Flick... fold...ReducioStats:
Ω Stamina 9 | Evasion 9 | Strength 17 Ω
Ω Accuracy 18 | Wisdom 10 | ArcPower 0 ΩAbilities:
Ω Obnoxiously Strong | Perfectionist I | Martial Artist | Healing Sage I Ω
Ω Muggle Condition Ω
Last edited by Piérre Marchonné on 23 Dec 2023, 06:37, edited 6 times in total.
14 Nov 2023, 03:47
Wallflower
Wallflower ~ Whittler ~ Warning ~ White Knight ~ Wrestler ~ Wartime ~ Wrath ~ Whelm
¤ | Ω | ¤
"Italiano. Italian."
"Russian."
\ Fingerless Glove on Right Hand, Bite Scar on Forearm /
| Lichtenberg Figure on Right Arm and Down Back |NoneBrows furrowed as I cleaned the edge of the blade with a careful hand, I let the continued frustration continue to roil in me; to roil without a worthy outlet of escape. Wasn't that the way it usually was, though? To feel these things swirling about, to let them grow and teethe and fester, and to remind yourself that you can't allow them to pierce through for the sake of civility and the health of those around you? Wasn't that why I had trained myself so hard to fight, to build myself into such a physical peak of fitness? Wasn't all of that just the pent up expressions of frustrations and exertions of undesired emotional duress unleashed upon the physical world in the healthiest way that I could manage for them?
Haha... and how funny it was that now not even that could be fully restrained inside anymore. Here I was, thinking that perhaps after all this time, after all this confession and decision-making I would somehow find myself more happy with my circumstance instead of hurtling through the world as if I were just an aimless comet trying to find a star that my trajectory could crash into to end things once and for all. Wouldn't that be the ending for me; hurtling into something head on without a care in the world for the things around me that tried to hold me back or slow me down, to crash into something and to take it with me in the most brilliant supernova ever observed by science itself? I couldn't think of a better ending anyways, at least not one that didn't involve at least a little bit of blood on my knuckles and in my mouth; something that entailed a bitter fight to the very end in the desperate pursuit of something worth dying for. Something, anything worth dying for; even if it meant dying alone and unnamed.
"AAAAGH!" I finally roared out my vengeance, sinking the knife as deep as I could into the blameless willow tree and watching how the weeping tresses shivered in fear of what had struck it so ruthlessly. With a similar wrench of my hand, I pulled it out, leaving behind a scar in the wood thin yet visible if one drew close enough to it. I appraised the knife in my hands now, how the thin blade had now suddenly warped and bent on an unnatural curve. "HA! You too, huh? Buckle and bending just short of breaking when stress takes you over, huh?!" I taunted the inanimate knife, dangling it between my fingers with a bared-tooth grimace on my face and blue fire in both eyes. "F*cking useless piece of sh*t you are! F*cking useless! USELESS!" I bellowed at it, stabbing it over and over again into the earth and carving the soil that would give. I wanted to ruin this knife, I wanted to destroy it utterly and completely. It was a child's knife, really. Totally useless and not really useful for carving anyways.
After a few seconds of gouging the earth and then breathing heavily when I was finished, I held up the tiny implement in my hand and observed how dirt was stuck in all its beautiful little mechanisms that helped it to fold and to stow away, and how the dirt had gotten onto my hands and how I had miraculously not managed to cut myself. How everything just seemed a little bit wobbly the longer I stared and tried to make heads and tails of what I was seeing; how everything was just a rushing spiral of thought and feeling and momentary, fleeting time.
Well, I had broken the knife. Fat load of good that had done me. Still, I couldn't deny the fact that such destruction had felt good while it had lasted; the tension in my chest felt a slight bit lighter even if the heaviness there had not lifted entirely. I folded the knife for the last time, feeling it stiffly returning to its closed state before permanently sticking there for good. "Useless piece of garbage." I snorted, chucking the implement as far over my shoulder as I could and hoping that it would be forever lost in the Forbidden Forest surrounding the campgrounds. It could stay there forever, for all I cared. I didn't even want to so much as look back, lest I think it a good idea to go over and fetch it. No. This would be a reminder. Let it go. Just... let it go. Let something go.
Selfish bastard I am... I closed my eyes as I rested my forehead on my drawn-up knees. Against the willow tree, just let everything else slip away for a few moments. Just a little while. Just a few moments...
Red flashed before my eyes.
With a sudden jerk, I raised my head in time to squint at an enormous red blast of sparks pierce the night sky over the Great Lake. They flared bright and bold for a few moments before fading away and leaving black spots in my eyes for a few moments that I had to blink away. My brow furrowed. "What the..." I murmured. Was there supposed to be a light show tonight? No... there were no other lights. And that was quite clearly the kind of sparks produced by none other than the Periculum spell.
And Periculum meant danger. Someone was in danger.
Maybe Valentin was in danger.
"Dannazione... Damn it..." I rocketed to my feet, feeling the wand in my hoodie pocket as I immediately took to my heels and forced myself to race across the campgrounds and along the shoreline of the Great Lake. Breath filled my lungs and the thoughts that had occupied my mind just moments prior all fell away and were replaced by blessed adrenaline that induced a cortisol rush and helped me to enter into a comfortable runner's high.
I was barefoot, things were definitely tearing into the soles of my feet, I was knocking away low-hanging branches for my taller and wider form. I couldn't afford to waste time. Someone was in danger. Someone needed help...
And if that someone was Valentin...
'Niffler, faresti meglio a non morire su di me ora. Non dopo tutto questo. Non ora... Non in quel momento in cui non ci sono per te. Niffler, you better not die on me now. Not after all this. Not now... Not at that one time when I'm not there for you.' Thoughts raced through my mind of a new nature, of red blood against white skin; of a storm screeching overhead as a blast of red sparks cut the air--sparks cast by myself. Flight through the eye of the storm and into the maelstrom, a crackling of lightning, and the a world that swam with nothing but whiteness and burning. 'Giuro su Dio, Caro, se muori ora... Perdero ' la testa. Ci sono cosi ' vicino... Perdero ' la testa... I swear to God, Caro, if you die now... I will lose my mind. I'm so close... I will lose my mind...'
Please, hold on. Just hold on...Topic Left: Continued at Lanterns and Boat RidesReducioStats:
Ω Stamina 9 | Evasion 9 | Strength 17 Ω
Ω Accuracy 18 | Wisdom 10 | ArcPower 0 ΩAbilities:
Ω Obnoxiously Strong | Perfectionist I | Martial Artist | Healing Sage I Ω
Ω Muggle Condition Ω