Bitter and Sweet PV ⇉ T. Piper Closed

Talia absolutely adored the lake.

Why? She wasn't sure herself, but maybe it was something about the water that reminded her of home. Home, Brighton, the seaside beach resort town that she had never left before September. She remembered her small house, sandy boardwalk instead of street and beach instead of backyard. The bright blue paint starting to chip off from years of wear and tear. She smiled as she recalled the scene, walking peacefully under a canopy of trees and looking off at the reflection of the bright sun off of the crystal clear lake, its water sitting perfectly still minus a few ripples from kids skipping stones.

She heard a quiet thud. Looking around for the source of the noise, she noticed a boy who seemed to have fallen.

Go ask him if he's okay, one part of her said. He might need something. But the other part of her internal conflict was to be her quiet self and act like she hadn't noticed anything, just to keep walking on. But guilt and kindness won over and she walked over to the boy nervously.

"Um, hello. Are you alright?" she asked shyly, picking a dried leaf off of the boy's clothes, hoping she wasn't too awkward to scare him off.

The approaching girl had snuck up on him without him noticing. Drat. Nearly jumping in the air as she inquired after his wellbeing, her voice sudden and seemingly coming out of nowhere, Elijah turned a shade of ripe tomato as he noticed the state he was in- torn pants, dirt on his knees, and some of the skin peeled back as well, raw from rubbing against the ground. His hair was a wild mess from being blown about by the wind, and there was dirt on the palms of his hands as well. 

Her sudden touch on his shoulder was startling, as well. He shuddered, recoiling as she picked the leaf off his shoulder, and immediately regretted it. She had only been trying to help, which was quite commendable- small, simple acts of kindness were the ones that commonly went unnoticed, but not by him. It wasn't her fault that she had received such an odd first impression- he was a prickly person by nature, and her heart had been in the right place.

"Hello," he mumbled, averting his eyes to the ground. Hastily getting to his feet, he dusted himself off, hands avoiding his skinned knees. "Yes, thank you for asking- I'm quite alright. Nasty fall though, I'm afraid- I really didn't see that root." Running a hand through his wild hair, he spiked it back up with a practiced ease, before sticking out his hand for a handshake.

Introductions were in order- he had to properly greet his rescuer, then find out a bit more about her in order to properly repay her. Maybe she liked a certain type of flower? He could easily research it, create a model, and gift it to her in thanks for caring about him. It really was that big of a deal to him- in a setting where he did nothing but blend in, someone noticing him and caring enough to ask about him was nothing short of a miracle. 

"I'm Elijah. And you are...?" 

As he did this, his eyes flicked over the girl standing in front of him almost automatically. He was a great deal taller than her, and she quite distinctly reminded him of Rosie- small, petite, and bubbling with positive energy. Even their hair color was similar- a rich brown that could only be described as earthy. Her voice reminded him of a bird, light and lilting with almost a tune to it- she looked no older than he did, from which he could assume that she was a first year.

Deductions such as these came naturally to him, and it was almost futile to resist them. In fact, why even bother resisting them at all? They provided some rather interesting tidbits, and gave him information about the person without him having to ask. He preferred to let his brain work itself out, rather than expending valuable time and attention preventing it from doing so.

Tal definitely hadn't intended to make the boy jump, but it seemed she'd underestimated how quietly she could approach. She didn't intend to make him uncomfortable by grabbing the leaf. But, the girl knew she was a little too eager to make a friend at times, and fully recognized it. After all, it was always worth a shot, right?

She giggled a bit. "Sorry, didn't mean to scare you," she mumbled as she absentmindedly fidgeted with the leaf in her hands.

"Yeah, these roots are kinda dangerous sometimes, and I speak from experience," Talia added on, speaking a bit more confidently. "Uh, I'm Talia, nice to meet you!"

Talia stuck out her small hand, trying to hold her chin up and seem a bit more proud and comfortable that she actually was.

A bunny caught her eye, hopping about happily, and it took every part of Talia's being to not squeal and obsess over it. Was it even socially acceptable to go running after a bunny in the middle of a conversation? Maybe not, Tal figured. There was time for bunny chasing another day, anyways.

"So, any reason in particular that you're at the lake today, too? Not that you need one, of course, it's just that if there is..." Talia trailed off, realizing that she was rambling on awkwardly, and put on an embarrassed smile.

Small, his brain noted, then automatically corrected itself. Smol. Surely, she had to be a first year, even if she reminded him more of a seven-year-old than an eleven-year-old. He wondered what a girl like her was doing outside when really, she should've been swaddled in a fluffy blanket and kept away from this big, dangerous world. Of course, he scolded and chided himself for thinking of someone else in such a manner, but the sentiment still remained. She just seemed too... good for this world.

Oh, how he envied her. How he envied her naiveté, her soft smile and slim fingers, the way she laughed easily and smiled with both her eyes and lips. He envied how she was allowed to trip over her words, to slur them together, how she allowed herself to be easily distracted. All of these things, he wasn't allowed to do. His parents disapproved, his ancestors disapproved, he disapproved.

Huangs were meant to be proper, to be proud. Perfect posture, perfect articulation, perfect dialect and word choice, and all these things that normal children had never had to experience. Celestine, perfect Celestine, had taken it all in stride, of course, but maybe Elijah had cracked a little bit under the stress of it all, the pressures placed upon his slight frame and downturned mouth.

Her question caught him off-guard, and he hesitated, searching for what to say next. "Spider," he found himself blurting out, his pre-prepared excuse sounding foreign and fake even as it left his mouth. "I wanted to, uh, sketch... but there was a spider in my dorm room." Biting the inside of his left cheek, he glanced down at the ground, as if he were embarrassed. The lack of colour on his cheeks, however, gave away the fact that he felt totally calm. "So I came outside instead."

Damn. What if she asked to see his sketches? What then? He wasn't any good, not at all, relying more on his notes about the particular subject in order to make a model out of them than the sketch itself. They were merely messy lines across paper, with arrows pointing to different things of varying importance and covered in his meticulously neat handwriting, a perfect print that looked like something a computer would print out, not what a human hand would write.

"What did you come outside for? Surely not the weather?" he said, trying for a joke, waving his arm vaguely to the sky above them. Truly, it was a bit of a gloomy day, the sky taking on a bit of a greyish hue and the wind bustling about busily. It was as if the world was fuming- truly, it wasn't pleasant weather in the slightest. Really, that did make him begin to wonder- what on earth was she doing outside in this weather? It looked like it was about to start pouring at any moment, like the sky would crack open like an egg and unleash all of its fury on the students in the castle below it. The mere thought of it made the corner of his lip turn down, although he tried to prevent the scowl from taking over his face completely.

Talia was just glad that she hadn't scared Elijah away with her intense uncomfortable ranting. The girl liked to think of herself of slightly intimidating, though anyone would know that being intimidating was definitely not her forte. It was quite like when a miniature, delicate puppy seemed to think it was bigger than it really was. But without losing the grace and sweetness of the little dog.

And like a dog, Tal had mixed feelings about bugs. They were kind of cute, she was curious about them, but at the same time unsure of whether it was about to bite her face off. Talia quite liked her face the way it was, thank you very much.

So when she heard about the spider, being too fast to trust and believing everything, she immediately offered her empathy- in the form of more spaced-out rambling. "Spiders are interesting creatures, aren't they? I think they're misunderstood, and I'd like to talk to one someday, but I feel so scared around them. Poor things. But I get where you're coming from, I can imagine an eight-legged friend might not be the best company when you're trying to draw..."

She fidgeted with a twig as her eyes darted around to follow a butterfly. One of the bright yellow ones that fluttered peacefully through the wind, as if it were effortless to resist a force so much stronger. Nature really was beautiful and inspiring and encouraging if you knew where to look.

"Well, I came outside because it looks like it's going to rain. Probably sounds weird, I know, but there's just something about rain. How in the gloom, there's some sort of beauty that shines through, like the sun through the grey clouds! You can dance and sing around as the world does its thing, and when it's over it's light again and there's a rainbow!"

Who even was this girl? He was, in short, completely and utterly baffled by her existence and its entirety. What was her purpose on Earth? She was just so free from all of the restraints he didn't even realize he was under, free from the sticks and straws he carried on his back. Well, maybe he was exaggerating it a little bit for dramatic effect, but the nostalgia of it remained, all the same. It was unfair that she get to be so... so her, while he had to be so him. 

Was he not unique in his circumstance, his nature, his stature? Certainly, there were other purebloods at this school, and there certainly had to be people facing the same struggles and conditions as him, especially when it was concerning pressure from his parents and the massive shoes his sister had left behind for him to fill. But he prayed that no one else was as silver-tongued or as prevaricative as he, especially as a first year. He didn't carry a burden, necessarily, but his life was not as carefree as it should've been. Eleven, and already a mythomaniac to the extreme, and a sesquipedalian to boot. Maybe he was secretly a sociopath?

Or maybe that was a question that was better left to the unknown.

Everything the Hufflepuff (yes, a Hufflepuff, she couldn't possibly have been any other house, could she?) in front of him did both bemused and amused him, a difference that not many were careful enough to recognize. He could only stand there with an unfortunately, idiotically dumbfounded look on his face as she spoke of wanting to talk to spiders. It wasn't that he disliked those in the Araneae family, but he certainly wouldn't want to have a conversation with them, by any means. Pursing his lips, he stared at Talia with open confusion, not even bothering to mask his strangely disgusted interest.

Then again, that begged the question- would he talk to a spider, should he be offered the opportunity? Maybe he would- if anything, it would offer a unique viewpoint on a world he thought he had all figured out.  He couldn't lie, he did sometimes, occasionally hold himself in a higher light than others because of his rather prominent and obvious intellect, but that certainly didn't mean that he knew everything. If a spider could talk, that meant that they could think, and if they could think... well, who knew what wondrous thoughts another species might think?

He nodded twice, however, at her sympathies in his attempt to draw, acknowledging her acknowledgment. That statement was one he could agree with, for certain. He wasn't very good at focusing on multiple things at once, and trying to avoid a spider while sketching wasn't an optimal situation for him to be in. Tugging slightly on the cuffs of his blazer underneath his overcoat and school sweater, he began to wish sorely for a pair of gloves. It was colder than he had originally anticipated, and he wished that he had had the hindsight to have brought even the thinnest pair of gloves to ward off the chill lingering in the air.

Her reasoning to being outside bewildered him once more. What kind of logic was that? Rain was detestable, in his opinion- or, at the very least, best enjoyed from inside, curled up in an armchair directly in front of a roaring fireplace. Going outside while it was raining wasn't something Elijah would ever do without an umbrella, but it seemed that he had underestimated the weather once more. The dark, overcast clouds that he had thought would've blown over by now seemed firmly anchored right above Hogwarts, intent on waiting until enough water vapor had collected before unleashing its fury and hell on the students below.

Her logic, however odd, offered up a new opinion on the situation. Perhaps there was something valid in looking on the bright side of things, of peering through the murkiness to set sights on the pot of gold on the other side. Rainbows were a somewhat rare occasion for Elijah, although he wouldn't necessarily go outside in the pouring rain just to see one. Trek up to the clock tower or the owlery, sure, but certainly not outside. 

"I..." What could one say to that? The Slytherin was at a loss for words, wracking his brains desperately for something to say- something in the perfect middle, where it wasn't too fancy but not too simple, either. He still had people to impress, after all. "Rainbows?" After all of that, it was the best he could come up with. How pathetic. "You're braving the rain, the pouring rain, to potentially catch a glimpse of a rainbow...?" Well, at least it properly captured his inner turmoil and frenzied thoughts. Shaking his head, Elijah looked rather confused.

"I don't get it. Why wouldn't you just see it... from the owlery... inside?"

Talia has many philosophies about nature. Some were a bit mental, about princesses and plants that could hold a conversation. Maybe even dogs with thumbs! But others, though the full effect and meaning of the metaphors sometimes weren’t quite understood by Tal’s young mind, had a deep underlying feel to them, as if they were more than just funny little thoughts that bounced around energetically in her head. Maybe they were!

“There’s definitely nothing wrong with watching and admiring rain from afar. But I think that there’s something inspiring and meaningful in actually being in the weather, experiencing it and enduring it personally. Some things are better to just feel!” She said happily. Observing the sky overhead, which was getting a deeper and deeper shade of grey every second, she turned back to Elijah, her big perceptive brown eyes noticing the subtle behavior that he showed. Talia was definitely no body language expert, but he seemed cold.

The girl did the first thing she could think of. She slid off her mittens, which were a few sizes too big, and handed them to him softly. Then she took her scarf off of her neck and wrapped her own hands in that. Sharing was good, and there was enough warmth to share! Adjusting her oversized, lopsided knit tuque, which was so big it fell over her eyes every few seconds, she smiled at the boy. Friends!

“And when you’ve braved the rain, and you see the rainbow, there’s a whole great big feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction. ‘Cause you know that you did it, that you made it through the rain, and you get to admire the rainbow as more than just a pretty thing in the sky, but also as the fact that things get better!”

What was she even talking about? Elijah was just getting more and more confused by the second. How on earth could someone adopt a mindset like this? Maybe Rosie, Rosie was great, so sweet and innocent... But no, he shouldn't be comparing people, that was one of the first rules of being a semi-decent person. Was he a semi-decent person? Probably not, but at least he was trying to improve his rather horrible personality. Emotion only clouded everyone's thoughts, rather than relying on pure and beautiful logic to carry them through any awful situations that they might need to problem-solve through. Emotions and feelings were incredibly complicated and generally made no sense to him, especially with these weirdly innocent vibes that people like Talia and Rosie had.

As Talia began to tug her mittens off her hands, Elijah was about to question why on earth she would do that, when he realized it was because of him. She was willingly sharing with him. What even was this? Staring at her, wide-eyed, at this exchange that somehow managed to be completed in complete silence, he accepted the mittens wordlessly, offering Talia what must have been his first smile during this entire conversation, if not his first facial expression besides confusion. He slowly slid his hands into the vessels of warmth, watching as Talia used her scarf as an alternative to mittens instead. Everything on her seemed too big, engulfing her in an aura of homeliness and comfort. He supposed that it must have been a Hufflepuff thing, always being shrouded in comfort. 

"Thanks," he said quietly, not quite sure what else he could possibly say. What did you say to someone who shed their mittens and handed them over to you, just because you looked a little bit chilly? Perhaps normal people would hug them in response, but Elijah was most definitely not a hugger. If it had been his sister, he might've hugged her, but he didn't do hugs. Hugs were for good people, and he was not a good person, if he was even human in the first place. All thoughts of trying to manipulate his way out of this conversation had been firmly banished from his mind, as he now felt obligated to at least entertain this girl's strange ideas and notions after she had done such a kind act for him.

He let her words flow over him, trying to understand the sermon she was preaching. So she must have been an optimist, to think like this. Always looking on the bright side of things- glass half full, and so on and so forth. If it had been him, he would've just been miserable, discouraged by being soaked by the rain and then feeling as if the rainbow would've been taunting him. Of course, he didn't voice any of this, choosing to just nod along, placing a thoughtful expression on his face and tilting his head just the right amount to make it look as if he were seriously considering the idea. 

It had begun to sprinkle, fat little droplets of water flying downwards and dotting their skin, his normally spiky hair flattening out from all of the moisture in the air. Turning his mitten-clad palms upward, feeling the wetness through the material, his mouth quirked as he glanced up at the sky with an amused expression on his face. "Did you happen to bring an umbrella, at least?" he quipped, glancing at Talia. Certainly, she would know. After all, she seemed to be an expert on the subject of how to properly enjoy oneself outside in the rain. She somehow knew how to find a moral to being outside, when he much rather have been enjoying the smell of the rain seeping underground from the common room.

"Or must you suffer through this... rain bare-headed in order to truly enjoy the experience?" Was it a hazing ritual of some sort, then? Once you went down the rollercoaster of being outside in a storm, you'd happily get back in line again to experience the dopamine thrill and adrenaline rush it gave you? He supposed it might've been an adrenaline-junkie sort of thing, although Talia didn't seem much like someone who enjoyed seeking out danger in her free time.