Closed Something New PV | A. Morgan

Faster. Faster. Faster. Damnit!

A loud thump hit the ground making the girl groan and rub her face in irritation. Today the weather was perfect for practice, but she wasn't in the right mindset for it. For already an hour she had been training, carrying a training dummy with her, tossing it up into the air and letting the wind take it where it pleased. She tried to pinpoint the location, based on the whooshing noise of it and rescue it before it hit the ground. Half the time she barely missed it, the other half of the time she ended up colliding with the ground after loosing focus.

She'd rise to her feet standing up and dusted her Quidditch robes off. The brunette had her hair plastered to her forehead with the sweat of her efforts and dust was smudged across her cheeks and nose. Just as she was getting ready to mount her broom, training dummy, or well sack of rice thrown over her shoulder, her shoulders tensed up as she heard someone speak to her. Oh shoot had they seen her fail miserably several times? She shook her head, taking a deep breath and turned to face the voice, or to her best judgement.

"Oh uh- hi. Yeah I'm good- just y'know practicing." Annie made small talk while trying to figure out who belonged to that voice. It was familiar, not sure from where but she had heard it before. Finally she let out a sigh, not wanting to guess and potentially upset the person. Her eyebrows went from a furrowed confusion look to one that made her expression look semi-guilty. An embarrassed blush crossed her face as she reached her empty hand not holding her broom behind her head to scratch the back of her head awkwardly.

"Uhm.. who are you again?

Interaction: @Koko Riddle

The Hufflepuff didn't seem like most of the Hufflepuffs Koko knew - she seemed less self-centred and a bit more open. This could have been due to her hard work and perseverance in the air - something Koko much admired even though she hadn't seen it for long. Hard work was something people didn't tend to put in as much, especially not if they were quidditch 'naturals' like some people were.

'That's good,' she said when the other girl said she was fine. 'Practicing is, er, good.'

That was probably the dumbest thing she could have said. The other girl seemed to understand her embarrassment - showing it with a reddened face that likely matched Koko's own. It soon became clear, however, that the other girl's possible embarrassment was not due to being bad at talking, but rather due to forgetting Koko's name.

'Oh, er. That's fine. I don't really remember your name, either. I'm sorry.' Koko nearly choked on the last word. Er, I'm Koko. Slytherin Keeper.' She was tempted to hold out her hand but she decided against it - a handshake would likely only make this more awkward.

Koko gazed at the girl in front of her. Something was different - she wasn't necessarily looking at Koko but rather through her. She didn't say anything, but it was definitely unnerving. However, it was a little nice to not have someone making intense eye contact with her.

Koko had never met someone in the air, she realised, and she decided it was probably the best place to meet new people. It was interesting, and Koko had the feeling that she couldn't make an enemy here since either of them might very well fall to their deaths if they were pushed from a height.

It was a morbid thought, and as the wind whistled around her, it faded from her mind, leaving her with only her surroundings and the girl in front of her.

@Annie Morgan

A comfortable silence filled them for a second, making Annie's heart pound lightly wondering if the girl was thinking or even observing her. Grabbing the sleeve of her robe in her palm she'd begin to fidget. Upon a few more moments of silence the girl spoke, alas it was a bit of an awkward statement it made a small bubble of laughter escape her. Soon followed introductions, the girl introducing herself as Koko and her place on the Quidditch team, a Keeper. She in turn introduced herself. "Ah right sorry, my name's Annie and I'm a Keeper too." The brunette grinned lightly at one thing they already had in common.

"When else am I supposed to practice being a second-string I'm not high priority unless it's against your team y'know. You always seems to crush us, tell us your secrets!" Annie's nose wrinkled in protest as she held a small grin on her lips but it quickly fell to a bashful smile as Koko's movement shifted. It seemed the girl was either un-nerved by this encounter or nervous just like she was. Why was she to be nervous? It was just a normal meeting by chance that two Quidditch Players were on the field, but meeting elsewhere would've been a bit odd or perhaps a coincidence.

Annie focused on the girl as she spoke only a few snippets. Her voice and name were familiar but she couldn't quite match her face. Suddenly a lightbulb went off in her head. "Are you a Prefect?" Her voice came out smaller and higher pitched due to her curiosity. She scolded herself for being nosy but then again how else would she connect the dots. Talking to a person even if she knew them by name was hard. She wanted to see her. Alas asking what a person looks like who is standing in front of you is kind of dumb except in Annie's scenario but she didn't want to make things any more awkward.

Her brows narrowed in confusion before she mentally threw her hands up in the air. Ah what the hell. She moved her feet forward, confident of the direction of the girl now that she heard her voice. Her finger tips floated upwards until she felt a smooth and surprisingly cold surface against her own hand that radiated constant warmth. Had it been the cheek or chin, she wasn't sure but she rested her fingertips lightly there.

"Koko I believe the eyes are the windows to the soul, you have heard that saying before no? Well your soul intrigues me and I do believe it wasn't a coincidence we met here, please tell me what color your eyes are." Her voice came out in a breathy whisper, fingertips still resting on her cool skin, their temperatures opposite yet complimenting each other.

@Koko Riddle

Koko kept listening for the other girl's voice, internally cursing the wind for being so noisy. She wished she could squint her ears to fine-tune audio, but she didn't quite think that was possible as she listened to Annie's introduction. 'Annie the Keeper! That sounds familiar.'

Immediately after talking, Koko realised she had probably said the wrong thing (had she? She really didn't talk to people enough) and she drummed her fingers along the shaft of her broom as she searched for something to say to make it better if she had indeed screwed up.

Luckily for her, Annie came to the rescue by talking about Quidditch.

Koko kept her gaze on the other girl, who was smiling, so clearly everything was going fine, right? Why was she so nervous?

She laughed in response to Annie's words, words that seemed to fly through the air just like they were doing, and she felt herself relax even if only minutely. 'I heard that the corridors are a lovely place to practise... Joking, joking... But I wouldn't be surprised if it happened.' She paused and thought about the Slytherins' 'secrets'. They didn't really have any. If she was honest, she thought the other Houses were better at Quidditch this year than the Slytherins, anyway. Especially the Ravenclaws, who Koko was harbouring a bitter grudge against at the moment. 'Well... As for secrets, our captain, Dan, wears no shoes. I don't know if that actually helps. I wear shoes and I do okay, I think.' She was a very good saver, so she considered that more than okay, actually, but she wouldn't say that yet. Quidditch was one of the few things Koko was confident about, but she didn't want to seem arrogant.

Koko nodded in response to Annie's question, but then remembered that maybe verbal words were better, so she said (totally smartly), 'Er, yes, I am, actually!'

Koko sighed, internally acknowledging that she was still very much terrible at speaking. She adjusted her posture so that she was seated on her broom side-saddle, with her feet barely brushing the ground. The grass beneath her feet was a nice colour, she decided. A springlike green that was somehow very welcoming but not too warm.

Koko was so fixated on the greenness of the grass beneath her that she didn't notice Annie was coming her way. Only when the other girl's warm fingers touched the side of her face did she notice that, indeed, Annie was now even closer. Koko's eyes widened at the sudden contact, but she didn't make a noise, instead opting to hear what Annie had to say since her lips were moving.

'I've heard the saying,' Koko said quietly. She felt her cheeks rise in temperature, a vast contrast to the rest of her face, when Annie said her soul was intriguing. Koko was not entirely sure what Annie meant by that, but it sounded very nice, and if she was honest, it was the sort of thing that made her want to smile. People didn't often find her interesting. 'I think your soul is rather intriguing as well.'

She did a momentary double take when asked for her eye colour. At first, she actually forgot, which was quite stupid since she saw her face in the mirror every single day. After what she hoped wasn't a very long time, she stammered, 'My eyes? Er, I think they're called amber, but they... Hm. They look more like a brownish colour to me.'

Now that she thought about it, she really didn't understand the layers of eye colours. Her eyes weren't bright gold like some people's, but they weren't a dark brown, either. When she looked at Annie's eyes, she noticed that although from a distance they had seemed to be only blue, they looked more like twin opals, as if white was mixing in with their pale blues.

'I like your eyes,' Koko murmured, at first unaware that she had said anything aloud. When she noticed that her lips had moved, though, she didn't apologise. What she had said was true. 'That shade of blue is very unique. Very pretty.' For a moment, Koko wished her own eyes were like that, but she supposed the world would be a boring place if everyone had the same eye colour - and that would make Annie's eyes much less unique, which Koko didn't want.

She hadn't moved much, save for breathing and uttering the occasional word, since Annie had placed her hand on her cheek, and while Koko was still aware of the noticeable difference in temperature, she couldn't help but think that the gap had diminished quite a bit. Either Koko's cheeks had warmed
- which she was rather aware of - or Annie's hand had cooled down, or perhaps both. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, Koko found, which was surprising as she didn't usually like the heat. Rather, it was almost comforting, similar to the warmth of a blanket.

@Annie Morgan

Reducio

OOC: I am very, very sorry this is so late