Closed 'Can you believe?!' PV Keiran Kith

Rays of sunlight poked through the translucent frosted windows overhead in the library, splaying across the space in such a way that even the dust that wafted idly through the air glinted gold. The librarian ran a tight ship, it seemed, you could hear a pin drop in the comfortable silence. It was particularly pleasant during golden hour, as people began to filter out as the air grew dim. Keiran had been doing something productive - - really, he had; and yet the open text beside the notebook he’d been writing in was beginning to collect dust.

Without someone hounding him at every breath, the young wizard found his mind wandering, his fingers going slack around the quill he held in his hand, the nib seeping a blot of ink into the page that began to erode his half-hearted notes. Keiran had sunk into the back of his mind, a loose hand in his hair arching over where his head nestled into the crook of his elbow. Everything about the library seemed to be lulling him further and further away from the page he was blankly staring at from behind his half-lidded eyes; the words blurred into a slurry of fuzzy black lines. It was peaceful.

Until it wasn't. Until someone had come crashing into the seat next to him, abruptly waking the wizard from his stupor.

"FECK!" Something akin to dominoes, falling one after one in disastrous succession, followed the boy's cry. Keiran's long legs jerked, tangling under the table, his knees hitting the bottom. "-fEcK- -" Somehow, he'd stubbed his toe in the process, the pain from which reflexively sending the arm he'd been burrowed into flailing, knocking the ink pot beside his hand onto his page. "....feck. feck. Feck. ffff-" Once he'd realised his fretting did nothing to mop up the growing black void that'd gnawed through his work, he'd stopped dabbing his sleeves against the mess, stupidly pressing his palms against his face instead, and groaned. "....eekkkkkkkkk........."

"Nothin' anymore. clearly."

@Novalie Moon

Novalie watched as the events unfolded before her widened eyes - one mishap after another.

Though it all happened in just barely a few seconds, it felt like she had witnessed an entire comedy show! But instead of apologizing afterwards, which she probably should have since she had barged into his personal space out of nowhere , Novalie burst out laughing,
"Hahaha! Oh my god, you-"

The redhead quickly quieted down when she noticed a few disapproving glances aimed in her direction.
Ah yes - this was the library, after all. A place dedicated to silence.

Stifling her laughter, Novalie whispered through a few lingering giggles,
"What are you doing? Seriously, your face..."

For a moment, she considered explaining what she meant, but then decided it would be faster to just handle it herself before he probably got more ink smeared around his skin. She pulled a clean Ravenclaw-napkin from her robe and reached her hand out in an attempt to gently wipe the black mess from his face.

"You're clumsy! Here, let me help you."

In Novalie's mind, the boy would absolutely let her help him, of course.
Social norms - like not invading someone's private space or not just casually touching their face without even knowing their name - weren’t exactly her strengths.
But! Her intentions were good!

Wide eyes bore holes into Keiran’s crumpled form as he seethed at the way the sound of his earlier agony echoed and bounced throughout the ever-shrinking confines of the school’s library. Ink, thick and intrusive, clung to the pores of his skin, smearing across the bridge of his nose with no attempt from the boy to remediate the effects as his stained palms came to clasp together, set delicately back down on the table.

At that point, it did not matter to him that he’d also somehow smeared more black across the space by doing so. Keiran seemed incredibly intent on acting like nothing had just happened; he wasn’t being laughed at by someone he’d never met, and the very pointed additional tittering that surrounded him had never started to begin with, allowing his jaw to unclench as it dissipated slowly.

This meant that the young wizard was perfectly still - - In his brief, transitional moments of juxtapositional, simultaneously guarded defencelessness, he felt every muscle wind and twist to a coil as fabric ghosted over his skin.

Kith’s eyes did not meet Novalie’s as the girl dabbed the clumsiness off his strained features, heat rising to his cheeks as he wondered why such an unassuming, unostentatious action accosted him so greatly. Perhaps it was because it accompanied her clamorous chuckles that did everything to undo his endeavours to conciliate the conundrum he’d caused.

Simply put, Keiran wanted to drop dead right there and then.

“‘And yer-“ Seeing as that wasn’t a viable option, he found himself matching the duress of his acquaintance, refuting the gesture with a temperate push of her hand. “Audacious. I - can help m’self -“

Amongst some other choice words that he mumbled under his breath, Kei closed his still very wet notebook. Then, for the nth time that afternoon, he sighed at his ineptitude at just- being.

“Did yous need someth’n, lass?”

@Novalie Moon

Novalie had barely time to wipe any ink from his face before the student firmly pushed her hand away, declaring he could handle it himself.
And to Novalie, it did not matter, naturally. So, with the same smile on her face, she shrugged her shoulders, tucked the napkin into her robe, and turned her focus back to that last word he had used: 'Lass'.
The girl had never heard that term before. Yeah, about that - the way he spoke struck her as peculiar - something about it reminded her of the elderly neighbors back home, mixed with the pirate talk she’d seen on TV. Quite amusing.
Deciding it must be a fun nickname he’d come up with for her, Novalie thought she should probably do her best in finding something to call him, too

Her smile widened as he asked if there was anything she needed.
“Actually, that's such a nice thing for you to ask, especially since you seem like the one who could use some help!”, the redhead replied earnestly, “I bet you're probably a really selfless person, aren’t you? I admire people like you!”
This was soon followed by a light chuckle from her, and without any hesitation, the floodgates of her chatter opened wide,
“So - I was genuinely trying to study and all, right? But then I saw you, a sad little student stuck in this otherworldly realm of boredom called the library. And I thought like, ‘Wow, he must either be as desperate as I am, or he just isn't fond of the sun’. I guess it could be both. I mean, why else would anyone spend their time here when the sun is shining bright and welcoming outside?”
Her gaze drifted toward one of the large, dusty windows wisfully. It seemed Novalie might lose herself in the mere thought of being outside, but then her head snapped back toward him, her eyes alight with a new idea.

Leaning closer - invading his personal space yet again - she declared,
“You know what? We should totally continue outside! I’ll study Metamorphmagi stuff and you can work on your little boyband thing. We’ll be, like, study partners, okay?”
There was nothing Novalie expected more than him jumping to this brilliant idea and agreeing with her. The Ravenclaw sprang to her feet and slammed her hands on the table,
“Yes! That’s the motivation I needed! Let’s go... uh...”
She hesitated while her mind caught up with the idea of a nickname. For a second Novalie dazzled her eye, lost in thought-but then it came to her:
“Cruella.”

Acquiring the sense for managing interactions whereby the recipient was not receiving the message that Keiran had previously been under the impression he knew how to send without being blunt was still something he left to be desired. There was nothing to be - admired - about Keiran right there and then, staring wearily at the ball of blazing sunshine that was his new-fangled acquaintance’s unadulterated, enthusiastic demeanour as it committed the rather passionate crime of unintentional misinterpretation in the ink-blotted face of his reluctant replies.

A strange twang of irony turned into guilt that eroded Keiran’s glare, softened the frustration that rasped in his throat and rounded the sharpness of his tongue. To bite back then, perhaps, would have felt like the verbal equivalent of kicking a kitten that didn’t know better than to scratch and nip at the ankles of its peers. “Thank -ye??” He said instead, trying his best to sound sincere. “I ain’t sad. I’m feckin’ tired, tryin’ te focus, an’ failin'.”

“My lit’le boyband ting ?" His jaded gaze fell to the disaster sealed in solvent and carbon shut between his hands, whatever he'd written prior likely obscured beyond legibility. "-ah."

There wasn't enough time to mourn his loss, however, between acknowledging the young girl's suggestion - "Er? Aye? Sure-" and processing her antics.

You could see Keiran's cringe form slowly, surely, skin folding between his brows in tandem with the increasing frequency of the ample waves humilation that rose to his cheeks in the form of red heat - "........Cruela?!"

@Novalie Moon | ACTION: Keiran is confused at Novalie's extreme friendliness and feels bad for being so bitter, explains that he's just tired and trying to focus and tries to understand what she means by 'boyband thing'. He agrees to go out and study with her but cringes at her new nickname for him.