This is the beginning of Aly's Cast the Bronze storyline. You can find other portions here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

A little ink between my shoulder and my jaw...

Summer had just begun, and Aly Salinger had already escaped the confines of her family home in Welwyn Garden City, fleeing to the ever-present comfort of a friend. Because Peri was quite reserved when it came to talking about his family, Aly knew very little about how the white-haired, one-eyed boy had grown up. She knew that at one point he had feared his father to the point of almost demonising him, though she was unsure if that was yet still true; they had discussed his father's shipping business, and former past as an Auror prior to some injury, a year and a half afterwards, and Peri had seemed to be on... somewhat better, if shaky, terms with his da during that conversation. Otherwise, the two equally parentally-traumatised Ravenclaws had avoided conversing too much on the topic of their home lives, but the eagerness with which they had both fled to Eve's place the previous summer did little to assuage Aly's worries that Peri had grown up far too much like she had herself. Still, despite it all, he had invited her to spend the night at his family's residence in Plymouth - and after literally spending just one night under the watchful eye of Hesper Livingston-Salinger after returning home from King's Cross, Aly was already all too ready to get the hell out of Welwyn.

And so the soon-to-be seventh-year Flooed off as prepared as she could be to the Dralt family homestead the morning of the 2nd of July, all steeled to draw nautical maps and undergo obstacle courses as Peri had once described to her as being his father's idea of fun. Instead of immediately meeting her good friend's parents, though, Aly was instantly swept away into Peri's plans for the day - the first of which mainly involved a somewhat illicit tour of the manor. There were the more normal portions, like the kitchen and the dining room and Peri's childhood bedroom (in which Aly took far too much pleasure in pointing out and cooing over all of the things that were distinct remnants of a young Pericles she had never truly known), and then the parts that bordered on transgression, like his mother's garden and potions storeroom. When she and Peri had discussed Aly potentially undergoing the Animagus transition this summer, so as to be able to hang out with the moon and sun whilst they were in their creature forms, the former had suggested that he might be able to help Aly obtain some of the more hard-to-get ingredients in Plymouth - he had gotten them for himself, after all. The mandrake frond came from the garden and the moth chrysalis from the tower in which apparently Cenedril Dralt created various brews and concoctions (and despite Aly's fretting over technically stealing from her most gracious hosts, Peri insisted that they were gifts and that his mother wouldn't miss them).

To avoid lingering further in areas in which they distinctly weren't supposed to be, Peri suggested the pair go into town; apparently, there was a quaint wizarding settlement nearby full of shoppes and stands and goods to purchase, and suddenly Aly's pocket felt quite heavy in amounts of gold. They wandered about the shoppes for a while, lightening their golden loads significantly over time, and just as Aly's hands felt like they would burst from all the various shopping bags (she really should have brought her expandable satchel) she clutched in her slender pale fingers, Peri gestured to a final shoppe across the street and explained that he had been meaning to pop in and get a tattoo from the wix who specialised in them there; would Aly do him the honour of accompanying him to this special trip?

The curly-haired Ravenclaw was never one to turn down being support for a friend, so she followed Pericles into the tattoo shoppe with wide eyes, drinking everything in from the moving designs on the walls to the wix behind the counter who greeted them in a manner that was somewhere between friendly and terrifying. (Perhaps that last part was simply because Aly had never set foot into such a place before, and her nerves were prone to get the best of her.) Still, as Peri conversed with the wix about some sort of design for his arm, the brunette's pulse quickened in her wrists and neck, thumping a syncopated rhythm that felt wholly unfamiliar and yet somehow... exciting.

Perhaps Peri was on to something.

@Pericles Dralt (godmod approved) | July 2^nd, 2025 | outfit | #C47DDB

Reducio

Their estate had been built across the channel from Plymouth, with sea to the east and woodland to the west. Its structure was antiquated, albeit sound, presided over by the Dralt lineage for centuries. The acreage featured a stable, sprawling garden, and humble apple orchard. A pair of gargoyles flanked the double door entrance. Wherever passerby went, the stone griffins turned their eyes to follow. Beyond, visitors would find architecture comprised of marble and mahogany. Countless portraits of long-gone ancestors lined the walls: sailors, surveyors, politicians, and archaic agents of the Ministry. A portly fellow in armor polished a chipped greatsword. A captain stood poised at the helm of a ship, smiling in spite of the sky churning with ominous clouds behind her. Witches and wizards brandished their wands, waltzed within depictions of this very room, prepared to delve into crumbling ruins, rode horses and hippogriffs through their neighboring pictures. The manor radiated history, though there was otherwise an odd stillness to it. With no staff, music, or outside light allowed to trickle in, it felt still as a sealed tomb.

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	Aly may not yet know it, but her arrival at the estate was something of a momentous occasion. Pericles was ecstatic to have an actual friend over; not a business partner, nor the heir of some well-to-do nobhead his father tasked him to shmooze. Isaac's affliction made playdates unlikely and sleepovers unthinkable. Now at their big age of seventeen, Pericles was determined to reclaim some freedoms for himself. He hadn't exactly told da that he meant her to stay the night, but the sun was glaring outside during their illicit tour. It would be too late to send her home by the time he woke. There was an underlying uncertainty over sharing a part of himself he hadn't before, yet this was Aly. If she wasn't afraid to play records with him in the dungeons, she wouldn't be put off by the mausoleum ambiance of his house. All the same, nonchalantly as Pear introduced her to each room, one couldn't shake the haunted quality of its halls. Some ancestral paintings took more interest in their passing than others, staring with an intensity that bordered on sentience. A resulting sense of being watched followed them wherever they went, an uneasy feeling worsened by the ever present silence, as though the manor held its breath. The source of Pericles' social offness couldn't be clearer than the environment in which he'd grown up. He led her by the hand through tunnels behind mirrors and doors disguised as shelves, moving with a sureness of step that implied the warlock spent much of his childhood within these walls. One hidden passage led from an unlit library to his bedroom, accessed by leaning against a rotating bookcase. Unlike the rest of the manor, Pericles' room was aglow with amber lamps and ample sunlight. Its theme almost emulated their dormitory, dominated by dark blues and bright brass palettes. His Starsweeper rested in metal claws mounted above a desk nook, nestled into a window outcrop overlooking a labyrinthine garden. Half dissected mechanisms revealed her friend to be an amateur tinkerer. Peeking out from between bedcurtains was a Siamese cat, Athena, who didn't trouble herself to stand yet expected attention all the same. Pericles' proudest display was the wall of approximately twenty tarantula terrariums. He introduced her to a poecilotheria metallica, called a peacock tarantula on account of its cobalt carapace, and a heteroscodra whose markings resembled an ink blot. "The best" was saved for last: a whip spider with hatchlings clustered on her back. Apart from one side of the room being an arachnophobe's ticket to a cardiac event, the mood was mellow as the bird himself. Here was a stark absence of familial portraits. The only faces looking back would be familiar to Aly, as pictures and mementos from school were wedged between the many maps, diagrams, and landscape paintings covering the walls. Photos of Aly, Eve, Dee, the Ravenclaw Duelling and Racing teams, the Hexwizard team, cutouts of Headliner articles, and posters from momentous events held places of honor. Pericles was the sort of student who spent vacations longing for Hogwarts- or more earnestly, his friends there. Having his first visitor wasn't the only cause for Pear's enthusiasm. When Aly floated the idea of an animagus ritual, he hadn't hesitated to offer advice, components, or insights gleaned from his grandmother. Their next stop was his mother's brewing tower, a formidable chamber lined with countless component shelves. He needed only to raise an arm and recite "Accio Chrysalis" for a glass jar to hurtle into his hand. Obtaining the mandrake frond meant heading down and out into the garden. Aly and Pericles passed under the shadows of statues, presumably more dead Dralts, until they came across an enchanted scarecrow. The thing was shoving weeds into its burlap mouth when Pear politely tasked it with taking them to the mandrakes. Guided by this mute gardener, they entered a humid greenhouse with creeping vines and insectoid occupants skittering underfoot. Once Aly plucked a choice leaf, their "business" was concluded, freeing them to go on a mage teen's equivalent of a shopping spree across the English channel. Many muggle cities were peppered with wix businesses, if one knew where (and how) to look. Most of these shops gathered into their own miniature neighborhood, every window tempting the two with magical artefacts, curious foods, broom care and flying accessories. Pear hadn't mentioned planning for a tattoo until the parlor came into sight. Wanting to check on the progress of his stencil, he asked if they could stop in, expecting a quick visit. They were greeted by a wix covered in glittering piercings and animated ink. The stencil depicted his patronus perfectly, a giant octopus in an illustrative style. All that was left was to set the appointment. As they explained it, the shop was at a standstill, a client had canceled, and two artists were on standby if he wanted it done then and there. Pericles looked haltingly at Aly, reluctant to make his friend wait around for the time this would take, but the temptation was clear. "You wouldn't mind, would you...?" He downgraded to a sleeveless undershirt, resisting a shudder while the artist applied the outline, and grinned as he admired it in the mirror. Its bulbous head took up his shoulder and a portion of bicep. Long black tentacles wove down his forearm and coiled around his wrist. He was warned that mundane ink ran a risk of rejection, but the arcane variety risked migration, in which the tattoo might move. Pericles was unconcerned. Once he settled into the chair and braced for the needle, the Gemini peered at Aly with a shining eye, coaxing: "You could always get one while you wait."
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| @Aly Salinger |

A little ink between my shoulder and my jaw...

Following Pericles into the shop, Aly felt her lips twist into a wry smile. "What'll you be getting, then?" she asked her white-haired friend as they stepped through the jingling door, a teasing lilt to her voice. "One of those spider blokes you've got in your room? Skittering up and down your arm for eternity?" She had kept a polite grimace on her face throughout her tour of Peri's pets, though she knew if anyone was able to see through her civility and respect as a houseguest, it would be the moon before her - other than Dee, no one knew Aly quite like this boy right here. She was... let's say not the biggest fan of creatures in general, especially those of the more-than-four-legged kind (the one exception to her distaste for animals being her fat, fluffy silver Siberian, Dauncey, who was more of a lazy blob than he was a cat). And yet she had plastered a smile on her face and tried to only flinch slightly at arachnid after arachnid.

The design the wix behind the counter showed to them, however, might have been eight-legged but was distinctly neither furry nor land-based. An octopus, instead - full of tiny details, from the ringed ridges down its arms to the underside of suction cups, each arm curling out in a different, distinctive pattern. Aly couldn't help but gasp when the design was revealed; it was something unlike what she had ever before seen, all linework and shadows. When they offered immediately to just put it on him right then and there, the Ravenclaw's eyebrows shot up. A million questions barraged through her mind: Won't it hurt? Aren't you supposed to prepare for this? Will he need anything? How can I help? The last question, however, was answered quite plainly when Peri turned to her, silvery eyes all aglow with hope and promise and worry for her own boredom. Aly waved him off, instantly sure of her decision. "Not at all. In fact, aren't you supposed to have someone with you for your first tattoo? In case you, dunno, pass out or the like?"

Peri seemed eager to get the thing on his body as soon as possible, stripping off his shirt so that the artist could press the sketch onto his arm. It really was a giant design, going all the way from his pale shoulder down to nearly his wrist, and Aly shuddered at the various needles the wix was setting up nearby. Her friend, however, seemed unconcerned, grinning at her from the chair and pointing out that there was a second artist nearby with an unfortunately empty spot on their roster. "You could always get one while you wait," he half-teased, half-coaxed, and though he mightn't have intended this, Aly heard an underlying message: This is how I am becoming me. Don't you want to be more you?

He was getting his Patronus, after all. Aly's own Patronus, an insect despite her dislike for the general category, hung soft but heavy in her mind. That was something so distinctly her - beautiful, delicate, mutable - just as the deep, secretive octopus resembled her lunar confidante. Suddenly, the idea of a tiny insect skittering across her skin for eternity didn't seem so strange anymore.

She turned to the second artist, a lively grin beginning to take residence on her face.

"Do you have any designs with, say, blue morpho butterflies?"

🦋

Some time later, she was face-up on the opposing chair, her white button-down of linen stripped off to join Peri's shirt on a table nearby, with the cropped white strappy bandeau beneath exposing skin from collarbone to fingertip. Aly had selected a variety of small designs, several tiny, fine blue morphos with wing detail and an ombré of shades, to take up residence on her collarbone (though they would likely move around and over her shoulder, if this "migration" ink thing was true), and as the artist neared her with the humming needle, Aly reached out her opposing arm to grab for Peri's hand, attempting to link her fingers through his.

You never forget your first tattoo, after all - or with whom you get it.

@Pericles Dralt | July 2^nd, 2025 | outfit | #C47DDB