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Between bugs

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  ❛Once, there was only dark if you ask me, the light's winning❜
  Date: 01/09/26| Words: 515| Dialogue: #627cbd| Look: Ω
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The first day of school always had something unbearable about it. Not because Bryndis hated Durmstrang. In fact, she found school much more bearable when the corridors were bustling with students and teachers again than when they remained too quiet during the holidays. What she couldn't stand was the noise that accompanied every start of the term: doors opening and closing, hurried footsteps, conversations overlapping each other, and groups of students who seemed to have an urgent need to tell the whole world what they had done over the summer. And to be honest, after summer camp, she needed a good bit of silence.

Bry preferred other things. That's why, while the rest of the students headed to their first classes, she had found a spot away from the main paths, near an area of vegetation that still held the morning's dampness. It wasn't exactly a garden. Nor was it a forest. It was one of those corners that seemed to have been forgotten by those who designed the spaces intended for students, and which, precisely for that reason, were all the more interesting.

Bry She sat on a flat stone with a notebook resting on her knees. She was drawing; on one of the pages, she had painstakingly sketched the body of a small beetle she had found among the roots of a tree. She had drawn the general shape first, then the legs, the antennae, and finally some small markings on the exoskeleton that she wasn't sure she had seen correctly.

She wasn't in a hurry. Insects didn't care about school schedules, and Bry found some comfort in that. She leaned closer to observe the creature resting on a leaf. The beetle remained motionless for a few seconds before continuing on its way. She followed its movement with her eyes, jotting something down in the margin. She wasn't sure what she hoped to find. Sometimes she simply recorded things: the behavior of a species, a feature she hadn't noticed before, a variation in color, or even completely useless details that she would probably never need for an exam. She liked to know.

Not necessarily to show that she knew. That was an important difference. The world was full of people who spoke only to show that they had something to say. Bry had discovered that observing was far more productive. That's why she didn't immediately look up when she heard footsteps approaching and receding around her.
The sounds at school were always irregular. Someone walked by with little intention of being quiet. Others had light steps that weren't audible until they brushed past a leaf or twig. That's why she continued drawing, because people just kept walking.

Classes would start soon, but she didn't seem particularly worried about it. She still had a few minutes, and the beetle was still there, as if it had involuntarily agreed to become her model. She looked back at her sketchbook, ran the tip of her pencil along one of the lines of the drawing, and corrected the curve of the shell. The beetle moved across the page, making her tilt her head before she carefully moved it with her pencil.
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│sta 5 ‡ eva 7 ‡ str 5 ‡ wis 10 ‡ arc 8 ‡ acc 5│
@Kullervo Ikonen
Stelle Mims - Huffelpuf
But let me be unseen───⊹
Bryndís Sigurðardóttir- Durmstrang

Between bugs
Image posted by the member
ebfheOOC Notes: I swear I'm not mean, that's just Kullervo
Mentions: @Bryndís Sigurðardóttir
WC: 566
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Kullervo's first day at Durmstrang since his foundation year had already managed to irritate him beyond all reason.

It all begun with a fated letter he received that morning. It bore the Ikonen seal, adorned in his mother's pristine handwriting. It was early in the year for mail, so he was hoping for a letter of upmost importance detailing how he could come home, study at the estate, and never have to deal with all the insolent curs in this doghouse of a school again.

Instead, it was yet another list. Accounts, correspondence, family matters. Things that already required his attention right this instant. His father had been dead for three weeks and the world had already decided that Kullervo had ought to know about everything that Eero Ikonen left behind. He simply neatly folded up the letter and put it away without replying, with no intention to ever reply.

Then there'd been those insolent curs that earlier irked him. Condolences. Always condolences. And if not condolences, then sneers. All delivered with obligation masquerading as sincerity, expecting him to lament on about a suitably tragic story, then acting offended when he refused to respond politely because it's such a surprise when someone doesn't want to monetise their grief. It only made him bury it further within the hollow.

By the time breakfast had finished, Kullervo abandoned his patience along with any respect for courtesy he had left. He took the longer route to his first class, partly to avoid crowds as the corridors were already becoming unbearable, and partly to avoid arriving early enough that anyone had any reason to speak to him and start up any mind-numbingly meaningless small talk.

Then, near one of the quieter stretches of green, he noticed something situated amongst the vegetation. Someone. A girl, seemingly unbothered by the passage of time. She was completely alone, safe for the notebook balanced across her knees as she drew. And a beetle. Kullervo stopped and, for several seconds, he simply stared. Then, a scowl formed. Out of all the things that happened this morning, this infinitesimal thing was the one that offended him and, unfortunately for this girl, his words were the sharpest weapon in his arsenal and they knew no bounds. He scoffed.

"You cannot be serious." Kullervo spoke at last, his voice cutting cleanly through the silence. He stepped closer without permission and cast his critical judgement upon the sketch. "You have spent the beginning of your school year sitting in the filthy dirt drawing a filthy insect?" He scoffed once more. "And here I thought the calibre of Durmstrang's student populous had improved over the summer."

Kullervo shook his head, let his words sit, and stepped away as though the girl's drawing had revolted him. Because it had. In his very objective artistic opinion, the beetle she'd drawn was ugly and granular, something he could have outdone during his toddler years. And that was being generous. He folded his arms.

"Classes begin shortly, in case you've not noticed. Though, I suppose there are worse ways to waste one's morning than making an artistic record of something that will be crushed under a shoe before the week is over." His gaze returned to the drawing, casting his scorn upon the linework. "Seriously, what is the point? Especially when your art is subpar, at best. If one could even call it art."
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Between bugs
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╭──────────────────────── † ────────────────────────╮
  ❛Once, there was only dark if you ask me, the light's winning❜
  Date: 01/09/26| Words: 617| Dialogue: #627cbd| Look: Ω
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
She didn’t look up immediately. She had learned long ago that people tended to say more when they thought no one was paying attention to them. That was why she kept her pencil hovering over the paper for a few seconds, watching someone’s shadow stretch across the notebook before deciding to look up.
The beetle, meanwhile, remained exactly where it was. It was far more interesting than the voice that had just interrupted her. She hated meddlesome people; she loathed them. Why did it matter to him, anyway? Surely no one told him how to spend his morning.

Bryndís let her gaze travel over the young man who had stopped in front of her. She didn’t recognize him. Or, if she had seen him earlier that morning, he hadn’t seemed important enough to remember. His expression was particularly unpleasant, though that wasn’t exactly new to her. There were people who seemed to consider disapproval a form of greeting. She lowered her eyes back to the drawing. It didn’t seem to share his opinion. She had spent quite a while observing that beetle: the shape of its legs, the irregular sheen of its shell, the way it moved among the damp leaves. She couldn’t understand why anyone would find it absurd to stop and record something that would likely vanish into the undergrowth just minutes later.

"I didn’t know you had to ask permission to draw here," she finally murmured. Her voice lacked the indignation he seemed to expect. Nor was there enough irony to turn the remark into a provocation. It was a simple, almost distracted observation; it didn’t even sound like she was replying to him. She went back to gazing at the beetle.

"It’s not in the filth; it’s on the moss." She paused briefly, as if she felt it necessary to clarify that point. "You look smart enough to know that, but then again—appearances can be deceiving." Bryndís added a couple of lines to the drawing, correcting the curve of one of the legs. Only then did she seem to recall the other words she had heard: mediocre, disgusting. She found those statements curious. Not because they hurt, but because the boy seemed to have voiced them with the confidence of someone expecting them to be enough to end the conversation. Bryndís had heard criticism before. She had never found a compelling reason to change her mind simply because someone else didn't share her interest.

"You don't have to like it. But if you don't, I don't understand why you've been looking at it for so long." The question came out quite naturally. This time, she looked up. Her eyes lingered on him for a few seconds, studying him with the same attentiveness she had applied to the beetle. She didn't seem angry; rather, she was trying to decide what kind of person stood before her. It was a hard habit to break. Bryndís tilted her head slightly. The drawing might be mediocre. It might be terrible. It might not even be art. None of that really mattered. She hadn't started drawing because she needed others to approve of her work. She drew because she wanted to remember what she had seen, and because some creatures were easier to understand when she could pause to observe them.

"Classes start soon," she repeated, as if verifying the information; there was no reproach in her words. She tucked her pencil into the notebook and glanced at the beetle one last time. The insect had begun to move slowly toward the shade of a leaf. Bryndís followed its movement with her eyes before reaching out to let it climb onto her hand. "Though I'm not finished yet."
Icelandic ‡English ‡ Russian ‡
Swedish ‡ Norwegian ‡Danish
Image posted by the member
│sta 5 ‡ eva 7 ‡ str 5 ‡ wis 10 ‡ arc 8 ‡ acc 5│
@Kullervo Ikonen
Stelle Mims - Huffelpuf
But let me be unseen───⊹
Bryndís Sigurðardóttir- Durmstrang
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