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The Art of Conversation, 3rd period

Jon looked at his (thankfully small) class and sighed. "Hello. I...well, I've given up on asking the moose for specific courses at this point. So. I'm Jonathan Sims, and welcome to The Art of Conversation, apparently. The first week of classes is traditionally for introductions, which seems like as good a start of conversation as any. If you're going to talk with someone, you should know who they are and vice versa."

He took a deep breath and stood a little straighter. "As I said, I'm Jonathan Sims. I come from England - Bournemouth originally and London more recently - and roughly this year. And I am here because I'm meant to be instructing you. Now you." He nodded to them.

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"I can confirm it's safe for witches," Adrian said, giving Luma a smile. "Being one and all. And, for the most part, people have been nothing but welcoming and kind. Even if Yelena hates my hat." He smiled. "I have never met a werewolf before, at least to the best of my knowledge, so a pleasure to meet you, Luma."

Luma's lingering glance up toward Adrian's hat seemed to suggest that she might be siding with this Yelena, whoever that was, about it. But when she looked back at the face beneath the hat, she smiled back. Still without teeth, despite having been honest about it, more out of habit than anything else.

"I don't know," she said, "if that's how most people would describe their first encounter with a werewolf, but there's usually a lot more running involved."

But some of the humor and the confidence seemed to falter just slightly, as if she was trying to remember what she should say next.

"But it's nice to meet you, too," she said, but it felt a little untrue, because she didn't know that yet, did she? "I think. Maybe. It's probably a little too early to tell."

Him being a witch didn't mean anything, either, because so was her cousin Charlie and his mother, and they were always so stuck-up and prudish.

It was a perfectly good witch's hat!

"We'll say it's nice to meet one another, but we're still withholding opinions on whether that pleasure extends to a continued acquaintance?" Adrian suggested with a return smile. "After all, there is that running you mentioned, and I do live out in the woods."

It was just...well, a bit...archaic, wasn't it? Luma was pretty sure her grandmother hadn't even had a hat like that...

Her attention, though, seemed to perk a little at the mention of the woods. "Oh, you do?" she asked, with that same pang of worry that struck her on Saturday when she was thinking about hunting. "The ones on the west side of the island? They're far less wild than the ones to the north, I've noticed."

And to brush off her interest and concern, she added, blithely, "I'm sharing a room with my sister in the dormitory. I'm not used to sharing a room, but it'll be nice to get to spend so much time with her."

"The west side," he agreed with a nod. "The woods in the north have very old, very potent magic that I did not think was in my best interest to disturb. A beautiful forest to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

Boston hopped up in Adrian's lap, eyeing Luma closely. "Your sister? Not one of Miss Bennett's sisters, surely."

A cat could hope. And pine.

Edited 2025-05-12 21:15 (UTC)

"...good," said Luma, after a moment of looking at Adrian thoughtfully, head tilted slightly, before Boston joined them and snatched all of her attention immediately.

Because you'd think a werewolf might not think twice about it, but a talking cat was still quite removed from her wheelhouse of experience.

Imagine. Being a cat instead of a wolf. Definitely couldn't be her!

"No," she said. "Miss Zarrin's. My sister's name is Eleanor. But I have met Miss Bennet. I think? That's Lydia, isn't it? Oh, I like her, too. She's so nice. And proper. And I guess I can't blame you for thinking I might be one of hers when she's got so many!"

And then she had to ask, "How do you do that? Talk? While a cat? Is it magic? I can't talk when I'm a wolf. None of us can. Well, not human language, anyway. I understand the other wolves perfectly fine."

Edited 2025-05-12 21:30 (UTC)

For perhaps the first time, Eleanor's name was mentioned and the response was simply a polite look. If Adrian had interacted with Eleanor, he didn't really remember it enough for the name to ring a bell.

Boston looked at Luma, vaguely affronted. "I simply talk," he said. "I am a witch's familiar, talking is a requirement in assisting my witch properly."

"By which he means, yes, it is a kind of magic," Adrian said. "But not a spell or anything. Magic was used in the adaptation of previous generations of familiars and it's bred true."

"Oh." Luma's brow furrowed for a moment in confusion. "We don't have familiars, in my family."

Granted, half the family was wolves half the time and Persephone's magic rarely was actual magic. And one could argue Arthur was a familiar of sorts, but Luma hadn't known enough about him to realize that.

"I guess we just don't need the assistance."

It was, genuinely, not said to be insulting or disparaging, though it did likely come off that way. It just seemed like as good an explanation as anything.

Adrian just smiled. He was too easygoing to get riled up, though Boston's tail puffed a bit. "Perhaps not," he said. "If there's one thing I've noticed, it's that different people have different magical disciplines. Our familiars serve multiple important functions - but they're functions your family may never have dealt with."

"Like what?" Luma asked, chin lifting, not realizing just how much her curiosity just sounded like challenging.

There was a reason she was in this class specifically, after all.

"Well, I have yet to run into anyone else on the island who planted their heart in the ground," Adrian said, his eyebrow arching just slightly.

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The Art of Conversation, 3rd period

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