fandomhigh | The Art of Conversation, 3rd period

Entry tags:

speech

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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Conversationally!

Such as it is.

Introduce yourself! Who are you, where are you from, and why are you here?

If you need an aside before or after class.

I wanna nap.

Luma Zarrin

With a little more confidence now (and already prepared for whatever trap this teacher was going to throw them into like the last ones had), Luma lifted her chin and had no problem going first. Especially since, well, there weren't a lot of other people in the class, either.

"I'm Luma Zarrin," she stated, giving her hair a small toss over her shoulders. "I'm originally from Winterport, Maine, although we moved recently, and from the year 1976. And I'm here because...well, I never had a chance to go to a real school before. My sister, maybe you know her? Eleanor? Well, she started to go to school here, too, and I've come to understand that it's actually a..."

Her eyes, for a moment, darted suspiciously, cautiously, between her instructor and classmates, and she drew in a bolstering breath before continuing.

"...safe place. For people like...us. I guess we'll see if that's true."

Her nervous, wary glance now seemed to hold a sort of challenge in it, the challenge of a dog backed into a corner, a challenge that just dared any of them to prove her wrong about that now.

"I, um. Welcome, Luma. It's been my experience that Fandom is about as safe as possible. Though I am curious what you mean by 'people like us'. There are a lot of different kinds of people here."

Look, she was from the seventies. She could mean queer people or women!

There was a natural, knee-jerk hesitation in Luma, still not quite trusting the belief that this place was different from literally the entire world as she'd known it up until visiting Fandom, but she reminded herself that the whole point of this (other than being a thorn in Eleanor's side, of course) was that she could actually be comfortable in her own skin(s) around people who weren't all just strictly related to her. And so the chin went up a little higher again.

"Werewolves," she said, and she flashed Jon her biggest smile, all full of sharp, canine teeth, and maybe a small thread of the lunch she had before coming here. "Witches. Whatever it is," her hand waved dismissively in front of her, "that my sister is. That's the reason why I wasn't allowed out much, lest the villagers come calling with pitchforks and torches."

Ironic, really, that then Eleanor came home and all but threw the door open for them.

"Oh!" Jon tried not to flinch at those teeth and only mostly managed it, but then that was followed by a wistful smile as he thought of Daisy.

"Right, yes." He nodded. "It is absolutely...well, I can't say 'absolutely safe', but as safe here for you as for anyone else. I don't think we've got any other werewolves on the island, but I do know we have a few witches. And at least one vampire, if that helps at all."

He frowned. "You're likely to have more difficulty coming...good lord, fifty years into the future. I wonder if anybody has told you about phones yet."

Adrian Blackwood

"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."

"My name is Adrian Blackwood, most recently from the Blackwood Forest in Massachusetts. present day. My version of Earth seems to be very different from everybody else's, though the normal humans with Gilgamesh's scales still over their eyes likely wouldn't notice anything much different. I'm here to nurture a small Blackwood Grove as practice for starting a much bigger one out west."

"And I," Boston said, officiously, "am Boston, Adrian's familiar. Well, really, Adrian is my witch. I am here to keep an eye on him and assist him with his magic."

And if Luma's teeth briefly made him nostalgic for Daisy, Blackwood...well.

Jon would definitely be calling him Adrian.

"Hello again." Jon nodded to him. "Um. I'm not sure what you mean by Gilgamesh's scales."

There was a cat! In the class! Boston was getting a much bigger smile than Adrian or Luma. Look, cat.

"Welcome, Boston. I wonder if you'll be participating in the class or just watching."

"Oh," Luma's hand waved dismissively again, with an air of importance for being a step ahead of Jon there, "I know all about those. My sister is taking me to go get one later, after our classes."

"Good." Jon nodded. "You're a step ahead, having a sibling here. Once you have your own phone, you should be able to use it to research anything else you might need to."

Like cat videos. Definitely research cat videos.

"I have not fully decided myself," Boston admitted. "Likely it will change on a class-to-class basis, depending upon my responsibilities at the time."

Or, you know. How much he wanted to nap in a sunbeam.

"Gilgamesh put scales on the eyes of humanity to keep them from the magic that is their birthright," Adrian explained. "Which means that most humans generally don't notice subtle magics happening around them and their minds are much more inclined to come up with reasonable excuses for what they saw that isn't magic. The scales can be removed, of course, but it takes a lot to do so."

Look, napping in a sunbeam was totally valid. If Boston taught a class on that, Jon would absolutely take it.

"Fair enough." Jon nodded. He hesitated. "Is...I have a cat at home, and I could bring her for company if you like. But I'm not sure if you're more intelligent than other cats and that would be an insult, or if the only difference is that she can't speak human language."

Issa certainly seemed to think she was as smart as any human, but that could just be a cat thing.

Jon frowned. "I'm not sure if that's metaphorical or actual. Or why Gilgamesh would do such a thing."

"An actual thing and because Gilgamesh is a dick," Adrian said.

Boston blinked at Jon, unimpressed with the question. "She is a pet. I am a witch's familiar."

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.

Oh, no, Jon, that would just make Luma hungry.

"It is rather nice," she admitted, "to have her able to clear the way a little for me. I've heard it from several people that it'll be a blessing to have her rely on."

It was said in that slightly sickly sweet way that could almost be sarcasm, but not enough to definitely be sarcasm. Because it was true, that Luma was grateful to have Eleanor here to help her, but there was a certain irritation in it, too. Saint Eleanor, here with all her sage guiding light...

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.

"Er...well, yes, although in my world's legends he improved after Enkidu," Jon said. "Though as far as I know he wasn't real. People are still good at rationalizing things they don't understand, though."

"Right." Jon nodded. "I apologize. As I said, I wasn't sure. My world doesn't have familiars. Or witches, really."

"I'm guessing that siblings are a rather mixed blessing," Jon said.

"He's real in mine," Adrian said sharply. "He murdered the gods and took over Heaven and he and his sons have watched over the systemic destruction of the magics that he didn't directly control. Which included destroying the people who practiced those magics, until the only ones that are left are those who are excellent at hiding, have impressive protections, or have made ourselves useful to him in some way."

Jon started at that intensity. "Right, I...I'm sorry about that. That's...that's very different than my world's legends. It sounds...very bad."

Look, not only was Jon Bad At People, he was also English. Understatement was only to be expected.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

The Art of Conversation, 3rd period

Sign in!

Listen to the lecture

Class activity

Talk to Jon!

OOC!

Re: Sign in!

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Sign in!

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity

Re: Class activity