The Low Reaches (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lowreaches) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
the_low_reaches2016-12-31 04:03 pm
lowreaches) wrote in the_low_reaches2016-12-31 04:03 pm
The Preamble (The Test Thread)
Who: The cast
Where: 7-0's classroom
When: Lunch!
What: Some basic testing.
Churlish.
That was the word that had gripped 7-0. No one knew exactly how it started, and not everyone was so charmed, but it had become a magic word for the 7th graders on the basement floor of the Belfry, who had not even windows to escape through and spotty reception at best.
The kids took to notes instead. Simple, hand-written, paper notes. Passed between themselves constantly. People were getting bullied for their handwriting now. Churlish had appeared somewhere, some time, in one of those notes, and then again, and again, and had wormed its way into their vocabulary. A catch all: The teacher's driving me churling crazy. Raury's such a churl.
No one wanted to be a churl.
It might've been the school proper what done it. The Belfry was a spindly, mean thing, looming over a stretch of pretty beach like a malcontent lighthouse. It hunched in the wind, which licked misty off the cold grey winter waters of the lake, roof slung over it at a surly angle, old and brittle and arthritic even in its youth. Several stories tall, and perched lonely atop a hill that was murder on a bike, churlish was an apt word for the Belfry.
In all likelihood, the word came from their teacher Ms. Poplar. She was a fair teacher most of the time, but notoriously temperamental. Today, she was of the private opinion that she was much too pretty and promising to be toiling away in the basement of The Belfy. Her bad moods were often given away by her hair, and today it was a particularly high and sloppy ponytail. Churlish was an apt word for her, too.
Ms. Poplar's mood had spread through the classroom; kids were skittish and quiet. The first whisperer of the day had been made example of, and several notes were plastered behind her as grim trophies; she scowled and stared down the class while she hung them up. More mortifying, the contents had all been read aloud after. She'd only handed out petty busy work, the kind that made it easy to keep checking her phone and biting her lip.
When the bell rang for lunch period, Ms. Poplar sat in her seat for a few long minutes more, head in her hands and the class holding their breath. It wasn't until a girl, Notoriously Nervous Ruby, finally stood up and after several false starts dashed past the teacher's desk and out the door that Ms. Poplar lifted her head, glared around sulkily, and drug herself out of the room. Churlishly.
A gentle buzz of voices filled the room as the pall broke. Bags crinkled open and kids disappeared out the door, fading away into the cacaphony of the halls.
no subject
(It wasn't so great a coincidence as it seemed, nor she so unobtrusive, really. She had also opted to take lunch outside of the school building, and wandered rather far afield in hopes of finding some patch of flowers her own pokemon might enjoy; and, having failed to do so, she'd been heading back to find a closer spot to sit for lunch when she overheard Rhyssa.)
"I didn't mean to overhear you, but--well, I did," she gave a small not-quite-laugh at that. "I hope I'm not bothering you," though her tone was polite rather than concerned, "But I do actually have some, if you'd like? Pokebeans, that is."
no subject
no subject
And, as she sat down and shifted her backpack off her shoulders and into her lap, "Mhm, I'm pretty sure I have a bag of 'em... um, let's see..." And sure enough, it took only a few moments of rummaging around in her backpack to produce a small, still-unopened bag of pokebeans. "Yeah, there it is. Here you go!" Anastasia almost handed the bag over... but after a brief, wary glance towards Rhyssa's eevee, opted to instead just set it down between the two of them.
"And don't worry about it, really, it's no trouble. I'll just pick up some more on my way home." The beans had, in fact, been meant for her and her parents' mostly-stay-at-home pokemon--but she'd be passing the same general store she got them from on her way home.
"Ah, do you mind if I get my lunch out, by the way? I was actually just looking for a place to sit when I was passing by. I mean, as long as it won't bother your, um..." she gives the eevee another glance, and this time a brief, finger-waggling wave.
no subject
"You can call her Kali," Rhyssa said with a nod. "She's always looking for danger, I guess. Even here. I can't see why, either."
no subject
"She's adorable, by the way," Anastasia enthused. "...My dad says Sinjoh actually makes some pokemon nervous, something about the climate I think, but I guess you'd know her better." A brief smile to Kali, then one to Rhyssa. "I'm Anastasia, by the way. We have class together, right? I think so?"
no subject
"I'd say she's been pretty nervous since we moved this summer," Rhyssa murmured. "Your dad much be right, it must be this area. My Rowlet, Fallon, too. They weren't this protective before we moved. They seemed like, you know, every Eevee and Rowlet you ever read about."
no subject
She stretched her legs out in front of her, crossed them at the ankles. She hadn't actually read anything in particular about Rowlets, and what she had read about Eevees... well, did touch upon their temperaments, but mostly in the context of what owning and caring for them was like, not so much how they could be expected to behave around stranger.
...But that wasn't really the most interesting topic of conversation available at the moment, so!
"Sooo, where are you from? You know, if you don't mind me asking."
no subject
Fallon swooped in on silent wings just as Rhyssa opened her hand with a berry for him. He snatched it nimbly before landing to give Anastasia an appraising once over. Rhyssa smiled at him and gestured.
"I spent half a year looking for him, even if probably shouldn't have," she admitted. "In fact I fell down a hill to catch him. I think it was mostly because I'd never seen a green Rowlet before." She shook her head a little. "We sat for awhile, Fallon and I, and I talked to him about wanting to see the world. I guess that's when he decided he wanted to join me. I had mud and dirt all over me, scrapes, nearly broke my ankle, too. I suppose that's all he needed to know, that I'd come after him like that even just to talk to him. Some people will throw a pokeball at anything that moves. I can't seem to do that. I just want to talk with them and see what they see first. Right, Fallon?"
The Rowlet, looking extremely satisfied, made a soft sound in agreement and waddled in closer both curiously and for a pet. He was interested in the food, too, but only to see what it was.
no subject
"Oh wow, that's--that's really impressive!" Rhyssa had painted a fairly clear picture with her words, after all. "I can't imagine doing something like that here, with the forest being all... you know." Inhospitable. "But yeah, he's got really gorgeous feathers! They're not usually like that, then? That color, I mean." The Eevee she realized had an unusually-colored coat, but Ana wasn't so knowledgeable what constitutes normal for the other species.
"Do you just have the two, or...?"
She tentatively extended a hand towards the Rowlet--slowly, non-threateningly--with two half-curled fingers offered for inspection; and, if it reacted favorably to that, and subsequently allowed her, smoothed the backs of those fingers down along its chest.
no subject
"She seemed like she'd been waiting in that egg for a long time," Rhyssa said thoughtfully. "The note he left said she'd been waiting for me. I guess some pokemon are like that, waiting for their trainers. He said she wouldn't hatch for him and he'd found the egg some time ago." She smiled as Fallon made appreciative noises and scuttled closer for more petting. He did enjoy attention and today seemed to be a relatively relaxed day for him.
Rhyssa glanced to the forest speculatively. One day, inhospitable or not, she was going out there. If she, Kali, and Fallon, trained really hard, nothing would be able to stop them exploring and talking to other pokemon out there.
Even if it was creepy.
She brought her head back around to the question instead of thinking in two places at once. Focusing would definitely help.
"Rowlets are usually a very light brown, white, and green," she said quietly. "But sometimes, they can be green. It's very suited to hiding in trees, really." Her fingers smoothed her Eevee's coat soothingly. "I guess neither of mine can be said to be the expected standard of their kind. Kali's coat is different as well, silvery instead of the more robust deep golden red of other Eevees. I've seen some like her here and there in my island travels."
Rhyssa laughed and shook her head, her twin tails flipping merrily.
"You know, I think I just attract odd pokemon. I don't mind at all, it's always their choice! That's why I go out and talk to wild pokemon and don't try catch them."
no subject
The discovery that Rhyssa's father had apparently just gone missing was enough for Anastasia to raise her eyebrows in surprise, before filing that little bit of information away (it was good to know what topics to avoid around certain people; easier to just not hurt people's feelings in the first place than placate them later).
"Huh, wow, really? That's..." well, it sounded like something of a story, but that might come across the wrong way. "...really touching!" she went with, after the story of how Rhyssa had met... Kali, had it been?
Ana looked up periodically, enough to make it clear she was paying attention, between bouts of delicately stroking thw minty-green bird pokemon. The feathers, she thought, were surprisingly soft.
...On the one hand, she did want to step in (figuratively) and gush about, and maybe show off, her own pokemon, but--seeing as the one she had with her was a bug, maybe bringing Rosa out in front of a bird and a territorial eevee wasn't the best idea. Not that she thought anything bad would happen, just that her own pokemon probably wouldn't appreciate it.
"Yeah, I knew that about eevees! I've seen pictures of them before, anyway. Um, I don't know if I'd say odd... Well, they're your pokemon, so you'd know better, of course." She pauses, hums and tilts her head thoughtfully, "Though maybe I'm just used to unusually-colored pokemon? You know, with that whole... Sinjoh tradition about them." She gives a mild roll of her eyes (and a hint of a smile to soften that expression) at the mention of the tradition.
"...Oh! Do you have something like that in Alola? You know, local coming-of-age customs, that sort of thing."