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Post by Arihant on May 31, 2008 10:02:52 GMT
His fingers trailed over the cracked black spines of the book, almost seeming noisy in the surreal silence of the library in the early morning, until he finally found what he had been searching for. He nearly missed it, the gold lettering was so faded.
Physical Abilities: Development Through The Ages
Arihant looked wistfully through the high, arching windows at the rising May sun for a moment. The weather had been so good lately, but of course he hadn't been able to enjoy it. It seemed some perverse habit of British schools to save the highest amount of work until the few months of the year that didn't have the abysmal weather that the country was so famed for.
And it wasn't just that, he reflected as he was going back to the table where he'd left his things. It wasn't just that he hadn't had time to enjoy the weather, he hadn't had time to... well, to do anything really. He'd barely had a chance to speak to any of his friends for weeks, and he didn't even have that many friends. Course, it was worst with Kira. He didn't even see her in class, seeing as how they were in different years.
That was why he was here at 7:30 in the morning in a feeble attempt to catch up. He'd been here for an hour already, along with many other people from his year who retained an air of somnabulism about them. At least Arihant wasn't tired.
He sighed and sat down, a mess of paper and pens scattered at his elbows. This was sure going to be fun.
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Post by Isolde Moore on Jun 1, 2008 14:47:14 GMT
Isolde flicked through the pages of her book and sighed.
This was going soo slowly. She had come here really early because she woke up in her dorm all alone again; not that she was ever going to complain about that, and she decided to come down here to do little research on the schools history and the history of her powers.
Apparantly plastic bending had never been one before so it was getting frustrating. But there was soo much on air that her brain gave up reading after the tenth book. So she had decided to get some of her schoolwork done and catch up on this years work. And ther was a lot of it.
She walked up the big hall looking at the sides of the bookcases looking for the History section. There was just too much in it it was hard to even keep up with what the teacher was saying in class. But thanks to Jude, she was able to keep up just. And thanks to him she was able to get most of this years work done quickly and she was just about finishing copying on their last topic and about to start into the one they were on now. Jude had helped her a great deal.
And then there was the training she had missed at the start of the year and she was going over things that Madeline had been teaching and going over with her and Ari too. She really was a great head.
Speaking of which, she had not seen Arihant in such a long ti-
Speak of the devil.
"Hello Arihant, how are you this morning?" she sat down opposite him.
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Post by Arihant on Jun 2, 2008 12:08:03 GMT
Holy-
Arihant visibly jumped as one of his classmates dropped gracefully into the chair opposite him, knocking his pen onto the floor. It was fairly safe to say that that had been the last thing he had been expecting.
After all, it wasn’t like it was usual for people to just… do that. Especially since his powers had become widely known. People weren’t avoiding him out of malice, he guessed, but it didn’t change the fact that they were.
And yet it was understandable. He would have done the same. In fact, he sincerely doubted the sanity of the people who would risk their lives to be around him – of course, he was thankful for said insanity, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
He grabbed the pen up quickly, moving fast enough to be able to catch it on its first bounce. His control had improved since he arrived, so much so that he was no longer surprised when he used his powers inadvertently. He knew it was safe.
“Sorry,” he said as he was coming back up. “I didn’t expect anyone to-”
That face. He recognised that face.
“Isolde?” he asked, the name coming to him quickly. He knew few enough names to be able to remember all the ones he did know without any major thought having to be put into it.
It took a little longer to remember where he knew the name from, but it came eventually.
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Post by Isolde Moore on Jun 2, 2008 17:32:25 GMT
Isolde smiled as he asked her name.
"Yes, I'm Isolde. Sorry for making you jump, I just thought I might say hello," she smiled gultily as she watched him pick up his pen.
"If I disturbed you and you want me to go I will," she frowned.
After all she had left her stuff at another table by itself were anyone could steal something or tamper with it in any way possible.
Not the brightest idea in the world, is it?
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Post by Arihant on Jun 2, 2008 18:18:08 GMT
"No! No, that's not it."
Really, he deserved some sort of award for this. He was a veritable social butterfly. How beautiful it was, the spectacle of him flitting his twin wings of awkward silences and bumbling ineptitude over every single conversation...
OK, no, Arihant, stop. Now's not exactly the time.
"I was just startled," he tried to explain. "I startle easily."
He looked down at his papers. They were scattered all over the table, each covered with rows of practically illegible Devanagari script. It was just easier for him to learn when it was written in Hindi, and considering the volume of work he had, anything that sped it up was definitely to be welcomed and encouraged.
He started pulling the pages to his side of the table, trying to make some room in what he liked to think of as organised chaos for Isolde to do her work.
"So," he said, while grasping a page that threatened to fly away in a sudden draught of wind from the open window. "How are you? I haven't spoken to you in ages."
That was true, now, wasn't it? Not since his second day here...
Wow, that was a long time.
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Post by Isolde Moore on Jun 2, 2008 18:24:55 GMT
"Oh, I'm ok....I know, how have you been?" she grabbed her bag and things out of the air.
She love it when she could pick things up using her elemental power. It did come in handy and awful lot.
Her eyes had been drawn to his notes as he had moved them aside for her work.
"That's beautiful writing. I love seeing things written in different languages, it has always had me fascinated," she stared at the writing.
Languages had always been a weak spot for her. She was good at them but her pronounciation was something shocking.
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Post by Arihant on Jun 2, 2008 21:00:06 GMT
"Fine," he said, the easy answer slipping through his lips as it had been doing consistently for the past few months... since Valentine's Day, he guessed. Everything had been fine since then.
OK, no, that wasn't true. It hadn't all been fine. It had been...
It had been fine for the most part, that was true. It had been brilliant. But the bad spells seemed to come more frequently and strongly in this place, the guilt.
And yet that was just at night. That didn't matter. What mattered was that during the days he was happy. He was... hell, he was great.
Better than he had been in longer than he could remember.
And what better proof was there than the fact that he could sit here writing Devanagari, that his own language no longer initiated those strange, worrying feelings in him?
He laughed briefly. "It might seem beautiful to you, but rest assured, it's scarcely legible. I've never had neat handwriting."
He surveyed the letters silently for a moment. "I don't know, I guess I'm used to them. They don't seem like anything special to me. Everyone where I come from thought that the English alphabet was really exotic."
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Post by Isolde Moore on Jun 3, 2008 16:23:36 GMT
"Exotic? Really?" Isolde nodded in agreement as she could relate. She was Irish sure but english was like her joint first mother tongue and so she wouldn't see it that way but for other countries it would seem rather odd.
"That's quite interesting to know, the only languages I really know about are Gaelic, English and a bit of Italien," she said.
Then she also knew the tiniest bit of Mandrian but that was it.
"No, I really do mean it. It looks lovely and your handwriting is not that messy. I bet I can read it.....if I knew the language that is," she corrected herself.
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Post by Arihant on Jun 3, 2008 21:29:18 GMT
Arihant laughed. "Well, if you'll insist it's readable, I won't disagree with you."
Didn't really make much odds when she couldn't speak the language. Of course, it wasn't like any of the notes were particularly scintillating anyway. Just lots of rambling about physical powers, most of which did not apply to Arihant but which, mad as this education system was, he had to learn about anyway.
He tilted his head to one side, curious. "You speak Gaelic? I thought that it wasn't so common anymore."
Or rather, he assumed so. Despite being best- well, close- some kind of friends with a native Irishwoman, he didn't really know anything about the country. He didn't even know if Kira could speak Gaelic...
Goodness, he was self-obsessed.
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Post by Isolde Moore on Jun 4, 2008 16:48:42 GMT
Isolde laughed a bit.
"Yes, I can," she went a bit red. She wasn't usually accustomed to talking about languages. Or anything about herself really, her dad sort of kept a strict watch on her so she couldn't really get close to anyone.
So this was new for her, like many things around the place.
She reached for his notes and skimmed over them, it was a really beautiful language.
"Can you speak som Hindi to me?"
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Post by Arihant on Jun 5, 2008 18:26:12 GMT
What?
He shrank back a little bit, his cheeks burning. So this was what it felt like to be put on the spot. He seemed to have forgotten...
He laughed, a little nervously. "Isolde, I really wouldn't know what to say..."
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Post by Isolde Moore on Jun 5, 2008 18:30:05 GMT
She could see she had made him uncomfortable and she understood his position.
"Just say something like How are you or Hello my name is...so on and so forth," she encouraged him.
She knew it was difficult for him but he had to come out of his cocoon sometime.
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Post by Arihant on Jun 5, 2008 18:33:10 GMT
OK. So she wasn't going to back down. He'd come to recognise that steely glint that girls always got in their eyes when they were going to insist on something to the bitter death.
So he mumbled, as his cheeks burned even harder, "Um... Well, that would probably be Namaste, meraa naam Arihant hai. And 'how are you?' is... um, Aap kaisey hain?, I think..."
Wow. Just how rusty could he sound?
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Post by Isolde Moore on Jun 5, 2008 18:38:28 GMT
Wow!
That was amazing. Hearing it first hand. She had been expecting anything like that.
"Whoa, that's....that's something I've never heard before. It's quite amazing," she looked at him in awe.
She looked at him and thought for a moment.
"Have you ever heard Italien before?"
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Post by Arihant on Jun 5, 2008 18:43:25 GMT
Amazing?
Not exactly. It was just... a language. Knowing three of them took a lot of the romance out of it.
(OK, so maybe three was a bit of an exaggeration. He didn't know an awful lot of German, and what he did know were things like 'router', 'monitor', 'RAM', 'speakers'... It didn't exactly make for fluency.)
"No," he said, relieved to get the spotlight back off of himself. "Well, I mean, I've heard a bit, but not face-to-face or anything..."
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