Post by Tea on Jul 23, 2014 21:32:44 GMT -5
[OOC: Hey guys, I thought this place could use some action until we get to the actual RP. This is gonna be a kind of introduction-thing for the students to meet each other before initiation into the academy. If you feel like it, join in~]
There are times in one's life when they have to sit down and reflect on the course of events that brought them to the present. Sometimes, those events are a walk to a coffee shop, down three flights of stairs, across the street, and over three city blocks. Sometimes there would be a nice, shy girl there and you'd fall in love without meaning to. Maybe you'd marry her. You could be hit by a taxi when crossing the street and never walk again.
Then again, you could just get a cup of coffee and go on with your day.
Sometimes, however, the situation was built on a much longer time-frame, the foundation being one's birth.
In English, there is no proper translation for the Portuguese word "saudade," but if I were to describe it, I'd say it's somewhere between fragile happiness and longing. It's the feeling that overcomes a seventy year old man as he muses on his wife, who passed away a few years ago; how--when he was a younger, more reckless thing--there was a coffee shop down three flights of stairs, across the street, and over three city blocks, and how the barista with choppy red hair and freckles handed him his decaff with a smile, and how smooth and educated her voice sounded when she asked him for £2.20.
Sometimes even young people feel this way, when they realize how fast time is slipping through their fingers, that they might be...losing something precious...to their parent's expectations.
The Great Academy Celeste was smaller than Leland anticipated. It was...a regular school, old walls and wallpaper with contemporary furniture, no different from any other boarding school--outside, he had been met with a building the size of a Renaissance monastery, rather symmetrical, golden baroque architecture, three visible gables, and about four stories. Well, yes, it was large, but it wasn't....huge. He had been expecting more.
The lobby of his new school had a domed ceiling and a single, supporting pillar placed in the middle of the floor. Its foundation was a fountain--a marble structure with enough girth for students to cluster around it and sit, but a wide enough moat of slowly circulating water (filled with large, beautiful koi and high reeds) to keep the brats from defiling the pillar. The tiled floors were geometrical, elaborate patterns of gold and white--there was a side of the room compiled with sleek leather couches and tables of magazines and cakes and coffee and whatnot, and a grand piano across from that area. For the most part, this wide, domed room was vacant.
Minimalism? Leland wondered.
Strangest of all was that this room was entirely void of people, as well. Not a soul save for the human boy admiring the grandeur of the Academy. True, he had transported himself early by way of a conjuring ritual, but he had at least expected to see a teacher in the lobby, waiting to greet the new students. What was going on?
Cautiously, he made his way over to the lobby's piano, admiring its cherry-oak woodwork before examining the parchment that lay on its music desk. It read:
Please feel free to use the school's public instruments. These can be fixed by means of magic, as we keep all enchanted band equipment in the conductor's office--which are not open for non-band-member students to use.
What else did he have to do at the moment, anyways? He laid his messenger bag down by the wooden stool and sat down, playing experimentally with the keys...before launching into an arrangement of pieces he knew all to well.
Erik Satie's Gymnopédies
There are times in one's life when they have to sit down and reflect on the course of events that brought them to the present. Sometimes, those events are a walk to a coffee shop, down three flights of stairs, across the street, and over three city blocks. Sometimes there would be a nice, shy girl there and you'd fall in love without meaning to. Maybe you'd marry her. You could be hit by a taxi when crossing the street and never walk again.
Then again, you could just get a cup of coffee and go on with your day.
Sometimes, however, the situation was built on a much longer time-frame, the foundation being one's birth.
In English, there is no proper translation for the Portuguese word "saudade," but if I were to describe it, I'd say it's somewhere between fragile happiness and longing. It's the feeling that overcomes a seventy year old man as he muses on his wife, who passed away a few years ago; how--when he was a younger, more reckless thing--there was a coffee shop down three flights of stairs, across the street, and over three city blocks, and how the barista with choppy red hair and freckles handed him his decaff with a smile, and how smooth and educated her voice sounded when she asked him for £2.20.
Sometimes even young people feel this way, when they realize how fast time is slipping through their fingers, that they might be...losing something precious...to their parent's expectations.
The Great Academy Celeste was smaller than Leland anticipated. It was...a regular school, old walls and wallpaper with contemporary furniture, no different from any other boarding school--outside, he had been met with a building the size of a Renaissance monastery, rather symmetrical, golden baroque architecture, three visible gables, and about four stories. Well, yes, it was large, but it wasn't....huge. He had been expecting more.
The lobby of his new school had a domed ceiling and a single, supporting pillar placed in the middle of the floor. Its foundation was a fountain--a marble structure with enough girth for students to cluster around it and sit, but a wide enough moat of slowly circulating water (filled with large, beautiful koi and high reeds) to keep the brats from defiling the pillar. The tiled floors were geometrical, elaborate patterns of gold and white--there was a side of the room compiled with sleek leather couches and tables of magazines and cakes and coffee and whatnot, and a grand piano across from that area. For the most part, this wide, domed room was vacant.
Minimalism? Leland wondered.
Strangest of all was that this room was entirely void of people, as well. Not a soul save for the human boy admiring the grandeur of the Academy. True, he had transported himself early by way of a conjuring ritual, but he had at least expected to see a teacher in the lobby, waiting to greet the new students. What was going on?
Cautiously, he made his way over to the lobby's piano, admiring its cherry-oak woodwork before examining the parchment that lay on its music desk. It read:
Please feel free to use the school's public instruments. These can be fixed by means of magic, as we keep all enchanted band equipment in the conductor's office--which are not open for non-band-member students to use.
What else did he have to do at the moment, anyways? He laid his messenger bag down by the wooden stool and sat down, playing experimentally with the keys...before launching into an arrangement of pieces he knew all to well.
Erik Satie's Gymnopédies
and It's okay Crooked, I think the party's just getting started! ]]
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