[if april showers bring may flowers, then july showers bring. . .?]

[sevenhorrorsmods]

Who: everyone!
When: July 31st throughout the day
Where: outside, but also wherever you want to be!
What: a general all-purpose mingle with flavor
Warnings: nada

[Today, for the first time since your arrival, dark and angry clouds gather in the sky above to block out the sun. It is sweltering outside, so when those clouds eventually open up in the early afternoon, showering everyone with cool rain, rolling thunder, and a few flashes of lightning. . . it probably feels good!]

[It seems to be normal rain, for the most part. Look at it from the wrong angle and some if it may seem to be tinted red, like blood. And sometimes, when a drop spatters against the ground, a spider lily suddenly blossoms in its place. The flower dies almost immediately upon springing to life, its petals dissolving into dust that is quickly washed away by the rest of the water]

[dwbi]

[. . . things have been awfully quiet since your arrival. It feels almost a bit like the calm before the storm, doesn't it? Are you still waiting for that other shoe to drop. . .?]

[What else are you up to today!]

Comments

[ratiocinations]

Or we are dealing with more than one entity.

[It's hard to say, given there haven't been enough incidents for there to be a modus operandi just yet, much less more than one, but. It's as good a guess as any.

Still! The bird!]

It's yours? As in, a companion from home?

[poetaste]

Something like that. [Each time the ink reforms the words, is what is written changed, or does it stay the same? That's the true question.]

When words take flight, they can spread to the entire world. The bird goes where I can't.

... [After a dramatic pause, her shoulders even out. Not quite a drop, but a signal that there's some level of serious and critical thinking in her somewhat grandiose and delusional mind.] It's not looking great so far.

[ratiocinations]

[Well, that tells him very little.

Though if he approaches these statements from a different, much more liberal and bardic angle, maybe he can glean something from that statement.

OR MAYBE HIS WRITER SENSES ARE JUST TINGLING--]

Are you a writer, madam?

[poetaste]

[Is she ever! The bird preens, pleased to be recognized. Just the bird, of course.]

And a journalist, a truth seeker, a social media expert, the voice of the West District Drifter Camp...and most importantly, a teacher, though it's hard to rebuild a classroom that's been hollowed out.

[There are enough kids here, too, that she has to worry about their education in this dilapidated school...though proper classes are the furthest thing from anyone's mind until they're more stable.]

[ratiocinations]

[Still unclear what the deal is with the bird, beyond some kind of extension of her… craft? A notion he would have found two hundred percent more ridiculous just a few weeks ago.]

You’ve a flair for verbal filigree that most writers seem to possess. [He’s calling her dramatic. Pot, kettle.] It is good to see that the trait is a universal one. Though when it comes to teaching, I imagine you’ve never come across a school quite like here.

[poetaste]

Haha! So you noticed! [It's a description that seems flattering for Cadence rather than insulting. She cocks her knee up, leaning against the wall.] Some say my work is grandiose, but if it fails to leave any lasting impression behind, have you ever spoken at all?

[If a writer's words don't survive them...then it was no different at all from writing on the surface of the water.]

The place has walls, facilities, and supplies... Not too shabby, if you discount the ghouls.

[What...kind of school wouldn't have those things?]

[ratiocinations]

[INDEED? He could comment a bit more on a writer's need to leave impressions behind—rather than doing much else, really—but! He will spare this secondhand shade for his loyal chronicler! And instead focus on the oddity of what she's just told him!]

...Do not most schools have walls, facilities, and supplies?

[poetaste]

Not if you're building them from the ground up.

[Burned out buildings, outdated and inadequate textbooks... Sometimes things have to be built from nothing.]

Good luck getting them all to sit still... Someone could say they're cursed to move around all the time, and someone would probably buy it.

[She looks thoughtful, like maybe she's actually considering the veracity of this as a working excuse. Hm.]

[ratiocinations]

[girl what]

...

Getting what to sit still, precisely? [THE BUILDING?]

[poetaste]

... The kids?

[She's the one looking at him sideways now, like he's the nutjob. Wasn't what she said clear? Some students have pressing matters making them fidget and miss class, like rebellion and vengeance. In this case, they're more likely to be wandering in the woods or exploring a spooky school, probably.]

[ratiocinations]

[The kids. This woman... following her line of thinking is a bit like a game of hopscotch, in which one must skip a logical step or two to reach her point, he thinks.

He smiles, thinly.]

Yes, of course. How silly of me.

[poetaste]

[Maybe she gets the wrong idea about his irritation, or perhaps the spirit of pique leaves her as quickly as it flies from any artist.

Either way, she becomes graver, with a bit of firmness or finality to her body language and behavior.]

For some kids, they can only dream about four walls and a chalkboard. They've got bigger things to worry about than showing up to class. It's the hardest thing about getting them to stay put.

[Though the problems facing the Homeless and other wayward kids in places like Syndicate aren't anything like the ones haunting this school, she'd wager that both have their share of ghosts.]

[ratiocinations]

[The more context he receives, the less he is vaguely put-off by the conversational leaps, as this sounds rather-

Well, interesting is not a kind word for it.]

Do you mean the poor and infirm? The ones without homes, or the ones put to work at an early age?

[A Victorian man, maybe, can understand this quite a bit!]

[poetaste]

[Indeed, it isn't "interesting," but it does apparently hold her interest or at least her attention.

He speaks like an Eastsider, so she'd dismissed it at first, but those who can get out and get to Eastside sometimes come back. Sometimes they're like her.]

All of the above! And more. That makes up the kids in Syndicate--ones who lost their parents or never had 'em or have ones who are just doing their best. Books don't even have the truth about their own history, but they get told they should be ashamed of it.

[ratiocinations]

[Indeed. Intriguing, then.]

I know nothing of this "Syndicate" to which you refer, but you describe, in grand swaths, the lives of many young children in the poorer parts of London. So, then, you are saying that when you do teach, you direct your attention to these children in particular?

[A heart of sentiment, then, if true.]

[poetaste]

I'm building up the only school of its kind in the West District. If you build it, you know, they'll come.

[But you left, dumb bird, and a bunch of those kids scattered, and now they want to be heroes. She can almost hear the sullen, wounded voice of her most wayward student reminding her.]

I wonder how they'd feel about sitting still in a haunted school. They'd probably laugh at us hiding from this harmless old rain.

[ratiocinations]

[FIELD OF DREAMS REFERENCE THAT FLIES OVER MY CHARACTER'S HEAD]

It is not a habit of mine, you know. Sitting still. Or rather, I should say... it is not a preference.

[And yet here he is, reflecting on the rain with a woman who keeps an inky bird as a companion.]

That said, I believe you have made a strange leap of logic in your explanations, madam.

[poetaste]

Never said I blamed them.

[She also gives off the energy of someone who's not particularly good at standing still. It's easy to imagine her covering the full length of the clasroom with her lectures.

A writing desk is just about the only thing that can keep Raven down.]

Are you calling out my methods? Well, what's the leap?

[ratiocinations]

That the mere presence of a school would compel such children to it, rather than repel.

[Unless he has a very wrong impression of children in general, which. He's probably sure he does not. He was one, once. Probably.]

[poetaste]

Children don't have a lot of self-control, and they have a lot of curiosity. They get told they'll never be anything special or that they'll never make it to the lap of luxury if they can't read, if they can't do their numbers. Give them the chance, and they run right in.

[She shrugs. It's hard to even know what to hate about school if you've never been. Some of the Syndicate children would probably embrace the routine and the safe place to sit, even if they didn't care much about the material.]

Now, keeping them there...

[She'd never put up a spooky fear barrier forest and close off all the exits, but, she's just saying.]

[ratiocinations]

[Maybe just close off all the exits?]

In which case, perhaps responsibility falls solely and unfairly into the lap of the instructors. To keep their minds stimulated and their attention spans from wandering. To be charming, compelling, and just stern enough. A high order for most.