Trying to Not Think (open)

[Silver Blackwood]

Silver was still thinking about that momentary motion of her teeth against her lip--wondering if it meant anything and somehow attracted by it--when he realized he should probably stop staring and talk again.

"Um, yeah, I know, I just...tend to compare that kind of stuff to Dare. He's really awesome, you should see his work." And irrationally, somehow he didn't want her to see Dare's work after all. Ridiculous thinking, he'd just met her, she didn't belong to him or anything, but he had to remind himself of that. Dare wasn't a threat.

[Druscilla Grace]

Dru shrugged, "Do your own thing, there's no point comparing yourself to anyone else." She had lived for a while doing that, but that phase had lasted barely a year before she had gotten tired of it. "I guess it's harder when it's a sibling, though." She knew that a lot of people tended to one-up their siblings, but she wouldn't know, she didn't have to worry about it.

[Silver Blackwood]

"Yeah," Silver agreed, nodding his head slightly for emphasis. "We're only a year apart, so there's a lot of stuff like that. I'd have all the same teachers next year...You don't have any brothers or sisters?" he asked. He only had the one, but he couldn't imagine anything different.

[Druscilla Grace]

"No," Dru said, "I'm an only kid, grew up around a lot of other kids, though." It had never seemed like she was an only child, because her friends and cousins had always been over at her house, some of her friends even called her mom theirs. "Doesn't mean I'm spoiled or anything," she added, grinning.

[Silver Blackwood]

Silver gave a low chuckle at that. "You don't seem spoiled," he said, "But I guess you can never really tell." He smiled, the feel of talking to someone so easily making him feel light, making it hard to feel nervous. Dru wasn't like a lot of the people at his old school, too self-absorbed to really listen and too busy to slow down and notice the guy off to the side. He didn't know how this had happened, and he wondered at it, but wouldn't argue, even in his mind.

[Druscilla Grace]

"Oh you can tell, the spoiled ones are the ones that look at people like us and wrinkle their noses, then swish their fancy robes and stalk off with their nose in the air," Dru said, mimicking the face that had been directed at her quite a few times in the past, then put on a voice, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe you don't have the new Nimbus 2025. And they don't even know how to ride one." She rolled her eyes, she knew the type.

[Silver Blackwood]

Silver laughed again, not as hesitantly as last time. "Yeah, I guess you can tell," he said, eyes gleaming at Dru. It was beyond a crush now; he was infatuated. "There were a lot of those at SWIM." He paused realizing what he'd said, then decided he'd explain. "South West Institute of Magic. Southern California, a way off Los Angeles, but not far enough," he said. It was still close enough to the coast that they thought they were the center of the universe.

[Druscilla Grace]

"Ah, so you know all about the spoiled brats, then." Dru's lips spread in a wide smile. "I can't imagine going to school so close to the ocean. I went up in the mountains, Appalachian School of Magic, beautiful in the fall." She was lost for a minute in memories, flashes of the brightly colored trees going through her mind, her eyes losing their focus.

[Silver Blackwood]

"The mountains," Silver repeated, half the awe in his voice at the idea of the natural freedom a place like that would have, the other half at the daydream-like expression on Dru's face. "It was beautiful, wasn't it?" he asked, a moment passing before he realized she'd just said that. He blinked, mentally shaking himself lucid again, and tried to cover his tracks. "I bet this place is something, too. It snows up here, right?" Now that was a question.

[Druscilla Grace]

"Yeah," Dru said, the answer to both questions. She shook herself out of the reverie and smiled at him. "Yeah, it snows a lot here, but it's kind of boring. I mean, after the first couple of times. Because there's not much to do inside and it's freezing outside." She just stayed at the club or in the common room catching up on work.

[Silver Blackwood]

"But it snows in North Carolina, so I can't imagine it was really anything special by the time you got here," he said. "I'm kind of looking forward to it, since I've never seen snow before." Except pictures in books, but actual snow would be a far cry from a photograph, where you couldn't actually feel it.

[Druscilla Grace]

"Oh wow, I can't imagine." Dru looked at him in amazement, she had grown up with snow, she could barely believe someone that hadn't seen it before. "Wait, does that mean that when it gets cold you're going to be complaining?" she asked, grinning. She had seen people that thought weather that was warm to her was cold and they bundled up with a bunch of cloaks and scarves.

[Silver Blackwood]

Silver chuckled at that. "Nah, I'll be fine, Dad sent us off with scarves and stuff." Not that Silver really had any idea of the kind of cold he was talking about. There was only so much that books could prepare you for, and though he'd read up, it was entirely different experiencing zero-degree weather from reading about it.

[Druscilla Grace]

"Good luck with that," Dru said, laughing. "I remember once I went somewhere on a trip with some friends, we all underestimated how cold it was going to be, ended up being like negative five with windchill, we froze, it was horrible." It would be interesting to see the Southern Californian guy during his first winter snow.

[Silver Blackwood]

Silver's normally sleepy-looking eyes widened a bit at that. "Negative five?" he repeated. He didn't even have a concept of negative five. "Jesus, do people really go out in that?" If it got that cold, he couldn't see wanting to leave the castle for anything without a fur coat.