What We Become When We Grow Up

Another day, another self induced training session or so it felt to Alaster as he sat himself down in one of the Pyxis common areas. His whole life, he’d been relatively on his own when it came to practicing and advancing his mystical talents so he had not been surprised when things remained that way upon his arrival to the school.

Foresta was an excellent resource for seeing many empowered beings of all varieties in action, but it was also that diversity that made the curriculum abnormal as compared to your average school in Alaster’s opinion. Though their instructors were relatively excellent and open for questions, their abilities varied just as widely as the students which left most to their own diligence to advance. For some, the new freedom proved more than their youth could tame and they slacked quite a lot with their skills preferring to exercise their liberty to do whatever they wanted instead of ‘homework’. For others, those like him, who had the motivation and self discipline to devote themselves to their practices, free time simply meant a new opportunity to try something new.

So here he sat cross legged on the couch staring at an acorn. A simple little seed, ready to be buried and sprout into a glorious symbol of strength. Or so it thought. He however had other plans.

Rolling up his sleeves, the dark haired animist pulled his pad of post-it notes out and an ink brush pen and quietly wove the symbols for a ward of containment onto the little yellow squares before placing the cornerstone symbols onto the four corners of the table he had commandeered. Then with a few rote gestures and spoken words, deep blue symbols began to crawl out from beneath each post-it towards the others, reaching for their brothers as he erected his cautionary measure. As each line of symbols linked up with the others, there was a flash of golden light that infected the midnight blue symbols before they faded away and sank into the table, no longer needing to be visible until it’s protection was needed. If it was needed.

Experimentation, even as seemingly harmless as what he was thinking he would do here always needed to be safe. There were just too many factors for what could go wrong and not being at least a little vigilant would be tantamount to negligence and recklessness.

His task there done, Aly whispered a quiet thank you to his pen and tucked it back into his bag. From there, the youngest Berg reached out and stroked the little seed with a single finger, magical energy flowing from his fingertip into the acorn as he spoke: “Hey there little guy. Wake up. I wanna talk to you, please.”

As his spell took effect, Alaster could see the spirit inside the acorn sitting up and seeming to yawn, as tiny as it was. With a little more oomph to the task, he tied the seed’s physical body to its spirit causing the little acorn to wobble and rise up onto the spindly little point beneath it.

Hiii~ came the tired, yawned response from the spirit, as it woke from its slumber, it’s words only audible to Alaster, who smiled warmly at his predictable success.

Graham was excited, he had finally managed to get his desktop set up in his room the way he liked it. The cables had been organized, he was done with his classes for the day and everything was ready to go. As he pulled a game up that stuck out brilliantly on his monitor, Graham moved his hand over to the side of his keyboard - reaching for his water bottle. A second passed as the young man's fingers wrapped around it, brought it up to his lips then paused as no water passed through.

Letting out a small sigh of frustration, Graham pushed his computer chair back and made his way out of his dorm room with empty water bottle in tow. Upon entering the main common room area for Pyxis, Graham stopped for a minute to look around - his eyes searching for a water fountain. As they finally landed on it, the young man was tunnel visioning so hard on filling up his water bottle that he almost didn't stop as one of his legs bumped quite haphazardly into Alaster's chair. Pausing for just a split second, Graham nodded lightly at the other boy "Ah, sorry." He said then, quickly turning away before receiving a response - the goal he had already set for himself within his grasp.

Stopping by the water fountain finally, Graham dipped his water bottle low and slipped his fingers lightly over the button the allowed the water to come out. As this happened, Graham briefly wondered to himself how many hours of gaming he'd be able to get tonight before it was interrupted by the roommate he hadn't quite met yet. It was bothersome being forced to share a room with someone now and Graham had silently been hoping to himself that the roommate in question wouldn't care about his computer set up and wouldn't try to bother him when he was using the said set up.

     While Zak was normally one for solitude, the idea of having a friend and companion had broken him out of his shell one day at a time. There were a few places he frequented, depending on what he wished to do that day- if he wanted to work, he stayed in his room. If he wanted to go for a walk, he went to the woods. If he wanted to find scraps and parts, he dug through the old maintenance closets that no one knew he had found a key to. And, if he wanted to draw, he either went to the library or the conservatory. 

      But today was different. Today, he decided, having woken up with the strong urge to improve his drawing, he had decided to do some figure work. Nowhere too public, of course- he wanted to stay out of the cold air outside, which kept him from the quiet of the coffee shop or the outdoors, but he didn't want to venture into the more populated parts of the school. And so, after knocking on Sheridan's door to call him out for his company, he had settled in the commons of the Pyxis dorms, sketchbook and pencil in hand. He drew a few quick, terrible pictures of Sheridan, warming up before he moved on to drawing those he was less familiar with. 

     Why was he still so nervous even here? This was his dorm, the one he had recently become one of the leaders of. He knew most of the faces here, although the names were a different story, and he had walked these halls for enough years that he could traverse them blind. But still, new faces had been cropping up more and more recently with the new semester and it made him uneasy. 

     As Zak finished his most recent awful Sheri drawing - this one was of his left hand, which he was desperately wishing could lie on his knee or his arm or run through his hair as he picked apart each phalanx with his pencil- he looked up from his page, sucking in a deep breath of air, trying to pick out a new subject. After a moment of scanning, his eyes rested on a man talking to something- what was that? An acorn? With curiosity, he scooted his chair forwards slightly, leaned closer, and began laying down lines.

Matthias had just been to the library, and picked up a new stack of books from the librarian. They’d seemed surprised to have a 14 year old picking out books clearly intended for the upper years for sciences, as well as a few books more intended for improving his English. Or that’s what he would claim if asked why he had taken out the few fiction books he had.

He’d put most of the books into a bag he’d had the good thinking to bring along with him, which was now considerably heavier with its mostly hard-backed contents. Matthias pulled the bag off onto just one shoulder as he entered into his dorm room.

He was a little surprised at seeing the three people, but not massively so. He had heard a voice through the door, but seeing this situation, what he thought he had heard didn’t make much sense. It didn’t look like either of them had been asleep. Matthias had probably mis-heard what had been said, which was only really to be expected he was only hearing English spoken around him (and some other languages he wasn’t going to attempt to learn any time soon).

Matthias had to walk round to the side of the common room, to get to the door to his room, and it was as he got in line with the door that he saw what was on the table. It was mostly thanks to the movement of the other boy (wasn’t he the male leader for Pyxis?), who was sketching something. It looked vaguely hand-shaped, but it might also have been a dead spider. Matthias didn’t have a very good artistic imagination.

He stopped in place probably around when the animus greeted Alaster, in parallel with his chair.

Matt had been surrounded by science since he was a baby, and even normal toddlers understood the basic principles as gravity- so it came as a little shock to see an acorn floating on its style. He spent a few seconds staring before realising that for Foresta this was probably fairly normal. If that was telekinesis, it would also go some way to explaining the grin on the guy’s face. Somehow, though, moving an acorn didn’t satisfy the question of quite why the guy was grinning like that.

”You don’t mind me taking that seat, do you?” Matt asked quietly, gesturing across the table at another chair, although he acted before either of the older boys could protest.
He rummaged in the bag and pulled out a book on cell-biology (hopefully he’d know enough of the terminology for it to make vague sense). He leaned back in his chair, pushed his glasses up his nose, and opened the book; peering over the spine to see if this guy could do anything more interesting.

Sheridan had been happily laying lazily on his bed when he heard the knocking. He knew instantly that it was Zak and huffed. He cared for the boy more than anything, but he really didn't feel like getting up. Normally he was the one to bang on Zak's door--karma was a bitch. He grunted and rolled out of bed reluctantly, spirits brightening slightly at knowing that at least Zak was waiting for him outside his door. He was already dressed; he'd woken up awhile ago, but promptly fell right back onto his warm and cozy bed, much to the dismay of Ash. He took the leather band that he always wore around his wrist and tied back his hair into his customary ponytail. "C'mon, Ash."

A low grumble was his answer. He rolled his eyes. "You lazy ass; you were eager for me to wake up earlier. Now let's go." Shuffling pawsteps approached and Sheridan grasped his guide's harness. His other hand found the doorknob, opening it. He shut it softly behind him as he walked down the hallway to the Pyxis common area, knowing that that was most likely where Zak was, seeing as he hadn't been outside his room.

Ash slowed down as they reached the open space, causing Sheridan to slow as well. He knew that there were other people here--he could hear them. A soft voice that seemed to be speaking to a child, if the tone was anything to go by. Was that Alaster? The dry rustle of paper reached his ears as well--someone was using a notebook. A soft voice joined Alaster's--maybe another student talking to him. The trickle of a water fountain mingled with the other sounds.

His face burned in humiliation. He didn't know where Zak was, and there were other people in the room. Shit. The pain of being an introvert. He bit his tongue. "Zak, where are you?" The words made him feel like a moron, and he prayed that no one else had heard him, or even noticed him for that matter. Ash looked up at his master and contemplated leading him to the other boy--after all, he could see him sitting right over there, sketching something. But he decided that he enjoyed witnessing the proud Sheridan's embarrassment far more.

About to open his mouth and begin convincing the seed in front of him to take shape he wanted it to, Alaster had to give pause. Off to his left, through the open door to his own dorm room, he could hear his roommate emerging, seemingly after something to drink judging from the water bottle in his hand, though the other boy, Graham, didn’t quite seem to give him the same notice. It took but a glance to see that the mindshifter’s dark brown eyes were set on his goal and little else, a sentiment the animist could understand. He, however, had rarely gotten so absorbed in what he was doing that he became oblivious to the world like the other boy did, going so far as to trip over the cushioned chair Aly was sitting in.



The mageling’s hand extended out of reflex to steady his roommate should he need it but it proved unnecessary. Alaster knew teens were supposed to be a little clumsy given the sudden extension of their limbs and other pubescent imbalances, but gawkiness seemed to be an epidemic around Foresta. Several of the school’s inhabitants made newborn deer seem downright graceful with the way they stumbled around, colliding with this and that. He just hoped that Graham didn’t hurt himself wandering around their room. Last thing he needed was an uproar from his inanimate possessions because they constantly were being kicked and fallen over.



Then before his roomie set finger on the fountain, another emerged from the depths of the building: Zak. A welcome face to most it seemed, the ornitho-communicator, as Alaster had labeled him in his own mind, uncharacteristically took a spot nearby. Usually the boy kept to himself somewhat, especially inside the dormitory where he seemed to roost in his own room. Perhaps his new appointment as dorm leader had left him with an urge to get out and be seen a little more? Well if that was the case, the shaman hoped wholeheartedly the endeavor went well. Zak rather deserved a larger social circle in his opinion.



And yet another body, another distraction came in behind Zak. A new face, Alaster reckoned after consulting with his familiars as to whether they’d caught site of the boy properly before. It was quickly concluded that he must be a freshman right before he spoke up and asked to sit with them. Oh goodness don’t let him be too extroverted Aly silently prayed to no being in particular. The whole descendant from gods and possibly being one himself sort of made it odd to pray anyhow, and yet, it was a social norm he’d picked up over the years. Thinking on it, he supposed he should make a conscious effort to refer to his ‘praying’ as ‘silently pleading with the universe itself’ in the future to not misconstrue his intent. He gave plenty of power to plenty of tiny gods as it was already. Last thing he needed was to enter into contract with some unknown, unseen being.



”No. Sure. Have a seat. it is a common area after all,” he spoke up, offering his unneeded permission to the boy, an overly observant eye scanning the subject matter of the book in his hand. Cellular Biology. What an ironic subject matter given that he was about to get a first hand practical example of it in short order if, no when, all went well. Alaster’s grin widened at the thought before his gaze shifted to fall on Ash and Sheridan stalking into the room and stopping with a question for their dorm leader, a rosy blush in the cheeks of the latter.



Alaster chose to leave the answer to the question up to the person it was directed towards and not confuse the blind teen. He had his own conversation to get caught up in. Which reminded him…



“Oh right. Hello, little one. Sorry for the pause there. I wanted to talk to you about a proposition. An uh... offer of sorts?” he said, lacing his words with the slightest flow of mystic energy again as he returned to speaking to his acorn, changing his terminology as he saw the confusion on the little soul’s visage. It was still an infant metaphysically speaking and polysyllabic words were still not quite in its vernacular yet. “I want to help you grow up, just not in the really really long way. More in the right here right now sense. See I need a new staff and I need it to be strong. Really strong and what sort of tree is stronger than an oak tree am I right?”



Hmm… yeah? I un...der..stand? I’m gonna grow big and strong and wide and root reeeaaally deep like my papa tree. But you don’t ...want me too? Why not? I wanna be big and strong! the seed queried, a slight tilt on its little point in the physical world, as if it were turning its head curiously.



“Oh no buddy. That’s not it. I want you to grow and become strong. Stronger than your papa tree even. Stronger than any tree actually. See you know how when a tree gets big and strong enough, sometimes they get cut down and turned into other stuff, like this table or this chair I’m sitting in, or a pencil or a house right?” Aly replied.



The acorn nodded on its spindly point, reflecting its understanding.



“Well I need for you to be better than that. I need all of you. All of the growing you could do. All of the strength you’re going to have to be put into one solid piece. I don’t need you to grow up and get cut down and turned into a staff and whatever else. No. I’m going to help you grow into the staff. I don’t want you ever to be cut or broken or scattered across the world as furniture or floorboards or something. I want you to turn into something so much better than your mama and papa trees, but only if you want to. I’m not gonna force you, little guy.” the mage offered quietly, earnestly, allowing the sincerity of his intention to seep into his words as the tiny soul with so much potential stared back at him with fresh, innocent eyes, the famed wisdom of an ancient oak not yet soaked into its spirit.



For a moment it was silent even to Aly's ears, considering.  

And then the acorn jumped, once...twice... and then it was bouncing up and down on the table, an excited rhythm clacking rapidly inside the commons. IwannadoitIwannadoitIwannadoitLETSDOIT! Its words continued to be inaudible except to those with spiritual senses, but even the lay human would pick up on that level of excitement from a bouncing acorn.



”Ok buddy just calm down and we’ll get started,” Aly chuckled back. It was like talking to a four year old, but he was just glad he didn’t have to get any more persuasive about this. He also hoped Sheridan didn’t think him even more insane for seemingly talking to himself yet again. Same went for the others he supposed since he didn’t actually know them very well either and it wasn’t like he usually exercised his abilities so publically like this. He’d have to cross his fingers and hope no one freaked out.


((OOC NOTE: For future reference, when Alaster speaks in blue, it is his normal voice. When he speaks in gold, he is using his powers, a flow of magical energy is being passed through his vocal chords and into his voice creating a voice that has an air of authority to it, slightly echoing, slightly melodic almost like multiple people are speaking at once but in perfect harmony and unison. The sound reverberates in the soul of those who hear it, but if his words aren't directed at you it is not as pronounced as when they are, It is not necessarily louder than normal, but is drastically different than a normal human voice. It simply is what it is. Feel free to react as you see fit.))

Once Graham managed to fill his water bottle all the way up, the young man turned around spotting the sudden influx of male Pyxis students. Frowning at all the activity, Graham looked uncomfortable as he navigated his way through the people - trying to get back to his dorm room. Soon finding his door, Graham ambled his way through and over to his computer chair - taking a seat and starting up the game that had been sitting waiting for him on his computer.

Computer's were easier than people to Graham, specifically video games. Plus, it was easy to adjust the volume when he wanted too. Letting his satisfaction quirk the corners of his lips, Graham soon became engrossed in his video game.

[ooc; I'm bowing out here. xD; I'm sorry I had no idea how to include him totally blanked out, plus I've held the thread up. D: Y'all enjoy! I'll try to pop him back if other stuff starts to happen.]

     Zak looked up from his paper, eyes shifting around the hall as he heard Sheridan's quiet voice. Face reddening a little, embarrassed that he hadn't thought before of some way for Sheridan to know where he was once he arrived, he set his sketchbook down on the small couch, standing to meet him. 

     "H-hey, Sheridan!" he hesitated, leaning to scratch Ash behind an ear before resting a reassuring hand on Sheri's arm. His eyes quickly darted to each person in the room before he took in a breath, pulling Sheridan to where he had been sitting. His eyes stayed on Alaster and the weird acorn for a moment before he moved his sketchbook onto an arm, then sat once more, scooting to leave room for Sheridan to sit next to him. "D-did you sleep well? I-" he paused as the acorn started shaking and bouncing uncontrollably, unable to keep himself from staring. Confused, he shook his head and looked back at Sheridan once again, laying his hands over his lap. 

     "The commons are... weird," Zak stated simply, a small, halting sigh heaving his chest. He shook his head, pushing his hair away from his face with one hand as he did so.

Although Matthias was not very concerned about whether he was being welcomed to sit where he chose, he was still at least somewhat glad he wasn't infringing on any wanted space. He'd rather not be that annoying house member if he could avoid it.
Matthias' attention barely even touched his book. Watching all these people around him was far more interesting. He had at least a little bit wondered what provisions there were for disabled pupils in a site like this, and it was good that there was something for him. But that really wasn't his main distraction.
There was a guy talking to either himself or an acorn while making said acorn wobble. Of course that was the distraction.
It was just far too bizarre, and scientific curiosity pretty much mandated his staring.
Not least was it bizarre in that he was practising using his powers outside the dorm room. Matthias was sure he wasn't the only person who tried to practise most in his room. Being a size-shifter, practising elsewhere was very likely to be dangerous. He didn't particularly want to be stepped on anytime soon.
But between the nutty guy with his acorn and the one with the dog, he was pretty distracted.
Why ever this telekinetic needed to talk to his target (like it was a child as well) Matthias wanted to know. At least some of Alaster's wish to have no one freak out was not going to be granted. "Incroyable!" Matthias had pretty much forgotten his book while watching the older boy and his acorn, and now that he had declared that he really had no way of hiding his staring. "How are you doing that? I've not seen télékinetics who can move anything so much before." His voice trailed off somewhat as he said that.
He looked down at his book, a little awkwardly. Although he wanted to know, providing equal distraction to the guy was unlikely to be very helpful. Generally annoying someone you are already preparing to bug with questions is a bad plan.