welcome to chimera!

[Victoria Summers]

On the rare occasion Victoria Summers was not plotting the eminent humiliation of Cactus Phelps it would be hard to pin her as the least bit diabolical. She, for the most part, acted with a certain enthusiasm for the world around her that could be contagious if you were in the right mood. She liked to experiment and although this had garnered her familiarity around the hospital wing, Vicky rarely let that stop her. She enjoyed fiddling with magic of all sorts and her latest kick was putting together magical fireworks. It took some work, was often quite dangerous but recently she�d perfected a simple sparkler. So of course she felt ready to tackle bigger and better right away.

The idea was to get the firework to form a fearsome badger once it exploded � she figured it�d be perfect for Quidditch matches. After some tinkering, a lot of intricate work with both her hands and her wand, Victoria set off a loud BANG! and as the smoke cleared and the smell of singed hair filled the Hufflepuff common room, she felt like perhaps something had gone wrong. Her face was almost comically blackened, bits of her fringe were crisped away and her eyebrows were entirely burned off. Once the adrenaline died down a little she would probably realize she had relatively severe burns on several of her fingers. Instead, for the moment, she cleaned up her mess with a wave of her wand and decided to give up for the evening and head to the hospital wing where hopefully �hair fixing� was something they did. She could probably mention the intense ringing in her ears as well.

Stepping into the hallway, she checked quickly to make sure no one was going to catch her looking quite so foolish. There wasn�t a hint of sheepishness on her face though; her expression was plastered with a wide, exhilarated grin. She�d probably been super close to getting it to work. You know, before it�d blown up.

[Eileen Prince]

In general, days passed similarly for Eileen Prince. Part of her routine, however, now and then included a conversation with a certain Professor of History of Magic going well after hours. She wouldn�t have said Professor Binns� liked her, but now and then, he remembered her name close enough (Pince, Prance, Peach, Parce, Prince, after all), that he caught her attention. In this case, his intention in stopping her at dinner had apparently been only to ask the date of the next gobstones tournament, but the conversation had sprung into a long history of famous tournaments and players who were for the most part forgotten. Eileen�s interest in her hobby was fairly extended, and her attitude toward the game disproportionately serious and her attention could last for some time. However even had she grown bored there was very little she could have done. And it was, even for Eileen, very near the line. She wasn�t used to extended periods of conversation, and couldn�t quite be flattered as after mere minutes Binns seemed to have forgotten she had existed.

Finally, lacking most social charms anyhow, the Slytherin student had turned around and walked away. She wasn�t sure whether or not he had noticed.

She wasn�t really particularly bothered by the distraction; Eileen rarely had better things to do. But she couldn�t say she begrudged getting to return to her dorm. It wasn�t after-hours, but it was evening and the halls seemed relatively quiet: most students folded into dormitories and the library by this hour. Eileen looked almost the same as ever, her expression un-revealing and her shoulders hunched slightly. When she found her way blocked by a passing Hufflepuff with sparse eyebrows and a grin on her face. Eileen forgot to step out of the way and instead stopped where she was, staring at the girl in front of her plainly.

[Victoria Summers]

"Prince!" She declared happily, as though they were the best of friends. Her smile grew wider and she waggled her fingers with only the slightest wince. She was also speaking obnoxiously loudly, thanks in most part to the fact that she had gone temporarily partially deaf. "I had an accident, Prince!"

Her vision, now that she concentrated on something close by, was swarming with all sorts of brilliant colours that, while entertaining, she was pretty sure wasn't healthy. Her brain was going to start leaking out her ear at this rate. "There was an explosion, Prince! Can't really see. Or hear. Speak up!"

[Eileen Prince]

As if she wasn’t standing in front of the girl, blocking her path, Eileen was surprised when Victoria addressed her by name without any apparent hesitation. She knew her classmate vaguely by name, though nothing terribly in depth, and it was not surprising to her really that Victoria would notice her – as contrary as that was to how she was currently presented. She blinked and then her eyebrows tilted together just slightly, taking in the girl’s appearance and too-loud voice. “I wasn’t talking,” she clarified, her voice clear but not half as loud as Vicky’s – she had never been a loud person, “What exploded?” There was something vaguely alarming about the other girl’s announcement of an ‘accident’, even to Eileen Prince.

[Victoria Summers]

"My fireworks! BIG BANG!" She stretched out her arms to indicate exactly how big it had been although her appearance probably did a fine job of documenting that all its own. "Was trying to make fireworks! Hey Prince, I think my vision has stopped working. You're not blue, are you Prince? Not metaphorically, I mean actually blue?"

He grin was only wider and she blinked furiously a few times to try and correct her wonky vision to no effect whatsoever except now Eileen also had red spots. Large explosion combined with modified and tinkered with magic had resulted in some interesting side affects. It felt like a bad trip. In a good way.

[Eileen Prince]

Fireworks were everything Eileen Prince was not: fast, loud and dynamic. The analogy worked rather well for Victoria either, and Eileen felt herself instantly a little threatened by the girl�s obvious vivacity and spirit, not to mention her loud voice or emphatic sentence fragments. Eileen stared, lifting her thin arms to cross warily over her chest. �Yes. I�m not blue,� she agreed flatly, her tone not reaching the volume of the other girl�s even remotely. �What is wrong with your eyes?� She didn�t often ask questions, but she had no where to go except right through the girl, and the situation was rather out of her depth of experience. She was over-whelmed, but was characteristically not quite expressive, or, rather, her emotions rarely reached expressive enough to over-take her physicality. So she stared.

[Victoria Summers]

Stretching out her jaw and blowing out her cheeks as if trying to get her ears to pop, it took Victoria a moment to respond properly as several senses swam about and collided until she swore she was tasting sounds and seeing sensation. ''I'm glad you're not really blue. I imagine I got something in my eyes when it exploded, or inhaled, or who knows. There was some experimental magic involved, weird ingredients, it's all a little hazy now.''

Head still sloshing about like her brain wasn't holding together properly, Victoria reached out and actually held onto Eileen's arm for balance, In a proper, sober mood everything about the girl would have repulsed the urge to invade her personal space, but Victoria was hardly to be blamed for her actions at the moment.

[Eileen Prince]

Victoria kept making strange movements. Her cheeks puffed up and her jaw moved about. Eileen stared without seeming very self-conscious about it, obviously perplexed by the girl in front of her. She wondered, passingly in a casual way, if Summers was mad. Really, there wasn�t much she knew about the Hufflepuff that contradicted the theory. But, then, she didn�t know much about most of her fellow students, just as she expected them not to know very much about her.

Before she could do anything else, however, Victoria was reaching out for her arm and leaning on it for support. Eileen didn�t pull away, but she didn�t quite shift to accommodate the change in a hospitable way. She kept staring. �You should go to the hospital wing,� she informed the other girl flatly, not sure what on earth else there was to do.

[Victoria Summers]

"No!" She proclaimed in a worried tone of voice, "No. No please, they don't let you smoke in there." Horror of all horrors. She didn't seem to notice the other girl's stiffness and she scrabbled at her pleadingly. "Just, fresh air? eh? Fresh air fixes everything."

Victoria smiled brightly at the Slytherin, "You have to come with me, eh, Eileen? Don't want to abandon me. I can't see right and all the walls are ceilings and the floor is the ocean and I know that can't be right but it's kind of confusing."

[Eileen Prince]

Eileen had very few mothering instincts. She hadn�t even really made the suggestion out of deep empathy, though she was not unfeeling � she just not used to people turning to her for help. Staring, still, Eileen shrugged her thin shoulders again, not quite sure why Victoria was asking her permission about anything. �Not everything. But you can.� She contributed, fairly generously. Next, though Victoria surprised her further by asking her company not just her permission. She didn�t know if she liked being told what she had to do, but then again, she couldn�t entirely dislike being asked along. She shrugged again, in what might have been assent. �Do you have to grab my arm?�

[Victoria Summers]

"The floor is the ocean, Eileen. I don't want to drown." Her brow furrowed at the girl as if this was obvious and shouldn't be questioned and she held on tighter just to prove her point although what point she was making about stiff and awkward physical contact was sort of beyond her at the moment. Like most things were, to be fair. She pointed in the direction that led nowhere close to outside and began to walk, "To the wild blue yonder!"

Eileen was a little serious, but she was a Slytherin so it was to be expected. Victoria kind of liked how surly and straight-forward Prince was, even if it was directed at her. It was refreshing in a girl.

[Eileen Prince]

Eileen stared at the floor and saw no ocean, which she had no trouble pointing out to her companion, glancing up at Victoria again. A lot of Eileen's contraryness was caused by a genuine disconnect with the metaphorical world. She wasn't skilled at dealing in the poetic. "You can't drown in a floor," she told Vicky flatly, but didn't push her away. The Hufflepuff's grip tightened and Eileen didn't see a way out - nor necessarily want one. "This way," she corrected in the same tone, turning them around a little sharply so that they went towards the stairs back to the first level of the castle and started out, assuming Vicky would remain anchored to her and then follow. She wasn't really sure how she had gotten into this, but not quite prepared to argue. "Don't fall over."

[Victoria Summers]

Victoria whooped a little when they turned so suddenly that everything sloshed, but she seemed to be distracted by the ocean-floor and Eileen's disbelief by something else. Namely, Eileen's hair. "Your hair is very pretty,' she intoned seriously. This compliment might've had something to do with the fact that to her, Eileen's hair looked like the night sky, but she was pretty sure she'd be disbelieved again and she was sick of that! Part of her knew she wasn't making much sense anyways, and the farther she got from the fumes she'd created, the clearer things began to get - sort of.

"I won't fall over I have perfect balance like a tight-rope walker, you look thin enough to be my rope, Prince."

[Eileen Prince]

The whoop startled Eileen who stopped momentarily as if to register what had happaned. Deciding it had not been a cry of pain, she stared off again, gaze fixed in front of her. However, Vicky's next statement puzzled her more, and she reached a spare hand to tug the straight ends of her very straight hair. As far as she knew, there was nothing remarkable about her hair except that it was limper than most girls preferred. So she answered the obvious, "No it isn't." Being contrary came naturally to Eileen, even when she didn't mean to be rude. In fact, no one had seriously told her she was pretty before, which made her wary and slightly defensive. Eileen hated being teased, and saw teasing everywhere. "Don't tease me," she clarified, though didn't bother stopping again, even as Victoria added some other metaphorical statement she didn't quite decipher. She was, now, both intrigued by the attention and quite suspicious of it, which made her a strange mix of defensive stiffness that was not, in Eileen, strikingly different than her usual manner.

[Victoria Summers]

"It is! It's brown like chocolate, like coffee, like chocolatecoffee." She nodded and began to swing their arms like they were chipper little schoolgirls who were simply the best of friends. "You're too serious, Prince, that's your problem, you know?" Patting her to comfort her about being told she was too serious like it was a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Victoria smiled reassuringly. "But that's okay, you can change."

They were being relatively loud, or at least Victoria was but they were lucky in that they didn't gather much more attention than the passing snarky portrait. Once they were on the first floor, getting outside was simply a matter of finding an exit of which the castle had many tucked away and they ended up in a nice section of courtyard with a pretty fountain. Victoria pointed to it like it was the holy grail. "Think it's deep enough to swim?"