Owlet

"Pull your hood back, dear," Bertha Beeblossom says.

"Yes'm," says a small voice, adding, louder and more deliberately, "Housemistress." Two pale, freckled hands pull back the hood of a gold-bordered brown House robe and a shock of bright red hair tumbles into the morning light of House Beavertail's common room.

An open-faced, guileless-looking young woman with pale blue eyes and a sprinkling of freckles from one cheek across her nose to the other side. You frown, seeing an improbable pattern. The freckles on one cheek are a mirror image of the other, precisely, though the set of her jaw is tighter on one side than the other.

And she's carrying one of your spellbooks, the study guides you've been transcribing for days? Weeks? One or the other, you suppose. This time your fingertips rise to the breast of your robe, touching the little pouch of necessaries where the miniature copy rests, waiting to tell you of the scholars studying its mates, like the one the new girl is tucking away into a fold in her robes.

With a gesture of the Housemistress' hand, the empty chair glides back from the table, dodging the newcomer's outstretched fingers, and taps gently from behind. Your last tablemate falls back into her seat with a grunt, concealed with a cough.

"Another redhead? They'll be conspiring together," Lupa murmurs to Florio.

"Allow me to introduce your new rooming companion," Mistress Beeblossom says. The Housemistress' eyes flicker toward the new arrival. "If I may?", following her words with a smile.

Your new roommate rolls her shoulders and lets them fall, takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Yes, ah, yes, Housemistress," she says. "Please?"

She's more worried than you were, your first day at House Minerval, but less...lost?

"Please greet Miss Orla Tumble," the Housemistress says. "We have the very great privilege of welcoming her into House Beavertail. She has the strongest natural aptitude for dreamwork and manifestation I have yet seen in a beginning scholar at Boarbristle."

Fluvia sniffs at "manifestation".

She's strong at manifestation, you'd allow, but, haha, her wind and water callings blow hot and cold.

"Eh?" Lupa says. "Pardon, Housemistress. I mean, it's near end of term. Second term."

"They call me Owlet," Miss Tumble bursts in. "And. Ah. Housemistress."

"No matter, Miss Tumble," Mistress Beeblossom says.

"So where are you coming from so late in the year?" Lupa persists.

The Housemistress clears her throat. "Circumstances are most propitious to welcome Miss Tumble to our House now." She nods, giving a broad smile to the table. Lupa sighs, her expression softening, her gaze distant. Florio blushes. Your little pink bits tingle, and a half-formed question bursts like a bubble as your eyes trace downward from the Housemistress' broad smile down her chin to the hollow of her throat and then her décolletage, the warm dark valley at the center drawing your gaze, a bottomless thousand-yard stare, swallowing all thought.

You blink back to awareness with a giggle from across the table. Fluvia is grinning. Miss Tumble takes a slice of fruit from the Housemistress' fingertips, her pale-lashed eyes closed with sensual rapture.

Your fault, perhaps, for overloading the Housemistress' plate, and now you're all her pets. Except Guillaume, and he seems less a pet and more a project, perhaps, and he's not rooming with you like Lupa, Florio, Fluvia, and now Orla. Owlet.

It's a pleasant breakfast. Eventually you brighten up and start talking. With Mistress Beeblossom prompting here and there, it ends up being more words than you've shared with your suitemates since your transfer from Minerval.

"Watch out, Owlet," Fluvia says. "Tess has a walking basket as her familiar."

"It's not my familiar," you protest. "It's just a walking basket."

"Might as well be from what it does," Fluvia says. "Florio shrieked when it bumped him. It was wandering round in the middle of the night like a stray cat."

"It was just looking for me," you say. "It's not used to me being up all night transcribing things, and it never bothered Juno. I found a corner for it and told it that was its home, alright? Did it move after that?"

Before the end of breakfast, the Housemistress gives you a special charge. "I am very pleased with your House Service, Tess," she says. "Miss Tumble's House Service will be to work in the gardens. Since neither of you yet have regular classes, I want you to study with Miss Tumble until she is familiar with the contents of the exercise books you scribed. Please see Miss Hemstitch about regularizing your own studies." Mistress Beeblossom fixes your gaze. "And make Miss Tumble welcome. You will find a number of particulars in common."

You blink. Did the Red-Headed League sponsor her, too? you wonder.

"Particulars about why you and she are entering this house now," Mistress Beeblossom says.

Woe and intrigue? No real family?

"Will you do this for me?" the Housemistress asks.

That smile. Waking you up, not with a kiss, but waking you clean and fresh and leading you on a whimsical magical hopscotch to breakfast at Beavertail's commons, to serve each other. The commons, where they sang your welcome and your heart melted.

"I will," you say. With all my heart, but that would be too much to say aloud, not words you'd ever heard at Minerval. Teardrops obscure the view through your glasses.

Miss Hemstitch is busy, says the little glowing mote that serves her as secretary, doorguard, factotum. So it's you, Orla Tumble, your housemates, and wherever Tess the Transformer's curiosity leads you. And your poppet-book, by similarity, contagion, and magical link, a way to learn about people. Well then, people it is.

You have 1 XP.

Traits: Ambition -1, Bravery +0, Cunning +1, Diligence +2.
Talented Transformer: +1 to Move rolls including casting a Transformation spell.
Unpurged Minerval: Tess can use MIND MELD or STAMINA as House Sex Moves.

You carry a miniature spellbook matching the study books you scribed for the use of first-year scholars. You can use the CAST A SPELL move to use MIND MELD to spy on and learn about other House Beavertail scholars studying the other copies of the book you scribed. Orla Tumble has a copy, though you'll probably be studying right along with her, and while she's studying, you'll likely be too engaged with being a tutor, and she would likely notice.

Take a GOAL (-2 vs. Diligence) from Housemistress Beeblossom: studying with your new roommate Orla Tumble until she's familiar with the practice spells and exercises in it.

You might explore a bit since you've seen little of Beavertail in the daytime, or talk with Owlet or your other suitemates, or wander the halls looking to eavesdrop. Or visit the Librarian perhaps and ask her about books on mills and clockworks for Fluvia?

But perhaps helping Orla settle in might be your best first order of business.