Prof. Sky Alton

True (But OMG, you need to)

Secretly enjoys reality TV

True

Enjoys Indian food

Sport (Olympics....yeah, my brain is random)

Glowworm

True. Old enough....but too enamoured with social responsibility to do it with no vision. hehe

Has written fanfiction

Pond

Glass

Penguin (um....yeah, my hot chocolate mug has a penguin on it)

False (Well, sort of. I did used to like them when I could see well enough to do them :D)

Has  used their phone/passed notes in class (depending on when they went to school, obviously)

Mug

2007 for me I think (my maths is astoundingly bad....which really begs the question of what I learned at the school I did go to but never mind)

Um...hi. I wrote this for Hol's Wand Making class last term and thought people might like it (or at least....not despise it). The assignment was to write how you thought Witches and Wizards began to use wands.

The Wand

  We were sitting across from one another, with our dying fire between us, when he began. I didn’t even see him pick the stick up and I’m not sure I noticed when he began to whittle it but at some point, I realised his fingers were busy. As we talked about our flight from the clan (as it had happened only two days before, we were still at that giddy stage of an adventure when looking back is liberating) he was engaged in trimming the bark from a twig. It wasn’t a remarkable twig either, just a fallen piece of the great oak we were sheltering beneath and his work seemed to have no particular purpose. I made nothing of it, after all he always had to be doing something or he fidgeted. His restless spirit was one of the reasons I had fallen so hard for him that I had been willing to leave the village behind for a life of uncertainty beyond. I remember pulling the blanket closer around me and preparing to sleep while all the while he continued scraping with his knife, the fire glimmering off the blade and off his eyes.

  The stick would reappear every time we camped. No matter how tired he was or how wet it might be, there would always come a time when he’d produce the thing out of nowhere and resume work. At first, it puzzled me and I wondered what possible work there could be left to do on such a thing but I kept my peace. Truth be told, by the fourth day, I was too tired and achy to mind what he did in the evenings. Nothing would keep me from my bed. In the end, the stick became so much an unexpressed part of our traveling life that I was surprised when he finally spoke about it.

“There,” he told me and held it out. I stared at him for a moment.

“What is it?” I asked, slowly.

“I have no idea,” he smiled as I took it, “must it have a purpose?”

“Well, you’ve spent so long on it,” I murmured, turning it over in my fingers, “it seems a shame to have done all that for naught.” The twig was now perfectly smooth, almost like a pebble that had been long washed by a river. In passing a thumb over both ends, I realised that he’d actually succeeded in boring a whole right through its core, end to end. I lifted it and peered through it at the fire, wondering how he could possibly have done it so neatly.

“Careful,” he chided gently, taking it back from me, “you know what happened to that spoon.” I scowled. I remembered all too well; my fingers had been clumsy with cold and the fire had eaten it quicker than I could knock it out with a rock.

“It could be a flute,” I told him, by way of changing the subject, “put wholes all down it and carve one end into a mouth piece.”

“Perhaps,” he mused, letting it dance in his long, clever fingers. He did it for so long that the graceful, lazy movement began to irk me.

“You had better make it a flute,” I told him, folding my arms.

He laughed, “You’re so determined that everything should have a place in the world.” He reached over and took my hand with the one of his not gripping the twig. He stroked my knuckles, “odd when you consider we ourselves are forging our own path. Becoming something new.”

I shook my head like a wild colt, not appreciating his superior tone, “go on then, what other ‘new’ thing could it be?”

“Well…” he thought, unruffled by my challenge, “how about a way of seeing things?” He lifted it to his eye and tilted his head back so the hole pointed skywards.

“We have eyes for seeing,” I pointed out.

“Well then,” he returned his attention to the ground, “a way of drinking?” He mimed slurping water from one of our wooden cups.

“Well, if you’re too lazy to lift a beaker to your mouth, I suppose.” He smirked and lifted the tube to his mouth. He blew through it, spattering me with water drops that sizzled off the fire. I turned my nose up.

“How about…” he said after a moments pause. He leant across and plucked a long, raven hair from my scalp and held it up. I didn’t cry out, too curious to see what silliness he might have in mind next. I watched closely as he threaded the hair entire into the twig. “A special place for something precious,” he finished, holding up the thing.

  I was about to scoff at him and flick him for stealing my hair when I stiffened. He saw it too and leapt to his feet. While we had been stupidly making merry, neither of us had kept an ear out for the woods around us. The gleaming eyes drew nearer and I thought I heard a low growl. We’d both lived long enough around flocks to recognise a wolf when one came calling. He seemed to be paralysed with fear and shock and I was the one who reached for the knife. Before I could hand it to him or use the thing myself, he’d leapt forward with only that stupid stick to protect him. I cried out as he brandished it, a cry which changed from horror to terror as a burst of light lit up our clearing. The wolf was transfixed by it for a moment, before turning tail and running, leaving only the scent of smouldering fur behind him. We both stood there for a moment, our eyes fixed on the stick.

  Since that day, he’s carried that thing. He even made one for me, though I’ll be the first to say, I don’t get nearly as good results as he does. We joke that it’s because his hair isn’t nearly as nice as mine. We tried to keep it a secret from those we met but it was too hard and the practice has spread. I don’t know what other people do with their wands nor what they put in the core and I don’t care. I don’t even want to speculate on why it works for some folk but not others, though it interests him a lot. All that matters to me is that we can keep traveling ourselves, knowing that we can keep both of us safe with those silly pieces of whittling.

Hi, I'm Sky. I've been a lion for quite a while now but only now have a computer that will work with the common room (darn non-magical technology). I'm a third year (in reality, 19 and at university studying creative writing). I'm a writer, a fencer, a geek, a reader and an internet addict. I'm also the owner of a guidedog-Lara (known affectionately as Lara Cruft-Tomb Rader)