Library Study Tables
 

Diabolica sat at one of the Library's tables. She pulled out a quill and a piece of parchment and started to write.

Ponessa looked up at the sound of a scratching quill. A Slytherin girl had sat down not too far away. She curled tighter in her chair, and she too continued to write.

Diabolica had the feeling someone was looking at her. She looked up. Sevral seats away she saw a Ravenclaw girl who was watching her. As Diabolica glanced at her, she turned back to her parchment. She smiled. The Ravenclaw probably thought she was evil, as all Slytherins are seen as.

Ponessa continued to scribble with what little ink was left in her quill:

NTS: Must try again this afternoon s'pposed to be bright. Not that that makes it any more enjoyable

She folded the parchment, slipped it into her pocket, and lifted an open book up from her lap onto the table.

Diabolica heard a soft thud, and saw that the Ravenclaw girl that had been avoiding her eyes had put a book onto the table. She tried to see what book it was, but the cover and spine was hidden.

Ponessa glanced up at the Slytherin girl again. She gave a quick, nervous wave, as she did to everyone, and her eyes fell back onto the yellowed pages of the book:

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"'Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door--
Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door;
This it is and nothing more."

She re-read these selected words a few moments before turning the page.

The Ravenclaw girl from across the table waved quickly. Diabolica laughed quietly. She could tell this Ravenclaw has a bit shy. She smiled, and waved, more confidently, back.

Ponessa was a bit pleased to see that this girl did not fancy her mad, as some often did. Her eyes moved farther still along the newer pages:

No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! - by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman - a howl - a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph.

She, again flipped a few pages:

In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a somewhat startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and while I still lay prostrate, arrested my attention. It was this -- my chin rested upon the floor of the prison, but my lips and the upper portion of my head, although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing. At the same time my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shuddered to find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular pit, whose extent, of course, I had no means of ascertaining at the moment. Groping about the masonry just below the margin, I succeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. For many seconds I hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its descent; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud echoes. At the same moment there came a sound resembling the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded away.

Diabolica turned back to her parchment, dipping her quill in ink.

OOC: ^Did you actually write that? Or did you get it somewhere online, or from a book you have?

ooc: well, I typed them out... I know all the poems by heart.

Ponessa became immersed in the words she cherrished so much:

I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more. And the death just avoided, was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me.

Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall; resolving there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon. In other conditions of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses; but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I had read of these pits -- that the sudden extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan.



Of course, She knew she cherrished them only because she could relate so well to them. She blinked, finally, and flipped back to the first one:

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore-
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore-
Nameless here for evermore.

She gave the smallest of sighs and continued.

occ: Wow....what book of poems are they from?

bic:

The girl across from her gave a small sigh. Diabolica looked up. She wondered if the girl was distressed.

ooc: you're not really asking me in OOC are you?

Ponessa's eyes darted back and forth ever still along the words on the parchment:

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the door;-
Darkness there, and nothing more.
~~~~~
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"-
Merely this, and nothing more.

ooc: Wht do you mean? Yeah, my character isn't speaking to your character directly....i'm talking to you....outside of RPG world.....wait, what?

bic:

Diabolica got out another piece of parchment and continued to write.

ooc: use your character, Jenius. Oiii. Be polite.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore-
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;-
'Tis the wind and nothing more."



Ponessa curled into her chair, her eyes never fleeting from the page.

Chris snapped back into reality.
"Oh, I didn't wanna hang out with them sis... I just needed some time to think alone", he said and smiled sheepishly.
"Like I was saying, I saw this girl in the owlery this morning, and my thoughts have been drifting to her all the time sis."
He was absent-mindedly doodling on the bit of parchment in front of him....

Kimberly walked over to an empty table and slung her bag on top of it. She then strolled over to the bookshelves and pulled out Hogwarts a History, Kimberly was a first year so she wanted to get to know the school as much as possible. Once again at her table she cracked open the book and immersed herself in it.

Ponessa jumped at the sudden presence of the Hufflepuff girl. She cleared her head and began reading once more the words that calmed her to read:

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed
he;But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door-
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door-
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore-
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

ooc: My character is busy right now...she's writing something, but now I realize what the poems are from.....btw G2G now...see ya later...?

bic: Diabolica looked up at the Ravenclaw girl. She seemed deeply concentrated on her book, but it did seem that she was watching Diabolica. Diabolica got up and went aroung to the back of the girl's chair and glanced at the book she was reading over her shoulder.