In one moment, Hanna was relieved her answer was accepted. In the next, she was back to nothing. She didn't know anything about cleansing the magical gemstones. Some of the answers seemed to make sense, but Hanna had never done it, nor did she know how to.

Thinking about ways of cleansing, with the polishing idea already answered, Hanna raised her hand. "P-Professor might... might a simple scouring charm work at all?" It was a great charm, but she realised that some it wouldn't be good for every thing.

For once in his life, Derf was not taking a professor's question literally and he wasn't thinking about cleaning charms and soap. Not that the Hufflepuff tended to dwell on such matters either and it had only been out of concern for Simon that he had put much thought into them at all. But his thoughts instantly returned to the smell when he had entered the room and, still scratching his hand so then they both went up again, the seventh year offered up his reply.

"I reckon...you've already been doing that," he began while his blue eyes glanced around looking for the herb in question. "...by burning sage or um...smudging? I think that's the name for that."

Scratch scratch scratch, his hands were back in his lap again.

Aaron wore a barely contained smile. Professor Sutton was a kind lady, and praise felt nice in any form. It was difficult not to preen beneath it.

He scribbled down the other suggestions from his classmates, before distractedly tickling his chin with the quill. Cleansing a gemstone wasn't literal.. all the time. Sure, they sometimes needed to be polished and buffed, but that didn't do much for the energy... Where they talking about the energy? Or overall appearance?

... Huh. If it was about spiritual energy, then the moon was probably the most effective. Like Daisy had mentioned. But also. "Running water, from streams, so it's not stagnant. And rain, as in during rainfall. Again, so it's not stagnant." He couldn't remember all the stones that went best with this method, but the Hufflepuff was positive quartz was among them.

He idly drummed his fingernails against his knee.

At first, Tina wasn't sure her answer would be what Professor Sutton was looking for, so she couldn't help but feel pleased with herself when it was accepted. Oh, so rose quartz fades if left in the sun too long... that was goid to know. She would file that piece of information in her brain; it could come in handy someday!

Tina listened intently as the professor spoke again, jotting down some of the gemstones her classmates had mentioned in her notes. So they were moving on to gem cleansing? Did that explain the tables? Were they going to practice a particular type of gem cleansing at the tables? Or possibly compare two different types of cleansing to decide which worked better? She had so many questions, but now what she needed was an answer!

She thought for a minute. The first thing that came to mind was the ultrasonic cleaning machine in the jewlery store her mother used to take her engagement ring to be cleaned,
but she doubted a muggle machine would work on a magical gem. Then she thought of sun or moonlight, but both of those had already been said. Come on, think, Tina! She tried to recall what she'd read on the subject, and... she had it! Her hand went up, and she said, "I believe there's one method of gem cleansing that uses Himilayan salt."

Once she finished speaking, Kassie made her way to the front of the room, nearest the plum colored curtains. With a quick flick of her wand, the curtains smoothly slid to the side of the room, revealing two tables. One table had a thick stone slab in the middle, surrounded by bundles of sage. The other table was a wooden water table with constant flowing water. “As you can see, we have a smudging station and a water cleansing station set up. The water station has moon consecrated water, so we don’t need to worry about stones that react to salt water.”

“Now, for what we will be cleansing.” Kassie flicked her wand once again, but towards the two long tables at the side of the room. The two white sheets flew into the air and gently landed off to the side, revealing one table with assorted gemstones and crystals, and another table with jewelers wire, leather cords, and tools.

“As you can see, there are several stones to choose from. Please choose wisely. You will want to be in harmony with the stone you will be working with.” Kassie held up the pendulum she had been holding in her hand. “This is what we will be making” Her pendulum was an amethyst, attached to a long leather cord.

“The first part of our task today, like I said, will be to choose your stone, cleanse it, then make your pendulum. You may choose any of the stones on the table, but only one. After you have made that choice, you then need to pick either smudging or water cleansing. To use the smudging station, light the sage bundle using either Incendio, or asking an older student for help if you are not comfortable. Allow it to flame for a moment, then blow it out. After you blow it out, run your chosen stone through the smoke a few times.” She glanced around to see if there were any questions. “If you decide to use water cleansing, please take one of the mesh pouches below the table and place your stone inside. Then, submerge your bag in the flowing water for five to ten minutes, depending on how much negative energy you felt from the stone. Once you have cleansed your stone, head on over to the table with the jewelers wire and leather cords to attach your stone and make your pendulum. When you have completed all the steps, please take a seat and we will continue with the lesson.”




OOC: Mini activity time! Pick a stone, cleanse it at one of the tables, then attach the stone to the cord. Do it in as many posts as you like. If you are just now joining us, please feel free to jump in/catch up. You have about 72 hours before we move on to the main activity. If you have any questions, please feel free to PM/VM me. If your charrie has a question, please put professor or Kassie at the top or nudge me if I don’t see it promptly. Most of all, have fun!!

Okay, well, Abra supposed it was too much to ask for two successful guesses in a row. He went a bit pink in the face upon hearing that his answer wasn't quite correct - he hate-hate-hated giving incorrect answers, and that was part of why he was so nervous about speaking up in lessons - but felt a bit better on hearing that his answer hadn't been totally incorrect. The stones DID need to be clean, after all.

Once they'd all been told what to do for their first activity of the lesson, Abra reluctantly rose to his feet and left the fireside to go over to the table of crystals and gemstones. Already, he'd forgotten what most of the others had said about what stones had what meaning, so picking one was going to involve a bit of guesswork. But intuition was good in Divination, right? Wasn't that part of it all? Following your intuition? Abra was going to do that.

After surveying the table for a moment, his gaze was drawn back to the tiger's eye. That was enough for him to make a decision - even though he had no idea the significance of the stone and would need to look it up in his textbook in a moment - so he picked one out for himself before crossing the room to the two cleansing stations.

Now, smudging, or water?

Well, at least her answer wasn't entirely wrong. Hanna was happy enough with that. Hearing Derf's correct answer of sage smudging, which she'd never done before, but also what was moon consecrated water? Things Hanna would have to look up after class.

Making a pendulum was a pretty cool activity. She went to pick a gemstone, and decided on Moonstone. Mostly because she liked the milky look and moon appearance, although she had no idea what characteristics it had. Would she be in harmony with it? Who knew. Deciding on which station to cleanse her stone with, she decided on the sage smudging. Partly because she'd done plenty of dishes in her life, and didn't feel that submerging a stone in water, even if it was moon consecrated water, was overly exciting. She'd never done sage smudging before.

She placed the stone onto the table to get her wand from her holster. "Incendio," she said, moving her wand into a flame-like shape. She was careful to aim the sage sticks close enough that they lit on fire. Once she was sure the flame had stuck to the sticks, she blew it out and what was left was a glowing orange ember, with a smoking sage. She positioned her moonstone over the smoke and rotated it around in the smoke for a while.

Gathering the remainder of her supplies and heading back to the table, Hanna set about constructing her pendulum with the jewellers wire, using tools as needed.

Gemstones and divination.

Not an entirely unlikely connection given one of the most commonly known types of divination included crystal balls. Though there appeared to be quite a few different types and colors and such, all with various different meanings and their own connections. Septimus was doing his best jotting down suggestions from his classmates as well as the answering explanations from the professor, figuring it likely would be helpful later on. And then there was the talk of cleansing of the gemstones.

Interesting.

The revealing of the two stations at the front of the room and the tables of gemstones off to the side only made it more so. Once they were charged with the current activity, Septimus moved to do his part, wandering slowly along the table of stones as he debated his options. He didn’t really have one that he was previously connected to so they were all open for his choice for this project. But jasper…the jasper seemed to call to him after a while, the fourth year picking up one of the stones and rolling it over in his hand.

Yep…yep this was for him.

Smudging seemed like the route to go, mostly because Abra wasn't entirely sure he could ~feel~ the negative energy coming from the stone, let alone how much. Sure, he felt negative energy, but he felt that every minute of every day and it was called 'anxiety', so he couldn't go around blaming that on the stone. The point was, he didn't know how much time to water cleanse it for, and going for ten minutes even just to be safe meant a lot of waiting around. No, smudging was the way to go.

So Abra moved to the cleansing station with the stone slabs and the bundles of sage. Holding his stone in the last three fingers of one hand, he picked up a bundle of sage, withdrew his wand, and cast, "Incendio," at the end of it. The bundle flamed at once, and Abra waited for a moment before blowing it out again. Trying not to cough too obviously from the fragrant smoke, he took the stone and ran it through it a few times, over and over and over, until the smoke had pretty much dissipated.

With that done, Abra set down the burnt bundle of sage and turned back around, and headed across to the last table where he used the jewellers wire, leather cord, and tools to set about the fiddly work of connecting everything together to make a pendulum. It took him... probably much longer than it should have done, and by the end of it Abra was trying hard not to get frustrated with the process - in fact, it was likely his stone needed cleansing again after that - but he eventually managed it and was left at last with a tiger's eye pendulum.

More or less satisfied, Abra returned back to his seat and waited for the lesson to move on.

Divination wasn't all that high up on her list of lessons if she was to be completely honest about it. And yet here she was attending another term full of lessons. Whether it be for curiosity's sake or the fact that she was still learning how to not be such an overachiever (which she was getting MUCH better at) was still unknown.

The fact of the matter was that the fourth year lioness was here. Though she hadn't said not one word when questions had been asked it hadn't been entirely because she didn't know this time. The reasoning was simply due to the fact that there was notes to be taken. Notes that kept her focus for just long enough until the lesson was moving on.

It was activity time. From what Professor Sutton was saying and a quick peek at her notes all she had to do was get up and select a gemstone first. That was step one. Once she had done that she would decide what to do next, either smudging or a water cleansing. First and most importantly was the selection of the stone.

Rylee rose to her feet and wandered over to the long table taking a very good look at all the gemstones. Right away her gaze was drawn to the Amethyst simply because it was purple and almost sparkly. Two of her favorite things. The moonstone was really nice too as it had an almost pearl like quality to it. There was also the emerald stones that she knew were her birthstone. A lot of choices but none that spoke to her. Really caught her eye. Not until she spotted that one. The one that practically leaped off the table at her calling her name. Okay, so it didn't really but it might as well have when she laid eyes on it. It was greenish with it's red spots. Bloodstone.

Reaching out to pick it up, Rylee turned it over in her hand a few times before closing it up in her palm, running her thumb lightly over it. This was the one.

SEE????

He had completely made up all that stuff about moonstone and the professor had complimented him on his way of thinking!! Sure, it was a little embarrassing that he'd chosen the stone that was apparently connected to childbirth but whatever. He was totally getting an O in Divination.

Sporting a proud grin for efforts so far, the Slytherin made his way over to the gemstone table. To him, they were just a bunch of rocks. But the Professor had said something about choosing wisely.....

Heh.

He picked up the Hematite for the simple fact that it looked kinda cool and it was his favourite colour, grey. So it'd do.

Since Daisy had knowledge of the Amethyst, that was she was going to use to make her pendulum. She made her way to the table laden with gemstones/crystals and grabbed one Amethyst crystal and held it in her hand. She felt minimal negative energy which gave her an indication as to how long the crystal would be submerged in the cleansing water.

Daisy then retrieved a mesh pouch that was below the table. She carefully placed the Amethyst in the mesh bag and headed over to the table where the wooden water table was and then submerged the bag for no more than five minutes.

Once that was completed, Daisy headed for the table where the wire, cords and tools were and grabbed a length of jeweller's wire, a leather cord and a pair of pliers. She then made her way back to her table and started to make her pendulum. Daisy slowly and carefully wrapped the Amethyst in the length of jeweller's wire, ensuring that there was a loop to thread part of the leather cord through. She used the pliers to close the loop after threading the chord.

Once that was completed, Daisy waited for further instruction.

Pleased by the energy of the room, Kassie slowly roamed about, glancing here and there at the work being completed. All of the students appeared to be getting along quiet nicely and she loved how vividly she was able to see their auras while they were focusing on the task at hand.

"You have about 10 minutes to finish cleansing your stone and to make your pendulum. Please be mindful of the time so we are able to move on. I'm not sure how the Headmaster expects us to complete such important lessons during our limited time each week." The latter part was said under her breath as her head shook in annoyance.


OOC: We will move on in about 24 hours. Feel free to catch up if you need to.

Torii had made up her mind. She was going to use jade. It was pretty and green, and it reminded her of Slytherin house. Yes, Slytherin house--the one at Hogwarts and not her beloved house she'd been sorted into at Ilvermorny. She might just be getting a little bit used to this whole move across the world.

The professor had said to be in harmony with the stone she chose, so...that should put her in harmony with it, right?

The Slytherin made her way over to the table and surveyed the selection of stones, making double sure of her choice. When her eyes settled on the jade ones, she knew it was the right choice. They were so pretty and made her smile. One in particular drew her attention, so she scooped it up. Deciding on cleansing the stone with water, Torii selected a pouch and tucked the stone carefully inside. She submerged the stone into the water and checked the time. Five to ten minutes.

So how was she supposed to feel its energy? She stared down at it, and after about six minutes, she knew the time was right. She just felt drawn back to the stone, and she carefully lifted it out of the water. Time for step two now, right?

Yes, sage was tickling her nose and she nodded when the professor said as much. Now in her seat she started taking notes as the professor talked about things she wasn't fully sure of. It was so interesting to listen in class and not really answer. Well at least in some classes and this was one of them. If they were using crystals and gems she hoped they were really sparkly and pretty ones.

Cleaning them, now that was something Chloe never thought about. What did they use, but they were magical so wouldn't it just be a spell? She wrote down all the answers and was shocked by some. The moon? That was really interesting. When the professors started talking again about the first part of their lesson she was wondering how she was going to clean her stone and which one she would take.

Going up to get one as soon as she got to the table she knew exactly what she wanted, Amethyst! "That is so pretty!" She wanted that one for sure. Taking it she moved to the smudging station, because hello fire sounded fun! Taking her wand out she did the spell and let the flame go for a bit. Leaning over she blew it out.

Taking her stone she moved it through the smoke as the professor said to do. Once she felt the negative energy whatever that meant was gone she headed to the cord station and picked one to attach her stone. Now that it was attached she took it and found her seat again.

Now that he had his stone he had another decision to make before he made his pendulum: smudging or water dousing? Water was what one tended to think of when thinking of cleaning…unless one took into account the magical aspect of it. Then Septimus leaned towards the sage smudging because of the fire connection. Even if the fire wasn’t actually coming into contact with his stone. So he moved to the table with the bundles of sage upon it in various stages of use.

He took a new bundle to call his own, setting his jasper down temporarily as he took out his wand as well. “Incendio…” he cast at the tip, lighting it on fire, being sure to keep it small. Quick enough he blew it out, setting down the wand in favor of the stone. Into the smoke went his stone one…two…three times.

There, his stone was smudged and cleaned so it was onto the other table. He found a piece of cord that seemed a good length, taking that and some wire to work on creating his pendulum. Septimus watched a couple of classmates attempt their own to see the best way to do it. A tight twist of wire to house the jasper and then the one end of wire connecting to the leather cord. It certainly looked good in comparison to the professor’s so he went back to his seat to await what came next.

Tina wasn't as confident with her last answer as she was with her first one. She half-expected her answer to be wrong, but just when the dread of being corrected in front of everyone threatened to overwhelm her... her answer turned out to be correct. Well, what do you know?She watched as the curtain slid aside to reveal two tables, and the sheets flew off the other tables at the far side of the room. So they were doing gem cleansing? She smiled, feeling pleased with herself that she'd not only given a correct answer but (sort of) guessed the activity. Being right was so much fun!

She made her way to the gem tables, carefully examining the stones as she moved along. Her eyes were immediately drawn to a pretty jade stone at the far end. It was an almost pear shape with flecks of varying shades of green, her favorite color, but Tina didn't want to pick a stone solely based on looks. Its meaning had to fit her too! She bit her lip, lost in thought as she tried to recall what she knew about jade. She knew it was associated with luck and prosperity, but she didn't feel very lucky or prosperous right now! But then again... jade was also said to encourage serenity and stability. Now that sounded more like something Tina could use! The light glinted off the stone as she turned it over in her hand, and the colors suddenly reminded her of her old house at Beauxbatons... and a much happier time in her life. Now she was 100% convinced this was the stone for her!

Tina took her stone to the cleansing tables, her eyes darting from one table to the next as she debated which method to use. She decided on the water; it seemed to have less room for error, and was therefore safer than smudging. She picked up one of the mesh pouches from under the table and dropped her stone inside. Now how long should she soak it? She was sure she felt some negative energy, but she wasn't sure if it came from the stone or herself. In the end, she went with seven and a half minutes - a nice, happy medium between five and ten minutes. Every so often, she checked her watch to make sure she had the timing as precise as possible.

When the time had passed, she fished her pouch out and removed her stone. Now came the fun part! Tina loved arts and crafts projects, and making the pendulum looked a lot like jewelry-making. This was right up her alley! She gathered some jewelry wire, a leather cord, and a couple of tools to help her cut and shape the wire, then began to carefully wrap the wire around her stone. But it wasn't just a random pattern to hold the stone in place! Never one to miss a chance to make a project her own, Tina wrapped her wire around the stone in a sort of crisscross pattern that was meant to resemble the wide part of a leaf- the symbol for Bellefeuille. She left a couple of inches at the end to form the leaf's stem and bent one end of the wire to form a loop for the cord. Then she carefully threaded the cord through and tied a knot at the end to keep it from detaching.

There, finished - and not a moment too soon! Tina took a quick moment to admire her work before going back to her seat to await the next part of the lesson.

It appeared as though most of the students had completed making their pendulums and it was time to move on. Kassie clapped her hands together, took quick note that no sage was left burning, and spun around to face the class. “Very good. It’s time we learned how to use the pendulums you have made.” She once again reached into her pocket and pulled out her own pendulum. The amethyst stone hung from a well-worn leather cord, smooth and supple with age. She held it out in front of her body with a relaxed arm and stood very still until the stone stopped moving.


“Now, before we will be able to get any answers from our pendulums, we need to calibrate them. It won’t do us much good to ask questions if we don’t know how it will respond.” She closed her eyes and cleared her mind. “Am I Kassandra Sutton?” She asked the pendulum. The stone slowly started to sway back and forth, left to right, before falling into a smooth clockwise rotation. Being as familiar with her pendulum as she was, she didn’t need to look to know it was signaling a yes answer. “As you can see, for my pendulum, a yes answer is a clockwise rotation. This may or may not be how your pendulum will signal a yes response.” She flicked her wand at the chalkboard and it spun around to reveal the calibration notes.

Quote:

Pendulum movements

Yes =?
No=?
Undecided/inconclusive =?

Possible movements, but not limited to:

Left to right swing
Front to back swing
Clockwise
Anti-clockwise
Small, quick circles
Large, slow circles
Hopping, or jumping

“What you need to do is ask your pendulum several yes/no questions. Questions that you know for sure what the answer is, so you are able to note how your pendulum reacts. There is no right or wrong way for your pendulum to respond, as long as it is consistent. If you keep getting different movements for known yes or no answers, then you may need to repeat the cleansing of your stone.”

She hoped everyone understood, but if not, she would be walking around to help. “After you finish calibrating your pendulum, please be sure to note on your parchment how your pendulum responds yes and no. Then, I want you to test it out with at least one question you don’t know the answer to. We have about thirty minutes left for our lesson, so get to work.”


OOC: Main activity time. The task is to calibrate the pendulum. Find how it responds for yes and no by asking questions they know the answer to. Then, ask at least one question they don’t know the answer to see how the pendulum responds. This can be done in as many posts as you wish. You have about 96 hours before we start wrapping up. If you have any questions, please feel free to PM or VM me. And, as always, catch up posts are allowed and welcome.

He had to admit, he was pretty proud of himself for the connection. Divination was one of those subjects where he always felt sorta encouraged to think outside the box and there were rewards for it. Even under Professor Fletcher it wasn't as rigid as the man's posture implied. So, grinning and relaxing a bit at the confirmation about sage, Derf attentively listened as Professor Sutton continued on and introduced them to the gemstones they would be working with today. And, well, was it any wonder that this Hufflepuff selected Tiger's Eye as his gemstone of choice?

Didn't think so.

And Derf was most certainly going to go with the smudging method over water.

Hopping up and selecting one of the Tiger's Eye stones, which he really didn't give TOO much thought and just let his hand grab which one it pleased, the seventh year made his way over to the smudging station and collected a bundle of sage. It smelled...pretty great on its own, you know? And there was a familiarity about it as well since dad often burned it when he was performing Earth magic. Same basic principle too, cleansing and stuff. Wand out, he cast a tiny Incendio and lit the bundle. On the count of five, he blew it out and then pinched his Tiger's Eye between his fingers and ran that through the smoke ooooooooonce...twiiiiiiiiiiice...thriiiiiiiiiice.. .seven times just to be safe. He reckoned that, you know, seeing as seven was kinda a powerful magical number it made the most sense to go with that.

With the wire and leather cord in hand, Derf fumbled around with it all as he made his way back to his seat and flopped in it to finish up the process of turning it into a pendulum. And just in time too as the professor was now moving on to the next bit...which sounded rather arbitrary at first that the Head Boy thought his head may explode.

No right or wrong way...just as long as it was consistent. Well...wasn't that just a metaphor for something else?

Ruffling his hair and swallowing somewhat thickly, Derf dangled his Tiger's Eye in the air and gave it a bit of a wiggle to test and make sure that it wouldn't fall off or something - which it didn't, thankfully - so now it was time to try this question and answer bit, yeah? Yeah.

Holding his pendulum steady, Derf asked the first thing that came to mind - given his seating arrangement.　"Am I Abraham Botros Jr?" And then he squinted at it, willing the stone to make some sort of movement.

Pendulums? This was pretty darn stupid. Nettie was hoping that at some point, Divination would click with her and she'd be happy to attend the class. But nope. She still thought it was a load of bologna. She missed the good old days of intro Divination classes, when they learned about tea leaves and tarot cards - mainstream stuff, you know?

She had decided to go with the amethyst, because it was the prettiest. If she had to do this, she was at least going to make it look gorgeous. She took the stone from the table and returned to her desk, she decided to go with the water cleansing. She wasn't sure what the heck negative energy was - she didn't think she felt any of it from her stone, honestly - so only five minutes was probably enough to clean it. She took the pouch and tossed her amethyst on it.

She walked to the cleansing station and set the bag in the flowing water, then looked at the clock to make sure five minutes had passed. It felt like FOREVERRR but finally, it was done.

Now on to the actual pendulum reading. She had to calibrate it first? Ok. Try not to eye roll...

Once she tied up her pendulum, she stood over her desk and cleared her throat. "Am I Trinetta Gladin?" she asked the pendulum. At first, it didn't look like it was going to do anything at all. Then, after a few seconds, the pendulum naturally started swinging left to right. Alright, so that meant it was a yes, right? Left to right. Got it.

Ooooh. They were going to start with the practical part of the lesson now, cool. Lenora listened to the instructions carefully, occasionally jotting something down on her parchment. She had to make sure she didn’t miss out on a step, yeah? Once the professor was done speaking, the third year got up and headed over to the table with gemstones. Hmm.. she took a moment or two, trying to pick one.. which was little more difficult than she had anticipated but she finally went with the amethyst, for some odd reason.

Carrying the gemstone, she headed over to the smudging station. Lenora pulled out her wand and lit the sage bundle by casting an “Incendio”. So.. this activity seemed rather easy enough. Hmm. She watched as the bundle burst into flame, waited for a moment before she blew it out. Now, what? She checked her notes before moving on to the next step. She ran the stone through the fumes for a few times.. and a few more times until there was no smoke. So.. that cleansed the stone? Lenora wasn’t exactly sure. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe she didn’t do it the right way?? Was there a right way? Who knew. But aaaanywho, moving on.

The Gryffindor headed over to the table with the jewelers wire, leather cords and tools. In a few minutes, she finished making the pendulum. She returned to her seat, staring at the gemstone. So.. had she actually cleansed it? She couldn’t feel any negative energy.. or did she? UGH. This was so confusing. Meanwhile, the professor started to move on the next part of her lesson. Setting the stone down on her desk, she listened to what the professor said. HUH. Yes and no questions.. interesting. What did she want to ask?

With her stone in hand it was time to move on. Rylee quickly settled on the water option for no real reason other than the moderate amount of negative energy she felt from the Bloodstone needed to be cleansed away. Water would do that and while it might take a little bit longer this is what she felt was best.

Choosing a mesh bag from beneath the table she placed her stone inside and then gentle placed it into the water. Keeping on eye on the time she removed the mesh bag containing her stone after roughly seven or so minutes being it fell nicely between five and ten minutes.

Now what she needed to do was move onto the the next table. Collecting a bit of wire and a leather chord she returned to her seat. It took a few moments and a couple of tries to get the wire securely around the gemstone and then fastened properly to the leather chord but she managed it on her own.

Before long it was yet again time to move on. This was going to be the difficult... trying to figure out what the pendulum was telling her. Picking up the leather strap portion she slowly lifted it up into the air, holding her free hand underneath the gemstone for a few moments until she was positive it wasn't going to fall apart. When it didn't she was ready to get started.

What was she supposed to ask it? Yes or no questions. Simple ones that she knew the answer to until she knew it worked. Right. Well maybe it was best to start with the most obvious question. Her name. "Am I Rylee Caelyn Prichard?" she asked softly watching as the pendulum took it's sweet time in making any sort of movement. Which right now was nothing at all. Or... wait... was it moving? She wasn't really sure. Was it just a trick in the light?

Whether or not it was a good idea, Abra had spent the last few minutes of the first activity swinging his tiger's eye back and forth in front of his face, watching it go back and forth and back and forth and waiting for the class to move on. When Derf returned to his own seat nearby, Abra flashed him a grin but tried his best not to distract him from his work, and then all too soon it seemed they were moving on anyway.

Right... calibration. Okaaaaay. Abra had assumed that there would be universal 'answers' in the pendulum's movement for yes, no, or maybe, and it looked like he'd been wrong. It made sense, though, that they would have to calibrate the pendulums themselves.

Sitting up in his chair again, Abra held the pendulum out and briefly steadied it with his other hand. He opened his mouth to ask it the first question that came to mind ('Am I sitting on a chair?'), when Derf's question made him stop and look up.

Abra paused, grinned again, then looked back at his own pendulum. "Am I Derfael Ashburry-Hawthorne?" He paused, waited, tried not to breathe too obviously in case he moved the pendulum or his body moved to much and affected its motion. Then, it moved. Side to side, left, right, left, right, just as it had done when he'd held it up in front of his face.

So that was probably a 'no', but he'd obviously check it with a few more questions before writing anything down.

Calibrating? That was for drones and other such things, not gemstones that really would look better in a nice necklace or ring.

She had, of course, followed the instructions so far (using the water in hopes of splashing off whatever was making her itch), even with her massive disbelief in this whole activity. She also hadn't paid any attention to which stone she'd chosen until the time came to attach the lanyard or whatever it was called. "Am I Archer Calrissian?" she asked, feeling rather foolish. Because, duh, she was most definitely Archer Calrissian. The pendulum bobbled up and down a bit. So that was obviously supposedly the way it said yes.

Also, it was most definitely the sage making her scratch at her arm like a mad woman.

She decided to do one more question before she moved on, to make sure that the left to right movement was DEFINITELY a yes answer. "Do I have a sister?" she asked the pendulum. Either she was going to get the right answer...or she was about to learn something shocking about her family.

More than likely if she got the wrong answer, this was all just a load of rubbish...

Nope, the pendulum moved up and down, in the opposite direction of her last question. Good. So it was calibrated or whatever...so now she was supposed to ask a question that she didn't know the answer to. She wrinkled her nose a bit as she tried to think of something that she didn't know the answer to. What could she possibly have to ask this stupid pendulum?

Blushing a bit, even though she knew no one was paying attention to her, she lowered her voice and whispered to the pendulum..."Does Eiji really like me?" Why were her cheeks heating up so much? It's not like HE was sitting here listening to her...but if he were, she probably would have gotten a lecture about asking a dumb pendulum for dating advice.

She watched, hoping that the pendulum would go from left to right...but instead, it just moved in a circle. SOOOO that meant...inconclusive?! WHAT?

"Stupid pendulum," she grumbled under her breath. This whole class was DUMB and not at all helpful to the real world! UGH.