Penwick

The teenager stared at his phone, the screen black and unresponsive. It hadn't worked in years. Hadn't been able to turn on in the presence of magic because Kas refused to charm it so. His hopes of returning to a normal, non-magical life had thus far been displaced, but he was a stubborn soul.

His tongue poked the inside of his cheek as he tossed the device aside. It landed at the edge of his borrowed bed, teetering for a moment before clattering to the floor.

A deep sigh seeped through his thinly pressed lips. So today was going to be like that, huh?

The bedsprings creaked as he stood. Then the floorboards out in the hall did as he traversed them. Kasimir's slippers scuffed against the wooden stairs as he descended quickly to the ground floor. The banister was warm from the morning sun slanting through the many windows the country manor boasted.

The Pryce home was smaller than the Damon-Cowles' house in the Hamptons, larger than their loft in New York City, roughly the same size of his mother's villa in Éze, and a great deal more warm and homey than any of the above. It was full of light and lace and love and Kasimir hadn't quite figured out how to be comfortable in such a place, just like he still hadn't learned to call Gawain and Alizé by anything less formal than Mr. and Mrs. Pryce despite the fact Alizé was his godmother.

Kas' thin linen pants swished as he skipped the last two steps and landed on his toes, spinning to set himself on a path through the very bookish "sitting" room in search of his hosts. "Mrs. Pryce?" he called, poking his head around the corner.

"Alizé, Kasimir," she reminded him gently from her chair. Kas clasped his hands behind his back, coming to a halt in front of her and nodding like he would remember for next time. He wouldn't.

"Right, sorry. Could I, uh, get some paper?" Mrs. Pryce was always so nice and generous to him, despite her sickness and his demeanor. Kas tried to be respectful to her, and to Mr. Pryce. It wasn't like they caused any of his problems. He thanked her several times with an awkward little bow at the end and asked her if she needed anything before tucking himself into an easel-less vestibule with nice lighting and his fountain pen to write a letter- oh how archaic- to his brother.

bGus,

That was as far as Kas got before a very pale pink pygmy puff hopped into his lap, then on his paper. He couldn't remember its name, couldn't remember any of their names no matter how many times Siân tried to teach him, but for some reason it had decided to obstruct his letter writing. "What the hell, dude?"

It was a sad state of affairs, truly, to find herself missing Penwick and counting down the days until the Zeppelin took her back again.

It made her feel somewhat guilty, the wanting. This was the first summer in years that her mother had been able to spend with them in its entirety, and here Enid was, sour and ungrateful as she found herself quietly wishing that she was anywhere else.

Her fighting with Cerys was by no means new, the ill-will between them long since brewed and bottled on the shelf, left for years to fester and degrade into something fetid and foul. Nothing she did, Enid had long accepted, would ever be good enough for her sister. She was doing just fine in her classes, but she wasn't trying enough, wasn't applying herself. She was a writer and a senior editor for the school paper, had been for years, but Cerys saw her as nothing more than a base gossip, a cruel mudslinger manipulating her classmates for fun and profit (she was all that and more, thank you very much.) Cerys had opinions on her friends, her clothes, her "lack of timeliness and urgency", her attitude, and any other little thing she could find to nitpick.

It had been insufferable before maman had come home, and was downright intolerable now. She did not need Cerys to follow her around like the world's naggiest personal commentator; she had her life well in hand, thank you.

She wondered if Kasimir was enjoying his stay at the Pryce Gwely a Brecwast, and all the scintillating ambiance of Enid and Cerys screaming at each other from their rooms on the third floor. Well, if he felt unwelcome, so be it. He was unwelcome. The Pryce household was at capacity already as they slowly tried to re-navigate and re-negotiate a life together; there was no room for some delinquent, woe-is-me twmffat, who'd managed to get himself kicked out of not one, but two separate schools, and seemed to be gunning to make Penwick his third.

Well, she intended to make it very difficult for him to do so. Loathe as she was to be sharing a roof with the blond boy, she was even less inclined to end up with him tarnishing their name while her parents were very publicly sponsoring him. Their community was small and insular, and people had long memories. Come hell or high water, Nimue help her, she was going to drag Kasimir bodily towards graduation, with or without his participation in the proceedings.

She'd thought to do her letter writing this morning; she liked to do it in batches, picking one three or four hour stretch and lounging in the sun as she penned updates to everyone she considered important enough for them: both sets of her grandparents, Santiago, her favorite cousins, and a smattering of select friends who currently comprised of her inner circle, though that was a title frequently wont to change with her ever-shifting whims.

Fig, her favorite of the pygmy puffs, tended to burrow herself into Enid's side on these occasions, sharing her fondness for sunbeams and chaise lounge chairs. The little pink creature was nowhere to be found this morning, nor were her well-worn pair of house slippers. Forced to descend to her writing nook in a subpar pair of slippers and sans puff, it was safe to assume that Enid's mood was already piss-poor before she'd even made it down the staircase.

Quill and parchment in hand, she rounded the corner to her preferred nook, only to find her lips curling in frustration and disdain at the sight of Lord Flunkie himself lounging insouciantly in the very chair she'd been headed to. There were two other chairs, but that one was hers.

Middle child syndrome comes for us all, in the end.

"My chair." She remarked snidely, her eyes sliding down away from the boy in question to a familiar pair of slippers stuffed haphazardly underneath the left side of the lounge chair. It was, logically, in no way Kasimir's fault, as Enid had almost certainly left them when she was down here a few days prior, but Enid was at neither her most logical nor her most forgiving at this exact moment. "My slippers."

Finally, her eyes landed on her traitorous little puff, looking wide-eyed and innocent, her mind preciously blank as she perched on the throne she'd made of Kasimir's lap. This, of course, was Enid's last straw. Fuming, she practically hissed, "My puff."

---

Tagging @Kasimir Damon-Cowles

Translations:

Maman is french for mother, Gwely a Brecwast, is Welsh for a Bed and Breakfast, and twmffat is Welsh for idiot. Fun fact: I briefly got my translations mixed up and Enid almost called Kas a very not nice word.

The first lesson Kasimir had learned in Wales was that girls were alien creatures, full of malice, hatred, and rage. Sugar, spice, and everything nice was not part of their DNA. He felt bad for the poor sod who thought the likes of Enid Pryce represented everything good in the world.

His brothers he far preferred. Everything was cut and dry, solved with a scuffle or a few terse words before normality resumed. Nothing like the shouting that kept him up at night from upstairs, or the withering glares and passive aggressive shots fired between the eldest and middle Pryce sisters. Cerys was insufferable, Enid was horrible, Siân seemed to find the whole situation miserable, and Kasimir was all of the above and then some. What a sorry lot they were.

He heard her funny Welsh accent in that voice so pinched, just like her expression at this very moment, and his own expression screwed up into a scowl. “Jesus, what’s a guy gotta do to get away from you around here, huh?” Kasimir’s opinion of Enid and everything she said or did was heavily biased by the fact he loathed her for no other reason than her existence, as hypocritical as his hatred was. She was nosy, conceited, vain, self-important, and unfairly judgemental for a gossipmonger, and Kas didn’t appreciate her relentless attitude, nor the fact that he wouldn’t be rid of her till he was rid of Penwick since they were in the same year. He prayed to every single deity he could think of that Penwick was as forgiving as Beauxbatons, which is to say not at all, and that their houses were the furthest apart two houses could be while he was still tolerated.

Of course Princess Pryce claimed the best seat in the nook as her own, even when she wasn’t in it. And the audacity of her to claim he would steal something so useless to him like her slippers! “What slippers, these are my slippers,” he defended, glaring at Enid. Kasimir took no credit for the crimes of others, and took offense when accused of such actions. He hadn’t spotted Enid’s forgotten pair, and he wouldn’t while glowering in her direction like he was. “And you snooze, you lose, sucker, so suck it.”

His disdainful gaze directed itself at the puff obstructing his paper still. “Well take the damn thing, I don’t want it.” Kas set his pen down and scooped the creature up, holding it out to Enid like it was burning his hands. He’d not taken to the petite, semi-sentient clouds. Their thoughtless eyes unnerved him. Thus far, his allies in the Pryce house consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Pryce, who were possibly the most generous people to ever live; sometimes Siân, because he’d found it beyond cruel to bully her poor soul especially while she was forced to live with him and her sisters at the same time; and the cats, who held similar opinions to him about the puffs. Enid was quite un-generous, crueler than he, and adored brainless animals. This interaction, just like every other between the teenagers, started shaping up to be a dumpster fire before it even began.