Sunday: Not A Lecture Who: Shoel and Sofia When: morning Where: their house
Sofia had slept fitfully through the storm, and only for a couple of hours. She'd left her door wide open, and continually woke up to listen as best she could, trying to detect any sneaking around her niece might be doing. She didn't think Shoel actually would leave the house again, but she worried. It was her job to worry. She'd 'gotten up' early, and cooked some breakfast, looking out the kitchen window often. It was the Solstice, and she had a bad feeling. But there was something to hopefully patch up first. Bearing a plate with eggs and some toast and fruit on it, she walked upstairs to Shoel's closed door and lightly tapped on it with her knuckles. Nothing like a good dose of teenage hatred in the morning. She was glad she'd had some coffee.
Shoel was still in bed, but she wasn't asleep. She'd woken up about the same time Sofia did, hearing her moving around the house, but hadn't felt quite ready to face her. Part of her knew her aunt was just trying to protect her, but that didn't stop her from wishing she had at least been polite about it all. Maybe explained what the problem was instead of acting like a monster, like that, and just ordering everyone around.
Hearing Sofia come up the stairs, she rolled over in bed, to face the wall. She didn't expect the knock, though, and looked back over her shoulder with a hair-mussed frown. "What is it?" she asked through the door, sure it was a lecture or at least just a question, not something like breakfast in bed.
Sofia sighed internally. Here went nothing. "A peace offering," she said through the door. When things like this happened, she didn't like to let them fester. Once tempers were cooled, it was time to talk, and that was how she'd always done things. Shoel was turning into a willful young woman, and that was a good thing in some respects, but she didn't yet have all the life experience she needed to make all-wise decisions. And as her mother-figure, that worried the older mage. Sofia shifted from one bare foot to the other, the plate of food in one hand as she used the other to push some mussy curly hair back away from her face.
A peace offering? Was that another name for a lecture...? "Coming...." Though if Sofia had wanted to, she could easily have just barged in. It wasn't like her door locked. Shoel pushed back the covers and rolled out of bed, shuffling to the door and putting her glasses on en route, the ones that made one eye look two sizes too big. She opened the door-- Dracula bolted out between her feet and past Sofia-- and blinked at the plate just below eye level. "Oh. Peace offering is food."
Along with the plate, Sofia had a faint, weary smile ready for her niece. Not that it would probably make much of a difference, but there it was anyway. "Sometimes," she agreed. "Are you hungry?" She had to admit, she was slightly nervous, as she always was when they were about to have A Talk. In her private heart, Sofia always worried about whether or not she was doing a good job with the whole parenting thing. Some things were easy, but this sort of thing definitely wasn't.
Breakfast in her room. Shoel was a little apprehensive right now, herself, actually. "Yeah... there really wasn't much to eat at the party except junk, and I... kind of didn't have a chance to get anything once I got home." It wasn't meant as a dig, really, just a statement. She stepped back to let Sofia come in, since she was pretty sure it wasn't going to be a plate hand-off. "Are you going to eat, too, or is this so my mouth will be full and you can talk?" She smiled a bit, trying to tease.
Sofia didn't say that she could've come out to eat at any time, even though it was true. She'd learned a long time ago that it didn't do anybody any good to get hung up on details. She smiled back slightly at Shoel and did offer the plate out as she stepped inside. "I've already had a bit to eat," she said even though it had sounded like a small joke. She walked to the desk chair and pulled it out a bit, sitting and tucking one foot up underneath her. "Did you sleep at all?" she asked.
"Of course I did," Shoel blinked at her, taking the plate and moving to sit cross-legged on her mussed up blankets. "You didn't think I was in here crying my eyes out all night, did you...?" She had done a little crying, but she really couldn't sustain that kind of thing for more than ten minutes or so. It didn't occur to her that the storm might've kept her up.
"Hardly," Sofia said, tone on the dry side. "It stormed like madness." Her gaze ticked to the window in Shoel's room, where it was still raining outside. Though of course, such things on the night of the Solstice likely bothered her more than they did her niece. She was silent for a moment, watching Shoel settle. "You're angry with me, so let's have it, dear." They might as well get that part over with. The purging.
Oh, right. The storm, which Shoel had actually kind of enjoyed sleeping to the sound of. She really didn't see much all that different about the solstice night. It was just another storm, after all; they got storms all the time. She paused, the fork with eggs in her mouth, when Sofia encouraged her to... what? Yell at her? She wasn't going to yell. She chewed her eggs and said quite calmly, "I think you were rude to my friend last night."
Sofia wasn't positive on what Shoel was going to say, or how loud she was going to say it, she was just ready to accept it. She nodded to the statement. "I can understand why you would think that," she said, not about to deny that. "And you're correct. However, do you think I didn't have a good reason to be? And how long had you known this person?" Because from what she gathered? Solana had been a stray off the street, more or less. Her niece was far too trusting sometimes.
"A little while," Shoel said, a bit defensively. "We walked all the way home together, at least. And I already knew she was a vampire-- I can tell that kind of thing-- and she'd told me she didn't bite people. Her kind of vampire... just doesn't." She blushed a little, not sure how to explain to her aunt just what Solana subsisted off of. "I didn't think she was going to hurt anybody. Why did you have to assume she would?"
Sofia's lips pursed a bit as she heard that Shoel had been so trusting of someone who'd only just walked her home. It seemed ridiculous, to her, and dangerous. Even on their sleepy little island. It had conveniently slipped her mind that she'd walked to an isolated place with a man she'd met on the docks. "Because there was something very wrong with her spirit," Sofia said, still attempting to keep a neutral tone. "Beyond her being a vampire. I could see it. It wasn't right at all and I wasn't about to trust her just because she followed you home."
"Aunt Sofia," Shoel explained, a little impatiently. She could be a rebellious teenager now and then-- and of course she would pick the vampire to be rebellious about. "She's a dead body, really, and I'm a necromancer. Dead bodies are kind of my specialty. Do you really think she could have hurt me? Or that I would have let her hurt you?" She might have been a little trusting, but she liked to think she wasn't stupid, too. Even if her theory that she could manipulate the undead the same way she did the actual dead wasn't exactly something she'd tested....
She didn't like that tone, to be honest, but one had to accept such things sometimes. "Shoel," she said. "She was more than just a dead body, or I would not have had any reaction from her. You are a highly talented young woman, but you do not know everything. I do really think she could have hurt you, and I was not willing to even risk such a thing. But despite all of that, this is still the roof I provide for you to live under, and while that is still in effect, I ask that you respect my rules and my decisions about what happens in this house. Please do not bring strangers home in the middle of the night -- no matter how honorable your intentions -- and please listen to my instincts about them. Can you do that?"
Shoel sighed and scowled down at her plate, from which she'd hardly eaten anything yet. "If you're going to make a rule about it, I guess I have to... I still don't think it was fair that she had to sleep outside. What else should I have done? Just let her stay out there? That's... it's unkind. And I'm supposed to be a kind person, too, aren't I?" She really didn't know what to do there. She hadn't seen anything wrong with Solana, and she couldn't imagine what else a decent person would have done. Buy her a room at the inn, maybe?
With the feeling that Sofia had gotten from the woman, she couldn't have cared less about her sleeping outside. Or doing whatever it was she did. Sleeping may not have had anything to do with it. "There is a fine line between kindness and foolishness," she said, a bit on the quiet side. "You can be kind to people without handing your life over to someone you only met moments ago. Please understand, I worry about you, dear. It's my first priority to keep you safe. Even if you didn't see danger from her, that doesn't mean it wasn't possibly there."
Looking down at her plate, Shoel had to blink a few times to keep a couple tears at bay. It wasn't often she got lectured by Sofia, and it made her feel both bad and stupid, even though she also still felt a bit belligerent about it all. She hadn't gotten an answer, but if she kept talking about it, she probably would just get them in a fight again. Instead she picked up her fork again and said, as matter-of-factly as she could manage, "I guess it was just a proper cap to an awful night, anyhow. Getting you angry with me." Her voice hardly quavered at all. She was proud of herself.
And cue the motherly guilt. Though Sofia didn't allow herself much of it, reminding that bit of her emotional makeup that Shoel had wanted to let a potentially dangerous woman spend the night in their home. She'd been justified in saying no, and the knee-jerk teenageness had been the source of her anger. Her expression didn't change much, however. Not that Shoel was trying to guilt her, but she still wasn't going to let her see that it did. "I'm sorry to hear, darling," she said softly. "Want to talk about it?"
"I don't know that there's anything to talk about," Shoel said. "I just don't think I like parties. Or sex-obsessed teenage boys." And Solana, who had offered, and she'd said no. Samuel wouldn't have said no-- neither of them. Neither would Dax. "Am I strange, Aunt Sofia?" she asked, prodding at her eggs. "That I don't want to sleep with people who I don't know or don't like? I mean-- is that normal?" It didn't seem like it should be, and yet Sam had been so offended when she'd told him so.
Though Sofia had her own opinions on sexual freedom, they didn't usually apply to teenagers. Especially not since she'd been responsible for one. It tended to change one's perspective a little. "It might be normal in that a lot of young people behave that way," she said, shifting to cross her legs in the other direction. "But that doesn't necessarily make it good or right. You are not strange, sweetheart. Not wanting to share something that should be an intimate act with just anybody is absolutely sane and sensible. It's a mature decision." She smiled, chuckling a bit. "Unfortunately, boys tend to remain sex-obsessed even after they're teenagers."
"I knew there was a reason I didn't like them," Shoel said dryly, trying to be funny, even though her voice was a little thin when she said it. "I just... people act like it's so weird that I don't... take anyone who might come along. And then they get all offended when I say I'm not that desperate." She popped in a bite of egg, finally, chewed, and then the whole story spilled out. "I had a fight with Samuel last night... the quiet one, not the loud one." That was the best way to classify them to Sofia, it seemed like. "Because he slept with one girl he doesn't like, and another one he only just met, like, five minutes before. And then tried to brag at me about it. Like it was something awesome."
Even though it was quite clear that Shoel was not amused, Sofia had to chuckle a little bit. That just sounded so ... adolescent boy. "Boys -- well, males in general -- tend to see sex in a very different light," she said, trying to find how to word it. "Some women, too. Outside of the hormone issue, which fuels so many mistakes, you'll find that those who give themselves away so easily for the most part are desperately trying to fill a void within themselves. An emotional one. Even the boys. Be it the insecurity that is so common at your age, or pure and simple loneliness ... they're certainly going about it the wrong way, but many people make that mistake. Your friend Samuel seems to have something to prove to himself, and society tends to back him up on the path. It's not right in the end, but it is what it is. He was looking for validation from you, would be my guess."
"Well, he didn't get it," Shoel said, a little sourly. "I just apparently told him he's desperate and gross and not that good-looking, I guess. And then he told me if some girl came onto me who I didn't know, I'd go for it, too." She stabbed at her eggs with a little grin. Not quite triumphant, actually still a little sour. "Well, I didn't. So I guess he's wrong." She'd just have to wait until college. Surely someone would be open-minded who she'd actually kind of like there....
"You told him he was desperate and gross and not good-looking?" Sofia asked with a bit of surprise. Really, the entire fact that she sounded offended about something her friend did with other girls was a little odd. But Sofia knew that she herself was quite lenient with the behavior of others, most of the time. "Who came onto you? A girl at the party?"
"Not on purpose," Shoel protested. "That's just what he got out of it, I guess. It was a big mess... we yelled at each other and everything." She picked up a piece of toast to nibble on the edge, thinking about how to answer the actual question, rather than the rhetorical one. She finally just went all for it. Sofia already didn't like her, after all. "Solana. That's... um. The kind of vampire she is, I guess? She gets fed by... like... having sex. I think. We didn't get into details, really. But she offered, and I said no." She shrugged a little, eyes on her plate instead of Sofia. "Since I didn't know her, or anything like that."
Sofia pressed her lips together and briefly looked at the door. A sex vampire with a fucked up spirit followed her niece home -- apparently under invitation. Wonderful. She took a second to respond, examining it before it came out of her mouth. "Well I'm sorry you had a fight with your friend. I hope that gets amended. And I'm glad that you did not accept ... Solana's proposition." And she would leave it at that. Things were already shaky, and she would of course still worry, but what could she do?
Shoel bet she was glad. Though she'd kind of hoped that would make her look a little more responsible in her aunt's eyes. If it did, it sure didn't show. "I kind of thought maybe it'd be easier just to not be friends with boys... but then I'd lose, like, all my friends. So I might just have to put up with all the flirting and bragging and stupid innuendos, I guess...." Unless she wanted to hover around Ava, or something, the only girl she seemed to be getting along with lately.
"No one is perfect, Shoel, and even your friends will not always share your moral outlook. It's a sign of your own value as a friend to remain nonjudgmental, if you truly care about someone," she told her niece gently. It was a cornerstone of her own beliefs, and she hoped Shoel absorbed some of it. People were as they were, beautifully flawed, and no one at all was exempt from that. A high horse was nowhere good to be. "Love them for their good traits, accept their bad, and it will come back to you tenfold."
"Even when their bad traits make me angry or upset?" Shoel asked unhappily. "I wound up in a very bad mood last night... unless it was from the party itself, it was because of all the boys being stupid and flirty and bragging." Even Dax and other!Sam had gotten on her nerves. Maybe it had just been the party... after all, she wasn't exactly the most social of people. She'd spent all of Vapor, pretty much, keeping to herself and watching, and had left there in a bad mood, too. Though not nearly that bad.
"I would examine exactly what it is about their behaviors that upset you so much," Sofia said, aware that she was asking a lot of self-knowledge from a teenager. But it never hurt to try. "Nothing they did directly harmed you, after all, unless there's something you're not telling me. Figure out what triggers the anger in yourself, and decide whether or not it's something you want to deal with in you, or just avoid altogether." She shrugged one shoulder slightly. Being social came with it's ups and downs, that was just life.
"I guess," Shoel said, quietly, looking back down at her breakfast. She was tired of talking about serious stuff. Right now, she kind of just wanted to forget about it all for a while. "I think that's about all we can say about that, though. You've got your lecture out, I got my annoyed-ness out... maybe we can go do something... like... nice." She glanced out the window. "When it stops raining. Unless you want to play a video game with me, or something." It didn't happen often, but maybe she could talk her into it this time.
Sofia successfully bit her tongue on protesting that it wasn't a lecture, because it wouldn't do any good. Changing the tone of things sounded like the best idea, and she had to give Shoel credit for not kicking her out of her room straightaway. She smiled warmly and nodded. "Something nice sounds like it's definitely in the cards," she said, despite her wariness about the Solstice. As long as they didn't go too far ... if the rain ever let up ... "In the meantime, yes. I will gladly join you to have my poor old butt kicked around whatever pixellated world you've got."
"We can play Lego Star Wars," Shoel said lightly, glad Sofia had decided to let her change the subject. "Then we're both on the same team, so I'm not kicking your butt. Just watching you fall off ledges and press the wrong buttons." She shot her aunt an impish grin, teasing, and then popped the rest of one of the pieces of toast into her mouth.
"Because that's so much better," Sofia said with a playful roll of her eyes. She uncrossed her legs and stood, letting her big cotton nightgown fall back into place. "Get it set up, I'll get some tea." They'd make a day of it. Or a morning, at least. It was certainly better than arguing.