( mostly closed ) when we were young the future was so bright

[darkart]

CHARACTERS: severus snape & others.
LOCATION: various.
WARNINGS: violence in the thread with edgeworth, possibly uncomfortable subject matter in the thread with william but nothing explicit.
SUMMARY: threads for people who've been arranging stuff with me or who have new stuff from the cr meme; covers this entire month/jump.
NOTES: i don't have the brainpower for making open starters this month but if you'd like to do anything send me a message and we'll get something up! come at me bros etc



see.

Comments

works great bb!

[darkart]

[ Seraphim is not the only nerd carting paper through the gardens today; Severus is making his way up a suitable excuse for a path, three sizable books under one arm and a satchel over the other shoulder. He doesn't look like he's made to be hiking about in the outdoors (or even the 'outdoors' as this is) and he's really not. Still, he endures. For learning, and all that.

He catches sight of the young woman and remembers her from when he first arrived. Since then, he's seen her name around here and there, but as it's been connected to someone he'd rather not deal with anymore, ever, he's not bothered to say anything. The path takes him near her though, and so when he's close enough, he greets her quietly. ]

Hello.

Re: works great bb!

[majestyofthethrone]

[He only surprises her a little bit, and she looks up. She met him once, and she didn't connect the two - Severus and Snape - because really, how could she? He has his books, though, and that catches her attention. Books on board aren't completely unheard of, but they're rare enough that it's a point of interest.

She erases the math on her slate and waves a bit first, so he knows she returns the sentiment.]

What are you reading?

[darkart]

[ Severus hesitates on answering, but it only looks like an unexplained pause. His features, over-sharp and unfortunately arranged as they are, remain difficult to read. ]

Plant encyclopedias, [ he says eventually, his low voice quiet as usual. One of them he selects, and holds it out so she can see the cover - he hasn't come any closer than it takes to be able to read her slate, though. His body language is always distant.

The book isn't in any language from Earth, so he indicates another one he's still holding beneath his arm, one that's stuffed with other free floating pieces of paper; notes. ] Using the same volume in different languages to translate the third.

[ He knows plenty about plants from home, obviously, but they're in bloody space. A simple 'well this looks like clover' isn't going to cut it. ]

[majestyofthethrone]

[She looks at the books, and then back at him. It seems like a strange project, but then, she can't judge, really, considering she's trying to figure out the practicality of magical math.

She takes some of her papers, piles them up.]

Do you want to sit down?

[darkart]

[ Not really he's already thinking as his gaze drifts to one side, but then he catches sight of a familiar-looking vector. Is she a witch? Severus thinks he would have noticed by now, and also that she'd be communicating in a different manner - but now he's a little curious.

Another one of those odd pauses, and then looks back at her. Eventually, he sits down.

Quietly, ] What are you working on?

[majestyofthethrone]

[She makes a little room for him, and then looks at the papers around her. How to explain it without using any mathematical jargon is easy enough, since she's had years of breaking down formulas to Grigori.]

I'm trying to posit a mathematical reasoning behind how the Jump works.

[She makes a face.]

It's not going very well.

[darkart]

Is it not a wormhole?

[ He sounds like he's not totally familiar with the word wormhole as anything besides.. holes worms make.. but he's accepted the terminology for that thing muggles think happens when something moves from place to place with magic. He assumes, anyway, that she means in a muggle sense, because she writes 'mathematical'.

Glancing at her for permission first, Severus reaches out and slides the sheet of paper with arithmancy doodles on it out. He looks at it for a moment then conjures a pencil into his hand and draws over it, connecting a spiral, making something more 3D, overlaying a rune.. ] This is the portkey movement.

[ Which isn't a wormhole but it's not not a wormhole. ]

[majestyofthethrone]

[She shakes her head.]

I don't think so. I don't think it fits the parameters for that, exactly. But maybe something related.

[She sets her slate down and looks at the spiral he draws, and tilts her head a bit. She takes her chalk, and at the bottom she scribbles out a series of numbers and letters, a formula starts to take form, and she just looks at it intently for a moment.

She erases the words at the top to write something else out.]

Is that an intra dimensional portal? From one point in universe A to another? Do you know theoretical mathematics?

[darkart]

[ He reads, and considers. So she isn't a witch. The thought that she's cliffed notes off of Sirius occurs to him, and it's vaguely irritating, but obviously that idiot hasn't explained any of it to her very well. ]

A portkey is an object enchanted to transport a person instantaneously to a predetermined place when they touch it. It's not really maths, though I'm familiar with them as they overlap with arithmancy.

[ Which is obviously superior. ]

[majestyofthethrone]

[She needs people to get over this notion that things aren't math, as if there is anything in the universe that cannot be defined through mathematics. But she doesn't say that. It never helps, it just gets people arguing, and the mood she's been in lately, she would just let him win.]

Do you think the Jump is a portkey?

[It's not a stupid idea.]

[darkart]

[ And in turn, Seraphim would need to get over her limited thinking. She's free to bring it up, he won't argue; it's not about something being 'not math', it's about there being more than math. ]

No. It's too involved for that. The principle may be the same, since the equations for Apparating and summoning are all similar at their bases and presumably they overlap with wormhole calculations.

[ Severus isn't sure how muggles came up with the whole wormhole thing, really. It's close, but it took them forever, and is clunky and unrefined. However he hasn't got a clearer answer to this particular thing so there's no need to go insulting it. ]

[majestyofthethrone]

[She doesn't ask him to write them down, and she won't - memorizing complex equations isn't something everyone does (despite the fact that her brain does it automatically) and that isn't the point, really.

But man, does she want to.]

If the Jump is a wormhole, then it implies that every person who enters through the jump is coming in through a separate and fully formed wormhole, considering we've never had body parts appear randomly in the pods.

[She takes a moment, and after he's read it, she erases that.]

I don't think that physics allows for that, to be honest.

[darkart]

[ He has them memorized. But, ]

Well it does, if it's happening. [ Which is a possibly infuriating answer, but Severus still doesn't understand why so many 'science' minded muggles on board can't handle it in its simplicity. He thought their science was about answering questions. ] Just because physics usually does something doesn't mean that's all it's capable of, it just means that in the observable history of any given world, the things it's had room to do are limited. Here, there's more room. So the laws must be given the same room to make sense.

[majestyofthethrone]

[She just looks at him, and there's not a lot of judgement in her face; she knows that these wizards don't see the world the same way she does, and she's come to terms with that, in general.]

What was learning magic like?

[Change of topic time.]

[darkart]

[ He just lifts an eyebrow at her stare, obviously on to her topic change. He's used to this, the blank looks of cow-eyed muggles who think magic is 'silly' or imaginary just because it's beyond their grasp. But physics is the cry of a child clutching a security blanket, and he remains surprised to hear it so often; the impression he had of muggle scientists from reading a handful of digests over time has been that they are explorers of reality. Perhaps he just had good reading material. (Dear Severus, Carl Sagan in the 1970s is an unfair bar to hold people to.)

At least she's good a numbers. That's more than most. ]

Inherent. Like learning to use your limbs or your mind but something far greater and more malleable.

[majestyofthethrone]

[That is a distinctly unfair assessment to make, considering he's known her for all of ten minutes, and she has been dating Sirius Black for over a year. She doesn't think it's silly or imaginary, but she does suspect that it follows rules (rules that she could parse in mathematical terms that would leave 99% of the people on this ship dizzy).

She's more than good at numbers, but there's no fault in not seeing that.]

Like music.

[She plays people's souls on her violin. For her, it's precisely like music.]

[darkart]

[ Virtually every assessment that Severus makes about any given person, ever, is distinctly unfair. That's part and parcel of who he is - not actually a nice person - and he does it even to people he's otherwise fine with. In this instance, 'has been dating Sirius Black for over a year' would not actually move his assessment of Sera anywhere better. ]

If you like. [ He assumes if she relates to those terms, then music for her is something intrinsically linked. ] Do you channel it?

[majestyofthethrone]

[That's an odd word. It's not channeling, exactly, but it is inherent, she hears it on the wind and she plays it, repeating strands of creation. She suspects that she's not the only person in history who has had this particular gift - she hears famous music, music that is emotionally resonant, notes of it weaving through the Whole.]

It's instinctive, more than anything.

[darkart]

What do you play?

[ It doesn't occur to Severus to go nitpicking about how or why. Maybe she's just also good at music and feels very emotionally moved by it; maybe it's something more.

Also: music is one of those things that takes a whole lot of talent and dedication to do, whether or not it's supernatural. He probably doesn't seem like he'd be the sort of person to appreciate that, perhaps on grounds of whimsy, but he does. ]

[majestyofthethrone]

The violin and the piano. The piano better, but I'm a good hand with the violin.

[It's easier when she needs to find other places to live to take the violin, so she gets plenty of practice with it.]

I have both here.

[darkart]

The piano, especially, isn't surprising. Patterns.

[ A slight motion with his hand towards her papers. Severus hasn't had a muggle education about math but he doesn't need one to parse even high level mathematics just fine; it's the application of how math is used in his world that tends to leave wizards on what looks like an uneven scale with it.

(Also some wizards are just dumb!! Guess who he thinks is just dumb. Guess.) ]

[majestyofthethrone]

[She looks at the papers, and then back at him, and gives a bit of a nod. It's true that she sees music as numbers, that it's easier for her to read equations as musical notes, and that she mastered hexadecimal at an early age for that purpose.]

Do you like music?

[darkart]

Well enough. [ He shrugs, slight. ] I appreciate the work that it takes. I'm not sure I have much of an ear for it, though.

[ His taste is sort if benign and not as stereotypical as his gloomy demeanor suggests; he thinks The Cure is boring and whiny but loves Fleetwood Mac, he's fine with classical and appreciates certain pieces but isn't terribly well-versed on anything. His life has other focuses. ]

[majestyofthethrone]

[Her smile is just at the corners of her lips, the barest kind.]

You can come listen anytime you like.

[darkart]

I'll keep it in mind. Where do you play?

[ It might sound dismissive, because Severus has a tendency to sound like he's talking down to people at all times, but he will actually keep it in mind. Questionable taste or not, he does like listening; even though he's still IN A FIGHT!! with Ilde he dearly appreciates what she recorded for him. ]