20 Mar 2012
The Vernal Equinox
Tuesday @ 10pm
Hufflepuff Girls' Dormitory

A voice came through the wireless, a mixed accent of a youthful Brit with a bit of north and a bit of south. So many young people were like this these days, learning more from their peers than their parents and their scants and lilts told that tale. So the voice on the wireless was new in many ways indeed. A few of the Hufflepuff girls had found the station recently, tuning the dial in between regular stations and finding this unique thing that hadn't been there before. The host seemed mature to them, but not aged - that wisdom of a girl just a bit older than yourself. She was conscious in a good way, speaking softly and annunciating well. Not too stuffy, but someone who knew she was on radio.  In total over the last two weeks, the Hufflepuff girls had heard, what, no more than five or six hours of the show which never said its name or her own.

"... like a goth Dickensian street urchin," came through Waverly's voice. She was introducing a brand new record she'd cut herself after discovering someone new. "She charmed them all without deceiving them, just making their coins a bit looser so they more easily honored their ears. She was small behind the guitar but played it well. I don't think she needed a spell to sing as loud and clear as she did. Anyway, here's Nemo."

Waverly silenced her microphone down there in the old studio in the old Witch Weekly headquarters in London and played the record which had no label, only a bit of marker saying the musician's name and date.

The song was odd to Zeta Pepper and she couldn't help but laugh nervously as so many did when they encountered something strange or challenging. It sounded so hokey at first, twangy like a cowboy song, but after a bit Zeta realized it was a little sad and a little mad. Whoever the singer was, she hit the strings with surprisingly strong hands. She was singing about about a man who'd killed his wife in a fit of rage and the man regretted it all, but the singer had no sympathy for him.

The track ended and the girls realized they'd stopped talking. The waited for long seconds to hear Waverly's voice again.

"If you see her around London, put a sickle in her hat and say hello for me. Next up I've got Tove the Sorcerer, Wandsnap Armageddon, Florence and the Machine, and Send No Crows."

Waverly's promised records played on a theme of taking no shit or rising above or rejecting nostalgia.

Open or snapshot - whatever moves you.