June 6th, 2009 - The Great Hall
Breakfast

Alvis didn't go down to The Great Hall that morning looking for a challenge. He wasn't looking for anything really, except for Pax Wintergreen and, maybe, some bubble and squeak. He'd been thinking a lot about Pax's fledgling gaming club since their first meeting, and he hoped the younger boy would follow up on his offer to let Alvis flip through his "Player's Handbook" before they went home for the summer.

That was what brought him over to the Hufflepuff table this Saturday morning, but when he looked around, he didn't spot the first-year who was the object of his search. This left Alvis feeling rather out-of-place, standing between the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw tables, looking up and down the row. A careful observer - that is, anyone who watched him for more than a few minutes - may have noticed that he did not blink, not even once, during his entire search.

At the end of the Hufflepuff table, he spotted a smaller, pale girl with long blonde hair. She looked like a first-year - the same year as Pax. And she was sitting alone, which made her easier to approach, at least in Alvis's mind. Maybe she would know.

"Excuse me," he said quietly, making his way over to her. "I'm looking for, uh, Pax Wintergreen. Have you seen him?"

Heliotrope stared at the mush in her bowl, porridge, before mixing and taking a bite. It needed fish.

Helio's brain hurt although she didn't know why. This was due to her sleep mask not being on properly last night. As she had no way of closing her eyes tight enough to block out the light she needed the mask. One eye was not covered and it had twitched about for the longest time during the night, looking while her mind did not register it.

She reached a webbed hand for the salt when a slightly older boy came along. "Excuse me, I'm looking for, uh, Pax Wintergreen. Have you seen him?"

Heliotrope stared back at him for a long moment. She knew who Pax was, just not his name associated with his face. "I have not seen Pax Wintergreen."

For the long moment that the girl stared at him, Alvis found himself staring back, and for the first time he understood exactly what his classmates meant when they said his tendency not to blink was, quote, "Creepy." He quickly wiped that thought away and refused to voice it. He hated being called 'creepy' and this first-year-girl probably wouldn't appreciate it either.

"I have not seen Pax Wintergreen."

Three places to her right, a second-year boy snorted halfway through eating a sausage. "You'll have to spell it out for her better than that. She's daft, she is."

Alvis frowned at the second-year and, without thinking about it, slid into the bench across from the girl even though it wasn't his table. "Don't you listen to him," he told her. "I'm sure you're perfectly sensible."

"You'll have to spell it out for her better than that. She's daft, she is."

Heliotrope didn't register that this comment was aimed at her, although sometimes she went daft and let herself drift through the current of the lake. Daft was drift in past tense, was it not?

"Don't you listen to him I'm sure you're perfectly sensible," the Ravenclaw said. All the while Helio kept her gaze at him.

"I like my senses," Heliotrope said, misreading the intent of that phrase. "I like to touch things. The smooth stones on the lake bed, the grit on the shore, the sheets on my bed, the feather of my quill, the parchment in classes, the paving on the castle floor when my shoes are off, the stone walls, the polish of the House tables." To go along with that listing, her fingers traced shapes in the wood between her bowl and glass of juice.

...well. It was an odd thing to say, but it was a nice sentiment. Not enough people took the time to admire the little things in life and, now that she'd brought it, Alvis found himself a bit hyper-aware of the way things felt. He traced a finger in a circle around the smooth wood of the table, trailed it up one of the golden goblets, thought for a moment, and extended his hand to the girl.

"I'm Alvis Norling. I think I've seen you around. Your name is...LeBeau or something. Did I get that right?"

He offered his hand, and Heliotrope felt down his knuckles with her fingertips. Her hand-eye coordination was such that she didn't need to avert her gaze. "I'm Alvis Norling. I think I've seen you around. Your name is...LeBeau or something. Did I get that right?"

"My name is Heliotrope LeJean of the Loch Lomond Selkie colony," Heliotrope said using one of her usual greetings. He had said a mermish word, or a word that sounded like the terms her colony used. With the occasional wisp of mermish she replied "I am not lebloh. Our lebloh is Gorbug who makes many necklaces from stones and shells." There was one term used at times for Heliotrope and she recalled it. "I am merg."

There was something different about Alvis Norling's eyes. Eyes said many things about the creatures of the deep; the spiteful eyes of the kelpie, the bitter eyes of the grindylow. Heliotrope was getting lost in his eyes, like staring at the immense eyes of the giant squid, the diameter longer than herself.

"Ah, I see. LeJean." Alvis practiced the name, committing it to memory. The rest of her words went right over his head. Though really, most things would go over his head at this particular instant, because the gears had started turning, and he was thinking.

Alvis had never really thought about his own blinking patterns before. It wasn't something that people thought about. But now, faced with Heliotrope LeJean, he was noticing for the first time odd it was. Heliotrope had, to his knowledge, not blinked once since their conversation had started, and now that he was thinking about it, neither had he.

"This may seem an odd question, but do you ever blink?"

Heliotrope continued to stare at him. "I close my eyelids when I swim underwater. The film protects my eyes from the water as I swim and look about."

As she talked those translucent eyelids moved a millimeter. "But blinking is what people do when they rapidly close and open their eyes, correct?" Heliotrope had done that before but hadn't heard the term. Blinking was rare for her and usually not for the typical reasons like cleaning off the eyeballs.

"I...yes, yes it is." And if to demonstrate, Alvis took his first blink of the whole conversation, though it was a deliberate motion meant a demonstration. Heliotrope LeJean was an odd duck, that much was certain; but he wouldn't have called her 'daft.' There was something resembling intelligence in there. It just wasn't the sort of logic that a normal person tended to have.

And it was fascinating.

"So I take it that you don't, then?" he said, leaning over the table. "Blink, I mean. If you're not totally sure what it is, that means you probably don't do it very often...that's very interesting." He rubbed his chin, turning over the possibilities in his head, then weighing the pros and cons of his first instinct before deciding that he simply had to see what would happen.

"This may be an odd question, but do you know what a staring contest is? It's a sort of game that two people can play. You sort've, well, look at each other, and don't blink. The winner is whoever manages to hold out the longest without looking away."

Heliotrope copied his motion. Unlike his blink, where his eyes were briefly cast to darkness, hers had the film of her eyelid cover her eye and she could still see his face and the great hall, a slight muted.

"Staring contest?" she asked once the lenses of her eyes were back to normal. "Is that what we were doing?" So the merpeople of her colony engaged in this when in conversation, their fish-like eyes similar to Heliotrope's.

"Um...well, no. Not exactly. It's not really a contest until both sides agree that there will be a winner." He rubbed his neck, popping out a crick, and glanced at his watch. It was almost 9:15; that would be his reference point then. "But we can give it a try, if you'd like. It might be fun, and besides, I'm curious to see how it turns out."

He sat back on the bench, making himself comfortable, and folded his hands easily in front of him. He spared one last glance at his watch, then deliberately met Heliotrope's eye. "I'm ready if you are. We simply...begin."

Alvis needn't have said the need to begin, as Heliotrope as already staring into his eyes again. Heliotrope could gaze unfazed for the longest of times. At times in the common room, if she had nothing to do like homework or swimming (usually in the winter) she would be found staring at the wall while her hands played with some trinket.

Silence stretched on at the table for a bit, as Heliotrope felt lost in his eyes again.

It was odd, staring into the eyes of Heliotrope LeJean. Seconds ticked by, and then minutes. Alvis began to feel oddly...float-y, as though he'd been soaking in a bath for a long time. It was not unpleasant, but his brain felt a little like it was about to drift away on the wind.

"What was that you called yourself before?" he asked suddenly, itching for some conversation to keep him grounded. "A...marg? Is that Welsh? What does it mean?"

The silence was eventually broken with another question from Alvis. "What was that you called yourself before? A...marg? Is that Welsh? What does it mean?"

Heliotrope stared blank at him for a few moments while she recalled memories, those that stood out from the depths of Loch Lomond. "As our elders taught the spawnlings the word merg was used for me." A few lines emerged from synapses rarely fired. " 'Wait for the merg if she falls behind.' 'It is good for the merg to find her own way.' 'See if the merg can determine it on her own before we instruct her.' "

The quotes were recited with an empty tone, devoid of meaning.

Alvis frowned, his brow furling. "So, your family wanted you to take care of yourself...so they called you a 'merg'." He'd seen Heliotrope's strange eyelids, and he knew that she wasn't entirely human, but exactly what she was escaped him. He didn't want to jump to conclusions, after all. He usually had a better sense of people than this, but for some reason, his brain felt especially muddled today. It was like trying to fight his way through a muddy lake.

"It sounds like you're very self-sufficient, then. That's nice."