All Imperfect Things (Daniil)

Zhenya’s current state of mind was questionable at best. The girl tried to keep up with her training, the artistic flying club of which she had been made the captain, and, as far as possible, with school work as well but she was struggling. Not only were these things already too many to find a lot of time for meals and sleep, but the constant worries about what was going on back home in Rybinsk didn’t make things any easier for her either.

Nastya’s latest owl mail had deeply disturbed the Drakonya Krov student. After she read it she had felt that she could not possibly reply to her distant cousin’s letter. She had been distracted in class, naturally some professors had picked up on it and she had only just managed to keep herself out of another detention with Galina Viktorovna. Somehow the Alchemy professor had been uncharacteristically soft on her today. Usually Zhenya felt that she was judged by her but somehow the teacher had only talked to her briefly after class and had then allowed her to leave already.

Training had not gone particularly well. It was dark, cold, windy… Zhenya was unfocused and barely got through her technical exercise, stumbling countless times and finally giving up altogether after she fell executing a spin that she had never fallen on before. She was frustrated and knew that she would not be able to do a proper training or school work until she had written Nastya a letter back.

She was back at the common room a little earlier than usual and took refuge in a far corner, trying to brace herself to write her distant cousin. She had not even changed back into her school uniform, still wearing her training clothes and not even aware of the fact that she had carried some dirt into the common room. As she wrote the letter to Nastya, Zhenya felt silly for reprimanding her distant cousin that she crossed out so much when she did the same herself. However, she felt that the reason why Nastya didn’t want to let her read some sentences was quite different from the reason why she crossed out things herself.

Relieved when she finished her letter, she folded it to send it out at her earliest convenience. She still felt tense overall but not quite as bad as she had felt before she had written back and she looked at the pictures of the young dog again that Nastya had enclosed in her previous letter. The German Shepherd really looked so adorable that it even lured a rare smile onto Zhenya’s tired face.

The girl startled as she saw an older student approach her. She dropped the pictures of Bronislav onto her lap and looked up, a questioning look on her face.

@Daniil Krylov

Daniil was sick of taking photos of inanimate objects. He felt as through he'd photographed every classroom, corridor, and common space in the school, and even though he hadn't come even close to this, the seventh year was easily distracted and more easily bored and had no desire to find new areas to capture. Besides, what was so interesting about dusty old hallways anyways? He already had plenty of pictures of those.

People were much more interesting subjects, he'd decided, and the seventh year had decided to turn to living, breathing things as his subject of choice. As of yet, he had very few pictures of people in his collection and Daniil was collecting photos for . . . something. Honestly he wasn't sure why he he was so set on putting together such a large number of photos, but he just had the urge to do it. Who knew, maybe one day he'd submit them to a newspaper or a magazine or something and make money off of them. Probably not. That sounded scary.

The problem with taking photos of people was that generally one needed to ask permission from the person being photographed, and that was tricky for Daniil. One of his biggest fears was getting rejected and he was loathe to put himself in such situations where rejection was a possibility. That said, he'd made a goal to be more brave in his final year of school and thus he was forcing himself to go more out of his comfort zone. In an attempt to do this Daniil decided to ask one of his housemates, Zhenya, if he could take photos of her.

He'd never talked to the girl before, but he'd picked her since he figured she was already accustomed to having her picture taken, and thus less likely to say no. The hardest part was just finding her. The seventh year figured that Zhenya would end up in the common room at some point, so he'd just been camping out in a corner for a large portion of the evening. He'd even managed to do some homework. He didn't meet to wait too long before the girl arrived and sat in the opposite corner. Uh oh. Zhenya looked tired. Did he dare to bother her? Would she be annoyed at him? Daniil warred for a while with himself, trying to decide whether to bother her or not before finally just mustering up his courage and walking over to the girl.

"Er, hi" he said as he approached his housemate "you're um, Zhenya Shishkina, right?" He stammered, already getting nervous "Sorry, I mean, of course you are. I watched the flying championships, well, um, I didn't watch it but I read all about it so I feel like I watched it and well, you won and oh, congratulations by the way." Daniil paused for a moment to take a breath. Why was he so nervous? Why couldn't he just get to the point? Why we're so many extra words coming out of his mouth?

"Anyways, I just wanted to ask if I could take some pictures of you?" He asked, pulling his camera out of his pocket "It won't even take very long . . ." Daniil didn't have the courage to look the girl in the eyes and instead looked down, catching a glimpse of some photos of a dog "Is that your dog?" He blurted, "He's very cute"

Zhenya was surprised to see Daniil approach her and even more astonished to hear the words he said. He seemed nervous and Zhenya wasn’t quite sure why he could possibly be nervous to approach her. He was her friend Marja’s best friend, they might have never really interacted in the past but they certainly knew of each other.

Daniil spoke of the past championships, said that he read about them and congratulated her on her victory. Zhenya felt how she blushed ever so slightly and she looked down, feeling rather embarrassed. He had read about the championships… Apparently he had found a neutral article, or maybe just a list of results, something that did not convey just how undeserved her victory had been. She knew that she should just thank him for the congratulations and ignore the unpleasant feeling that always came up when she thought about these European championships but she struggled to do that.

“Oh, thanks,” she began, glancing at the older student briefly. She wanted to say that it was good that he hadn’t watched the championships as he wouldn’t have felt like congratulating her then but bit her tongue just in time. “Those were really strange championships,” she offered instead, shrugging slightly, “it was very close in the end.”

She frowned as Daniil asked her if he could take pictures of her and wondered why he had chosen her. Was it because she was the new junior European champion or what was the idea behind this? “Umm…” she began, feeling absolutely unsure how she should react to that. “I…” she shrugged. “I guess? I should probably… err… change into something else? And… umm… brush my hair…” she smiled sheepishly as her voice trailed off and she shook her head, feeling rather awkward.

Zhenya was actually relieved that Daniil picked up on the pictures of Bronislav asking her about the dog and so she smiled at him, grateful for the distraction. “Oh no, it’s my distant cousin’s dog that was given to her by her sister! I never saw him in person, but he really looks like a cute dog, doesn’t he?! My distant cousin just sent me the pictures – the one that gave her sister the dog, not the one who got him…” her voice trailed off and Zhenya felt that her cheeks were hot now. She was making a total fool of herself, rambling on like that. “I’m so sorry,” she muttered, feeling embarrassed and not daring to look at Daniil now.