you owe it to yourself [kalevi]

NOVEMBER 2003

Already the sun had risen -- Conrad squinted up at the sky, bright through the clouds, and scowled. They didn’t have a lot of daylight left -- not to mention it was going to be bitterly cold -- so he elected to move with haste, hauled his bag over the edge of their beached boat and clambered over after it, gathered his things and trudged up the sandbar.

Even though it was frigid the sand was soft under his feet -- he shaded his eye with one long hand, squinted at his roommate following him out of their boat. Being bundled up this thoroughly meant that getting any sand anywhere would be unbearable -- Conrad could hardly stand to be bundled up at all, much less bundled up with sand in his shoes -- so he first got out a blanket to sit on, spread it out as best he could and sat heavily in its centre, planted the radio on the corner and turned it on.

All he got was static; he turned the volume almost all the way down and glanced back at Kalevi setting up his things; with a little jolt of amusement he sat up straighter, legs bending awkwardly in counterbalance. “Come on,” Conrad complained, “you were serious about the --” he’d forgotten what piffling creature nest Kalevi had said was out here, so he shook his head rather than finish the thought.

“Man,” he said, “Just sit down and have a rest for five minutes, haven’t you already spent the last month having every waking thought about magical creatures?” It wouldn’t be dark for hours yet -- they would have to build a fire eventually, but first he wanted a moment to himself. It’d been windy enough that the voyage out here had been a nightmare; he had rope burns on both his hands. He turned his attention back to the radio, fussed it into something sort of recognisable as music and prodded the volume up to ‘quiet’. “You care what I put on?” he asked -- if Kalevi really did plan to go birdwatching or whatever, he’d better not.

@Kalevi Aare

The wind in his hair and the salt on his face was refreshing. Kalevi missed this. It had been some time since he had been out on the open waters on his own. Not long enough to forget, but too long to relax. Relaxing was just what he and Conrad intended to do.

Once the boat was safely docked, he set about gathering his instruments and bag. He wore a warm knitted turtleneck sweater underneath an opened button-up fleece coat. A dark green beanie sat atop his head with some curly black bangs poking out from beneath in the front. His rain boots served to be the best to keep out the water. Thick wool socks kept his feet warm.

With a soft grunt, he pulled his bag over his shoulder then climbed over the edge. He was surprised to see Conrad sitting on the beach with a bleak overcast and static radio signal. "Well of course I was serious! Why wouldn't I be?" He trudged up through the sand to where his housemate sat. Here we are with an opportunity to find a rare species and you'd rather sit here? It'll be neat to find them. I'd like to see them before it gets too dark."

He adjusted the weight of his back. His free hand slipped into his coat pocket. "I don't care what you put on. I thought you were coming with me. We'll build a fire when we get back and then we can relax." He was somewhat annoyed that Conrad was already sitting down. Kalevi liked to have a routine when he got to unknown locations. "At least come scout the area with me so we know we're in a safe spot and our boat won't be stolen? Then we can come back before looking for the birds." Then he would have much rather preferred to go lookimg for these creatures immediately after, but Conrad was not the kind the rush to such duties.

He couldn't recall a time when he'd ever shown a sense of urgency. Conrad wasn't horrible, but Kalevi strongly believed he had some bad habits. It always seemed to be the bare minimum was enough. The Krov was almost certain he procrastinated on all of his assignments too. If he had to guess, he'd say Conrad had no ambition-no plans after school. They were already done with half of the school year and he seemed to just enjoy gliding through life. The guy had potential only if he put in some effort. He couldn't understand why Conrad felt rhe need to always be sitting down or reclining back when relaxing. Going after his interests was a way Kalevi relaxed.

The comment was made about Kal being obsessed over magical creatures-which he chose to ignore. He wouldn't have claimed to have spent wvery waking moment thinking about magical creatures. There was no denying he studied them frequently in his free time, but he had occupied himself with other curiosities too like dueling, a particular Swedish girl, his other assignments, and survival and nautica magic classes. What did it matter to Conrad if he were study magical creatures all of the time? He certainly couldn't recall the last time Conrad after chased after a passion of his. He had to have had some, didn't he? Something that peeked his interest?

Why wouldn’t I be? Conrad didn’t really have an answer for that -- he’d just wanted to complain -- he shrugged, squinting up at his roommate. His hair was sweaty under his hat even in this cold. “Yeah, but I don’t really care about rare species,” he pointed out. He hadn’t planned this as a rare-species outing -- he’d planned this as an opportunity to laze next to the ocean instead of in the Drakonya Krov common room, and Kalevi had turned it into a rare-species outing to justify coming along.

But -- really -- Kalevi had to have wanted to come along if he’d gone to all the trouble of making up a reason it could be productive. He just had to be persuaded.

At least he didn’t care about the music; Conrad nudged it louder again and tried to find the classical channel. He couldn’t tell if Kalevi was offended or not that he didn’t want to go -- he couldn’t tell if Kalevi wanted him along -- so he propped his arms on his knees and mumbled, “Makes no difference to me.” It would be a waste of time -- nobody was stupid enough to steal a Durmstrang boat -- but this was all about wasting time.

Kalevi went on and Conrad lifted his head, brow furrowing thoughtfully -- “Alright,” he said. If they were going to go scouting and then come back for a rest, he wasn’t sure they were going to have daylight the entire time they were looking for Kalevi’’s dumb birds. After a moment he added, “If it takes too long we should just go look for your birds before we rest up, I don’t want to get lost when it gets dark.” Long winter nights were his least favourite aspect of Swedish Durmstrang -- they’d only have until the early afternoon before the sun set.

He scooted forward to stand off the blanket, bent over to scoop it up and shook the sand off, in just the beginnings of a bad temper; he dumped it on a seat in the boat and picked up his radio too, wavered indecisively for a moment before deciding to take it with him. It wasn’t heavy and he was here to listen to his radio and be left alone; if he couldn’t be left alone, he could at least listen to his radio. “Who do you think is going to steal our boat?” he said, and swept his head in an exaggerated search of the little beach. “There’s no sirens out this way.”

Oh. He should've expected as much. Conrad didn't really care about many things. Kalevi was silly to think he'd even be slightly interested in a bird that built nests in rocks but could also burrow underground. Slightly annoyed, he gritted his teeth and looked out at the horizon around them to determine the time pretending that Conrad's disinterest wasn't bothering him. He'd been eager to come on this trip with his roommate. It was a chance for them to get away. Obviously, they both had very different ideas as to what details entailed a relaxing day.

The radio was turned up with it's static frequency. Kalevi enjoyed it. He felt his stance relax a little at the music. When Conrad agreed to go though, Kal's focus turned towards him. He was having a hard time believing that Conrad would go.

The young Krov offered his friend a hand to pull him up to his feet. "Keep your radio on. That way, if it does get dark, we can listen for it to find our way back." He was purposely leaving out the detail of rumors he'd heard that this particular bird he was about to look for enjoyed classical music. He recalled reading in a journal entry in one of his studies that classical music slowed the bird down and brought them above ground when they had previously been buried in sand or loose dirt.

Kalevi led the way with his wand in hand. Who knew what they would need it for. "These birds are rare. That means they haven't been studied enough for us to fully understand their behaviors. Who knows, they could have siren voices and prey off of human flesh! Or they may grow bigger in size and find a way, our boat in this instance, to escape their island. They can't fly but can swim im shallow waters and dig. Drowning is how many die. They're turquoise-green in the sun. In the shadows, their feathers aren't as shiny and look almost peppered-tan. Like sand. They camouflage very well."

Through some brush and over porous rocks, Kalevi led them into a small clearing where he began to look around. "Watch your step. They could be under our feet!"

He set his bag down carefully beside him as he moved to inspect a pile of weeds. "There may not be sirens this way. But there may! How thrilling would it be if we were to find both the birds and sirens? We would be famous! I wonder if there's any correlation to sirens and water snipes," he mumbled the last sentence to himself. "Have you ever seen a siren? Or heard one?"

Kalevi looked around the surrounding area and Conrad went back to smoothing his blanket out over the sand, not sure whether or not to feel disgruntled. This had been his idea, so shouldn’t it have been his choice whether they went traipsing round the beach looking for sea snipes or whatever? (Never mind that those doltish birds were the only reason Kalevi had come.)

When he spoke, Kalevi looked back around to him -- he knit his eyebrows closer together, discomfited with the attention -- but he took Kalevi’s proffered hand and allowed himself to be hoisted upright -- somehow that seemed like a better choice than ignoring it, even though he thought neither option would have made him happy. “I was gonna bring it with,” said Conrad, of his radio, “You want me to keep it on and leave it here?” Surely not -- this was about the only thing he owned that he really cared about, these days. He didn’t have a broom or anything else worth real money.

They set off.

Conrad thought he had been more than clear how he felt about rare species, when he’d explicitly said he didn’t care about them, but Kalevi had taken that as his invitation to try and interest him. In vain, of course -- Conrad tuned him out and tuned the music in. It was something he recognised vaguely -- he nudged up the volume a little. He was sure Kalevi was making most of this up to scare him; if they were constantly drowning he doubted they’d be smart enough to steal their boat, and he was starting to doubt they existed. They were way too mundane to be a magical creature, but too interesting to be a muggle one.

They could be under our feet. Conrad said, bluntly, “That’s one way to catch them.” Kalevi didn’t seem dismayed enough at the prospect that there could be sirens nearby -- Conrad opened his mouth to ask if he had a death wish or something, and finally said, “I met one in the village but she wasn’t singing, I guess they’d know better than to do that around all the wizards.” He didn’t want to admit it, but they terrified him.

He kicked a rock and watched it skitter over the ground, and changed the subject. “I don’t think there’s any birds here. Can we go back?”

"Fine, you can bring it. I'm not stopping you," He shrugged turning on his heels to lead the way with Conrad in tow. He didn't particularly care if the radio was brought or not. Conrad sure did seem to be way more interested in that than him. If it got him to come, then why not?

His eyebrow raised in speculation when Conrad informed him of his encounter. "A siren? No way," she ran a hand through his mop of dark curls as he stepped over some driftwood towards the tide pools. "What was she like? Did you feel a pull towards her at all? I've always wanted to meet a siren." His eyes never looked up at the other but rather at the ground around his feet. He was careful where he stepped, being sure not to step on any creatures and to avoid falling into the cold water.

Kalevi ignored Conrad's statement about the birds as he moved to the side to tuck his backpack somewhere safe and dry. "I've heard that sirens are some of the most beautiful creatures to walk to earth. Is it true?" He rolled up his sleeves as he eyed a pool. Despite the cold, he stuck his hand in and pulled out a clam. Carefully he inspected it, tapped it on a rock, then placed it back into the pool.

Doing a half-squat of sorts, his tall lanky figure crouched over and stepping between the pools, Kalevi began to click his tongue as he would clap and then stir the surfaces of the pools. "Here, snipey snipe. Come on," click click click He looked absolutely ridiculous, he knew while looking for the water snipe. He also knew the possibility of finding it was extremely low but he wanted to give it a shot. Kalevi was never one to pass down an opportunity to find a magical creature.

Conrad got the impression Kalevi was annoyed with him, but this was his day out, so he had every right to be annoying. He hefted his radio -- “Fine” -- and dropped it into his shoulder bag to carry; the music was muffled through the fabric and his bag was bulky with the radio, but it wasn’t that bad. He trudged along after his roommate, paying attention half to where he was going, half to the radio he was still messing with, and only barely to the conversation.

They reached the tide pools; Conrad dipped the toe of one worn loafer into the water, to watch it ripple, and shrugged, the gesture a little wild with his arms out for balance. “Don’t know. Blonde. She might have been only half a siren.” He found a spot clear of anything else and sat on a rock, adjusting his bag so that it rested next to him, and watched with bafflement as Kalevi wandered the area. It hadn’t done any good to ask to go back -- Kalevi just changed the topic back to sirens like he was obsessed or something.

“No,” said Conrad, though, now he was thinking about it, he didn’t know what he thought the most beautiful creatures actually were. Jellyfish, maybe -- his father always pointed them out, if he saw them in the water, because he knew Conrad liked them -- those were pretty. He detached himself from his rock to go look in the nearest tide pool again -- he didn’t see any jellyfish, but there were a few colourful anemones waving softly up at him. “I think it’s sort of weird when creatures look like humans,” he said finally. He didn’t know how to explain why -- there was something about almost-human that was much more unsettling than not-even-close.

It didn’t matter if he explained or not, though, because Kalevi was back on his snipe hunt, clapping and poking at the pools. Conrad returned to his rock and sat back down. His radio hissed out static, so he prodded it back to the classical station and said, again, “I don’t think there’s any birds here.”

Out of curiosity, though -- “So who told you they might be out here? Was it in a book?”