Lament of the Bard (9-6-2011) [open for all]

It was early in the afternoon and Hazel had quite some time to spare before her next classes would start, one of her teachers being absent. She didn't felt much like leaving schoolgrounds, even though she could spend some time at home without being late for when she would have classes again. So instead she explored the schoolground a little, ending up in the theater finding it abandoned and with a baby grand piano on the stage.
Without bothering to ask permission Hazel took place behind the piano and first played a random melody, to find that the piano had a great sound and was perfectly tuned. Now that she knew that she started with playing and singing this song. First softly only to herself but it didn't last long before her voice filled the entire theater. And because she had accidently left the door on a small gap her singing could also be heard if someone would walk by.

With a couple hours of a break between her classes, Keoki had taken the time to wander around the grounds. It looked nice, probably the closest she'd get to buildings that resembled the city, but didn't have much charm for her. Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that she wasn't even that thrilled to be back in school. Kicking a stone as she walked over some of the grass, a tune caught her attention and she turned the find the theater door open.

Maybe she'd be disturbing some practice or something, but curiosity got the better of her as she approached the door and picked up something rather unique about the music. Glancing over her shoulder, and no catching anyone else in sight, she walked into the theater building, following after the increasing sound of piano and singing. Keo was a little surprised when she saw the stage, finding just a lone girl there instead of any other students, but maybe she was a teacher, or a bored student like herself. She quietly moved down to one of the seats, sitting at the end of the row, and hoping she wouldn't disturb the girl before she finished.

Not noticing that she had an audiance of one Hazel continued playing and singing undisturbed, doing some improvisation at the end to make it a little longer and a little more complicated just for the hell of it. Once the song was done she sighed, her fingers still resting on the white keys. It wasn't until a moment later that she noticed someone was looking at her, turning around in her seat she saw that another student had joined her. Looking Keoki over she decided it best to be friendly and smiled at her.
"Hii, I'm Hazel," she said introducing herself, not getting up though, "didn't now I had gotten an audiance."

Keoki leaned back, listening to the rest of the song, hearing it get a little more complicated before coming to a stop. Moving forward, and resting her arms on the chair in front of her, she heard the musician introduce herself and nodded, "Hey. I'm Keoki. And you're damn good. Just to point it out." She grinned, standing up and taking a few steps closer to the stage so she didn't have to talk as loudly to be heard, "You a student, too?" She assumed Hazel was now, since she'd introduced herself by her first name.

Hazel chuckled when Keoki complimented her on her piano playing and singing skills, she was used to people complimenting her on that but of course that never grew old. "Thank you, that is very kind of you and nice meeting you Keoki," she said standing up and sitting down on the edge of the stage, "yes I am a student here, I assume you are too. Oh I'm not distrubing your rephearsal time or something, am I?"

"Yep, student. But I'm in film, not theater, so you're not disturbing a thing. Just got bored between classes and took a look around, then heard some music from outside and decided to check it out," she replied, approaching the stage and hopping up the side of it. She stayed over at the edge instead of walking over to Hazel, but turned around to get a look at the theater from the stage. It was bigger than she expected for a small town. Turning her head enough for Hazel to hear, she asked, "Are you a music student, or...?" She left the question open in case her guess was wrong.

Hazel smiled and nodded as Keoki explained to her that she was a filmstudent who got bored and had come to the theater because she had heard her play. Making a mental note to make sure the door was closed the possible next time she would just wander into the theater to play a little without asking permission or anything.
"World history, believe it or not," she filled in the open question of what she was studying a small grin on her face, curious to see how this girl would react to hearing that, "you aren't from around here are you? Or did you just recently moved here?"
Thanks to it's ever small town status Hazel knew or had known at least one family member per family that lived in Penrose. Causing her to be capable of guessing who was new in town, though of course she could very well make mistakes with that. It wasn't like family features couldn't change beyond a point of easy recognition if you missed a generation too many.

Keoki had to admit she didn't expect her to be a history student, but aside from looking a little surprised for a second, she just nodded and turned to face her again when Hazel asked if she was new in town, "Yeah, I'm one of the people staying up at the mansion. So I'm only here for the school year, nothing permanent." But she couldn't hide a small grin, because she was quite glad it wasn't a permanent move. She had nothing against Penrose, but the town didn't have as much to see and explore as she was used to. And even then, she was used to moving once she got bored enough. But she hadn't seen Hazel at the mansion, so she asked, "What about you? From town or here for the schooling?"

As Keoki told her that she was staying at the mansion for only this schoolyear Hazel nodded again, her look a little thoughtfull as the mentioning of the mansion had reminded her of something. If it had she wasn't planning on sharing the thought.
"Both actually," she answered a small grimace on her face as she thought of that, "my family has a small house here in town for generation now, but we hardly ever really stay here for more then a few months. But that changed when my mother thought that I sound get an education and since they opened a new University here she enrolled me."

Keoki noticed she seemed to be thinking about something, but didn't ask, figuring it probably just had something to do with the town's stories about the forest. Now that she thought of it, the mansion actually being apart from the rest of town could explain why they were targeted... But Keo decided to worry about that later, catching that Hazel's family had a house here but now she was stuck there to go to the university.

"Heh, I can relate. Granted, my family doesn't have a house here, but someone decided I also needed an education. Then she sent me out here so I couldn't move off to a city half-way through the year," at least, that was one of the main reasons why she figured Anna picked this town. The supernatural events also figured in, but she had no clue about the area around Penrose, so as she said, she wouldn't be able to ditch the university and move away like she otherwise would.

Hazel raised a brow when Keoki told her that she was sent here by someone else well so that she couldn't leave halfway through the year. A part of her wandered if that was because of a similair reason as hers or if Keoki just didn't like Penrose itself or didn't like small towns.
"Why would you want to move half-way through the year?" she therefor asked, "Don't you like your classes already or are you not a fan of small towns?"

"No, Penrose is nice," she started, shrugging a bit, and not answering anything about the classes seeing as she wasn't big on school, "But I'm used to cities. And moving around a lot. Haven't really stayed in one place for very long since I was a teenager. Even ended up getting home-schooled instead of constantly hopping around high schools or dropping out." She'd certainly considered the idea of dropping out, but Anna would never even consider it. "So I might get a bit restless in a small town like this, at least for such a long time," she added.

As Keoki told her that she had didn't like sticking around in one place for a longer period of time because she had been travelling since she was a teenager, thus being homeschooled, Haze was very surprised. This girl's way of living was a lot like her own. But instead of thinking that a great reason to try and be friends with Keoki Hazel got suspicious, maybe this girl was sent to get her. Does that sound paranoïa, yes but she had rather good reasons for that.
"I know the feeling of not wanting to stick around in one place for more then a month or two," she said smiling as if not suspecting Keoki of anything bad, "I've been travelling since my fourth."

"Fourth?" she repeated, not quite sure what that meant. Fourth year, maybe. "This is actually my first time being out of the US. Used to just stick around the east coast, a lot of big towns and a few good cities all along there. I think New York is where I've been the most times," Keoki explained, counting on her fingers as she tried to recall her repeat visits to some of the bigger cities, not catching onto Hazel's suspicions. Then she looked back to her to ask, "But you've been in a similar position then, so where have you mostly been?"

"Since I was four year old, sorry should have been more specifyck," Hazel explained, her suspicions not over yet. She listened closely as Keoki told her that she had never been out of the US before and even then having spend most of her time on the east and New York.
"I've mainly been in Europe," she answered this time deliberatly not being specifyck, "though I have seen a few parts of Asia."

"Four years old? Geez, that's basically your whole life. Sure got me beat," she replied with a small laugh, wondering if her parents had some job that required such constant moving around. Even with her experience, she didn't usually assume that some odd behavior meant something inhuman, even if her reason was to avoid getting too much attention as a werewolf.
Europe seemed interesting, though Keo was a little disappointed she didn't name any countries she might have been to. And Asia especially seemed far different from her typical homes, "Wow, that's pretty impressive. Your parents must have good jobs or something to afford that. Hah, I just live from hotel room to hotel room, can't afford much else."

Hazel just shrugged a small smile on her face when Keoki said that she had her beat because of how long she had been travelling. Her smile faded just a little at the assumption of her parents having good jobs that they could travel so much. A small part of her wanted to correct that assumption, but the larger part decided to play along.
"Yeah I guess we are just lucky," she answered with a shrug, "so what made you decide to start travelling from hotelroom to hotelroom alone?"

"Ah, only traveled alone for the last year, actually. I lived with my sister, Anna, before then," she explained, easily seeming as if Anna was her actual sister. It wasn't the first time she'd used that lie, and Keoki hardly even considered it a lie, since Anna was a bit like a big sister to her. But she went along with her story for now, "Anna's ten years older, and she'd been living on her own for a while before I hit the rebellious teen years and started begging to go with her, cus she traveled so much. Parents were completely against it, but Anna convinced them that I'd only last a few months with her."

She grinned, as if remembering that story like a real memory, "Never did get tired of it, like Anna though, and even though they asked me to come home a few times, it was never very long before I wanted to head out with Anna again. Then last year, when I turned 18, I took to moving around on my own." At least that was a much nicer story than saying Anna was a werewolf that bit her and if she didn't move out of the house she'd more than likely massacre her parents one night. "Hope that wasn't boring to listen through," she ended up adding, rubbing the back of her neck.

Hazel listened closely to Keoki's story of the reason behind her traveling around, looking closely to her bodylanguage as she did so. Not because she thought Keoki was a werewolf, just the paranoïa that had kept her alive for so long, as well as the occasional help of her mother.
"I'm a history student," she answered with an honest smile when Keoki asked if she hadn't bored her, "I find the past very interesting and something that can be learned from. Though until people actually start doing that it'll just keep repeating itself."
The last part had a double meaning, she had dealt with people that had been sent to harm her before. And seeing as she was still around it's easy to guess how history was repeating itself in those cases.

"That's a nice way to look at it," Keoki replied, though when it came to hunters, she rarely had to deal with them when Anna was around. Who would have known hunters could be so good at learning to take out their own. Then it hit her, she knew another history student, "Hey, maybe you'll have class with Tobias. He's a friend of mine I met at the mansion who's also studying history. Tall guy, brown hair, kinda pale, not very outspoken," she might have described him rather simply, but if they had any classes together, maybe she'd recognize him next time.

At Keoki's response to her history repeating itself comment Hazel looked rather thoughtfull, unsure if this girl actually was just innocent or pretending to be. Her father had told her to lighten up a little on her paranoïa seeing as these weren't the middle ages anymore, but old habits die hard.
She raised a brow at the mentioning of her knowing another history student and described one of her housemates to her. Thinking for a few seconds, trying to put a face to the description, she came up blank. "Can't say it rings a bell," she said after the moment of thought, "but I'll be sure to keep my eyes open. So what made you decide to become a filmstudent?"

She was a little disappointed that she didn't seem to know of Toby, but so be it. Hearing her ask what got her into film, she thought of mentioning the paranormal... but after what happened in the forest, Keo decided it'd be best not to mention that right now. Instead, she replied, "Well, I got used to it after working as a cameraman for events, like, school events, weddings, whatever someone wanted a video of. It was a good way to make money, and it was also pretty interesting what I could catch. Seeing as I don't really have any other skills that I could get a job in, I opted to enroll for film."

Glancing along the stage again, she walked around a bit, passed the piano and glancing back stage, "So. This place looks pretty deserted," she said, mostly thinking aloud. A grin crossed her face, a theater that was practically empty. She'd have to record the day and time to see if it was always like this. She might have had an old habit of digging around deserted places, mostly from her freerunning habit. The best places to practice was where no one was around to yell at her for climbing on things or ask just what she was doing.

Hazel doubted if filming really was all that Keoki was good at, but she kept that to herself. She was curious to what Keoki had caught on film that she found so interesting. But she first watch the young girl explore the stage a little, shrugging when she said that it seemed to be pretty abandoned.
"I guess so," she answered, "though it could be that a class arrives any moment. But what did you caught on film that was so interesting?"

So Hazel asked the question she probably should have expected, and Keoki didn't have much time to think over a reply or she would just seem suspicious. Deciding to just go with it, she glanced back in Hazel's direction, "Yeah, you would think that, but maybe there's no classes today? As for the filming. Well, I just have little interest in other fields. And in films, anything can happen. Even monsters can be real," she replied, not directly stating anything, "The horror genre is popular, as is old fantasy tales, and there's modern fantasy, too, now. Though I wasn't a big fan of Twilight." To be honest, she mostly hated their portrayal of werewolves. But she didn't think on that too much or she'd end up ranting in her head for a bit, and that was just annoying.

Taking a seat behind the piano again Hazel played a random tune that could fit in a fantasy movie as Keoki talked at them. She didn't read behind it that Keoki was interested in getting the supernatural on film, but she still felt like giving her a little warning, strange as it may come off.
"Every tale, strange as it may be, holds a grain of truth," she said not looking up from the keys, "a truth that is sometimes best kept out of the spotlight."