Owls and Insanity (OPEN)

[sable]

Dangling legs over the edge of the window, kicking merrily while Sable hummed tunelessly to herself. One of the school owls perched on her knee, occasionally hooting indignantly when Sable paused in stroking it with a finger. A notebook was propped on the side of the window, the feathery tip of a quill peeking out from the top.

Sable laughed quietly to herself. "You know, if Cealach caught me up here right now, he'd have my head," she muttered, referring to her foul-tempered cat. "He's got something against birds, and it's not just your typical 'cat eats bird' thing, either." She shook her knee lightly to dislodge the bird from her knee, wincing as the bird, apparently in protest, tightened its claws on her leg, and then flapped off. She mumbled a curse under her breath, and gingerly rubbed where the bird had sat. She glared at the owl, while the bird held itself with an odd air of self-satisfaction.

"I'm going insane," she stated under her breath. "I talk to myself, I talk to birds, I sit half out a window at least five stories above the window, and now I think that a bird is staring smugly at me. Witch or not, I think all this fantasizing's gone to my head." Despite her rather pessimistic outlook, Sable wasn't fazed in the slightest. There wasn't much need to be - this being one of her favorite places to escape the crowds, she tended to sit here, and so was quite comfortable, and felt safe enough (no less than the Quidditch players did on their brooms). Even the people on the ground, maybe with the exception of a few first years, had grown accustomed to spotting her up here, and didn't even spare her a second glance.

Just as well, Sable mused, staring down on the students. This high up, they looked like ants. Slow ants, seeing as they were walking as opposed to scurrying, but ants nonetheless. People just learn to leave you alone after a while, I guess. Good for me.

Sable sighed, leaned back, keeping her fingers in their vice-like grip on the edge of the wall. Sweeping her eyes around the owlery, a half smile on her face, her eyes fell on the notebook. Her contented appearance slid off her face like butter as the reason for her visit here hit her. She heaved a sigh again, but, this time, it was not contented; on the contrary, it was a rather depressed sound.

Sable was writing to her mother; while most might view this as a tedium, it certainly wasn't depressing. No, it was not the fact that she was writing to her mother that had sent her into this dejected state; it was why she was writing to her mother. Her father had just... shut down. Sable didn't want to look at it as dying, as she'd never really considered him alive. At least not after the Dementors had gotten a hold of him. However, her mother, regardless of his... lack of soul, had sunk to the bottom level of despondency at the news of his passing on. And so family obligations had brought her here - she hoped that by writing to her mother, telling her about her own happiness, encouraging her, and doing whatever other ideas struck her might help her mother snap out of it. Father or no, Sable still felt a bit reliant on her mother; she didn't want to be thrust into the world, on her own, at least until she graduated from Hogwarts.

Shaking her head in an effort to dislodge the morbid thoughts, Sable picked up the quill with a forced, jerky movement, clearly showing that she didn't want to be touching neither feather nor parchment. Flipping open the notebook and taking out a piece of parchment, her quill held poised over the paper, she sat for a few minutes simply staring blankly at the paper. With a grunt of frustration, she flung the quill at the wall of the room, sliding off the windowsill and onto the ground, scowling at nothing in particular.

"How do you start something like that?" she demanded to herself. "'How are you doing?'"
Pfft, as though I don't already know... there'll have been no change between the announcement of his death and now.
"'What's going on?'"
Of course there's nothing going on. She's retired!
"Everything I say to her is going to send her into a worse state than she is now, and if I don't..."
She's going to send me a howler. I just know it. A howler screaming of how I'm neglecting my poor, widowed mother. And when I reply, I'll probably get another one screaming of how I'm inconsiderate, for making her think of dad. Stupid depression.