All Your Little Quirks • h.ravenclaw ✓

⚪four

Arven is confused.

All his life, he has seen girls and women trying their best to remain proper and presentable, doing nothing that requires exertion. That is how women are supposed to be, aren't they? That is how his mother has always been, and that is how all the village girls are.

But when he sees Helena one evening sitting atop the branches of a tree, staring into the distance and swinging her legs back and forth, her dress sporting even more rips and dirt, she doesn't seem any less presentable than she was the last time they had met. She looks just as beautiful, her dark hair falling like waterfalls down her back, and her lips, even from this distance, as full and pink as he had last seen them.

She doesn't see him when he appears at the clearing, and he stomps his foot on the ground to get her attention. She looks down and a beaming smile appears on her face. Swinging her legs over the branch, she scampers down the tree and leaps the last two feet.

"I was thinking of going to the town just now," she says as soon as her feet are on the ground. "Do you want to come with me?"

Arven finds himself hesitating. By town, he knows she means the place on the other side of the woods. The place he has never visited, the place he knows to be comprised of people who are richer than them, and much much crueller. Of course, he has never met them, but the stories he has heard from the villagers make them sound like non humans, people with no mercy and no love.

But Helena doesn't catch his hesitance. She keeps talking. "I ran out of ink, so I need to buy some. This place is awfully lacking of ink, do people here never need to write anything? And I need water as well. I wish there were clear springs around, so that I didn't have to waste money on water."

Her voice drifts along, and Arven loses himself in it. There seems to be something magical about it, the way her accent curls around certain letters, and the way it silences others, and it rings beautifully in his ears. Maybe it is because the only human sounds he hears all day are the yelling of his father and the concern of his mother, but he feels that if her voice was an ocean, he wouldn't mind drowning in it.

"So, are you coming?" she asks once she has finished talking about the list of things she needs to buy. Arven hesitates again, but nods in response, deciding that he could get the answers to his questions now.

His feet lock themselves on the ground as he reaches the edge of the woods. This is completely foreign territory, with different soil, different air, and different people. Everyone seems to be staring at him, just like his fellow villagers do whenever he steps outside of his house. Except, this time, their looks seem to be sharper, more menacing. The people are dressed differently – in less shabby and more expensive clothing. There seem to be more angular features in their faces, more sharpness in the way they walk. Or maybe he's just being biased.

Helena tugs on his arm impatiently, not noticing his dilemma, and he is forced to follow her.

The town is certainly different from the village. The roads are more ordered, and so are the houses, with less trees and more housing. There is less mess, but more chaos, and soon enough, they emerge out of the residential area and reach the marketplace.

For once, Arven is able to look around his surroundings. His inhibition dwindles away slowly as he realises that the people here are far too busy to notice him. He allows himself to enjoy the trip, to enjoy the sights it offers, and more than anything else, Helena's voice as she talks away about how she has been surviving here in Albania.

"There are many homeless people here, you know?" she says, eyes forward and a determined stride in her steps, showing that she knows very well where she is going. "I pretend to be one. I have managed to find a job in a fruit market, where I help the owner sell his products and calculate the daily earnings. He was very surprised to see me being so good in calculations – he thought women aren't capable of doing it. It's a strange place, so different from Hogwarts. So much discrimination against females, not that Hogwarts doesn't have discrimination. But it's a nice place nonetheless. My mother doesn't get to force me to be who she wants me to be. And the climate is warm."

Arven has some of his questions answered, but instead of the satisfaction he is supposed to feel, he finds more questions piling up inside him. Where is Hogwarts, for instance. She hasn't mentioned it before. And he also wants to ask whether she is stating it as a fact that Albania is a nice place or whether she is repeating it over and over trying to convince herself that she has made the right decision in leaving Scotland. She certainly sounds like she isn't paying him attention, for when her hand loosens its hold on his arm and he falls back behind her, she doesn't notice. He runs over to catch up to her. She is still speaking. He wishes he could talk so that he wouldn't have to wait to return to the tent to ask her.

She buys a few things, including food and stationery. Arven looks around, revelling in the surroundings, the outside world he has missed out on, for he has always paid attention in not drawing attention to himself so he wasn't able to look at his surroundings. His feet was what he watched every moment he was outside, but now that he is certain no one is goggling at him, he is able to raise his head and look.

They return to the tent sometime later, and they sit down to eat. Arven notices, lit up by the warm orange glow of the fire, several drawings on the ground, carved by a stick that lies next to Helena. The drawings aren't particularly good, but they are nice to look at.

"I'm not a good artist," Helena says with a laugh, watching him observe the ground. "I just find it easier to think when I'm doodling random things."

There is a long, comfortable silence, broken only by the sound of them munching on their food. Finally, Arven puts his now empty plate aside and pulls a parchment sheet toward him. Dipping the quill in ink, he scratches out two words.

Think what?

She shrugs. "Nothing you need to bother yourself with."