Open World of My Own

[Poppy Perkins]

Poppy waded into the the water, her boots long forgotten on the shore. She had rolled up the bottoms of her pants over her knees but it wasn't quite enough and the water brushed them, slowly soaking them through. But Poppy hardly noticed as she kept her eyes out for just the right plants. She had read about how someone could make an enclosed ecosystem in a jar from one of her father's books while she was at home for break. Ever since she had come back to school, she hadn't been able to stop thinking about making one with the water in the lake. Her imagination had run wild with all the potentially magical things she might be able to find. Lysander had mentioned something about an eel living in the lake last year, and while she still didn't know if she believed in it or not, it didn't stop her from jumping every time she felt anything brush her leg underwater. She also obviously couldn't fit a giant eel in a jar but she did wonder if there were any tiny magical fish or other creatures she would scoop up.

 

[Lysander Summers]

Lysander sat along the shore, hidden by its pier, and absent-mindedly fidgeted with a pile of damp seaweed, while the cool lake water occasionally lapped at his toes. His frog leaped around the general vicinity, seemingly happy to splash about in the damp ground. He couldn't really tell, but he was active and didn't hop too far away, so Sander had to assume he was having a good time. He watched the water, as he often did, in case the sea creature he'd seen would appear again, though it had been a year since he'd last laid eyes on it - the briefest of glimpses, and he was beginning to wonder if he ever would get to see it again. So far everything he'd tried had failed, and he was growing frustrated.

At the sound of sloshing nearby, he tore his eyes away from the spot in the lake he'd been staring at, wondering if the creature was closer to the surface. Peering through the wooden struts, he realised it was Poppy instead, searching around for something by the looks of it. He watched her for a moment, and glanced back down at the coil of weeds he'd fidgeted with, knotting it into a length of misshapen mess, though the general shape gave him an idea. He could have just gotten up and said hello to his classmate, but that wasn't as fun as what he had in mind. Tossing the length of weeds back into the water, he picked up his wand and gave it a small wave, animating the leafy cluster. It floundered and splashed around for a moment, until he directed it towards Poppy, letting it find its pace by snaking, serpent-like, over the water towards her. It wasn't exactly the believable sea-snake he'd pictured, since it was quite literally just a few pieces of seaweed knotted together and brought to life, but he thought the general movements and mottled colour would be enough to spook at a glance.​

 

[Poppy Perkins]

Poppy knelt down to pick up some rocks to add to the bottom. The cool water of the lake felt nice but as she straightened she saw some movement out of the corner of her eye. She glanced over and saw a shape moving towards her. Before she could even make out what it was she let out a scream and flailed her arms causing the jar she was holding to make a comical plop sound as it hit the water. A moment later, clutching a hand to her chest, she realize it was just some plants enchanted to move. Poppy frowned and looked around the edges of the lake to see who was around who would have pranked her. It took a moment to finally see him, but she spotted Lysander on the opposite side of the pier. "That's not funny!" she shouted and let out a nervous laugh in spite of her racing heart beat. She pushed her hair back before she bent down and picked up her jar, keeping the water inside, and held it up to eye level to inspect what was inside.

 

[Lysander Summers]

Lysander laughed hysterically from behind the pier, clutching a support beam for, well, support. He wasn't sure how the seaweed-snake charm was going to go down, but it had been worth it. "It was so!" He called teasingly back. He released the wood to scoop up his frog from the muddy ground, pausing to flick away a significant portion of the mud he'd collected in his palms, and trudged over to join Poppy on the other side of the pier. His feet splashed through the water and he set the frog down on the damp ground, much closer to the two of them so he could keep an eye on him. "What are you trying to catch?" He asked her curiously, in the midst of crouching down to wash off his grubby hands in the lake water. Fish? A baby sea monster? A grindylow? He had a lot of ideas, most of them highly unlikely.​

 

[Poppy Perkins]

Poppy tried to look as stern as she could muster but knew it probably wasn't very convincing. "Maybe for you." she said indignantly, before letting out a nervous laughing as she felt her pulse still racing slightly from her scare. "I'm not trying to catch anything actually." she corrected and straightened up her posture, excited to share. "I read in a book that if you put all the different parts of an ecosystem in a single jar you could keep it with you and everything should be able to go on living just as it was in it's natural environment." she explained and held up her jar that was full of lake water. "So I thought I'd try it with the lake and see what kind of things I can find." she said, and reached her hand down into the water again to get a handful of mud and rock to add to the bottom of her own experiment. "Are there any magical fish that live in here?" she asked. Poppy hadn't heard of any in her Care of Magical Creatures class but she figured Lysander would probably know.

 

[Lysander Summers]

Lysander gave Poppy a puzzled look. It had seemed like she was trying to catch something, and he listened to her explanation with more understanding. "So it's like a...what's it called. The plant aquariums. A terrarium! Yeah." He said. He'd had to make a bog for Hopsprocket to thrive in, so he figured it was sort of a similar thing. His dad had made all sorts of habitats for animals, but he didn't really know what went into maintaining them all. He watched in fascination as she scooped up some mud and rocks to add in, and offered her his own fist full of seaweed to try and help. "Magical fish..." He trailed off, having to think about it for a moment. A lot of creatures were starting to seem more and more "magical" to him, and it was becoming hard to tell the difference sometimes. "There's plimpys, for sure. They might be too big for your jar. I don't know any others that would be here. I can help you look if you want?" He offered. He was definitely down, especially if he came across a plimpy himself. Or the elusive lake creature. "If we can find a mermaid, I bet they could probably get you a fish for your ecosystem."​

 

[Poppy Perkins]

Poppy smiled when Lysander seemed to quickly get what she was talking about. She wasn't always the best at explaining things. Usually she tended to give too much information or too little. “Pretty much.” she said, and made a mental note to use the terrarium reference in the future when she undoubtedly would have to explain it all again when she brought it back to the dorm room. She laughed when Lysander offered her the once enchanted seaweed but she did carefully take a piece and place it inside. "I guess, anything of exceptional interest would be too big for this particular experiment." she said softly, mostly to herself as she considered what he said. "You think they would?" Poppy asked with her eyebrows raised in excitement. "Have you ever actually seen a mermaid in the lake? Or is it only stories from other people?" she asked after a moment, trying to sound slightly disinterested and not as nervous as she felt. If she was honest, she would thrilled to see a real mermaid in person but the thought also made her a bit weary, as she didn't know exactly what to expect or how to properly behave around them.

 

[Lysander Summers]

Lysander looked briefly offended by the suggestion he might have only heard about the mermaids, and never actually met one. "Of course I have." He said quickly. They didn't come up to the surface and socialise as much as he'd like, but he could still proudly proclaim that he had, in fact, met some. "I met one just at the start of this semester even, when I was swimming with Jenna. Her name's Sandy." He said. She had looked a bit different from the sirens he was used to seeing in New Zealand, but she had definitely been a mermaid. "You can only talk to them underwater, so if we wanted to call one, we'd have to yell out under the lake and see if there's any around." They could probably find the coolest fish no one ever got to see, living at the bottom of the lake. He'd heard that they had merhorses too, but they were probably going to also be too big for the jar.​