isladora

[isladora]

The night before finals. 3:07 am. Pepa and Yadira carry the team on their backs.

Fenrir doesn't need the help, but decides not to miss the opportunity for a "Midnight Romp with his future subjects". Sometimes, he seems like his own person and other times, he's just another Loki. Either way, they roll their eyes and pass him a mug of tea.

Elijah cries three (3) times, but they all pretend not to notice.

Plumdrop gives up halfway to terrorize someone online.

Wyvern works hard, his tail twitching and his lips wearing that little smile.

Madame Hesper spends the night chatting up a 22-year old online between bouts of baking extremely delicious pastries.

The first semester is coming to an end.

[isladora]

"Pepa, please don't make me do this," Wyvern mutters into the curtain of his hair from where he's sitting cross-legged near the fire in their room.

"Wavy, my mother is here already," Pepa said, not bother to disguise the frustration in her voice. "I've been preparing you for this all week. She's just like you, you'd love it!"

"She's got wings?" he asks dryly, flopping on his back to stare at the ceiling. Despite his complaints, he kind of smiling beneath the arm across his face. Despite this, Pepa knows that he really is feeling nervous to meet her family, especially because he can never see his own.

"No, and she hasn't got any horns either," Pepa's kicking at his lashing tail.

This is usually more of an indicator of his mood than his face. Wavy, that's what she's decided to call him, is always smiling around her. Even if he's mad at her, which happens more often than you'd think, with flushed horns and a lashing tail, he's got that little smile on his lips.

"But she has got a tail, and anyway she's as awkward as you are," Pepa says this next part to hear that dragonly squawk of indignation he does. "And, unlike you, she actually has a diagnosis and medication to treat her social anxiety."

Wyvern squawks right on cue.

"I have a stupidly expensive four hour appointment coming up next Friday," he pouts, his voice louder than usual. "Thanks to you."

"Yes, Wavy, thanks to me you'll be independent enough to ask Plum on a real date and Elijah won't give us weird looks when you hold my hand in large crowds."

"I don't want to date plum," he insists, lowly. It sounds like a growl. "And Elijah knows we're just friends and he knows why we hold hands."

"Please, Wavy, come meet my mother," Pepa says, trying to get him back on track. He pouts. That's okay. Pepa pouts back and it's twice as effective. "For me?"

He shrugs on his sweater and rolls his eyes like he doesn't care. But when Pepa extends her hand to him at the threshold of their dormitory, he takes it.

[isladora]

There's another thing that happens over the course of the first semester at Magic School - Elijah.

Well, it's not as if he happens, per se. But he's the closest Pepa has ever come to-happening with someone before-and that seems worth mentioning.

They're not dating, of course. Madame Hesper says they aren't allowed to date at the boardinghouse. Although, someone ought to tell her that. She always leaves her dating profiles open in the library.

But anyway, they aren't dating and they're barely friends. He follows Plumdrop around like a puppy dog, but Plum swears they're just friends. And anyway, who is Pepa to judge on platonic relationships when she spends nearly every moment with her newly adopted shadow, Wyvern?

Sometime during the semester, Pepa, plum, Wyvern, and Elijah end up at the pier near Copperdale high school on some sort of weird, cross-platonic double date. Elijah takes Pepa on two rides all by themselves, the ferris wheel and the one with the big heart on top, while Plum and Wyvern stand in line for food and Boba tea.

They don't speak a word on the Ferris wheel, but they do hold hands and side-eye each other on the heart ride. And right before they joined up with the others on a picnic bench he calls her beautiful and complements her eyes.

The girls (and Madame Hesper) squeal about it in Plum's room and Yadira promises to start dropping Pepa's name in conversations in their dorm room at night.

Wyvern seems to like Elijah. They're usually in the gym at the same time before breakfast. She's seen them. It's as good as Wyvern usually gets with the others when Pepa isn't around. Wyvern on a Yoga Mat and Elijah lifting weights, the noise of the TV filling the silence between them.

She promised to tell her dad first if something ever happened between her and a boy. Now, more than ever, she can't wait to see him at the end of this semester.

[isladora]

If Magic School is nothing like she thought, then Wyvern is even more surprising.

It took her a full week to realize that this tall dragon boy with a wingspan twice her height is not mean or scary at all, despite his long, prowling stares and moody silences.

He's just painfully awkward.

It happened in their room in those late hours where the morning mingled with night and every nighttime echo seemed to shout in the silence. Pepa sat curled on her bed, a mug of tea on her side table and a book in her lap.

Wyvern was perched in front of his easel, his tail curled lightly around his body. He was staring at the easel, sketching with a pencil in hand, muttering under his breathe and measuring every few strokes.

The silence in the room was thick, lurking like a crocodile in a lake. Pepa had never truly fit the archetype of a nerd, despite her efforts. She loved books and needed learning like her owl Holmes needed perch judgmentally at the foot of her bed (little twit), but she'd never succeeded in being properly awkward or shy.

Despite her childhood efforts of bookish isolation, she had loads of friends growing up and still caught up them from time to time on her social media accounts or on weekends. A few had even visited her at the boarding house.

And so when the silence prowled, Pepa was simply not bookishly quaint enough to meekly ignore it. She confronted the silence head on.

"What are you painting?" Pepa asked the dragon boy, hoping he hadn't heard the quake in her voice. His face flushed a truly shocking shade of red.

When he spoke, his voice quaked worse than Pepa. She found herself feeling unexpectedly proud of that fact. After all, it wasn't like he was talking to a black-eyed white dragon.

"It's-erm-nothing," he mumbled, his long hair falling in curtains around his face. Usually he kept it back with a rubber band, but sometimes he let it fully loose in the privacy of their room.

"You've been working hard on it for hours," She said, arching an eyebrow at him. God, it irritated her when people said 'nothing'. Just say you don't want her to know. It can't be nothing. It must have shown on her face because he flushed even harder, this time to the white roots of his hair. Soon he'd be as pink as Plumdrop.

"No, but-it's-I can't," he stuttered, scratching at his scalp. And finally, in the most defeated voice she could have imagined, "You weren't supposed to ask." "What?" She asked dryly, her primly arched eyebrow arching higher. Because, honestly, what? Was he raised in a cave?

Did Mommy and Daddy dragon not speak simlish? It was so absurd that she completely forgot to be afraid. She laid her book aside and leaned forward, more than curious about whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

"It's a gift," he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "For you."

Eyebrow down. Mouth open. What. This dragon boy hadn't spoken a word to Pepa, or anyone, all week. And suddenly, he's painting something for her specifically? Once again it must have shown on her face, because the blush crept down his arms and to his hands.

"Well, I've been-" And he mumbled the next part so quietly that she had to unfold her limbs from her comfy bed and cross half the room to hear him. "I've been wanting to talk to you. Just didn't know how. So I thought maybe we could talk about this painting. When it's done."

"Oh," said Pepa, unexpectedly flushed. She tugged her sweatpants higher on her hips just to do something with her hands. "Right. Of course. When it's done."

"When it's done," he repeated, a hint of desperation in his impossibly deep voice. He spoke in a growl like the grim reaper. It was terrifying.

"Okay, when its done you can-you can try talking to me about the painting," I said, tucking myself back into my bed, grabbing the discarded book from my bedside table.

He nodded into the curtain of his hair and turned back to the Easel. That's when she thought back to his long stares and avoidant behavior and sighed. Well, she had to adopt him now.

[isladora]

The first semester of magic school is nothing like Pepa imagined. She had pictured bubbling cauldrons and duels, flying lessons and flailing wands--and it's all of that, of course.

But, more than anything, Magic school is just school. Homework is hard, essays are hard, teachers are firm and disciplined. Her classmates aren't nearly as scary as the first seemed. Plumdrop, for example, is definitely evil. But not, like, in a bad way. You know?

Like she laughs at our misery and steals the last puzzle piece in the common room, but she's a good laugh most of the time and a decent study partner. Yadira is as kind as Practical magic is boring. She works hard at school, almost harder than Pepa, and magic comes naturally to her.

Everyone quietly turns a blind eye if they hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs at night, long after curfew, and the creaky opening of a fridge. Yadira is always hungry-she eats twice as much as everyone else and almost always gets up to eat in the middle of the night. Her room is bare except for an old rug, a broken lamp, and a box of stuff she still hasn't unpacked months into the semester.

Sometimes, Pepa, Plumdrop and Yadira skip homework to hang out after school. Plumdrop goes thrifting all the time to sell outfits online. She wants to be a fashion designer one day. No one offers to buy anything for Yadira, even if she finds something that actually fits in a way she like doesn't make her look like angles and bones. They just buy it for themselves, even if it can't fit, and slip it into her room a week later while she's down in the kitchen.

But mostly, we try on clothes and giggle like girls and snap pictures of each other in Plumdrop's pink room, and it's so extremely normal that I forgot I'm at magic school.

[isladora]

When Pepa enters her room all she sees is black.

Black curtains, black paintings covering every available inch of wall space, stacks of paintings against the wall, and a corner containing a stained easel, open art supplies, and a canvas glittering with wet paint. The smell of it fills the room.

Wyvern is a bundle of red fabric in his bed -- one wing pulled tight against his back and the other wrapped protectively around his body. His tail hangs limply off the side of the bed. She tries not to stare--surely dragons can feel your eyes even in their sleep.

Her side of the room is comfortable. Safe. Bright and white and filled with books. She cracks one open, glad for the screen of plants shielding her from view, and pretends there's not a sleeping dragon right across the room.

[isladora]

Let the Games Begin - Magic School here we come!

[isladora]

There are five other students staying at the Boarding house with her. And they...well, they all sort of scare Pepa at first sight.

Yadira is the least of them, but not in the way you'd think. Her skin hangs from her bones like a coat on a hanger as if the skin is decoration, but the bones are her true self. Her skin is dull and her brown eyes are bright and defiant, but kind despite the scars on her face and arms. To look at Yadira is to glimpse her suffering, whatever suffering that might have been.

Plumdrop wears oversized clothing, too, but you can tell it's on purpose. She's thin and small, but the clothes don't jut around her bones like Yadira. They fall artfully around her frame--like a curtain from a windowpane. Her hair and eyes are both baby pink and her fair skin colored with a gentle blush. But her eyes are the opposite of Yadira--they are sharp and dark with secrets. Pepa gives her a wide berth.

Fenrir is the same--gorgeous, charming, rich as hell, wears the color green like he invented it. When Pepa hears his last name it all makes sense--laufeyson. He's a laufeyson! The son of an unholy union between Loki and Sylvie, the God and Goddess of Mischief, who are widely rumored to be the same exact person. His green eyes are watching her across the room--every Laufeyson has the exact same type: Black hair, green eyes. Pepa avoids him too.

Elijah is the least of them in exactly the way you would expect him to be. He's the sort of person Pepa would have found scary if this were a normal high school. Muscled, sensual, popular, handsome and clearly the captain of several prominent sports teams. He'd look down his nose at bookish types and order them to do his homework--in the movies, that is. Here he looks as nervously out of place as Pepa does, bounding around with Golden retriever energy and sniffing out the other students.

But everyone, and I mean everyone, gives Wyvern a wide berth. Because he's a dragon and he's floating and there's black smoke pooling around his feet. And because Pepa is the protagonist of a horror movie, he has been obviously assigned to the untamed dormitory. Apparently, Magic school means sleeping three feet away from an actual floating dragon.

[isladora]

After her initiation, the events leading up to starting magic school scraped by like a desert wind.

She quit Normal School and enrolled in Magic School. Her parents hauled her back and forth from the magic realm for a Familiar, her school robes, a darling blue owl she's named Holmes, a broom like a telescope that coughed bright purple exhaust and BOOMED! when she took to the skies, and her very own wand - Dragoncore, ten inches.

Just kidding. Apparently, wands can be purchased and used quite generically in this world. She picks a wand made from the wood of the Fairy tree that guards the Sylvan Glade. Why shouldn't I have the best? Then we went to Magnolia Promenade to pick up some furniture for my new dorm room. I've decided to decorate it--like all things in my life--library chic. A mobile fireplace, bookshelves, an old-fashioned TV, plants, vines, and candles galore! Just in case the boarding house sucks, Pepa will at least have my home away from home.

Or, at least, that's what Mom keeps saying to justify the truly extravagant purchases Pepa's demanding. After the furniture store, she heads online to order books. A lot of books. Honestly, she's not fully sure they'll all fit on the shelves.

The night before she leaves for Magic School, the whole family goes out to dinner at this fancy experimental place. Pepa orders a plate of eggs that is (apparently) from space. The first semester spans the rest of the summer. She won't see her family again until the beginning of Fall--How will she be changed by the magic this school claims?

[isladora]

Fell in love again today...what else is new?

Thanks @buttertrait for posting such lovely sims! I have to find a way to fit them into my main story now.

[isladora]

I'm so excited to do this ! Such gorgeous sims.

Buttertrait's base sim challenge (sim dump)

rules!

you can:

you can give them names, traits, aspirations and pronouns (they currently have place holders)

you can make MINOR changes to them to fit your own sim style (but please don't change them so theyre completely unrecognizable)

you can make them an occult

you can make over just one of them, or you can make over all of them, it's your choice!

use the hashtag #buttersims so i can see your makeovers

you cannot:

you cannot claim them as your own

you cannot change their skin tone

download: sfs folder

pictures with just my default skin below the cut!

[isladora]

The students arrive...

[isladora]

Pepa Nakamura, Human.

Assigned dormitory: Untamed

Yadira Lassiter, Human.

Assigned dormitory: Practical

[isladora]

Fenrir Laufeyson, Demi-god.

Assigned dormitory: Mischief

Elijah Clarke, Human.

Assigned dormitory: Practical

[isladora]

Plumdrop Whistle, Elf.

Assigned dormitory: Mischief

Wyvern Winter, Grim.

Assigned dormitory: Untamed

[isladora]

Dear Pepa Nakamura,

You are hereby invited to attend Bonehilda's Magic School at the recommendation of our sage of untamed magic, Morgyn Ember. Please report to Madame Hesper's boarding house within two days to claim your spot. Bring any belongings you might need for the school year.

You are assigned to the untamed house and dormitory, where you will be provided a bed, including a sheet, duvet, pillow, lamp, and bedside table. Any other necessary additions must be provided by the student. The color theme is red.

Students will pick up brooms, cauldrons, books, and wands from the magic realm as a group. Any attendance or unenrollment from other schools will be handled by Madame Hesper. See the aforementioned boardinghouse mistress, Madame Hesper, for any additional questions. Classes begin the following Monday.

Best regards,

L. Faba (Sage of Mischief)

[isladora]

Morgan is charming. Or, at the very worst, he can be very charming to get something that he wants. When his future student Pepa walks in, he knows immediately that she must be enrolled in Bonehilda's Magic School. It's where he received his own formative education alongside five other magical students who lived with him at the boarding house, now owned by a certain Madame Hesper Padmere.

Yes, if he gets his way, Pepa might find herself at Madame Hesper's to set up her dormitory as early as tomorrow afternoon. The father, Yong-sun, is a comedian. Perfect. Morgan knows a few jokes.

Within two hours, they are laughing like old friends.

"Oh, yes, it's very distinguished," Morgan assures Yong-sun. "A bit like being admitted to a magical private school. Not every spellcasting child is admitted, you know? Only those with the most potential. Six students maximum."

"Only six?" Yong-sun gapes, surprised despite himself. "Well, I've always known my Pepa to be one of the brightest people I know." "Naturally," Morgan murmurs, soothingly. "I find myself very impressed by her. In fact, I'd want to oversee her education personally if I could, and I'm one of the sages." "How often could we see her?" Lana asks, anxiously. This one is a mermaid, or perhaps even a sea witch by the feel of her. She has been harder to please.

"Family and friends are free to visit the boarding house," says Morgan, smiling winningly. "And, of course, students are welcome to travel home various weekends and holidays once they've checked out their brooms."

"Brooms?" Yong-sun gapes. "Like a witch-a real wizard of Oz witch?"

Morgan laughs outright and plops a heavy hand on Yong-sun's shoulder. "Spellcaster is the polite term," he says, blue eyes sparkling with mirth. "Besides, very few of us are actually green."