free me from this bondage; vogue!

[silas]

Silas was reclined on his desk chair, his loafer clad feet resting upon the desk. His eyes peered through the thick lenses of his spectacles as he read through a book of literary criticism on Yeats. He was focused momentarily, before his gaze shifted towards the open window beside him. His mind deceived him for a moment; made him hear the sound of birds chirping instead of what truly was the whooshing sound of car tires as they passed by. One could say that he was suffering from something like cabin fever. After assigning a major test and project, he had been saddled with the task of grading for the past week. He was making It through. Still, without his usual dose of nature, it seemed that Silas was slowly being drained of all of his regular zeal. He lazily glanced up at the clock and groaned. Five more minutes, that was all he could afford to give the test make-up-er before he awarded them a zero and decided to leave.

It wasn’t that he was a mean teacher. In truth, Silas was always rather lenient. He was notorious for accepting late assignments, for allowing himself to believe the most absurd of excuses, for providing his students with opportunity after opportunity to make amends. But when a student just flatly didn’t care, it frustrated Silas beyond belief. When a student’s carelessness cost him his own happiness and satisfaction, he found himself becoming increasingly willing to allow them to experience the true cost of their indifference.

“Fuck it,” he whispered to himself, rising from the desk suddenly. He grabbed the jacket hanging behind him and began to walk towards the door. He had better things to do. There was a dog to walk, there was exercise to do, there was dinner to make, there was a new copy of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying waiting to be read. Contrary to the belief of his students, he had a life he wanted to pursue outside of the four walls of that classroom. As he made towards the door, he remembered that he had to prepare the board for tomorrow and began to handle that issue. This was his least favorite part of the day, when there were no students. It was just him, alone in an empty classroom, remembering what it was like when there were people there. He looked up at the clock again. Wasn’t there supposed to be a detention as well?


note: sorry this is soooo short. I tend to fail at starter posts.

[LENI ROSALIND WEIß]

Days later, the idea that she had a friend on the staff – not just an acquaintance, but whom she considered a friend – shocked poor Leni Weiß. The chance run-in with the performing art teacher this past weekend still replayed in her mind occasionally when she was bored. She wasn’t used to such kindness. It put her in a much more chipper mood than usual, a fact her students seemed to notice this week more than she intended. That said, it seemed to make them happy and they knew better than to think she’d grade more easily because of it. She had a reputation to uphold, after all, and it wasn’t as if her happier mood made her outgoing.

Like always, she stayed late today, grading papers, organizing her lesson plans. Somehow, it felt right to stay for a little bit. She’d taken Hamlet on a walk this morning and the forecast wasn’t rainy for the first time in a while so she let him stay in the backyard for the day while she was at work. Otherwise she’d head home in more of a hurry. For now, she felt relaxed and content to grade papers where she sad, happy to imagine what she’d do when she got home. Without work to do, she could take Hamlet for an evening walk, and then settle on her couch with a little dinner and some tea to punctuate the evening. After, she’d watch the news and head off to sleep, as always.

Low stress days like this even made a high-strung person like Leni relax a little. She even hummed very quietly to herself as she separated her things onto the folders on her desk and put them into their separate files before reaching into her basket for the next order of business. For a moment, she stared at the manila folder she extracted. A name was printed in bold on the tab and it wasn’t hers. With a frown, she stood, her heels clicking on the floor as she strode from her office toward another part of the humanities building. She rapped on the doorframe as a warning before entering, hovering just inside the door for a few beats before approaching the blackboard where the English Literature teacher stood.

“Mister Michaels,” she began, managing at least a small smile. “I believe this made it to my desk by mistake.” She held out the folder almost hesitantly, eyes flickering to the blackboard briefly. “Preparing tomorrow’s lessons on the board already? You are even ahead of me. I always do that in the morning. Very responsible of you.”

ooc: Decided to use Leni because I'm about to open up threads two and three with Archer and she only has one. Spread the love, right? xP I hope this is okay for you! xoxo

[silas]

So he hadn’t exactly been in the best mood as he jotted down the words to “I Hear America Singing,” on the blackboard and then wrote that his students were to hand in an-at-least-one-and-a-half-page explication of the poem by the end of each of their periods tomorrow. It was cruel work really. They’d been going over poetry together for a long while though, and Silas felt that his students should have expected that an assignment like this one was going to show up eventually. Still, something told him that had it not been for the no-show he would have assigned it as homework or would have at least allowed them to prepare ahead of time.

Silas turned around when he heard the familiar voice of Ms. Weiβ and smiled in return. The usually-withdrawn woman seemed to feeling rather ebullient that day. It was nice to see her that way. Rumors had been swarming amongst the rest of the faculty, but Silas had refused to believe anything until he saw it himself. But there she was. . .smiling. And though his mind told him that it wasn’t his business and he shouldn’t inquire, he couldn’t stop himself. “What’s got you in such a good mood Ms. Weiβ?” From the way her eyes were darting all over the place and avoiding contact with his own, he wanted to guess that it was a who and not a what.

He smiled again when she told him that he was ahead of her. That wasn’t a usual occurrence. Silas had always been a bit jealous of Leni’s preparedness. If there was any colleague he would name if asked who always had their shit together, it was her. He didn’t mask his pleasure when the german instructor admitted to him that for once he had beaten her. “That’s wonderful to hear,” he replied, turning back to the board. “It’s what I aim for.” He turned back to her when he remembered that she had mentioned a folder, and as he took it from her he nodded. “I needed this. Thank you.” She thought he was responsible? Ha. She had no idea. He wished that he could venture to believe the same about himself.
“Hey how do you say that in German; thank you?”

[LENI ROSALIND WEIß]

Leni considered responding that she was pleased the weather had warmed up, or that something rather exciting had happened back home in Germany, but both seemed like blatant fibs. After all, the weather hadn’t warmed up all that much. Back home wasn’t much different, aside from the fact that her father had been making attempts to contact her lately, and she didn’t especially consider that to be a good thing. In fact, she’d ignored his letters and screened her calls since she first realized he’d been trying to get in touch with her. For a fleeting moment, she searched her mind for something to say other than “I cooked an impromptu dinner with a coworker and that somehow made me feel like a million bucks”.

“I had a particularly pleasant weekend,” she finally decided to respond, her voice mild and regularly pitched. The smile that followed was barely perceptible, hardly curling her peach pink lips against her pale skin. She imagined he might not notice, though she hadn’t the slightest idea how perceptive Silas Michaels actually was. Similar to her relationships with the other teachers, she hadn’t spent much time around him, although the time she had, he was exceptionally bright, friendly, and easygoing. She was obviously quite the opposite, but she admired those traits quite a bit and often wished she had them for herself. Interesting that she could seem to on a day that had her so unexpectedly cheerful. She felt oddly flattered, if embarrassed, that he’d noticed.

She nodded when he spoke; honestly, she would have been surprised if he’d admitted out loud he envied her organization. She often thought she’d trade it for the ability to feel comfortable around others any day. Her head tilted just slightly to the side at his question and she couldn’t help but chuckle. “Danke,” she responded lightly. “To which I would say bitte. You are welcome. Or please, in another context.” Leni decided to stop herself there and her eyes moved to the board. They flickered with recognition as she read the words he’d printed there. “I know this poem.” She nodded as if to accentuate a point. “Lovely. I used to hear people speak of America this way in my country when I was a child. Full of hopeful people.”

[silas]

He could see that she was choosing her response carefully. When she finally spoke, he decided that her response had been prudent. She hadn’t lied to him. Still, he sensed that she hadn’t told him the whole story. This didn’t disappoint him though. She had the right to keep her life private. Besides, they’d never really spoken before excluding basic civilities. He was happy to be speaking with her now. Though she was soft-spoken, he found her interesting. Silas felt that some great storm was astir within her. He watched her lips form a barely conspicuous smile. “Pleasant it was,” He replied as he finished copying the poem onto the board. “Mine was somewhat uninteresting really. School work, house work, that sort of thing.”

He smiled and repeated the word, “Danke,” though there was a certain error in his pronunciation. “Simple. I like it. Danke for teaching me how to say Danke.” He let out a soft laugh and then crossed his arms as he read over the poem again. He was happy that she approved of it. Hopefully his students would understand. He didn’t think that it was a difficult one really. For some reason her last statement caught him by surprise. “There are people who admire the American way of life in Germany?” Perhaps, like most of the world, he was still stuck in a ‘Second World War’ way of thinking about Germany. He knew that that way of life was long gone, but it was simultaneously the one image of Germany that he had been presented. He hoped he hadn’t offended her. Here he was a teacher, and yet there was so little he knew.

“My father spoon-fed me Whitman as a kid. His favorite poet. Now mine.” He turned to the bookshelf behind him, searched through it for a thin collection of his poetry. He walked back towards her, holding out the book. “Have you ever read anything else by him?” He didn’t wait for her to respond, “Well even if you have, take it anyway. It has a bunch of his less-known poems. I guarantee that you’ll love them. And if you don’t. . .don’t tell me that.” He smiled and shook the book a bit, insisting that she take it from him.