Confusing Questions (Cosimia)

[James Florian]

With all the chaos attacking the school left and right, James needed a distraction from it all. He was stressed beyond belief over the identities of those who were in the garden, the events in the village, and of course one of his closest friends disappearance with normal teen aged worries on top of that, that if anything else was added to it he might just go off the deep end. Or at least it felt that way. It seemed like that everyday brought some sort of new problem that was designed specifically to confuse and worry James which of course was working. He was a wreck. On the inside he was a ball of nerves practically jumping at the slightest noise, thinking it was some new danger. Somehow though, he managed to keep it together on the outside. He was a prince after all, he needed to be strong for everyone. Or at least that's what he had been told to do. Actually doing though was a completely different matter. 

That's why James completely threw himself into his schoolwork, especially after the incident at the lake. He needed a place to escape his confusing thoughts, and challenging work provided that refuge. If he could stay focused on that he wouldn't have the time to worry about other stuff. So earlier in the day he'd approached his teacher asking if he could have extra work to do,  to take his mind off things, a question to which he was handed a college level textbook about leaders in history and told to write an essay connecting it to the leadership class he was required to take. He was already about an hour in and he had about half of it done. (There was a lot of info in that book.) The teacher had disappeared ages ago, off to the teacher's lounge no doubt to do whatever teachers do during breaks. So that left James alone in the lecture hall, chewing his pencil as he was buried in the work. In truth he didn't even realize the teacher was gone. In fact he didn't realize anything, not even a certain villain also entering the room...

[Cosimia Gothel]

Ever since prom, when she heard the prince, James, (Whose name she had heard around the school.) cryptic message, she had been dying to find out what he meant by it. Her limited knowledge of religion, which had all been taught by Ari, explained what he had said in no way.

Cosimia had been waiting for the prince to forget about her part in stealing her friend and in the meantime had been practicing her powers of teleportation and illusions. Finally, though, curiosity got the better of her and she began to actively seek him out. And now, she had him alone.

Entering the room, Cosimia closed the door behind her, making perhaps a louder slam then was needed. "James?" She spoke hesitantly, "May I speak to you?" Hopefully, he would say yes before realizing who it was. This soon, there was nothing to guarantee that he didn't hate her. Though that would be no surprise.

[James Florian]

James was so focused on the task in front of him, that he didn't even noticed the door being slammed shut as someone entered the room. He did notice though when someone called his name. His eyes glanced up from the book and paper on the desk to the girl with wild untamed curls, ones not too unlike his own if he forgot to brush it when he woke up. Well with the minor difference of her curls being more defined and well curly than James’s could ever be. In comparison his was just wavy, and of course like everything else about him James got it from his mother.

“Uh sure.” He responded to her question as to whether or not he could spare a moment to chat with her or not. Although he would have preferred to keep working so he wouldn’t lose his focus, he could tell by the hesitation in this girl’s voice that whatever she wanted to talk about it was probably important to her and it would be rude of him to just brush her off for an assignment he necessarily didn’t need to do and he probably wasn’t expected to finish in one night anyway. He also tucked the loose papers scattered around the desk into the textbook and then placed that on the floor under his desk to show that this girl, who’s name he couldn’t remember for the life of him, that she had his full and undivided attention. Also with himself being a gentleman, James got up and pulled out the chair for the desk that was next to him as he asked, “May I ask what you wish to speak to me about Miss, Miss… I’m sorry I can’t recall your name.” He admitted with a slight blush crawling up his skin and making itself stand out against his porcelain skin. He knew he knew her from somewhere, she looked so familiar to him. However he just couldn’t remember what her name was nor where he had seen her before. Which just another question that James did not have the answer too, and that was his largest pet peeve since coming to this wretched school that didn’t care about any of them. That was a lesson that was becoming clearer and clearer every single day.

[ Writer's Block  : ( ] 

[Cosimia Gothel]

Cosimia breathed a sigh of relief when the prince agreed to answer her question, but when he asked her name, she was nervous again. "Uh..." She couldn't very well tell him she was a 'villain' he would surely refuse to talk to her. Even just her first name might arose questions. But she wasn't sure whether she wanted to come up with a fake name so she just said, "Cosimia."

Now for her question. She was still super nervous but took a deep breath and continued. "I was at prom and I couldn't help overhearing you say, 'There is only one divine being and I'm pretty sure he doesn't have blue hair.'" She quoted, but here she made a crucial mistake. She acknowledged that she knew Aristeides personally. "But that doesn't fit with what Aristeides told me, she said..." Here her eyes went wide and she stopped abruptly.

Then she smiled nervously and tried to brush it off. "Not that I know her, I've just heard her in the hallways." Inwardly she winced at this, telling someone that she didn't know Aristeides. If she were to find out! But surely she would understand?

[James Florian]

“Cosimia.” James parroted back to the curly haired girl, trying out her name with a small smile on his face. That wasn’t a name he was going to forget anytime soon. It was a foreign name to his tongue, one he had never heard before and likely never would again, but at the same time there was still a strange sort of familiarity to it. James suspected that it was an old name, one with roots in either Latin or Greek, languages he knew fluently because of his aristocratic medieval background. So to him it was strange, but yet not that strange much like many of the other people and things he had encountered at this school. Shaking himself out of his thoughts he added, “Well that’s a lovely name nevertheless. It’s far more interesting than say James.” He chuckled at the end poking light fun at the fact that his name was the most plain and run of the mill name that could be found at Seacombe Halpworthe. It had been his mother’s idea, giving him such a dull one that is, but who could really blame her? Her name was Snow, his father was named after flowers, his cousin’s name came from trees, and his uncles’ names were adjectives. In his family it appeared to be that James had the most pretentious name of them all, a normal one!

Not once did it ever cross the Prince’s mind that it was the name of a villain. Cosi seemed far too nice to be even remotely related to a villain, she actually had manners!

His jaw did momentarily tighten, and his knuckles turned white as the prince rapped them lightly on the desk top when Cosimia quoted his little tirade from the prom. He was embarrassed by his actions now that he knew his threats would lead nowhere, but a slammed door in terms of going to the witch for information about their friend. He had let his anger take a hold of him, and as a result the prince had acted first and thought later. He had been that medieval brute he didn’t want his friends to think he was and for what? Nothing! It had been for nothing! He secretly hated himself for that. Jim didn’t want to be that stereotypical prince, the girls seemed to think so little of that and it caused Grove to worry, but at the same time he wanted to be that valiant soldier that everyone back home wanted him to be. He was caught literally between two worlds, and at times it felt like both were tearing him at the seams.

However it took him a moment to realize that she was asking him to explain not his actions from that night, but instead his words. Cosimia was asking about the one thing he was steadfast in his belief in and nothing would ever change that, she was asking about his religion. His eyes widened at this realization because he knew he was walking into somewhat dangerous territory. He had been warned by the school to not talk too much about his choices in religion, sure they supported his pre-reformation Catholic beliefs, but they didn’t want to risk the liability of him running into trouble with some of the other non-religious students. The school accommodated him the best they could. Every Friday a special fish based meal was made for him, and then on Sundays one of the classrooms was turned into a little church with a priest coming in just for him that knew that he was used to the sermons in Latin. They did their best and whenever a special holiday for Jim came up that they knew they would never be able to handle they sent him home for the day to partake in the festivities and then be back in his dorm room before curfew came around. He did his best to stay quiet about it all, but every now and then he would let something slip. Never before had someone directly asked him about his beliefs, but there was always room for a first.

“Umm..” James started to say unsure how he was going to approach the subject with the warnings from the school about not being a missionary or preacher while here ringing true in his mind. “Well me and Ari have uh different beliefs when it comes to what’s out there.” He explained as he motioned up to the ceiling as a signal to what out there he meant. It never even crossed his mind that Cosimia may not know anything that comes to religion and he simply brushed off her explanations as to where she heard Ari proclaim for all to hear that she was a goddess. James had heard Ari’s speeches before, and he knew that none of it was true. Ari was just a witch and nothing more.

He wasn’t sure what to say at this point, because Cosi didn’t directly ask him to explain his religion, and he didn’t want to impose if she didn’t want to know, but then again why else would she ask him about it if she didn’t want him to explain? “You do get what I mean don’t you?” He asked her finally with an eyebrow raised, hoping to open the door as to her telling him what she wanted to know.