Carving pumpkins, not ice (Monday)

[Deleted]

It had been a while since Wendy had last considered simply having fun. She was usually more the time to choose commitment over having fun but she'd made a really back smack while practising earlier that week and the healers had told her not to strain herself too much to avoid things getting worse. She'd been highly frustrated about this all week and her temper had suffered quite a lot because of it. A lot of the students in class had taken a step back from socialising with her and that only added to her frustrations. Now being forced to socialise meant people had no interest in it? She'd asked Monday if she wanted to come hang out and carve up some pumpkins.

Now she'd wanted to carve up ice a whole lot more but it seemed like that wasn't an option so she had elected to at least try to have fun. She arrived before Monday did though, leading to her standing at the stand with a knife that she violently stabbed into the pumpkin so that she might start the process of cutting it up. She figured it was a good opportunity to destress a little bit. She plunged the knife into the pumpkin, smiling happily as she saw Monday approach. She managed to pull the knife out with a little effort and used it to wave at her sister. This was going to be fun!

monday meadow weekly

[monday meadow weekly]

Monday knew how dedicated Wednesday was to ice-skating—including how obsessive her sister could be about not being able to be on the ice. It had to have been frustrating for her, but Monday also knew from experience with the various injuries that she had suffered for herself because of her goblin blood that taking a break when necessary wasn't all bad. Besides, with everything going on for Zombie Island, they could totally take a break by doing something more fun than going outside of the castle for some fresh air. And pumpkin-carving was classic fall fun, the sort of thing that always signalled that Halloween was right around the corner, so Monday had agreed to her sister's suggestion without a second thought. Not only was it festive; she figured that it might help Wednesday to take out some of her frustrations on a pumpkin or two…

Ending up having to mend some of her fingers after she landed wrong on the other end of the Portkey, Monday was a little delayed in getting to the pumpkins and Wednesday. It was no matter, though; Wednesday was, apparently, already hard at work, waving at her with a knife in her hand.

"Hey, Wendy," Monday giggled, shaking her head as she approached her sister. "You might wanna put that down before you go in for a hug," she pointed out good-naturedly, eyeing the knife.

@wednesday

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Wendy was glad that Monday was here now. It made everything a bit easier. She was antsy and missed her ice time. She wanted a career that was all about her sport so badly but everything was far more complicated now they went to hogwarts and well, Wendy hated it. She'd much rather have been back at home but her parents cared about her education. Such a shame. It totally got in the way of her ambitions. If she could have quit school she might have. Still, she didn't really want to disappoint the family so she dutifully kept at it, although she barely managed passing grades. It was uncommon for a Slytherin at times since most had their ambitions on a more academic field. Not Wendy, her ambition was in terms of sports.

When Monday suggested she put the knife away before hugging, Wendy simply chuckled. "I know how to handle sharp object, although I admit they are usually attached to my feet, not in my hands." She said as she put the knife down to give her sister a big hug. She was fond of her family and usually tried to make sure they didn't have to worry about her. This didn't always go according to plan but she knew they cared about her as well so she figured that as long as she was fine in the end everything would be okay. It was good to have a large and happy family. "So do you have a design in mind yet?" She asked curiously as she got back to her pumpkin, picking up her knife again.

monday meadow weekly

[monday meadow weekly]

Getting accidentally stabbed by her sister wasn't really something that Monday wanted to happen, and she knew that—frustrated though she was with her current inability to practice on the ice—Wednesday wouldn't ever intentionally hurt her that severely. Of course, Wednesday pointed out that she knew how to handle sharp objects, though those were typically on her feet in the form of the blades on her skates. She did put the knife down, though, before hugging her, and Monday laughed because she had had a point about the skates.

As they parted ways from their hug and Wednesday got back to carving her pumpkin, she spoke again. "So do you have a design in mind yet?" she asked.

Aside from the typical jack-o'-lantern design, Monday hadn't really thought about it. "I mean…" she began, only then starting to think it over as she gathered up the supplies and moved to the available pumpkin beside her sister. "I don't know? Probably just a jack-o'-lantern with, like, the little mismatched teeth kind of thing going on?" It was classic and not too intricate. "You have any ideas?"

@wednesday

[Deleted]

Wendy wasn't really the highly creative type. She didn't really have time for that. She made time for it whenever she wanted to make a new choreography but she usually had somebody that made one for her to make sure it was both possible to learn it to perfection in the time that she had and to ensure it played to her strengths as a skater. Add to that the need for making a certain bar in terms of difficulty and Wendy was quite sure it was better to leave the actual choreography for the competitions up to others while she did her part. The skating. It was difficult to master all the moves, yes, but also highly rewarding whenever she did manage to nail down a particularly challenging move or piece of choreography. Still, she couldn't help but smile as it seemed Monday also hadn't really put an overload of thought into her carving just yet. She nodded with a faux-thoughtful expression on her face.

She then chuckled slightly. "My main idea was just stabbing it really." She said as she almost stroked the knife against the outer shell of the poor victim pumpkin. "Now if I actually had carving skills I'd do an outline of a figure skater or course but since I don't have that sort of a talent....." She paused and shrugged. "I'll settle for a regular jack-o'-lantern design. Might stab it a few times for dramatical effect? I really don't know. Maybe I'll try to make it overly cheerful? Do you think that might make it look a bit more spooky?" She asked her sister in serious contemplation. She was mostly getting the lid done so she could pull the guts out of the pumpkin in order to make space for the lights. Not to mention attacking it with a knife to give it a face. Poor pumpkin really. It wasn't it's fault it had grown to such a splendid size for becoming the victim of her poor knife skills. At least in the hands of another person it might have looked stunning still. Oh well, too bad, she thought as she ferociously stabbed the pumpkin again. She had a goal in mind and the pumpkin would do well not to stand in her way. She was a slytherin, after all, and slytherins would go to great lengths to achieve their goals. Even if those goals were simply to carve a pumpkin for halloween.

monday meadow weekly

[monday meadow weekly]

Monday wasn't sure if she would consider herself to be an artistic person in any real way; it wasn't what her passion was, but she at least knew what looked good. When it came to carving pumpkins, she didn't think that most people were looking at it as fine art, either, which did take the pressure off of her to make some sort of sculptural masterpiece out of an orange gourd. Of course, she'd heard about people who had managed to carve pumpkins with a ridiculous level of detail, but she thought that it would only stress her out to do something like that.

A classic jack-o'-lantern sounded like a perfectly good idea to her, but her sister Wednesday's idea for her own pumpkin? Well, they might not have been on the same page, per se. According to Wednesday, her idea was just to stab the pumpkin. At that point, Monday was almost certain Wednesday was going to end up actually cutting the thing before she got started; the blade of the knife was awfully close to the pumpkin, but pumpkin stabbing was avoided.

Instead, said Wednesday, she would have tried to create a design with a figure skater. Since she didn't have that sort of talent—so she claimed, anyway—"I'll settle for a regular jack-o'-lantern design. Might stab it a few times for dramatical effect? I really don't know. Maybe I'll try to make it overly cheerful? Do you think that might make it look a bit more spooky?"

"Like, a… how a clown is overly cheerful kinda thing?" There was that sort of creepy element in being overly happy, Monday supposed, as Wednesday got to work on carving a lid out of the top so that she could scoop out the insides of the pumpkin.

In the meantime, Monday took up a knife. It would have been easier if she had something with which to outline a design first, she thought to herself, but she didn't really have a quill available to use. The first part was getting the inside scooped out, anyway, and Monday knew from experience that it wasn't always as easy as it seemed. The actual pulp part of the pumpkin was sort of gross and also sort of stringy, but maybe she could figure out a way to clear it out with magic. That would make the process a lot faster, and Monday, unlike her sister, kept waiting before strategically cutting into the top of the pumpkin and forming a lid.

@wednesday

[Deleted]

Monday hit it over the head on accuracy for sure. "Yes!" Wendy agreed in seconds. "Like clowns. I don't understand why they still allow those things to exist." Wendy wasn't exactly scared of clowns but they were useless, kind of creepy and didn't really bring all that much cheer to any party. She found their obsession with joy and happiness to be somewhat disturbing as the attitude of everybody being a winner for merely participating went directly against her nature as a competitive skater. This was all for some light hearted fun, supposedly, although there was a bit of a therapeutic element to murdering a pumpkin that Wednesday hadn't anticipated.

So as she drove the knife into the flesh of the pumpkin and effectively scalped the thing before starting to scrape and fish the cuts out through the hole she just made, she cackled fondly in delight. It was disgusting and therefore more fun than she'd expected. "What are you waiting for Monday?" She asked teasingly. "So much gore, so little time." She teased. It was very much true of course. There wasn't an endless supply of fall or Halloween decorating to be done. Still, she guessed that Monday wasn't having as much fun digging into the guts of a pumpkin as Wednesday was currently having.

monday meadow weekly

[monday meadow weekly]

Wednesday explained that she was right in drawing a comparison to the way in which clowns were sort of creepy. "I don't understand why they still allow those things to exist," she added, which was somewhat amusing for Monday to hear.

"Since when are you scared of clowns?" Monday laughed. That was news to her. There were clowns that were intentionally really spooky, but there were also clowns that looked relatively cute. Maybe they weren't cuddly, exactly, but they were happy; they were meant to make people laugh, after all.

She hadn't gotten to work on the pumpkin carving as quickly as Wednesday would have liked, because she asked her what was taking so long. "So much gore, so little time," she added, which might have been true.

Monday, still laughing, pulled out the lid that she had formed and made a face at how gnarly the inside of the pumpkin was. She didn't have much of a choice in the matter, she supposed, so she stuck her hand inside of it and began grabbing handful after handful of orange goo, discarding each as she went. "Ewwww, Merlin!" she giggled, looking to Wednesday. "This is so gross, Wendy! It's like pumpkin guts!"

@wednesday

[Deleted]

Wendy shrugged when Monday asked since when she was scared of clowns. "I'm not scared of them but I don't like them much either. They are unnaturally cheerful. Nobody is that happy." Wendy found it impossible to believe people were actually that happy without actually being secretly depressed or something. That or they were hiding some very deep dark secrets somewhere in their closets. That happy would never really happen in the way that clowns were happy. That and the make up that just pulled all the the natural features far out of proportion made for a very unfortunate combination.

Wendy laughed good naturedly at the reaction that Monday had to the pumpkin. She shrugged ever so slightly. "It's disgusting." She agreed before scooping some out and letting it dribble out of her hands in the most slow matter above the waste bin so it splattered and the sounds were just as disgusting as the pumpkin felt on the inside. "I suppose we better enjoy it for a while." She gave a wicked little grin and chuckled as she continued scooping the insides out. "I mean, we'll run out of pumpkin innards after a while and then what will we do with our lives?" She asked over so cheerfully. It was a fun enough thing to tease Monday with, especially since she didn't really seem to enjoy the gutting all that much.

monday meadow weekly

[monday meadow weekly]

Wednesday shrugged about being scared of clowns and said that it wasn't really that she was scared of them; it was that they were unnaturally cheerful. No one, she said, was that happy all the time. Clowns, at least in Monday's view, weren't meant to be representative of real people. They were like mimes, or mimes were like clowns. Nobody actually went around in those outfits and that makeup unless they were being intentional about it… or they were really bad at doing makeup.

As gross and slimy and occasionally stringy as the insides of the pumpkin were, Wednesday told her that she supposed that they needed to enjoy it. "I mean, we'll run out of pumpkin innards after a while," she reminded her, "and then what will we do with our lives?"

Monday laughed. Once they got through all of the gunk, it would be far more enjoyable than getting pumpkin all over their hands. "Uh… Not make pumpkin juice for a living?" she teased. Although Monday hadn't had any plans to go into the pumpkin juice business, she couldn't see herself doing it if it involved digging through pumpkins all day long, day after day. "Besides," she reminded Wednesday, "what's the point of a hollowed-out pumpkin if it's not actually carved?" They couldn't really do anything else with them at that point.

@wednesday

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Wendy chuckled and conceded as Monday said they weren't going to make pumpkin juice for a living. That was certainly not something that Wendy had in mind at all. "Oh please no. I'd just die." She said laughing. This was fun for a while but never for the long term. Wendy had far too great ambitions for that. It made sense to her that some people could do this and be happy, since it probably meant they were doing exactly what they wanted, either satisfied at working a simple job to pay the bills, or because they had everything they wanted in their free time. Not everybody made the same choices and Wendy appreciated that.

Wendy grinned as Monday asked what a hollowed out pumpkin without carving was. "Organic cauldron? Bio degradable. Very environment friendly." She joked cheerfully, although she wouldn't actually consider mixing potions in it. What would the pumpkin even do when mixed with the ingredients? It would be half a miracle if anything turned out the way that it was supposed to inside a pumpkin. "Although I doubt that'd actually work the idea is amusing enough." She said cheerfully. It was good to get away, if only for a little while.

monday meadow weekly

[monday meadow weekly]

Wednesday told Monday that she would "just die" if she were to have to make pumpkin juice for a living, and Monday could sort of agree with that. Given their parents' wealth, it was the kind of thing that she could only really joke about. She couldn't imagine having to do that—honestly, even something as normal as waiting tables only really existed at the far reaches of her imagination. Luckily, neither of them were likely to end up in a situation where they needed to pick up a part-time job in Hogsmeade while in school. Monday had heard that some of the other students had done that, and it made her feel bad, in a way. She knew that she and her siblings were fortunate to have the lives that they did, and she knew how easily they could have ended up not having had their parents as their parents—save for Charlie.

One use for a hollowed-out pumpkin, though, Wednesday suggested, would be as an organic cauldron. It would be biodegradable, she added, and very environmentally friendly. Monday laughed at her sister's comments, mostly because it made her picture their mother's trying to use a hollow pumpkin in place of a cauldron. With all of the vegan and holistic trends she was into, it wasn't really that much of a stretch. They got occasional care packages of those kinds of things, not that Monday knew what to do with half of them.

Even as Wednesday expressed her doubts that a pumpkin would actually work as a cauldron, Monday still laughed. "Just don't give Mom any more ideas," she teased her sister. "If some potion ingredient burns a hole in the pumpkin," she added, "then it might not work so well, though…"

And that was what jack-o'-lanterns were for, Monday thought, since the most that they would have to put in there would be a candle. She finally made her way through the innards of the pumpkin, relieved to be done with that process, and eyed the pumpkin—now essentially a blank canvas. Mulling it over, Monday picked up her knife again and made her first cut for a triangular eye. The pumpkin was thicker than she expected, but she was able to do a relatively clean job of it, from what she could tell, and popped out the first eye. Seeking confirmation, though, she turned to Wednesday. "Does this look good, Wendy? Or should I make it a little bit bigger?"

@wednesday