Aria… ritornerò nell'aria
che mi porta via dalla vita mia
aria… mi lascerò nell'aria

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Home… was London her home now? It was a question that Gioconda had some difficulty answering to herself. Until recently she would have said firmly that, no, her home was back in the Appenine. Home was where she had grown up. Home was rural. Home was where she knew everybody and everybody knew her. Where everything was familiar up to every single tree on the other side of the village. Ever since she had finished school, she had spent almost all her life away from where she had grown up. For her Quidditch career she had moveds down and north to live in a town. And she had always remained a stranger. Yes, she had been friends with all her team and they had come from very different backgrounds, but Quidditch was different. Of course she got along with everybody who had a connection with Quidditch. The sport was home too after all. But she had never formed any others bonds. She had never become at home where she had lived for almost ten years.

Weirdly enough, London was now feeling more familiar after just one year. She didn’t have many friends either — she didn’t even have a Quidditch team to make up for that — but she felt like she was living a life. When she hadn’t been at home, she used to do nothing but play Quidditch, something she couldn’t do now. Maybe it was that. She had no real purpose in this country. Her mother was from here, but that hardly mattered, considering that she hadn’t lived there for a while when Gioconda was born. But out of a whim, she had forced herself to live here last year, and without Quidditch she had needed to get some sort of life beside that. She hadn’t really done that either, but apparently still more than ever before. London was starting to feel like… no, not like home but… a home. That was maybe the best way to put it. It felt sort of right to herself to formulate it like that — though there was one element that would never let her feel British. This irredeemable defect was as mundane as it was vital on a daily basis: their coffe was awful. Nothing more and most certainly nothing less. She had been to a couple of places during the last month, and no matter where she was, the coffee was far below drinkable. In fact, the more she drank of this watery mess, the more she wondered why she hadn’t noticed before.

So it was definitely hoping beyond hope that this village would change anything. And yet, after some sight-seeing the shop’s name had made her stop. If they had it in their name, could their be any hope that this establishment would be any different? No, she didn’t really believe so, but on a more positive note, it also couldn’t be worse than what she had previously experienced. And she was thirsty. She pursed her lips and looked over the crowd that was sitting outside the shop until she spotted an almost empty table. Approaching it, she cleared her throat and asked, “Excuse me, is this seat taken?”

Contessa's Outfit

Tag: Gioconda

aria

She was an import here. Tess was American. As American as you could really get with her Cherokee roots and upbringing. She was more American than the people that had come to America and claimed to have civilized it. Not that she was bitter, or anything, she wasn’t, really, she was just trying to make a point. That there was no sense in acting like she was from this place that she clearly didn’t belong in. Her father was here, in this country, with his family that he had actually wanted. But that part even didn’t really bother Tess. She had gotten used to that. The fact that he had married Savannah, and not her mother. That he had kept Jacob, and Rachel. That they were the kids that he had wanted, and not the mistake that he had made when he had been in America. The thing that he had never even looked back for. He didn’t know she existed until she was old enough to come looking for him herself, and she knew that he was her father. He hadn’t even denied the possibility, he had simply told her that it was possible, and moved on with his life. Tess wasn’t even upset over that anymore. She just would have liked to get to know her siblings. She had always wanted siblings, and she was trying to make that into something. To establish relationships there. Just because she was a wolf, something that she had made sure that her father and his family did not know, didn’t mean that she couldn’t form meaningful relationships. It didn’t mean anything other than the fact that once a month she slept in a cave in the forest instead of in her bed. It was something that she wasn’t even all that ashamed of. A good majority of her clothing marked her for what she was, different. Even if they didn’t know that she was a wolf by looking at her, they knew that she was different. That she clearly wasn’t British. She didn’t look, or act like she was from here. Tess made sure that people knew that she was American. That they knew that she wasn’t going to be held to their odd standards and traditions. She was her own person, and she made her own choices. They made her who she was. She wasn’t going to change that. Coming back to this village this morning had been deliberate. She had decided that she had wanted to see this place in the day light, and it wasn’t that it had been dark exceptionally early last night, it was just that she had wanted to see it in the morning. She had wanted to see it with the no-majs getting their paper. And she had wanted to see it with the people reading the morning paper in the coffee shop. She had wanted to see what normalcy looked like. That had been something that she had been striving for for a long time. Coffee shops were all the same and they were normal, and she thought that that was something that she could work with. Some bit of normalcy that she didn’t think was all that unusual, but for her, she thought that it was. Normal was a tempting word, and Tess knew that she hadn’t been normal for a long time. Her own version of normal was something that she had learned to accept though. Something that she had come to actually like. She liked who she was, and what she represented. Learning to love herself for who she was had been a challenge. It had been something that she had struggled with for years, and it was something that she still had trouble with from time to time. It was the Alpha in her that made her strong though. Tess didn’t have time to doubt herself when she knew that she had to be strong enough to lead them. That they had to have someone solid to lean on, to come home to. Those were the things that she needed to be, and grounding herself in moments like these, that was enough to have her thinking that she could handle just about anything that life through her way. She had decided to sit here, and just be for a little while, when she heard a voice speak from just above her and she turned to look up into the face of a woman that she didn’t know. “Not at all.” She lifted a hand towards it, she was more than willing to sit and join her. Tess had always been an outwardly friendly person, she could talk to just about anyone for a little while, and company was nice. Spinning her ring around her moon finger once she wrapped her hands around her cup as she waited for the other woman to sit.

There were countless positive aspects to being part of a large family — family in the broad sense as she only had one brother. But Gioconda had grown up with her grandparents and great-grandparents always around and three aunts and uncles and eight cousins. And this was just the core family. There was one or the other family connection with almost everybody who had lived in their village for more than fifty years. If it were not for the Muggleborns that the Ministry loved to send up to live with them, they would most likely all end up studying parish registers until they were old and grey. The whole village was one big family, and the elders were far from showing any inclination to give up their right to be solely responsible for any decisions of any kind. Gioconda wasn’t sure how they had learnt to yield so much authority. At some point in their lives they had to have been young and completely dependent on those who had been old back then. She certainly never had had to be responsible for more than her immediate situation.

Even after she had left the village for her Quidditch career, little had really changed. Being part of a Quidditch team had been pretty much like being part of a huge family too — a family in which she had had tasks that needed to be fulfilled but never the full responsibility. If there was some sort of crisis, it was not her who would be accountable. There had been the captain, the trainer, someone from the management, basically everybody else to make decisions and take the blame whenever something went wrong. She just had to come to the training and, of course, the matches and do in the air as had been advised on the ground. Her only task had been to fly and get the Quaffle through the hoops. It was the same task that she had already had as a little girl, so there had been more pressure to succeed but not the feeling that she was shouldering a responsibility. She had basically been able to stay a child even ten years after finishing school.

Then had come the accident and she had lost her Quidditch family. She hadn’t been ready though to return back home and become a small child again that her nonna would command around — not that she didn’t love her nonna but the old woman was very dominant. Considering that she had spent the first year in Britain living with relatives, she supposed that this had been a first step to standing on her own feet. She now had a flat of her own, for which she had to pay and look after, without a manager who would run and solve all her problems. There hadn’t been any yet, so she wasn’t entirely sure whether she would manage. Then again, why shouldn’t she? If other far younger people could, then she could too. She didn’t have to ask her nonna about how to clean an oven, she’d find a way to do it. Her nonna might tell her it was wrong and inefficient, but she wasn’t there, and Gioconda doubted the old woman would ever leave the village.

She had left, and now that she finally felt like leaving the narrow borders between Flourish & Blotts, Lufkin, and her great-aunt’s home, she would go wherever she could in this country. Especially now that it was summer, the weather was even sometimes bearable. And once one got used to it, the landscape could be called interesting. The most negative thing she could say from what she had seen so far was that the more fascinating the landscape was, the ghastlier the weather. This village for example was now bathed in sunlight, but that didn’t change that it was mostly boring, quite pretty but still, boring. She hadn’t seen anything so far that would explain why this village was apparently considered so meaningful for British wizarding history. She had always doubted anyway that these northerners had any history that would deserve the name.

At the moment, though, her hope was mostly concentrated on that they would serve coffee with that distinction. “Thank you,” she replied with a smile, drawing the chair towards herself and sitting down. She considered for a moment whether the other woman would want her quiet (which seemed to be very often the case with British people), but judging from her posture, Gioconda thought that maybe she could ask this woman’s advice. She didn’t look like the majority of the English after all, which right at this moment was a welcome sign. “Excuse me,” she addressed the stranger. “Are you from here? I’m asking because maybe you know what can be recommended… here.” She would give this place a chance before she’d classify everything they had as undrinkable and uneatable. It just so happened that her hopes were not very high.

Aria

When she had come to England she had had a plan. She had had a purpose, but then she had fulfilled it. Kind of. And she hadn’t left. She had made her choices, and she had ended up staying here. Something that she was sure that she hadn’t had to do. But it had felt right in that moment, and then things had changed again. She had had a different purpose. She had had people that she was going to take care of, and Tess hadn’t meant for that to happen at all, but she thought that it was better that she was here, and that she stayed. She didn’t want them to have to worry. She would protect them. And becoming an alpha was not something that she thought that she was all that concerned about. She hadn’t set out to be one. But sometimes things happened, and you couldn’t explain them. Sometimes there were no answers, and you just had to suffer on. That was what she did. She soldiered on.

Her life hadn’t turned out all that badly though. She had all of this. She had the life that she was living now, and she had everything that she could want. Mostly. She had a good majority of the things that she thought that she wanted. But Tess couldn’t know for certain. She couldn’t honestly say what was going to work out, and what she thought that she would just have to try and come up with next month. The stable was steady though, and the steadiness that she felt like she needed was something that she wasn’t going to give up on. Not yet. She wanted to keep that in her life, and she had found it here. Something that she hadn’t been able to get in America. At least not after everything that had happened. But that had been nine years ago now. Tess had learned to manage this life. She had learned to be strong.

And it was a kind of strength that echoed from within. It was a kind of strength that she knew that she needed. The kind of strength that she knew that everyone in her pack needed. They depended on each other. And she was mother, and sister, and leader and friend. She could be all of that. She could care for all of them. Even the ones that were older than her. She was still their leader, and her farmhouse would always be their home. If they needed someone to talk to, or even someone to just listen to them talk. She could be there, she could do that. She had found her place here, and her grandfather had been the one that had told her to come. Her people were very matriarchal. Her mother had not wanted her to come so far away, but now she could see. She was meant to be here. To learn, and to grow. She was becoming a medicine woman, all on her own. But not the kind that would treat others. Not the kind that anyone sought out. Just the kind that could help her own.

Tess knew that she needed to keep track of her own people. That she was responsible for them. It was a responsibility that she had grown into, and Tess thought that she was more than equipped to handle it now. She hadn’t been, at first. There was no question that the first time someone had addressed her as the Alpha she had had no idea what it was that she was doing. But beyond that, she thought that she had grown. That she had figured it out. And she was proud of who she had become now. Tess smiled when the other woman asked her if she was around here. “I’m not I’m afraid. This is my first time. But I’ve heard good things about it. One of my,” there was the briefest of pauses as she caught herself before she said ‘pups’, “friends said that this place had the best coffee in West Country. So I thought I’d give it a try.”

@ gioconda - 687 - contessa's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOXOGRPHY 2.0

England wasn’t home and it very likely would never be, but in most situations it was… okay. That was all things considered the most fitting word. Okay. Not more, not less. There were good things about her life here, many good things that she wouldn’t have back home. And what annoyed her back home did not exist here. No ever present relatives whose prime goal in life seemed to be to mess with her life. Then again, this made everything here a lot less personal. She had hated the unannounced visits from her parents, grand-parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and many other more different family members. But now that these spontaneous self-invitations never happened, she missed them. On the other side, it was undoubtedly true that they’d go on their nerves much sooner than it had taken her to regret their absence as she now did. Family was a complicated construct, that much the distance had taught her. It was possible to terribly miss someone and at the same time be glad that they were far away. It didn’t make any sense, and yet it seemed like this was what family was all about in the end — or at least her family, she couldn’t speak for anybody else. Or at least she shouldn’t, it wasn’t like she didn’t like to pretend she could. It was a weird idea that other people felt different from her and those that she was used to. They were all humans, so they should all have the same feelings? That sounded wrong too, but her feelings being not universal was also a strange idea. Back at home, she had never had to think about this. Sure, not everybody had always agreed with her, but on the whole she had felt far more often as if they were all on the same page.

It was very comforting, the knowledge to be surrounded by people and things that were so familiar that they were almost a part of her. But she had tried to flee this comfort that could hug her so tightly that at times it felt like strangling before. She had willingly decided to leave all of this at home and try to live among not only strangers (she had done that before) but foreigners. Logically speaking, she was the foreigner here, but that was a detail she didn’t care much about. Her mother was from here, so she had every right to claim she was English if anybody else would ever try to point it out to her. She still had family here — only a great-aunt and her husband, who lived very secluded, but it was enough. Enough to remind her too much of home if she was with them, not enough to make her feel at home when they weren’t near her. She had thought that she’d figure out with time what she was supposed to do with her life, once she was away from everything she knew, but it didn’t seem to be happening. She still felt directionless most of the time.

On a more positive note, her mother was not here to bother her about it. Her future might still be vague, but at least she knew what she had to do for the next three years. And once she’d finished university, then she’d certainly come up with an idea what to do. She could go home then, and maybe get a job as… something. She’d know what she’d do then someday. There was no point in planning the future too carefully anyway. Life was too unpredictable for that. She couldn’t even predict whether she’d regret it that she had said down at this table for drinking coffee (or whatever awful brown water-mixture the English had dubbed coffee). She nodded at the woman’s explanation and kept herself from adding that the best coffee in West Country was not much of a praise. On the other hand, the way the woman spoke… was that an English accent? It sounded sort of… different. Then again, she was really horrible with English accents. And it wasn’t like there was real, proper coffee anywhere but in Italy. “And?” she asked, eyeing the woman’s cup critically. “Would you say your… friend was right?”

amazing grace

how sweet the sound

that saved a wretch like me

You make plans, and they never work out. That was the old adage, right? You make plans and you hear god laughing. Tess thought that that was essentially what had happened here. Of course, she didn’t believe in the same god that a lot of people did. She believed in the Great Spirits, and everything that they did to guide, and help the souls of the people here on earth. But Tess was not convinced that they were going to give her the answers that she sought after when it came to the family that she had here in England.

Of course, she had been years with the same questions, and that would have been enough to stop a lot of people from believing that they were going to find the answers in time. But Tess was a patient person, and she was, by nature, a lot more relaxed when it came to finding things out spiritually, and in time. The ways of the world around her didn’t often allow for such things, but she thought that it was good nevertheless, to have something that she could fall back on believing.

Here she was prone to being alone in a lot of ways, and that was okay. That suited her, to some extent. She could focus on her pups, and on the pack as a whole, if she was on her own. Her attention was less divided in that way, and she could get along well enough without there being some sort of stipulation that caused changes in her dynamic. She didn’t like to feel out of sorts, and she was content, in most ways, to simply be herself. She was glad that she hadn’t had to give up who she was, when she had come here. It was easier than she would have believed, to carry tradition in her heart.

Tess had grown up in a very matriarchal society, and while the society of the wixen here in England did not seem to reflect that, there was something vastly different about all of this. There was something that she couldn’t put her finger on, that had made this place feel just as much like home as anywhere else had before now. And that was special. It took the guidance, and the comfort, and the tradition of home, to truly be at peace with oneself.

Not that she thought that there were all that many that were at peace. Just by looking around them you could tell that. But this place was not only for those of magical descent, and she was glad to see that they were able to co-exist alongside one another in a way that it would have been vastly harder to do in America. Even now. They were getting better about it. It was easier to blend in, there were far more people to disappear into. But someone like her? In a no-maj tribe of Native Americans, she was already different. She was already half outsider. Being magical only served to make her even more different.

And being a werewolf? She hadn’t thought that she was going to survive that, in the beginning, but she had. And over the years she had learned to make her peace with it. She had learned to embrace that side of herself, and how to, somewhat, control who she could be, at least leading up to the moons. “I think so. It’s better than what I can make at home, that is for sure.” She didn’t think that she was an expert at coffee at all, but what came out of her coffee maker would never rival something that came from an actual coffee shop.

@ gioconda • 615 • contessa's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

Arriving in England, that coffee culture was barbaric had been one of the first statements she had been able to make with confidence. Everything about their eating habits was strange, come to think of it. Who ate bacon for breakfast? A cappuccino was all she needed, maybe a bun on her way to work, but that was it. Breakfast was not a meal, just something supposed to wake her up. But as gross as their habits in the morning were, it was nothing compared to what they were capable of in the afternoon. How could an English citizen drink coffee in the afternoon that was not espresso? Until she had seen it, she wouldn’t have believed it possible. It was about the most basic rule of eating culture, but apparently not even this vital fact was known in this country. She had seen the horrible truth again just now while she was walking over to this table. How were these people allowed to drink coffee at all when they had no idea how it should be done?

Maybe she was overreacting. Of course, she was overreacting, she knew that. But knowing that how other people drank coffee was not a statement about their mental health did not help making weird habits feel any more familiar. It wasn’t even like England was horrible as a whole. On the opposite, most of the time she felt just fine and couldn’t be bothered to think back of how her life in Italy, be it in the village she grew up or in an anonymous city, would look like. This was her life after all, and she could do with it what she wanted. This conviction was hers more than ever before, and the new environment might be thanked for that. There were a lot of traditions or views that she had brought with her that she didn’t mind to see go. It helped her to figure out what she’d want to do. Not what she thought her mother or her nonna wanted her to do. What she and she alone wanted. Granted, she hadn’t made much of a progress, but she still had loads of time. She wasn’t thirty yet — nobody could make her think of her next birthday. It was still several months. Once she was thirty, she’d start to plan out her life with more detail. There was no reason to rush anything.

With this overall, positive view on her life here, little details like the coffee took her always by surprise and alienated her. It wasn’t Italy as a whole that she missed. Of course, she loved her family, but their absence wasn’t bothering her. She could see them whenever she should decide she wanted to see them. She could not, though, make this guy over there who was drinking a latte macchiato that he was devoid of good taste. She couldn’t even know that she was not alone with her verdict. It made her feel more like a stranger than anything else. And at the same time, she was well aware how ridiculous this was. It was just coffee. But it was little details like that that showed her she was still not at home here yet. Maybe she didn’t want to be. One other thing she’d have to figure out sooner or later. Going back to Italy and attempting whether her education at Lufkin impressed anyone at Bologna? Lufkin was so ridiculously young, any respectable university in Italy would laugh at her if she said she had her education from there. The land of coffee incompetence.

There might be customers around here who didn’t know that it was the time to drink espresso, but that didn’t have to mean that the espresso served would be undrinkable. “It all depends on where the beans are from, and how they are roasted,” she replied just as the waiter came up to her and she gave him her order. “Well, now there's nothing to do but wait and see. You’re more of a tea drinker, I suppose?” It was the typical British beverage after all and to her never-ending incomprehension.

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