Touch, Pause, Disengage

[BROseidon†]

(Virgil Jefferson-Davis, continued from Debates and Discourse)

"All right guys, that's a wrap. Great practice today everyone. Remember, the game is this Saturday at 10am, so be there by 9. Just run the plays like we have been in practice, and we'll have no problems."

With that, practice was over. It was a bit of a pain having practice in the park instead of at school, but that came with the territory of not playing the most popular sport. That said, the long drives for some away games were more annoying, but those were infrequent.

Virgil was exhausted. Coach had decided that the team needed work on their set piece plays, especially stuff off the ruck, and that meant a lot of running for the flankers. Flankers like Virgil. Thus, Virgil was covered in sweat and dirt, short of breath, and harboring some pretty sore feet.

Even so, practice had been good. It always was. Virgil wouldn't have dedicated so much of his time to rugby had he not enjoyed it as much as he did. Virgil always wondered about his peers, most of him were so enthralled by football. Sure, football had big hits going for it, but the game just moved so... slowly. Virgil would occasionally go to Aurora's football games, but he found them to be a complete bore.

By comparison, rugby was fast. It was aggressive. It was elegant. The sport combined speed, strength, technique, and strategy in a way that no other sport did. Virgil could always feel himself getting pushed to be better in all aspects of the sport whenever he was put up against good opposition. Unfortunately, good opposition had been getting rarer and rarer over the past few years.

Virgil walked over to a nearby bench and sat down to change out of his cleats. Upon sitting down, Virgil realized how tired he was, and how much he didn't feel like walking home. Thankfully, Virgil had his backpack with him. Virgil pulled out his copy of The Aeneid and started reading.

[MrMissMrs Random†]

(Rosemary Michaels continued from Pass or Fail (Content Warning))

Rosemary had decided to take a break from her walk to catch up on a bit of her reading. While Centennial park wasn't her first choice because of the frequent activity all around the benches were quite comfortable. And also it was one way to look at nature (though very little compared to the outskirts of the city). She had been reading A Doll's House, a book she had found on a must read list and though it was short she was finding it quite good, and just enough literature for a lazy afternoon.

However, most of the other benches she found were full, or with someone the girl thought wouldn't be the type of person to appreciate literature. She walked and was debating if she should just go to a cafe and splurge on a drink. But then it could be loud in there...

Rosemary just about given up when she saw a boy around her age sitting on a half-unoccupied bench with a book in his hands. Though he seemed a bit sweaty (Was he playing a sport earlier?), he seemed not the kind of person to annoy her. The girl walked a little bit closer while still keeping a bit of a distance before clearing her throat to give away her presence, planning on pointing to the otherside of the bench when he looked up to give her request silently. She wouldn't have to talk to him then.

[BROseidon†]

Virgil hadn't been reading for long when he heard someone clear their throat behind him. It wasn't particularly loud, but just enough to grab Virgil's attention. Virgil turned around to see a girl standing back, looking at him.

"Yes?"

[MrMissMrs Random†]

The girl didn't make direct eye contact with Virgil, nor did she speak. She simply pointed to the free spot on the bench in a silent request to sit down.

[BROseidon†]

The girl said nothing, nor did she make direct eye contact. She simply pointed at the open space on the bench next to him. Virgil found this behavior a little strange. She must have been remarkably timid, given that she couldn't even muster an "is this seat taken?"

"Uh, yeah, nobody is sitting there. Feel free to take a seat." Virgil tried to make his voice as friendly and inviting as possible to avoid intimidating the girl.

[MrMissMrs Random†]

Rosemary nodded, glad she got her point across and sat down on the bench, taking out her own book and flipping to the page she stopped on, settling into her own little world.

[BROseidon†]

The girl took a seat next to him and began reading her own book. Virgil got back to reading his, and the pair sat in silence, each entrenched in their own little worlds.

After a while, Virgil began to find the situation a little bit strange. The girl hadn't even spoken a word to him, and here they were, sitting side by side. Neither knew a thing about the other, and for all intents and purposes, the other might as well not exist. Virgil thought that he should maybe remedy the situation and be a little friendly.

However, Virgil was quick to consider the flip side. Maybe she wouldn't like that he was being friendly because it would interrupt her reading? Maybe she had some sort of anxiety that made her not interact well with strangers. Maybe she'd just be a bitch. Then again, Virgil didn't really have anything to lose by trying to strike up a conversation; the pair weren't friends before, so there was no friendship or even acquaintanceship to be lost.

"So, what are you reading?"

[MrMissMrs Random†]

"So, what are you reading?"

It took a few moments for the girl to process that someone had asked her a question. She looked up from her book and turned to face the boy sitting next to her. Rosemary lifted the book and held it up so he could see the front cover.

"A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen." She replied.

[BROseidon†]

She just lifted the book and gave a quick title and author. Nothing more, nothing less.

However, Virgil couldn't really gauge how much she wanted to interact with him. She could have just been shy, or maybe disinterested. Virgil couldn't really tell. He knew that he was more outgoing than most people, and that she might not take well to his friendly conversation.

"So, what's it about?" Might as well push it a little while I figure out if she just wants to be left alone.

[MrMissMrs Random†]

"It's about a woman living in the late 19th century who has a relatively good life. A husband, children, a nice house, but most of the happiness is based on a small lie. It's about her trying to find herself," Rosemary replied, a small smile crossing her face. "When the book first came out the author's main goal was to show that everyone needs to find what they want for themselves in life, however due to the time period it was published many people thought it was about womens' rights."

The girl leaned back on the bench, pointing at the book in the boy's hands. "Yours?"

[BROseidon†]

She gave a pretty fast response about what the book was about, but without really going into any detail about the specifics of the plot. She described mostly the themes. She then referred to the context within which the book was written, which actually confused Virgil a bit. He hadn't heard of the book, so hearing something about the book that was referential to its era gave him only a little information on the book itself.

She then asked about his book. The Aeneid, one of Virgil's favorite pieces of literature. He'd read it in English long ago, and had made it his personal project to get through it in Latin. However, between rugby, school, and hanging out with friends, he'd actually had relatively little time to commit to reading it in Latin. Virgil was good at Latin, certainly better than most high school students, but he couldn't read it at nearly the rate he could English, and he would often get caught up on a sentence for long periods of time. Still, Virgil loved the text, and found it life changing in a lot of ways.

"Oh, this is The Aenied. I've been trying to get through it in Latin for the past... three and a half years now? Oh wow, it's been that long..."

Virgil paused for a second, realizing that this book had been with him for pretty much all of high school. Now he just hoped he could finish it before he graduated.

[MrMissMrs Random†]

Three and a half years he said? That made Rosemary's mouth (figuratively) drop. "Why did you choose to read it in Latin?"

The girl knew her question might be a bit pushy, but she was interested now.

[BROseidon†]

The girl looked surprised when Virgil said said that he had been reading The Aeneid for that long. Vigil wasn't necessarily shocked by that reaction because that was how most of his friends had reacted when the learned what he was doing with much of his free time, but he there was always that reminder whenever he told someone knew about his reading that what he was doing was a little strange.

Why did you choose to read it in Latin?" Virgil had heard this question enough times that he had a near-scripted answer ready.

"So, both my parents are Classics profs at U-dub. They started teaching me Latin and Ancient Greek when I was pretty young, so I grew up learning and reading a lot of cool stuff. By the time I was done with middle school, I had done a fair bit of reading from a bunch of different authors, but most of it had been with their help, and I'd never taken an entire text and read it front to back. So, this has sort of been a personal project for me since I started high school. Read one of the greatest pieces of literature of all time in its original language, front to back. It's a really great poem, and so much of what makes it great gets lost in translation."

What Virgil always left out of his answer was how difficult it had been at times, and how many times he had come close to abandoning the poem. This had been true especially at the start, and the first couple of books had taken him so long that he didn't think he'd be able to get through the rest of it. However, practice had made Virgil stronger at reading the text, and it was now at the point where he could breeze through dozens of lines of the text in an hour, and now Virgil was starting up book eleven with a few months left of school.

Virgil didn't want to take up the conversation talking about himself, and it seemed like he had the girl engaged. "So, why are you reading that book? Just for fun?"

[MrMissMrs Random†]

Rosemary listened intently. This book the boy was talking about sounded to be a very important life porject for him. And he was the son of university professors which also helped with his drive to finish the poem in its' native tongue. When he asked about her own choice in literature she let out a small chuckle.

"Yeah. Not as intriguing as your own tale. I found it as part of a list of "books you should read before college" or "100 stories to read before you die" or something like that. My mom works in a library and gave it to me to check out... And here I am." She finished with a small shrug of her shoulders.

"...What's your name?"

[BROseidon†]

So she'd just read that it was a good book to read, and she started reading. Nothing about the girl's story was remarkable; it is so frequent that one comes across something serendipitously. That Virgil had intentionally chose something to read for so long was the exception, not the norm.

When the girl asked his name, he realized that they didn't actually know each other. This was a little strange, since Virgil was generally pretty social and well-known around school, although far from being among the most popular or notorious students.

"The name's Virgil. You?"