buy a little distraction [open!]

Exams were fast approaching and Mariah was having a hard time motivating herself to do...well, anything, really. Every time she sat down to study, she found herself spacing out, finding a million and one little ways to procrastinate as her brain refused to focus on anything related to schoolwork. There were just so many other things to think about and they all somehow seemed more important. That, or she just didn't want to confront the fact that her OWL scores may or may not drastically affect her future, so to keep herself from stressing out about it, she just desperately tried to ignore the problem until it went away.

Because that always worked so well.

She had her books open in front of her, but she hadn't looked at them. The study area was supposed to be distraction free, but Mariah had never had a problem making up her own distractions. As soon as her eyes had passed over her Transfiguration notes, she remembered she had yet to reply to Mr. Weber's last letter, and what better time to do that than now? She could always study later.

So she pulled out some blank paper and penned out her response, checking it off on her mental to do list as she waited for the ink to dry. She folded it up, sealed it in an envelope, and tucked it away to be sent later. With that done, she glanced back over at her notes again, sitting and staring at them for all of two minutes before she remembered an idea she had been planning to flesh out for a short story. Seizing upon a moment of inspiration - since who knew when it would strike again? - she grabbed her journal and jotted it down.

She wrote out a few lines of dialogue, circled a phrase she particularly liked, added a few notes to expand upon later, plotted out a brief outline of the story which included an introduction, a climax, a conclusion, and a few scenes that would fit in somewhere (she wasn't sure where yet), then got a little stuck on how to tie everything together. She absentmindedly drew a few question marks in the margins of the page while she pondered this, all the while pointedly ignoring the little voice in the back of her head saying You really ought to be studying right now.

Just as she was about to give up and actually start working, she heard a series of swears suddenly sound from off to her right. She glanced up, locating the source of the noise.

Oh, she knew that person, sort of. Her name was Sienna and she was in Mariah's house but one year older. They hadn't really spoken to each other, but she'd definitely seen the other girl around quite a bit and had heard a thing or two about her. It seemed she'd spilled ink all over her work. Mariah sucked in a short breath through her teeth and winced a little at the girl's misfortune.

She looked around to see if anybody else had noticed, but nobody else moved to do anything. She scooted a little closer to the girl and leaned over to whisper, "Hey, um, I have some spare parchment in my bag if you need it. Or, uh, maybe 'Tergeo' will do the trick?"