Petra has just ruined her prospects and those of her sisters, as the son of the Mayor of their town has just asked her rather publicaly to leave her alone. In her third season of being out.

Her elder brother is away on his Honeymoon with his wife, and her favourite brother Peter is no longer there either. She wants to learn and do engineering. To build things.

By the town, she was already considered odd. This recent incident has made things worse. She writes to her Uncle, as she is close to him.

Petra's uncle (on her mothers side) agrees to take her own, and persuade her mother that the best thing is for Petra to go with him, to hopefully improve her sister' prospects.

Petra packs her clothes, but also packs the clothes her brother Peter left behind.

She and her uncle decide to have her attend as Peter, who went through the Portal a few years before. The Scholomanse is about to have a new set of students and “Peter” can attend. Petra used to attend in the summer when she was a child. Her uncle used to let her sit in with Peter. She had gone to stay with her Uncle when her brother was starting to look at marriage prospects for him and her eldest sister.

Peter like Petra, were more focused on the pursuit of knowledge than the pursuit of marriage.

Their uncle looked after them both in the summer during the season, but also over some Winters. Peter signed up for the Scholomanse and volunteered to go through the Portal 2 years before.

The Scholomanse teaches Natural Science, as well as advanced engineering and mathmatics. But every 10 years a portal opens, one way. Petra had been asked by her mother to go back to start her seasons. Petra would have preferred to stay, but Peter made her go, to keep their mother happy. Petra's still not sure how she feels about that given the fact that Peter then walked through the Portal.

Cue several years of boredom on the Marriage Mart until the Mayors second son appears in town.

He's awkward, but fascinated by engineering and is giving free lectures in the hopes of raising interest and patronage. He needs to be there as his family want him married well. She hears about the lectures and keeps sneaking in.

He thinks she's missish and when he was giving a general lesson on well being from the East. He snapped as there's been a relentus pursuit of him by the unmarried women. He didn't want to come back, but his family were reassigned and now are ruling this town. Although she was asking him questions about his experiments and his work.

So when she no longer appears and his mother is hounding him about his prospects he suggested Petra. His family point out, she's left and good riddance. Odd girl.

He departs for University again.

5 years later, the young man who ruined Petra's prospects signs up for the Scholomanse.

#petra #writing

Notes for Petra from notebook 20230102 after a dream

A girl wearing glasses keeps getting in the way of a young man giving yoga classes.

He accuses her of following around, she is hurt. She decides to not be around him any more since he feels she is stalking him.

For the first few days he feels relief, but then he wonders where she is.

At first she is at the other local classes and he asks her why she stopped yoga. She just looks at him and walks away.

Then she leaves town and hasn't been in the engineering symposiums, he is disquieted. But then he goes back to his University.

A new student is now in some classes, a rather small man. Women aren't allowed at University in this time.

Then pair is assigned together on an engineering task. The boy is there for the bare minimum of time. Not choosing to spend any extra time, talking about his life or interests.

The boy is related to the professor, who also keeps an eye on them both. While the young man wishes to curry favour with the Professor, the Professor is very private of his time.

The University the young man has chosen to attend is the Scholomanse. But instead of the devil taking a Scholar, some one is chosen every decade to go through a portal to never return.

What is on the other side?

#petra

Toot storm of inspiration about a Regency Punk Story set in the Scholomanse on Jan 02, 2023, 11:53

Oh no no no random idea from a dream,

I have at least 2 WIPs I do not need a third.

I certainly need to stop plotting it out from beyond the dream. #Writing

I've spent about an hour finagleing it in my head.

Fine new idea, you win, There's a page at the back of my writing notebook now! Luckily it's the kind of notebook that has cream and brown sectioned pages. Which lends it self to scene notes, character notes, place notes etc. The spare section at the back is handy. Now pretty please, I'd like my brain to go back to the Nanowrimo plot. Please?

Shakes fist! “you've won this round dream idea!”

There's a girl learning forbidden knowledge dressed as a boy because she's decided she's sick of the boy's nonsense. She's just gone away.

She's learning about stuff where she has to go on an expedition.

He's clueless and wondering where she went. All this from some random weird yoga class dream where there was an argument. Like how?

It was weird, there was some other stuff in the dream, like some engineering type stuff, which is why the girl was around the boy because she was curious about that, then it came to a climax because for some reason he was giving some form of weird yoga class and she was too close and he was mean to her. So she realised he found her irritating and she decided to leave him alone. I feel there's a lot of my teenage subconscious past stuff going on there.

and like now there's some definite trope stuff with her pretending to be her dead brother.

He's never even heard she has a brother and he's like so confused and she keeps avoiding him, because she in no way wants to irritate him again.

I feel like I was way way too invested as a teen in Shakespeare's habit of dressing girls as boys for reasons......

thanks, it's not often I get a dream like that and my brain goes how would this continue?

So I needed to get it down before breakfast somewhere

and now I know what the knowledge is for, the Scholomance, except the devil taking one of the scholars isn't actually the devil, its the portal to a strange world.

I do not need this when I'm trying to serve breakfast!

like I'm in the middle of an inspiration storm.

Which is nice, but I was happy plotting my other story.

But they are both awkward and bless her she just wants to learn, she can't be arsed with courting.

Which is why he thought she was hanging around. Why has this idea suddenly gone regency science fantasy? Is #RegencyPunk a thing?  Well there's a plot sketch 2 pages long now. If there's more I can add to the section.

I know the girl is called Petra now. like such a strong impression. She knows who she is.

She's also the kinda person who's good at slipping away unnoticed. Good timing that.

#petra