Distracting Fish (Eloise)

[Travis Morgan]

"I like climbing," Travis said with a nod, "there were lots of pine trees where I grew up.. which are easy to climb, but not.. not really optimal. You get sap all over you, and that shit doesn't like to come off." He laughed quietly, then took a deep breath of forest air.

"I think plants have feelings, though," he said, pondering what Eloise said about telling people she could talk to trees. "I think they talk to each other, but probably not in a way that humans can understand. I always get really uncomfortable when people cut down trees, like.. If I can see it happening, it always makes me really angry." Travis reached out to pet another leaf.

"I've always really wanted to be able to talk to plants. I think that'd be cool." He let go of Ella's hand finally and wandered a short distance from her to touch a nearby tree. "What was the name of that Dr. Seuss book.. the Lorax? They just made a horrible movie from it.. But since I was a kid I've imagined that there really are little spirits who live in the trees, advocating for environmental rights."

Travis smiled. Oh yes, nature was good for him. Dirt beneath his feet, and trees above his head. It made him feel grounded. Stable. Eloise had the right idea.

[Eloise Eaton]

"I just like that whatever they're thinking, I can't hear it," Eloise stated as she continued to walk past where Travis stood. "At nights I prefer rooftops. Daytime - treetops. I really don't have a preference for nature or infrastructure. I just like peace, really." Eloise just enjoyed new things and experiences as well as all the little things that she found beautiful. "If your power really is anything like mine you'll find that the silence that comes with nighttime is one of the most comforting things in the world."

Eloise wasn't even sure if Travis was really following her, but she continued on a path through the trees. There wasn't a real path beaten in, and she wasn't sure how she'd find her way back, but she just had a feeling that she should keep walking - keep exploring. "The entire world just needs to shut up and slow down sometimes - you know? People need to just get out and do something unexpected or out of the ordinary. Like getting lost in the woods."

[Travis Morgan]

Travis trotted after Eloise when she kept walking. It probably wasn't a good idea to get separated in a forest they weren't familiar with. Travis was pretty well prepared for forest survival. His family went camping a lot. But that didn't mean he was necessarily prepared for wandering around alone with no supplies.

"Nighttime is a little iffy," he said, "people dream. Not always about happy things." He was smiling, though, as he spoke. He liked weaving his way through unbeaten paths. It gave his mind something to do other than dwelling on his troubles. There were branches to duck under, rocks to hop on, and all sorts of things to avoid tripping over.

Travis was fast on uneven terrain, and he couldn't resist running ahead, reveling in the freedom that was nature. He leapt onto a sizable rock by their path, climbing to the top of it and standing, looking back at Eloise. Damn, she's really beautiful. The thought flitted through his mind, and he immediately wondered if she could hear his thoughts from this distance. He didn't want to creep her out or anything. Guys could be so obnoxious, and she probably got more than her fair share of unwanted attention. Especially with the telepathy.

[Eloise Eaton]

"Ok, Jungle boy," Eloise joked as Travis flew ahead, jumping over the roots of the trees and climbing up onto a rock. Eloise had heard what he thought about her, but didn't respond. She didn't need to . She usually didn't. He hit the nail on the head when he thought that she got her fair share of unwanted attention. Ella knew from experience that there was something about her long blonde hair and charming smile that made guys want to talk to her. She elected to ignore it. If a guy thought she was pretty, that was great, but it didn't mean anything to Eloise anymore. Not really anyway.

She elected, at that point however, to put up a mental block. If it looked like Travis was trying to say something to her mentally, she'd drop it. But everybody deserved their privacy. Travis was entitled to his own thoughts and Eloise felt like she had intruded when she had heard what he was thinking about her. With the distance between them, it was hard to hear, but she caught it all in the silence of the woods.

Eloise kept walking toward Travis until she came across a low hanging branch which she reached up for, and pulled herself up. Planting her feet on the thickest part of the branch, she began to walk across the lowest part of the forest, moving between the trees with the low hanging branches. "So..." Eloise started, "I may have been reading your mind for about 45 minutes now... but I still don't really know a lot about you. Not really." Eloise made her way over to a tree near Travis, "Where are you from? What's your family like?" She hoped none of the questions would bring up any stresses or anxieties.

[Travis Morgan]

"Ooh yeah," Travis mused, "I forget that details are important, sometimes." He tended to become emotionally attached to people without actually knowing anything about them. Even before the empathy hit he'd been sort of intuitive about his relationships. He always just thought it was a right-brain thing. Clearly it was also an energy-feeling thing.

"I'm from Pensilvania," Travis answered her, sitting down cross-legged on the rock, "tiny little town nobody's ever heard of," he said with a laugh. "My family is.. well, sort of weird and sort of normal at the same time." Travis scratched his head. "We're really into science-fiction and fantasy.. um, and we like art an' shit..."

Travis looked up at the trees, thinking. He was bad at talking about himself. "Mm.. I like to draw.. and paint.. and just.. Y'know, make stuff." He shrugged and looked at Eloise. "What about you?"

[Eloise Eaton]

Eloise pulled herself up one branch higher, and sat down against the trunk of the tree, listening to Travis answer her questions pretty quickly without much detail. She didn't mind though. It wasn't like he had to tell her everything. She was just always curious of how others lived, since apparently her life was far from the norm.

"Well..." El started, "It's just me and my dad. And we kind of never stay in one place long enough to be settled in. I was born in Maine so I guess that's where I should say I'm from, but I've lived all around the world. Milan, Dubai, Paris, London. We lived in HongKong for a few months too." Eloise shrugged as if it were no big deal though. It was normal to her. "And I'm mostly into like... clothes and architecture. Designing things I guess. I don't make things I just dream them up. Its one of the ways I can focus on my own thoughts I guess."

Eloise looked down at Travis sitting cross-legged on the rock before continuing, "When you move so much its hard to get really involved in anything. People. Hobbies. So I kind of just entertain myself in my head I suppose."

[Travis Morgan]

"Now see, your life is interesting. Mine mostly involves me hiding in my house." Travis scratched his head. That's not really true. You do stuff. It just doesn't seem exceptional to you because you're the one doing it. Just like Ella feels that her life is normal because she's the one surrounded by it. Perspective. You could be fascinating for all you know.

"Well," he tilted his head to the side, "I guess I don't always hide in my house. I do this sometimes." He held his arms out briefly, indicating their current activity. "But I've never been anywhere interesting. We went to Niagara Falls once.. and that's about it."

He wasn't being intentionally vague about the details of his life, he was just awkward when it came to talking about himself. Honestly, he had a hard time thinking of specific things unless they came up in conversation. Like, if Eloise mentioned that she'd had a dog at some point (or something), then Travis could think of all sorts of funny stories relating to the family dog.. Er, the late family dog. Poor Skipper.

[Eloise Eaton]

"I guess my life has been so 'interesting'," Eloise started, using air quotes and a roll of her eyes to make her sarcasm quite clear, "that not a whole lot is interesting to me anymore." It was the best way Ella could explain it. It was why she was always searching for something - anything new. It was the reason she was generally emotionless. She was indifferent to change. She didn't mind chaos. It was normal.

"We would go on vacation and suddenly all of the stuff from our old apartment would follow," Eloise explained, remembering specifically when she was 10 and a vacation to Venice became another move. "I guess I hid away in my house a lot too... my house just kept changing." She chuckled, playing with some of the leaves on the trees. "I went to school in Switzerland though, so at least that was constant. Up until this year, that is." Although, even in Switzerland it was hard to make friends. Everybody spoke a different language. And even Ella only spoke non-English languages crudely despite her constant moves. "Its nice being in a place where everybody speaks... and thinks... in the same language. For the most part anyway."

[Travis Morgan]

"That sounds.. pretty scary to me," Travis said getting up and climbing onto a tree branch that was hanging low next to his rock. "I don't like change," he said with a laugh, fully aware that inflexibility was a pretty serious draw back. "It wigs me out. Like.. I'm mildly uncomfortable when my parents rearrange the furniture! It's awful!"

Travis stood on the tree branch, balancing with his hand on a branch above him. The move to Hammel was still hard for him. He was still having trouble sleeping in a new bed. It just wasn't home. His family had always lived in the same place. Hammel just didn't feel like home. It felt like summer camp, which he also found uncomfortable.. but tolerable, because camp generally only lasted a couple weeks.

He really just wanted to go home. Back to where things were familiar. Where he knew the faces, and the sounds, and the smell of the air. Where his boyfriend was just fifteen minutes away.

Travis had started staring vacantly into the distance. These were his feelings. It was easier to tell out here in the trees. He was homesick. That was it. He just had no experience coping with being away from where he grew up.

[Eloise Eaton]

"The homesickness wears off... at least thats what I hear," Eloise said with a little smile. She hadn't even read his mind for that one. It was pretty clear to her that Travis was missing 'normal' life. "This is the best place to be when learning to control your power. Once you've learned basic control, they'll let you visit home whenever possible." It took Ella a year and a half to get to that point, but she didn't let Travis know that. Ella was also a tough student. She could put her money on Travis being more of a 'listener'. Which is sort of ironic in a way.

Eloise stood back up on the trunk of the branch, and scanned the woods. "Change isn't all that bad," Ella said with a shrug. Then again she was used to it. "I just like to think of it as new opportunities. Take advantage of change. Don't let it consume you." She climbed up one more branch. Now a good 20 feet off the ground, she already felt like she was towering over everything. But she had only climbed up this high to confirm the suspicion she had developed while there was a relative silence between her and Travis. She thought she had heard running water. And sure enough, about 75 yards away, Eloise could just make out a bend in a stream. She began letting herself back down carefully. "Change gives you the opportunity to try new things. Even if its just viewing your television from a new location."

[Travis Morgan]

Perspective was important. Travis considered Eloise's words. Change didn't have to be scary. Change was good. Of course, deciding not to feel a certain way wasn't something he was good at. It had never even occurred to him before. Just stop being afraid. Easier said than done.

Still, she had a point. He shouldn't let it consume him. Travis was beginning to feel like his whole life was driven by fear. He was afraid of people. He was afraid of change. He was afraid of disappointing people. He was afraid of getting in trouble. He was afraid of being yelled at... Everything scared him, and he was getting tired of it.

It was exhausting to be afraid all the time. Travis chewed absently on the inside of his lips. Thinking. How exactly did one not become consumed by emotion? Was it how you act? Was it how you think? Was it this magical ability some people had called 'letting go'?

Travis heaved a sigh, and looked up at Ella as she climbed a little higher. He watched her face while she peered into the distance, and he 'hmm'ed at her words when she began climbing down again. "See something interesting?" He asked, deciding to push the conversation to the back of his mind for a while. Sometimes things made more sense when he just sat on them for a few days.

[Eloise Eaton]

Eloise hung by the lowest branch for a moment as she reached her feet toward the ground. When her toes seemed as close to the ground as possible, she let herself drop to the ground, falling forward slightly as her feet hit the rough terrain of the forest. "There's a stream just over that way," Eloise explained, pointing in the direction she was looking when she was up in the trees. Ella loved water. Oceans, lakes, streams. Yet again, El proves to be drawn to peaceful, quiet places. Even the roar of the ocean was soothing to the telepath, and she loved sitting on the rocks by the ocean when she lived South Africa.

"Streams often lead to larger bodies of water," Eloise explained - her curiosity of the new area becoming more apparent with each step. She looked back at Travis as she started to walk. "Its amazing to me how I've never gotten so lost that I couldn't find my way back home," she said. "And I think I can't focus in one place for long enough to really enjoy it. I get that from my dad." She noticed they had barely spent any time in their previous position - and Travis had just gotten comfortable on his rock. But Ella spent life on the move. She went wherever her interest took her, and right now it was too the creek. "Maybe we'll find some turtles or something."

[Travis Morgan]

Travis started climbing down too. He didn't mind moving already. He could be a little ADD in the woods too. There was so much stuff to see, and he always felt at home in nature. Sometimes you had to explore first before you could just sit down and enjoy the scenery. Gotta quench that curiosity.

Travis' feet hit the ground, and he jogged a few feet to catch up with Ella. "Well, it's good to know we won't be getting irreversibly lost," he said. Really it was a good thing Eloise could find her way back. Travis got turned around easily. He'd gotten lost in a mall before, and it hadn't even been a big one.

"Turtles are cute," he commented with a smile. "You know, unless they're grumpy. Then they sort of resemble crotchety old men."

[Eloise Eaton]

"I had a pet turtle once when I was 7," Eloise explained. "It was the only pet I've ever had, but I had to leave him in Dubai when we moved back to Italy. And since I cried my dad wouldn't let me have any more pets because I got too attached to them." Ella ducked under a branch, and squeezed through a small spot in between some bushes. On the other side, the stream ran just past her feet. It couldn't have been more than two feet wide, and only a few inches deep. The water was extremely clear. You could see some fish and frogs trying to swim against the current, not getting much of anywhere really.

"Do you have any pets?" Eloise asked as she hopped over the stream to the bank on the other side which was much larger than the small area after the bushes. She sat herself by the edge, and dipped her hands in the cool water. "I've always wanted a dog or a cat or a fish or something," Eloise explained. She liked to hear about other people's pets. She liked that you could be friends with something you couldn't communicate with. They didn't have readable minds, but they clearly had some sort of consciousness that allowed for companionship.

[Travis Morgan]

"Oh that's sad," he said about Ella's pet turtle, "what's the point of having a pet if you're not attached to it?" Travis lived in a world where everything was about emotional attachment. He didn't really understand how people could interact, yet remain so detached. Sometimes he thought something was wrong with him. Sometimes he thought there was something wrong with everyone else.

"Oh, yeah," Travis smiled when she asked if he had any pets. "I have a dog--" he paused. "Well.. had. He got hit by a car right before I came here." Travis chewed the inside of his mouth, momentarily lost in memory. "He was a corgi," he continued, "super cute. Loved everybody. His name was Skipper." Travis smiled again, but his eyes looked sad. He hadn't really dealt with the loss of the beloved family dog in all the chaos.