When A Landscape Becomes A Portrait (Jas)

[Jasper Blackwater]

“No way,” Jasper insisted. “I saw you fiddling with that lens like a professional. Don’t even try to deny it.”

He could tell right away that he’d embarrassed her, although she seemed at the very least to be more flattered than flustered by the attention. He found this encouraging.

“Hey,” he said. “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

He smiled, then; it was one of those small, warm smiles that served to stifle a counter-argument before it began. She accepted his phone, and he watched her type for a moment or two before forcing his gaze to the side. There was just enough daylight left to allow him to see the black silhouettes of the treetops beyond the lake, and the far-off White Mountains, smoky-blue with distance.

When he looked back to Alanna, she was holding his phone out so that he could take it back.

“Thanks,” he said. A brief struggle with his jacket pocket ensued; he’d grabbed several extra packets of graham crackers, and they were taking up more space than he’d anticipated. It took him a moment to realize that she had offered him her phone in return. She’d brought up the new contact screen, too.

“Whoa, fancy,” he said with a grin, squinting so that his eyes could adjust to the light of the screen in the dark. He busied himself with typing, taking extra care with the unfamiliar device. “Hey, no problem. Mom’s been waiting for a new picture for at least a year—I’m sure she can handle a few more days.”

He beamed. A moment later, he returned her phone. There was another brief pause, wherein they simply looked at each other.

“So, uh,” he began. He’d never had any trouble filling up silence in a conversation. “We should probably head back, right? It’s gonna be dark soon, and I’m already freezing. This New England weather and I are on shaky terms—I short-circuit if it gets below fifty degrees.”

[Alanna Darlington]

Her blush grew slightly brighter at his words yet at the same time her back straightened - a small allowance of pride. "Thank you," she said simply. It was nice - and incredibly rare - to be so sincerely appreciated by someone. Besides, how could she argue with that smile? A fact that she had a suspicion he was well aware of. Still, she could hardly fault him for it.

It was getting dark quickly but Alanna was still reluctant to acknowledge what that meant. She hadn't enjoyed being around another person this much in... well, longer than she cared to remember. They exchanged information quickly - at least that was promising - though his reaction to her phone made her smile. The light was fading fast which meant that the light of cell phone screens seemed all the harsher.

Alanna laughed softly at his remark about his mother. "Well I hope she likes it," she offered with a small smile. Another short silence fell over them until at last Jasper stated the obvious. "Yeah, it is getting late," she agreed. "I take it you must be from Florida or something then where it's always warm. I'm sure you'll get used to the weather up here eventually, even if you never quite like it," she said. "This sort of weather is pretty normal for me though. Though winters are a little worse here than back home."

[Jasper Blackwater]

Jasper smiled at Alanna’s second, more confident acceptance of his compliment.

“You bet.”

He slid his hands into his pockets again—there was nothing he hated more than having cold hands. His attention wandered briefly; she recaptured it with her comment about his mother. He chuckled.

“She’ll probably add you on Facebook,” he said. “She adds everyone I know on Facebook. Sorry in advance.”

He started to walk slowly along the trail that led back to the main camp. The glow of the campfire was visible in the distance now; occasionally, a shout or a laugh from the group gathered around it would reach them from far away. Jas remained quiet, so that he was sure to hear the soft tones of Alanna’s voice as she spoke. He grinned at her comment about Florida.

“I’m from Tucson,” he said. “It’s a desert, you know? Florida’s got the heat thing covered, but I can’t deal with the humidity. Give me a yard full of cacti and a house with a swamp cooler, and I’m a happy camper.”

He glanced sidelong at her—just for a moment—before looking forward again. He was still grinning.

“That sounds awful,” he said, cheerfully. “Where ya from?”

[Alanna Darlington]

Alanna chuckled. "Nah, that's sweet actually." She wasn't about to admit that she hardly had any friends on Facebook. Well, that wasn't entirely true, but none of them were people she really talked to or interacted with beyond tagging a photo she had taken of them.

She followed him down the trail, walking beside him, but just slightly behind him. She tried not to grimace as they got closer to the main camp and the campfire as their thoughts began to press on her mind. Nothing coherent yet, just the uncomfortable presence that came with their proximity. Still, she wanted to talk to Jasper just a little longer if she could, so she ignored it.

It was obvious he was from somewhere very different. She had never even seen a cacti that wasn't small enough to be kept in a pot on a windowsill. Alanna had been just about to say that sounded miserable when something else he said distracted her. "A... swamp cooler? What on earth is that?" she asked, her bemusement very clear in her voice as she looked up at him.

"I was born in Tennessee, but my family moved to Lancaster Pennsylvania when I was young. Pennsylvania is either all city or basically a forest, there's not much in between," she said with a small laugh. She liked the area well enough, it was just the people who didn't seem to like her. "The weather is more or less the same as around here, a little warmer though, but same general climate, so I guess I'm just used to it more or less."

[Jasper Blackwater]

“She’s a sweet person,” Jasper said. It was true—his mother was an exceptionally good-natured, compassionate woman. “She just gets a little carried away with the Facebook thing. She sends me an invite to play Bake Shop Drop, like, at least three times per day.”

His smile had grown a bit wistful. His peers all seemed to discuss homesickness in the past tense; for Jasper, it was the chronic illness that he’d never been able to shake. The trail passed under a canopy of trees, and he looked back at Alanna again, as though double-checking to make sure that she hadn’t gotten bored and left. She hadn’t; his smile tightened into something shy and sheepish, and his dimples appeared again.

“It’s basically an air conditioner,” he said, not without a certain degree of diplomacy, as though he were trying to sell her one. “It’s sorta like humidifier-meets-air-conditioner. Regular air conditioners don’t work so great in the desert, you know? Trying to refrigerate all that dry heat will cost you an arm and a leg.”

He chanced another look at her—if she hadn’t been bored earlier, she was surely bored now!—and found that she was looking at him, too. He huffed out a small, embarrassed laugh. Swamp coolers. Christ! She probably thought he was from outer space.

Fortunately, she turned the conversation around by telling him a little more about herself. Tennessee—so that was where that subtle twang came from. He nodded slowly, to acknowledge that he was listening.

“So—are you from the city part, or the forest part?” he asked. He wasn’t exactly up to speed on his Pennsylvanian geography. “And, uh, Steelers or Eagles?” he appended, with a grin.

[Alanna Darlington]

Alanna watched him as he talked of his mom and it as written all over his face how much he missed her. She could almost understand that. She missed her parents - being an only child, they were close even if she had always been more independent than her peers. She didn't miss her home though... she had never fit in there. But she had spent a lot of her life missing Tennessee. So she could understand what it was like to be homesick, even if it wasn't quite the same.

Then he caught her staring and her own smile turned sheepish as well even as she looked away for a moment. Her gaze quickly returned to him though as he continued to speak, explaining a swamp cooler to her. "Oh. Yeah, that makes sense I suppose. Weird name though." She had never really lived anywhere without humidity so it was easy to forget other places didn't have any.

She chuckled softly at his question even as her gaze turned first to her feet and then to the sky. "A bit of both I suppose. I live just on the outskirts of the city, where it's a bit more suburban." The football question made her laugh even more. "Eagles area, but I'm a little bit of a rebel so I go Steelers. Not that I really follow football very much." Alanna looked over at him again, curiosity in her eyes. She wasn't much into sports, but if he was, then that was a plenty good reason to start paying attention to them. "How about you? Do you have a team?"

[Jasper Blackwater]

Jasper chuckled at her assertion that ‘swamp cooler’ was a weird name.

“Yeah,” he said, drawing his agreement out into a long and affectionate sigh. “It is, ain’t it?” In his cheerful, rhythmic accent, the final two words fused so that they were barely recognizable: “en’et?”

They passed through the small, canopied part of the trail and emerged on the other side, where the still-fading light illuminated the worn, dusty brown path under their feet. The din from the crowd around the campfire was more audible, now; occasionally, sparks from the growing fire could be seen shooting so far upward that they flashed against the dark of the sky before they burnt out.

For a few moments, he didn’t do anything but listen to her talk. He liked the sound of her voice—it was comfortable to listen to. Being that he didn’t generally do a whole lot of listening, that was saying something.

“Hm,” said Jas, with a hint of a smile in his voice. “I’m a big fan of the Suburbian Rebels, you know? But I like the Cardinals, too, and any team that beats the crap out of the Washington Redskins.”

He grinned at her in the early dark. A moment later, they arrived at a fork in the trail; he slowed to a stop, lingering in front of it.

“Boys’ cabins are down here,” he explained. He was still wearing the ghost of a smile. “Hey—thanks again for the picture, you know? I really appreciate it.”

[Alanna Darlington]

She laughed softly. "It really is," she agreed, glad that she hadn't accidentally offended him with her statement. She couldn't help but worry about things like that - there was a reason she had never really had friends after all. She was so socially awkward - even without the telepath thing making it even more difficult.

Alanna smiled as he spoke about sports - really she didn't know much of anything about them, so she was rather clueless. She knew enough to agree with his last statement though. "Yeah, I'm not sure anyone actually likes the Redskins," she said with a chuckle. Admittedly she only really knew about them because of proximity - after all, D.C. wasn't that far from PA.

Their steps came to a halt then as they reached a fork in the road. She nodded as he explained. "Yeah, girl's cabins are up thataway," she echoed. Her own smile had faded slightly, but was still there. "Oh yeah, it was no problem," she said, her smile brightening slightly. "I'll be sure to send it to you soon." She worried her lip and absently ran her fingers through her hair as she tried to think of something to say and coming up with absolutely nothing. "It was nice meeting you," she finally said, her voice soft and shy.

[Jasper Blackwater]

Jasper grinned.

“If only that were true,” he said, in reply to her comment about nobody liking the Redskins. “They’d have changed their mascot long before now, and I wouldn’t be forced to hate them as a matter of principle.” He paused, as if to think, and then shook his head. He was still smiling. “I like basketball better, anyway.”

He’d already known that the girls’ cabins were in the opposite direction; he listened to other people’s conversations frequently, and he’d overheard a few of his roommates conspiring to sneak through the woods in the middle of the night to spy on them.

He nodded anyway, as though she had given him new information. Then, just for a moment, he looked over at her again: wide, bright eyes, long, shiny, perfectly tousled hair, delicately bowed lips, faintly flushed cheeks....

Inside of him, something shifted, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t the s’more he’d eaten earlier.

“Awesome,” he said. His voice had softened, too, in a subconscious effort to match her tone. “Hey, it was nice meeting you, too. I’ll catch you later, right? And, uh—”

There was a brief pause. The corners of Jasper’s lips quirked awkwardly.

“Um, just so you know—if you put up towels over the windows of the cabins, it keeps out most of the draft. You should try that. When you get back to your cabin, I mean.”

He cleared his throat; a moment later, he raised his hand casually in a gesture of farewell.

“Later.”

[Alanna Darlington]

His words surprised her slightly, but in a good way. She wondered if he was one of those people who was always socially aware and had a million causes or if this was something particularly significant to him. She didn't ask though, simply filing it away for future reference.

She nodded. "Yeah, catch you later," she began, her voice fading as he continued on. She raised an eyebrow, silently questioning the sudden advice. She didn't remember noticing a draft at all in her cabin, but it seemed important to him for some reason.

"Oh, um, yeah, okay. I'll do that," she said with a tentative smile. "Thanks, for the suggestion I mean." She gave a small wave as she started to turn down the path, glancing over her shoulder at him.

"Later."