[CT] Not One With Nature

[Lennox Marshall]

New Orleans had plenty of pretty outdoorsy places. The Bayou was probably the one Lennox knew best, but she often stayed away from it. Pretty, yes. Creepy, also yes. There was just something about all of the bugs and creepy crawlers that Lennox just couldn't get on board with. She loved animals, she even thought some bugs were cute...until they were crawling on her or came near her in which case, she screamed and flailed like most girls. And don't even get her started on snakes. Snakes were the devil's caterpillar, except they didn't transform into anything pretty.

Being the not-so-outdoorsy type, Lennox realized signing up for the camping trip might not have been her brightest idea. But, all her friends had come along and, well, she didn't want to just be stuck at school with no one to talk to. She figured if Jack and Kat could rough it, she could too! She just wished she'd had some kind of portable piano or that she was a little further in her guitar lessons than she actually was. One would think she'd grasp the guitar a bit quicker, but her fingers couldn't press down a bar chord to save her life. It could also be the level of distraction that kept her from learning guitar though, too.

Kicking some rocks and twigs out of her way while she walked alongside her friend, she frowned, "I think I should have stayed back at the academy. I can't even focus on writing my songs here. And I don't have a piano, I can't play guitar, and I suck at the a cappella thing. Please tell me you're hating this as much as I am." She looked over at Katrina and offered the girl a smile. Lennox was not one to complain about much, usually a very optimistic girl, but nature brought out the worst in her.

[Katrina Bellefonte]

Katrina found herself uncertain about a great many things. She'd had quite a firmly established place in her old school, one of the private schools near Kalispell as a class prankster. She had very average grades, talkative and chatty friends and she got herself into quite a lot of fairly minor trouble for attention. She'd always wanted powers like the rest of her family, and when she finally got her wish she came out feeling kind of unhappy.

Coming to the academy was great and all, but she wasn't able to bring any of her friends with her, and she suddenly felt herself very uncertain. She got attention that she'd sought out before, for the simple reason that her name was literally on the buildings that her and peers attended their lessons at, and the places in which they lived. But it wasn't the same... She got the attention because of something she couldn't help.

To make matters worse, all of this led to Katrina having a sudden and distinct inability to be sociable. She was really struggling with it, and had been pressured into the camping trip to help with this. Thankfully, she was with one of the few people she could tentatively label as a friend. She'd been paired with Lennox on one or two assignments prior to this, and she knew her to a reasonable degree.

She offered her friend a timid smile in response to the question. "It's not easy, but we're here now so we should make the best of it." A thought somewhere in the back of her head cataloged that Lennox's figure and smile went very well with the outdoors.