Wildheart, Forever

Leo / Sophie

Leo

Leo wasn't sure what to do in this case. He was the funny guy. He was the mechanic, he was the flirt, he was the portable torch, but he had no idea what purpose he served in this situation.

Law? He barely was able to sit in a chair the right way.

So, he did what he always did when he felt useless- took a detour while the others were working on tie-dye to see what inventing supplies he could find. Dex was in the shed when he entered, working on a little robot bird with tools.

Without any sort of speech, Leo walked up to the bench and began to tinker with pieces of wire, bending them without any sort of ulterior end.

They sat like that, eventually beginning to share stories. Dex told Leo how Sophie was the first person to believe in him fully, sharing stories about their adventures and the times Sophie had stuck up for him when others were being dismissive.

In return, Leo received advice when he told Dex about his insecurities. They never made eye contact, always working on their inventions. Soon, their conversations slipped to their families and friends, then finally their crushes (which was Leo's choice of topic).

Leo pried it out of Dex that the other boy had realized his gayness somewhat recently, and was now dating a guy called Jensi. The dude sounded like a human version of the Energizer bunny, but Leo was glad that his friend was happy.

In return, Leo shared stories about his girlfriend Calypso, which Dex listened to with the occasional hum of interest.

By the time they left the shed, Leo knew he had someone new to talk to when he was feeling down.

Sophie

Sophie finally had a whisper of an idea. It was stupid, but it might work. Yes, she would need more study, and this might not even work, but she would try anything. The idea was something she discovered in a fictional book- don't laugh, she was going to check the actual laws before banking on it.

See, the idea was simple. In a book she read, there was a similar situation where an area that 'gnomes' lived underground was going to be flooded. To save the gnome's homes (try saying that three times fast) they put a rare mythical creature in the area and got it registered as an endangered species.

If she could get the land registered as a nature preserve, then the camp could be saved- but still, she was trying to not get her hopes up with this. If this turned out to not be real, and she brought everyone's hopes up only to have them dashed, she would feel awful.

This time, she was going to be stealthy about this. No more of burying herself in books 24/7. Ok, maybe that was because her friends had threatened to give her a manicure with such long nails that she couldn't turn a book's pages without the potential of accidentally ripping them.

They knew Sophie too well. She would never take the chances of hurting a book, they were her only constant when she was in the human world! In fact, she had made a habit of projecting little movies of her favourite books in her head when she couldn't sleep, using them as a distraction when she needed to.

Tam and Keefe glomming onto Sophie pulled her from her thoughts. Both of the boys were sweaty messes, likely from the extreme parkour they were challenging each other at on the way to the ropes course.

Silly boys, expending all of their energy before they even got to the activity. Actually, was that an ulterior motive one of them had? Sophie remembered the time Tam got stuck up there, and it would be a pretty good excuse for him to sit down on the ground with the bags while the others messed around.

Smiling, Sophie put her harness on, checked it three times, and then followed her friends onto the ropes course with a skip in her step, temporarily shoving the problem away yet again in the hopes of having fun.