Autumn
by Firinel

Autumn

by Firinel

Jamie and Sarah walked across the green, their hands intertwined. Jamie held a rolled up blanket and the padded case with her laptop in the free arm, Sarah had slung over her right shoulder a rucksack which contained her sketch pad and other art paraphernalia. When they came upon a spot with both a clear view of the chapel and no one else sitting relatively near them, Jamie flung and smoothed out the blanket, sat down and booted up. Sarah slipped off her sandals using the heel of the other foot to prise them off and ceremoniously wriggled her toes in the grass before sitting down next to Jamie and her artistic accouterments. She meticulously took out her charcoals and conte crayons, laid them out in order from light to dark; beside them went the kneaded eraser, the blending stumps, wet wipes to wash her hands on periodically, and eventually the sketchbook.

Sarah squinted into the autumnal sun at the chapel and pondered its geometry. Turning that aside she considered the trees on the green, and then a group of people playing footie not far away. She quickly sketched a boy kicking at the ball, his hair flowing behind him, capturing the movement in a few fluid lines. Content, her eye searched on and found a group of what appeared to be deaf students furiously signing at one another. She did a few quick studies of their hands on the same page with the footie player. They walked on: no more moving hands for her to sketch, only fading backs. She wriggled her toes in the air and settled down to sketch them for awhile, paying particular interest to the ridges in the nails. Bored with that, she sighed, fumbled a green apple from the front pocket of her satchel and flopped down.

Jamie continued typing and seemed to look over at her without her eyes ever leaving the monitor's screen. "Bored already? I thought you were going to draw the chapel."

"I was, but it doesn't seem very interesting today. There's no energy in it, no movement."

Jamie snorted. "It's a bloody building, what energy, what movement do you ever expect it to have?"

Sarah bit the apple and slurped a bit to avoid the wetness running down onto her upturned face. "Huh, you don't get it, everything has movement and energy - sometimes just more than others. And besides, the sun's all wrong: I have to squint to look at it so it's just a big silhouette of blackness over there. Hmm, maybe it would be okay to paint it like that, but sketching it won't do. I should sketch something else. Maybe I could just sketch you?" Sarah rolled over so that she was propped up on her elbows and looked at Jamie.

"Well, I've hardly any energy, and at the moment I'm not moving."

Sarah laughed. "Well, the not moving thing will make you easy to sketch." She studied Jamie's face a bit more and then set her conte furiously to paper.

Some moments had passed quietly before Jamie said, "What do you think of me?"

Still sketching, Sarah made noncommittal sounds. "Hmm, well, your nose is small and cute, and you've good bone structure, quite nice cheekbones. your eyes are a little small, and your hair being so short makes your chin look severe, but overall you're quite pleasant to draw."

"So you think I'm good-looking?"

Sarah's brow furrowed but she continued sketching. "Good looking is so subjective, I don't like it. You're not the sort of beauty that people put in magazines, no. People don't seem to like girls that look so androgynous, but I don't mind. I like all sorts, personally. Skinny girls with flat chests, scrawny guys with long hair, big girls with squishy tummies, bears with crushing hugs. It's just more about the person for me."

Sarah noticed that Jamie stopped typing for a moment, the constant chatter of the keyboard paused. "What's up?"

"Nothing, just thinking."

Sarah nodded and continued sketching, smudging in trees behind Jamie's unfinished head. "There's this girl that comes into the store, I think it's her own artwork she's getting framed, actually, and she's cute. I actually asked her for her number last time, but I'm not sure if she thought it was personal or to let her know when her order was done. I haven't called her yet. She wasn't what I'd call beautiful, though she was definitely interesting-looking. Sometimes, beauty is so boring because it's everywhere, very homogenised. I don't like that so much: I'd much rather someone with character."

"Do you think I've got character? Am I homogenised?"

"I dunno, what's homogenised in a university town? In some places goths would be out of place; here, it's practically expected. Piercings were once only for freaks, now my mum has her bellybutton pierced. Who's to say, really? And yeah, I know I just said, but... I dunno, I think it's just something interesting inside that sort of comes out.

"You know, you're a really great friend to humour me after a long day of work, come to the park and skip with me, and work some more while you let me sketch you." Sarah smiled at Jamie.

Jamie laughed, "Ah, it's no problem really. I mean, I wouldn't have done anything anyway, probably would have skipped dinner, spodded all night, fell asleep in my clothes, got up at some ungodly hour to eat beans on toast and stumble back to bed before blearily waking up when the alarm goes off again in the morning. I might as well waste the evening with you here. Speaking of which, the sun is starting to set, you won't have enough light to draw by soon."

Sarah was watching Jamie's face change in the light of the setting sun. "The park isn't so bad this time of year, once the new students get settled in: nicer than being stuck in the house like you said. My neighbours are crazy anyway."

"You gonna call that bird tonight when you get back?"

"I dunno. Nah, probably not. I'll probably just call her when the art's in, and she won't know I didn't work up the nerve to ring her to ask her out. Why?"

"Dunno. Am I interesting looking, I mean, like you said, the inside out thing? Do I seem interesting? Am I interesting... probably not, I'm just a code monkey, I work with a bunch of mostly boring blokes all day, I wear blokey suits, and have a blokey haircut, my life isn't really very appealing, you know, and I'm not terribly interesting. I curse an awful lot and play too many video games, and I natter on when I'm nervous..."

"Jamie? Why don't you come over to my house when we leave here? I've got some port, and that horrid cheese you like. If you get too drunk to make it home you can crash with me and go to work from here in the morning."