A/N: I wanted to update yesterday, but I had a friend over and we kind of lost track of time. Here's the chapter anyway, just one day later than I expected.
Clarke picked up her work again. She made the string and glue, then attached the stones to the tops of the sticks with the glue. After that, she cut a small notch at the end of the sticks and attached the feathers with glue and string. Every now and then, she checked on Madi.
"The pain is already fading. It isn't bad," Madi told her when Clarke had finished the arrows and climbed into the rover. "I'm just a little bored."
Clarke could understand that. She had sprained her ankle once too. She'd hated not being able to move around too much, but she knew how important it was to let it rest. "You didn't sleep well last night. Are you tired?" she asked. "You could take a nap."
"I already tried. I'm not in the mood for sleeping," Madi answered.
Clarke let out a chuckle. "How can someone not be in the mood for sleeping?"
The green-eyed girl shrugged. "Then I'm just not tired."
Neither of them said anything for a while, but it wasn't silent. They could hear the birds chirping outside. It was pretty windy today, which caused the leaves to rustle. Somewhere, a twig broke.
All those sounds were familiar to Clarke. She'd heard them countless times. Just like the voice who broke the semi-silence. "Clarke?" the voice asked.
She responded with an "hmm?"
"Can you teach me how to draw?"
Clarke snapped her head up in surprise. When Madi was younger, she had asked her a few times if she wanted to draw. She knew next to nothing about raising a child. Let alone under their circumstances. But when Clarke was younger, her mother had always given her paper and a pencil to keep her satisfied, so she decided to try that with Madi too. She had declined every time. "Why now all of the sudden? I mean, I would love to. I'm just curious."
Madi didn't answer right away as if she had to think really hard of an answer to give her. "I don't know actually. But I like watching you draw. I want to be able to do that too."
"I have no idea how to teach someone how to draw, but I can try." Clarke had taught Madi a lot of things that she needed to know in order to survive. Mostly, those were boring things. She didn't like to teach them, but she had too. Of course, she had also taught her things she enjoyed teaching. Medicine for example. And reading and writing. Drawing was a thing she'd always wanted to teach her, to what extent that was possible, but Madi never seemed interested. Clarke loved the fact that she now was.
"My sketchbook is still outside. I'll get it." With that, she jumped out of the Rover and walked around it. Her sketchbook was still laying on the rover hood, where she had fallen asleep yesterday. She picked it up, but she couldn't find the pencil she had made out of graphite. She searched the ground around the rover hood for it and eventually found it laying in the grass. She picked it up and went back to Madi.
"Okay," she said when she was sitting again. She opened her sketchbook on an empty side and handed it to Madi together with the pencil.
Madi took it carefully like it was something made out of glass and could break at any moment. She looked at Clarke expectantly. "So… What do I do?"
"I don't know. I think you just need to draw something."
Madi played around with the pencil. "Like what?"
Clarke thought about what she used to draw when she was a kid. She'd always dreamed about the ground and it was also what she drew in most of her drawings. She had drawn the earth from her imagination and from what people had told her. But painting the view they had from the rover wasn't exactly something for a first drawing.
She looked around in the Rover and her eye fell on an apple. She picked it up. "Try this," she said and showed Madi the apple.
The girl laughed. "An apple? That's silly."
"You said you liked food."
"True." Madi took the apple from Clarke and looked at it briefly. "But that's just a circle with a little stick sticking out from the top."
"No," Clarke answered and Madi looked a little confused. "That's what you think it is. Now give it a better look."
She looked at it again. She turned it around in her hand, looked at the top and the bottom and finally put it in front of her. "It's not completely round." She was speaking more to herself than to Clarke. "It's more oval-ish and it looks like someone or something really strong pushed the top and bottom to be a little flatter."
Clarke nodded approving at her explanation. "See, don't draw what you think is. Draw what you see."
"But now I'm hungry," Madi complained.
"Yeah, me too. Let's eat something." Clarke could see Madi's gaze wandering towards the apple she was about to draw. "But not that apple. You still need it."
Clarke picked up two other apples and gave Madi one of them. They also ate some meat from the rabbit they caught this morning.
After they finished, Madi started drawing the apple. She started on the right side of the paper, which she soon discovered wasn't very clever. She was right handed, so when she moved to the left side and rested her hand on the right side, she got graphite all over the paper and on her hand. "Jok!"
"Madi, what did I say about swearing?"
"Float me?" She said it in a questioning voice. It was almost cute, but Clarke knew Madi hated it when she called her cute. She laughed instead and shook her head. She couldn't be mad at her.
She went on drawing. Clarke corrected her a few times, but mostly just let her draw. It was funny to see her so concentrated on the apple. Her eyes were a little squinted and moved up and down from the apple to the paper. Clarke explained how she could add light and shadow to her drawing and Madi tried to transfer the things she said into her drawing.
She held it up proudly when she was finished. "I think that's okay for a first try," she said.
"It certainly is," Clarke said honestly. The drawing was impressive, that was for sure. "You have talent."
Madi smiled happily. "What should I draw next?"
Clarke answered her question with another question. "What fascinates you?"
It was silent for a moment before Madi spoke. "I'll draw one of the arrows you made. The feathers on it are beautiful."
"Okay, I'll get you one." Clarke did as she said and handed the arrow to Madi. "Be careful," she warned her. "It hasn't completely dried yet."
Madi studied it and then placed it in front of her. "Mochof."
Clarke didn't climb into the Rover. "I'll go get some water. Will you be okay?"
She looked up from the arrow. "Yeah, of course. The truck's loaded with guns after all," she said and then started drawing.
Clarke nodded, although Madi couldn't see it. "I won't be long."
The only response she got was an absent "Hm-hmm". Madi was already focused on her drawing.
Glad that Madi enjoyed drawing so much, Clarke made her way to the small river that was flowing just about fifty meters east from their camp. She had one bucket in each of her two hands. The plants under her feet were already trampled from all the times she had walked here to get to the river.
The river wasn't big. Maybe it was more like a stream. Well, what was the difference anyway? Water was water. At least it wasn't big enough for some monstrous water snake to hide in. She kneeled down by a little waterfall. It was only about half a meter high, but that was enough to hold the buckets under to fill them.
Before returning to the camp, Clarke quickly washed her hands in the stream. The water was cold, but she didn't mind. She liked the feeling of the water wandering over her skin. For almost eighteen years, she had never had fresh water. Yes, it had been drinkable, but never fresh. It had been recycled countless times. They often used to make jokes about drinking their great-grandma's pea. Now, she didn't know better than the beautiful clean water she had every day.
She cupped her hands to drink some and then made her way back to the camp with the two full buckets of water. She placed them just outside the Rover and looked at Madi, who was still busy. It made her happy to see how concentrated she was on her drawing and she didn't bother distracting her by saying anything. Instead, she decided to fix the hole in the little bag she had made out of the skin of a deer. She had noticed it this morning while collecting berries and from her experience, she knew holes only became bigger and never smaller over the time.