CASCADE
steep waterfall
The problem with Jinx, one of them at least, is that she never actually stops. She does everything with a single minded fervor and tenacity that both frightens and awes. She is consumed by her passions. Her thoughts, her ideas rapidly fire through her synapses, riddling her consciousness and never leaving her alone.
"Ever." She told Lux once.
It is the early hours of the morning when no one sane is awake. They are in Jinx's apartment, in the mess that is a living room buried under dirty clothes, candy wrappers, wrenches, screwdrivers, and pages and pages of increasingly complex designs. Jinx is frantically scribbling on her walls, having run out of paper ages ago. Lux studies the string of figures slowly making its way to the floor. She takes a step closer, resting her finger on a particular number.
"You're overestimating. If you changed the exponent to 4, instead of 6, you'd get more accurate results."
Jinx pauses in her frenzy and looks up. The dead-like stillness she acquires is in stark and disturbing contrast to her earlier unceasing motions. She stares at Lux as if she can't quite figure out where Lux belonged on the equation, an unaccounted for variable that she missed. Then she breaks out a grin that redefines wild.
"Oh my god! You're right! Thanks, Flashlight. You just saved me a whole night's worth of work."
"So you're going to sleep soon?"
"What? No. Now, I can move on to other things. Like modifying the blast radius of my rockets."
Lux sighs, bemused in spite of herself. "I'll go make coffee then."
"You're staying up with me?"
"And leave you alone? You'd eat yourself alive."
Jinx smiles then, a soft, shy curl of her lips where her eyes crease in the corners. The sheer wonder and gratitude of her expression shouldn't affect Lux so much, except for the absolute novelty of seeing Jinx look something other than sharply hazardous. Lux swallows loudly.
"Besides, I saw at least 2 errors in your last computation."
"No! Where!"
As Jinx whips around, Lux ducks into the kitchen. She thinks of numbers, the stream of figures. She thinks of streams, coursing, winding over cliffs. She thinks of edges, of tumbling, of falling. Maybe because she is, slowly and quietly falling.