"Sure you dun want some s'mores, Eugene?" Stinky called out in a slow drawl over his shoulder, his marshmallow engulfed in flames a few seconds too long before noticing and lazily blowing them out.

Helga didn't know if she'd imagined it, but she could have sworn she heard someone reply "crisis debriefer" from somewhere behind her, as if in response. She chewed the inside of her cheek, trying to concentrate on her journal as she endured unwanted company and the sounds of commotion around her.

Everyone else was there, and she'd chit-chatted a little, but she found herself still feeling more withdrawn from the Hillwood crowd than usual lately. Even if no one knew what recent events weighed on her mind, she felt that keeping to herself was easier. The fact that they all knew and had history with both of them applied a pressure she cringed from.

She sat on a log with Phoebe and Nadine, tuning out their stimulated discussion on the local ecology as she doodled punctured, deflated footballs, one jammed in the corner of the page with a small, hidden heart scrawled around it. Her gaze darted like barbs from her journal to the throng of activity around her, keeping an eye out for his presence, but she still hadn't spotted him.

He was supposed to be here.

"That's okay, it's probably best if I don't get too close to fire, heh," Eugene called back with a good-tempered nervousness as he gathered twigs and small fallen branches off the ground, piling them onto the bundle he balanced precariously on his other arm. "Just gathering wood is good enough for me…" he trailed off before predictably tripping over a bulging tree root and eating sticks. "AH! …I'm okay…"

"Nitro-glycerin holder."

This time she heard the words clearly over the sound of campers mingling, some nursing sore hands or watching as a row of sign-ups kneeled on the ground and rubbed sticks furiously for the FireStarter Challenge. Puzzled, she turned and spotted the twins leaning against the wide trunk of a pine nearby, subtly pointing in her general direction, but didn't focus on her as she finally flashed her palm, signaling an annoyed 'what?'

Not that she didn't suit her role as a loner a good chunk of the time, but she didn't like being ignored or avoided anymore than she already was, and with all the activity around her stunting her focus (why was it when her nerves were frayed even normal background sounds drove her nuts?) she snapped her book shut and approached them irritably.

Hands on her hips as she waited moodily for them to acknowledge her, she observed herself in a moment of self-consciousness, the fact that she had actually bothered getting up to talk to people. She dimly noted that conversing with these two chuckleheads just happened to be a bit easier than everyone else she knew due to a lack of baggage or strings. And, not knowing each other's names offered an extra buffer of amiable anonymity she found fairly easy to approach.

Even if they were still idiots.

"Hey," mop-head finally muttered offhandedly, not looking at her. His twin gave a nod, staring at a pocket of people socializing at a picnic table a ways out. "Sup."

She crossed her arms, shifting her weight to her left foot, jutting her hip out.

"Why are you doing that?"

They still didn't look at her, people watching. "Doing what?"

She stared. "Calling out shit randomly for no reason."

Mop-head finally looked at her, his focused look replaced with an easy amusement she couldn't help but feel was at her expense. "That annoy you?"

She thinned her eyes at him. Don't press your luck.

He rolled his eyes, grinning and opening his arms disarmingly, palms out.

"We're playing a game."

"Oh?" she asked, unimpressed.

"Yeah," purple-hair replied, leaning in and pointing back to her old classmates. She cocked a brow, looked over her shoulder, and deadpanned as Eugene dropped the re-gathered wood pile again, this time tripping on nothing.

"See, he's perfect," he punctuated with a finger gun. When Helga turned back, shaking her head with an incredulous grimace, he elaborated.

"Okay, so, honestly? We're just people watching and shooting the shit, but—the 'game,'" he finger quoted, "is to assign people to your opponent's team to worsen their odds in the event of a hypothetical post-apocalyptic survival scenario, before they can. And your little ginger classmate right there? Nitro-glycerin holder."

Mop-head shook his head with a seething frown. "I'm still mad you called him out before I could."

Helga didn't respond for a bit before giving a wry snort.

"Well then. If I know Eugene," she threw her thumb over her shoulder with a cocky grin, "and I know Eugene, then I guess that means it's game over for you, bucko."

The losing twin rolled his eyes and stuck out his barbelled tongue in disaffected defeat. Helga's lip curled in disgust at the sight.

"Hey, Arnold!"

She swiveled her head back so fast she felt dazed and light-headed. Criminy. Phoebe was right, she really did need to hydrate more. She made it back over to her spot while she cleared her head and squinted to focus her vision, and took her seat by Phoebe, who greeted her with a tiny 'hello again!'

She nodded a greeting back and, hurriedly guzzling her water bottle, she nearly choked when he finally appeared, despite expecting him. Gerald steered him right to the fire starter stations, slapping his back with jocular entertainment as Arnold sauntered along, looking uneager to be there as ever as he obliged his best friend.

"My man Arnold here? Can make a fire faster than you can pop a blister," he hyped, and winked at one camper who gestured his own red and blistered palms open in a universalsign of 'what the fuck'.

"And not only that," he gave a pointed nod at a nearby counselor, who seemed less than thrilled a teen in their midst was apparently a whiz at starting fires, "he is also one of the most responsible guys you'd ever know. Take it away," he handwaved with a bit of casual showmanship, grinning at Arnold's subtle side-eye.

Responsible, huh? She thought with a sneer, crossing her legs. Funny.

Wouldn't bet money on that.

Arnold rolled his shoulders and heaved a soft, resigned sigh before dropping down to his knee, examining his fire station with some puzzlement, as if he were looking for something. He turned to look up at the supervising counselor and made a small gesture with his hand that she didn't understand, but they did, shaking their head. "No, this one's hands only, no bow drills."

A collective chuckle rolled through the gathered campers who'd come to watch after Gerald put him on the spot. Her lips quirked in a crooked grin.

Guess you can't do that trick your Grandpa taught you now, can you, Arnoldo?

Helga joined the crowd with a distinctive, derisive snort that carried.

Arnold's eyes flashed to her with surprised displeasure, like he'd only just realized she was there. There were a few people in the way, but sure enough, he made her out. She met his gaze head on, an arrogant smirk tugging at her cheek. She arched the left side of her unibrow at him in a way that read her taunt loud and clear: 'Hop to it, Hair Boy.'

His stare hardened before finally breaking away, cutting her out of sight as he looked over a selection of already whittled sticks to choose for his spindle, and picked up a sturdy thin one, rolling it in his hands. He discarded it, picking up another and rolled that one, too. He kept it. Sitting down properly, his legs out on either side of his station, he picked up the flaked piece of branch to be used as a hearth board, and pinched it for… some reason. She didn't know, and a few others exchanged looks of amused speculation. He looked around, even turning back behind him like he was looking for something missing, whatever that could be, until he found…a branch. A small pine branch with a sticky looking end, one Eugene had snapped earlier. She frowned.

What did he want that for?

Arnold rolled the snapped end of the branch in his hand, and she saw it glisten in the evening light.

Tree sap. Huh.

He rubbed his palms together and focused back on his station.

Spindle in position, he rolled it slow at first, then sped up and maintained a steady pace as he drilled his palms down again and again, his form tight and fingers flared out.

"... No shit," said someone to her right, she didn't know who, but there was a hush.

Before she knew it, she saw wisps of smoke, and he bore down, putting his whole body into drilling with such a tight speed and intensity that she unconsciously crossed her legs as she leaned forward and watched, jaw slacked.

About 20 seconds later, when the smoke came up in tendrils, he dropped the spindle, sweating and gusting out an exerted sigh, his hair a shaken mess. He gathered the soft starter to the smoking point and blew, thicker tendrils of smoke wafting up through the straw. He carefully lifted the starter and shifted onto one knee, blowing long, gentle, and slow into the smoking clutch in his hand.

As he blew his breath and the coal caught, his eyes lifted up to hers again through his fallen hair, smoldering as their hunter green reflected the first red spark of embers.

Helga forgot how to breathe.

He crouched down, slowly placing the caught tinder under the fire station's small, half-opened teepee campfire structure, blew through the opening long and slow… and watched her again as the flames caught.

Gerald whooped as the gathered crowd, who'd become swept up in the process, cheered.

When he looked away at last she fell back and panted, catching her breath.

Oh, my self-chained Prometheus

Who eats his own liver in spite

How you call again

To days you gave man fire
Flaring the scorned hearth of my heart

And yet, oh
You do so fan those flames
And much too dangerously
My love, my conquest
Careful lest you burn me up
Tethered tight

I'll burn you too

Overcome, she hardly heard Curly as he was dragged away from the site by several counselors over whistles and scattered applause, screaming, "But how come I'm not allowed to start a fire?!"

… … …

Author's note: Breathing