"Aren't you going to pitch up your tent?"
Milo finished tying a loose knot around a stake and stood up.
"Uh, I did."
Vinny didn't look convinced. He shoved his bedroll into Milo's arms and wordlessly took over the mess of a tent.
"Sorry," Milo said lamely. "I guess I'm a little rusty at this. I haven't gone camping since…well, since the last time my grandpa took me!"
At that, Milo got a distant look in his eye. Eleanor loved when Milo talked about his grandfather. He was usually so serious and studious that it was refreshing when he softened and began to actually open up about himself and his past. In the years that she'd known him, he rarely talked about himself other than his quest for Atlantis. She saw glimpses of the private side of Milo when he told stories about his childhood with Thaddeus.
"I never got to meet your grandfather," Audrey mused, sitting in the entrance of her tent. "What was he like?"
Milo smiled as he lay his mat in the tent - properly pitched, thanks to Vinny. He looked at Eleanor, whose tent was next to Audrey's, with disbelief. His expression said, Can you believe we're actually conversing with these people?!
Eleanor was glad to finally be making friends. Rather, Milo was making friends. Eleanor wasn't sure where she stood with the group. She had yet to make herself an invaluable member of the team.
"Where do you begin?" came Milo's reply to Audrey. "He was like a father to me, really. My parents died when I was a little kid and he took me in."
Eleanor saw the looks of sympathy pass between the other members of the crew. Milo didn't seem to notice. He actually started chuckling to himself.
"What is it?" Audrey asked.
"One time, when I was eight, we were hiking along this stream and I saw something shining in the water. It was a genuine arrowhead!" Milo began excitedly. "Well, you'd think I'd found a lost civilization, the way Grandpa carried on about it. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that the arrowhead was just some compressed shale mixed with zinc pyrite that had fractured into an isosceletic traingulate."
Everyone but Moliere stared blankly after Milo's observation.
"Say, Audrey," Milo stated as he shook away the memory. "No offense, but how does a teenager become the chief mechanic of a multimillion dollar expedition?"
Eleanor could hardly believe that Milo would ask this. Audrey was young, but she'd already made quite an impression on them both…or so Eleanor had believed. When had Milo gotten so comfortable with Audrey?
"Well," Audrey shrugged, pulling off her work boots. "I took this job when my dad retired. The funny thing was, he always wanted sons, right? One to run his machine shop and the other to be middleweight boxing champion. But…he got my sister and me instead."
"So…" Eleanor piped in, putting the pieces together between Audrey's unconventional career and her father's dream. "What happened to your sister?"
"She's 24 and 0 with a shot at the title next month," Audrey stated matter-of-factly, but the corners of her lips betrayed the immense pride she felt for her sister. "Anyway, I'm saving up so my Papi and I can open another shop."
Slowly, the others opened up about their history too. Dr. Sweet had been educated through college, war, and an Arapaho medicine man. Vinny had been a florist before discovering his true calling as a demolition expert after a freak accident at the Chinese laundry. Sylvia caught a love of languages as a youth through the kind old professor her mother cleaned for.
Rather than join in the sharing, Moliere burrowed himself in the ground just outside the line of tents.
"What's Mole's story?" Milo asked curiously.
Audrey took a breath in preparation, but Sweet quickly cut her off.
"Trust me on this one; you don't want to know. Audrey, don't tell him. You shouldn't have told me, but you did, and now I'm telling you," he pointed at Milo with all seriousness. "You don't wanna know."
"Eleanor, you didn't tell us about yourself," Audrey said, much to Eleanor's surprise.
"I…I don't think there's much to say," Eleanor confessed.
"Sure there is," Sylvia encouraged. "Tell us."
"I was born in England," Eleanor began hesitantly. "I was sent to the States for boarding school because my mother always seemed to be ill. When she died a few years later, I never heard from my father again. My grandfather, Mr. Whitmore, was the first family I really ever had. I suppose I'm like Milo in that way."
The others looked at each other sadly, like they had done after Milo shared. Milo, however, was beaming at her. She was always so shy in front of others that he filled with pride in the rare moments that she opened up and endured the spotlight.
"I think it's time to tuck in, eh guys?" Audrey suggested. She smiled at Eleanor for the first time since they had met before closing the flap on her tent.
The others started to follow suit, but Vinny gestured toward the strange formation hanging from the roof of the cave.
"Is that thing going to keep glowing?" he asked angrily. An eerie green-yellow light shone from the many openings in the rocky chandelier.
"It's natural phosphorescence…so probably," Milo answered with a grimace.
"It's going to keep me up all night, I know it," Vinny grumbled, pulling his tent closed.
"Goodnight!" Milo whispered to Eleanor. "Good work today!"
Eleanor rolled her eyes at Milo and waved before retreating into her tent. Was she actually making friends? Maybe this trip wouldn't be so bad after all.