Work Text:
“You’re not gonna believe this,” was the first thing Nathaniel heard when he stepped into his studio, and he immediately felt he start of a headache coming on.
“Alya, if you keep breaking into my studio I might have to start calling the police. This is why we have phones, remember? So you can contact me in advance.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” Alya replied, not sounding apologetic at all, “but this is really important and I knew it couldn’t wait a second.”
Placing his bag of art supplies next to his easel, Nathaniel gazed mournfully at his favorite chair—the chair currently occupied by Alya, and in fact the only chair to be found in the cramped art studio. It was too early to muster up the energy required to budge Alya, so Nathaniel settled down next to the easel to wait out her upcoming spiel.
Alya straightened up once Nathaniel was seated and dug her phone from her backpack. “Okay, so, last night...I got closer to one of those things than I ever have before! This is the best video I’ve managed to get of them—this is totally proof that they’re out there! See, look,” she said, shoving her phone in his face. Nathaniel grabbed the appliance from her hand and played the blurry video. Ayla’s “proof” consisted of shaky flip-phone footage of a nighttime forest. Ayla’s muffled whispers were heard as the camera focused on a reddish figure. A flash of green appeared from deeper in the forest, and the footage ended.
“I had to put my phone away, ‘cause I think it was scaring them? But once I put it away, I was able to get even closer! They weren’t aggressive at all, and they seemed so intelligent, so I don’t think I want to call them monsters anymore. They’re more like...like creatures, or cryptids.”
Nathaniel patiently waited until she was done talking, then interjected. “Okay, so you have proof now, even if it’s really vague. Why, exactly, did you need me to see this?”
Alya rolled her eyes. “First of all, we’re friends, even if you won’t admit it, so you’re always going to get a sneak peak of my creature sightings before everyone else. Second, I’m sure you noticed how blurry my video is. I need you to draw the creatures so I have a clear reference of what they look like. It won’t even be a speculative sketch this time! I wrote down everything I could remember about them. I swear, one of them kind of looked like a huge ladybug, and the other was, like, some kind of panther thing.”
“Okay,” Nathaniel said, massaging his temples, “okay, let’s pretend that the creatures are real—a fact not disputed by the terrible quality of the video, by the way. Why can’t you just have Marinette draw them for you?”
“Marinette’s a fashion artist, not an artist artist! Besides, she always gets weird whenever I mention the creatures. You’re clearly the best candidate I know!”
Looking at the girl in front of him, making a horrible attempt at puppy dog eyes, Nathaniel couldn’t keep back the sigh that escaped from his lips. How many times had he aided Alya in her mad goose chase already? How many sketches had gone towards her wild goal of “educating” the world about the existence of monsters?
If asked, most of the townspeople Nathaniel knew would describe Alya as crazy; others would call her obsessive. Nathaniel agreed with them wholeheartedly. Still, watching the enthusiastic sparkle in her eyes when she spoke of passions brought other adjectives to mind. Alya might have been crazy, but she was driven, compassionate, energetic.
Though she drive him up a wall, to Nathaniel, Alya was completely beautiful.
A smile crept on to his face as much as he tried to keep it down, and Alya grinned, knowing she’d won him over. Both of the room’s occupants could tell his next sigh was just for show.
“Alright, get off my chair and I’ll get a sketch for you.”
“Yes! I knew I could count on you, tomato-head.”
“...I’ll help you if you promise never to call me that again.”
“Deal.”