i.
Lysette turns to Aether when she needs inspiration.
It’s something she’s always done since they were children; when she was bored out of her mind without much to do, she would roll over and stare at the other girl, who would be reading or studying sheet music. “Prompt me.”
Aether wouldn’t look over at her, barely breaking contact with her sheet music. “That one boy in class you’d always stare at.”
“No!” Aether barely stifled a smile. She didn’t have to look over at Lysette to know that the other was turning a light red. “Something else.” At that, Aether hummed and tapped her chin lightly for a few moments, suggested a couple of more prompts until Lysette took the one she found she could work with.
“How about this,” Aether finally said. “Draw me.”
“I—what?”
She shrugged and tore her eyes away from the papers to look at her. Lysette sat up, peering at her curiously. “If you’re okay with it, I mean. Do any medium you want. Just draw me and do whatever else you want.”
A smile tugged at the corner of the redhead’s lips. “Aren’t you conceited?”
“You can’t blame me. I like it when you draw me.” Aether then looked back at her sheet music, but Lysette froze slightly, staring at her before breaking out into a wider smile than her previous one.
It continued even after Aether left England and when they both moved on to college. Aether would glance at her inbox from time to time during the day, sometimes finding an email from Lysette with two simple words: prompt me. She would send prompts, five maximum, and the other would only reply once having completed their artwork. It usually came in form of an attached picture; Aether would end up saving it on her laptop, kept away in a folder labelled Lys’ Art.
Lysette was barely embarrassed—they reached the point wherein she could comfortably ask for prompts in the middle of conversation or in the middle of the night. Aether would reply a few minutes to a couple of hours later, and Lysette usually started when the right prompt hit.
(She found that some of her favourite works were prompted.)
It happened again when she visited Atlanta for the feature on HQ: Lysette stayed in a hotel, Aether was busy working in HQ. She had a phone with a sim card that worked in the States, and she was bored.
To: Aether Maxwell
prompt me?
To: Lysette Cross
Give me a moment. :) But don’t do the prompt yet. Maybe we can meet up later?
To: Aether Maxwell
what why? what happened?
To: Lysette Cross
Nothing happened, really. I just want to watch you, if that’s okay?
To: Aether Maxwell
O F COURSE YOU CAN
pick me up hurry i’m starting to pack my ~supplies~
(They eventually did meet—and Lysette found that it was better that way.)
ii.
Eugene seeks inspiration from the oddest of sources.
It’s why he always brings a notebook with him—no, it’s why he always brings at least three notebooks with him on a daily basis. One of them was a smaller, pocket-sized maroon one purely for random prompts he’d find or sentences that couldn’t leave his head. The other two were of the same thickness but different color; Eugene kept the black one for writings unconcerned with his projects while the white one was purely dedicated to his more serious works.
“I can’t understand how you’re able to keep up with all of them,” Lysette told him over lunch. Aaron merely watched while drinking his coffee. Eugene had taken out the maroon one and scribbled into one of the pages with a black pen. “I just have one big one for my artwork and another for my ideas. That’s it.”
“It’s one of the things about being a writer, I suppose.” Aaron mused. “Don’t want one project to overlap with another.”
“Unless it’s crossover. See, Aaron understands. It’s not a difficult concept,” Eugene argued. Lysette merely gave a shrug of the shoulders and drank her tea, Eugene looking back at the notebook and continuing to write. “If you fixed up your files more and invested in more notebooks than sketchpads, you’d be able to access all your ideas easier.”
“I have my laptop, I don’t need that.” she argued back. “And I work best on the spot, Ramsay. Don’t judge me.”
“I’m not judging you. I’m just lightly offering—”
“That’s definitely judging,” Aaron joked.
Despite Lysette’s teasing, Eugene knew that she didn’t mean it. It didn’t really bother him; the banter between them was something normal, something already integrated into their friendship.
But it was true that he liked to keep his notes neater. He appreciated it just as much as he appreciated post-it notes and different colored markers, appreciated cork boards and laying his ideas out for him to see. It gave him a thrill—having that much control over his words was something he loved; more so the feeling he got when he knew that he was creating something he loved.
When he got stuck, Eugene usually dropped everything else (aside from the pocket notebook) and wandered outside. He left his phone behind and wandered wherever he could, scribbling down anything that would catch his attention and hopefully get him back into writing.
Sometimes it took only a couple of minutes. Other times it stretched into hours. On the particularly worse times, writer’s block would stretch into days, and it was something he detested. Eugene would turn cranky, would require more caffeine than usual, and lock himself away from the rest of the world.
Eventually, it would pass. An idea would come, a word would stick—and he found himself back in the groove as if he had never left in the first place.
iii.
Aaron has a certain knack with photography; he’s able to turn the most mundane of objects into something completely thoughtful with just the right settings. It’s something he enjoys doing when bored—it’s reached the point wherein he has his own folder for the semi-deep images that are, in reality, mere household objects just laid out to the right angle.
To him, anything and everything is worthy of being captured. When Lysette protested that she didn’t have any good angles, Aaron disagreed and said that everyone had their angles—it just came to the photographer to see what exactly that angle was.
(And yes, he ended up capturing her angle.)
While the rest of them thought that he brought his baby 24/7, Aaron actually preferred to leave it behind when he didn’t need it for work. He was already happy with his camera—an iPhone with custom lens attached—and felt no need to bring out his baby more often. It wasn’t a fear thing, but more of a practicality kind of reasoning.
“I don’t want to lug it around,” he told them. “And I’m already okay with my phone and the lens I’ve got. No need to make things more complicated.”
He found his inspiration in people. Aaron didn’t admit it out loud, but one his hobbies was staying around META’s offices and taking pictures of unsuspecting people. Some caught him but paid it no attention, others intentionally struck weird poses in the middle of the hall for him to capture.
If anything, it helped with getting to know people. He was able to find out that Lysette was a naturally self-assured person—she liked standing with her hands on her hips, her form straight yet easy at the same time. She was a natural extrovert, and that kind of image of her was easily reflected from the photos he took.
Eugene was something else. Aaron found that Eugene’s stronger photos were when he was sitting down, busy scribbling into his notebook. More often than not, his sleeve would be rolled up and he would squint at the pages from behind his glasses. He was quieter but still made a statement: most often, this was obvious when he was busy writing.
People were somehow easier to read in photography versus everything else. It was with that skill of his that he was able to gauge Lysette and Eugene as genuinely good people, and he found that he was thankful for it.
Unlike them, he wasn’t the type to fall into some kind of artistic block. Aaron merely didn’t believe in them—he instead thought that his own brain needed a break every once in a while, regardless of whether he was tired because of doing something he loved or not.
(And besides—photography was something else entirely.)
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