🕯️⋆⁺☾✧₊˚.⋆⁺.₊✧₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧₊˚.⋆⁺₊✧₊˚.⋆☾⋆🕯️

₊.˚⋆⁺☾✧₊˚.⋆⁺.₊✧₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧₊˚.⋆⁺₊✧₊˚.⋆☾⋆˚.₊

There was a time when what you wanted more than anything else in the world was to be loved entirely. Tenderly, messily - painfully. Faults and all. Pined and whined and craved and cried for it. Then, when you least expected it, weren't searching for it at all, devotion crept out of the dark woods and flattened, squeezing beneath the closed door of your heart. Made a cozy little home for itself. Locked in a too-small cage, it now beats at the undersides of your soft flesh, strums a playful tune on your heartstrings, and revels in how you twist in agony.

So, no. You don't want love.

What you actually want, more than anything and everything, is to be remembered.

If everyone gets a legacy, the one you've left at home before your trip isn't much to be proud of. A few scattered friends, lovers kept at arms-length. Scant calls to your brother and even scanter ones to your dad. The tombstone that rests above your empty grave will simply read your name. Maybe a "beloved child and sibling" for added flair.

While your friends from college got grown-up jobs, careers even, you were blacking out at bars. They got engaged, you got laid-off from a job that you didn't need your college degree for. The friend eternally stuck at twenty-two. You were kind, you were sloppy, you were fun. But you weren't Much at all. You hadn't cared then, just waited for what the next day held.

Ignoring the forest for the trees.

Suddenly, though, it matters. You don't want the last thing that people remember you by to be the headline "rookie hiker goes missing in the woods" or "woman found murdered on the PCT."

Which, you suppose, is why you've taken a shine to John's camera. It's the last chance to tell the world who you are before the wind carries away your voice. Maybe one day, months or even years from now, when your bones are found bleaching in the white hot of the relentless sun, these images will stand as a testament, if lacking, of how you lived during your final weeks. How you cried, how you laughed—how you endured.

I was here. I was real.

Initially, you resented it, this tangible extension of his obsession. Watched it as though it would move on its own while your back was turned. If you stared beyond the stretch of trees with your head turned just so, cast your gaze into the corners of your eyes, maybe, just maybe you would catch sight of the blurry thing defying logic. Hated it wholly, this harbinger of your misfortune. Archivist of your folly and pain.

The first time you picked up his camera - well, second time, really - it was out of spite, a desire to take something of his and claim it for your own, if only for a little while. Mar it with your dirty, greasy fingerprints. Stuff a strand of your hair in the inner hardware somewhere as evidence. Rub your scent on it for the search dogs. It laid dormant while you seethed with resentment. Even considered smashing it with a rock, just to see how he would react.

The next time you held it, you were struck by the weight of it. It was heavy in your palms, heavier than expected, like it contained a hundred worlds, a thousand secrets. It was after an exhausting day of marching under an endless blue sky and your back ached, your foot throbbed, and your spirits were low. Plopped onto a soft patch of grass for a break, you glanced at the offensive object hanging from his bag and picked it up out of boredom.

Things didn't go so well for you the last time you nosed around in his belongings.

But - lessons never did come easily to you, so, you turned it on, flipped it around to look at the lens, stared at your own reflection as you haphazardly fiddled with the buttons, trying to figure out the controls, when - click! Oh. Well, there. You got yourself. Well, part of yourself, anyway. A nice part, at least.

Then it occurred to you: maybe you had more control over your legacy than you thought.

And that was that. From that point on, the camera was in your possession more than his. Trees, birds, rocks, water. All of it was fair game. You weren't even sure who these pictures were for.

Still. It mattered. You began to see the world at a distance, through another's eyes. You got to record your comings and goings and everything in-between. Including John. He knew you were "sneaking" pictures of him, but said nothing about you holding onto his property, content that you were content. Even posed a few times for you, just to see you brighten up.

It was when you began to capture the intimate moments, the painfully vulnerable ones shared by the two of you that a truth, cold and devastating, revealed itself: you were only taking these because you both knew no one else would ever see them.

"You've already done this one - do a different shape. Something spooky."

"The only one I know is a dog."

"Oh, a big scary dog then. I'm shaking."

Followed by said shadow-shape attacking your neck, reducing you into a puddle of giggles.

"You're gonna kill the battery on that."

The gentle warning comes from beside the fire, where he's hunched over, diligently tending to it, not even looking at you. It's the last battery pack you have, too. When this one dies, you won't have any other chances to leave behind your mark. Your memory.

So be it.

Maybe there is something to the old myth after all, that they steal your soul or whatever, because with every shutter, every click, every blink of the lens, you feel a piece of yourself slipping away.

Click.

Stretching your legs, you join John beside the fire, dropping the camera into his lap before impaling a marshmallow on your stick and shoving it into the fire. Watching the flames dance around it before the sugar slowly catches. The heat overtakes the treat entirely, quickly turning it until a molten glob encased in char.

The blackened shell sticks to your fingers as you stuff it into your mouth. Sweet and bitter. The remaining goo goes back into the fire for another round.

"Why is this always so dirty after you've used it? ...Is that a lipstick print on the lens?"

₊.˚⋆⁺☾✧₊˚.⋆⁺.₊✧₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧₊˚.⋆⁺₊✧₊˚.⋆☾⋆˚.₊

The Rustic Wild