- He wasn't going to say that leaving home was hard. It wasn't. Asher was always eager to leave somewhere to go somewhere else; it was his nature. Forever the traipsing magician. And he wasn't going to say that leaving his mother was hard either. It wasn't. Aside from the fact that he'd been attending the camp for years now, he never had difficulty leaving people behind. It wasn't out of a callousness or a lack of attachment. On the contrary. He was always secure in his belief that he'd meet these people again someday, and when he did, he'd have all new stories to tell.
As it was, despite the fact that Asher's leg was shaking, his fingers twitching, the car door already open, his mother was holding onto his shoulder, saying a lengthy teary-eyed goodbye. The two of them had always made the trip down to California a road trip, and he's driven most of the way down to give his mother rest for the ride back up. His neck was stiff and his legs ached for movement, anxious and restless less to arrive at camp and more, at this point, to just get out of the damn car. Midway through her long checklist of things he should have packed, he leaned in and gave her a hasty kiss on the cheek before quickly climbing out through the open door and into the fresh air. He breathed deep, enjoying the crisp breeze blowing through the trees and the consequent rustling of the bright green leaves. He loved the sounds of the forest. Definitely one of his favorite parts about the camp.
He ducked his head under the frame of the car door, still smiling, to say his own goodbye to his mother. "Viszlát, Mama. Találkozunk két hónap." A farewell in Hungarian, his latest endeavor, that she may not have understood the exact meaning of, but knew the general gist of the words. He said the same thing every year. Two years ago, it had been in Spanish, last year in Czech. She smiled back and, at last, let him leave, shooing him away from the car and towards the camp grounds.
It didn't take him long to reach his cabin; in his four years there, he'd found the quickest way there, a route that didn't involve following the dirt paths crafted by the camp staff. He unpacked quickly, leaving most of his things in his bag, which he threw up onto one of the top bunks. He liked the top-- better vantage point, good for observing all the people that came in and out. Same reason he often climbed trees, really.
He didn't stay long after laying claim to a bed. There were no people in the cabin anyways (boring), and he knew there'd be the welcoming program outside. Every year, like clockwork. Also one of the few times everybody was gathered in the same place at the same time, making it an event of particular interest. If one was paying attention, there were plenty of secrets to be discovered when the entire camp population was put together.
His walk towards the main hall was fairly uneventful. He picked out a few familiar faces in the crowd, held short conversations with a couple. Even to him, the amount of people he'd met there over the years he could now call something akin to 'friend' was surprising. He was strange, or, at the very least, others treated him that way. He was perfectly content on his own, of course, hardly noticed the difference between having company or not, but it was always curious to him the way boundaries seemed to be broken down within the camp grounds. Sometimes he felt as though it were an entirely separate world from the real one, the one everyone went back to at the end of their summer stay. He wondered how many of these people he would be speaking to under normal circumstances.
Still, he saw no sign of the two people he was eager to see most, both close members of his team. He was unsure, though, if they simply hadn't arrived yet or if they'd already made their way into the main hall. He drifted, half letting the crowd carry him, indoors, searching for either of the familiar faces of Garrett or Eleanor.