INSPIRED BY: iswearfealtytolexa (Tumblr)

Chapter 1

A small smile came upon Clarke Griffin's face as she felt the spring wind blow across her face, picking up a few loose strands of blonde hair that had somehow managed to escape her twisted bun. She enjoyed the way she could feel the first tendrils of spring hang in the air, the way it slowly began to warm the city of Washington D.C. to prepare for summer time. Today was one of those where it was warm enough to sit in a light blazer but too cold to take it off, one of those where she liked to sit on a bench in the park between her campus, her studio and the mall, where she really liked to stroll about sometimes to clear her head if she needed to take a step back from all of the essays, when Raven or Octavia had classes at university themselves or were otherwise occupied.

Inhaling deeply, she let the soft smell of blossoming flowers and herbs fill her nostrils. It was a wonderful scent, and she felt lucky that she was not one of the unfortunate who were allergic to pollen or other things this time of year, as she had learned a lot of people were. The percentages she had seen in class had surprised her a bit. She never would have imagined those to be that high. Blue eyes fluttered open, and twenty-two-year-old Clarke's gaze travelled across the lawn, the stream, the benches, the very flowery scenery. She was not the only one who had come to enjoy the rays of sunlight there.

She saw first-year students' attempts to study from the books laid open before them, most getting too distracted by their friends to achieve such. They would go back to their dorms as the evening fell without having done anything at all. Clarke's smile got bigger as she remembered her own first year ── or, first years ── at university. She had been sort of shy at first, had been an one of those 'ideal students' in the first months, but then Raven and Octavia and she had started to do more things together, as she had gotten to know them better… With Raven in particular, in the house, Clarke Griffin had really had to learn how to study with distractions.

Then her gaze fell upon a slightly older girl a small distance away from her, sat on one of her knees and holding a professional-looking single-lens camera. The blonde noted that the girl who held the camera seemed casually dressed only, in dark jeans and a navy university sweater, but she had to say that her 'subject', by lack of another word, looked like a whole other type of woman to her, as she let her blue eyes slide over long and unruly dark curls that really characterized the girl before the camera. A soft yellow flower carefully tucked in-between them, Clarke noted, created rather nice, seemingly unintended, contrasts.

Clarke couldn't help the shiver that suddenly ran down her spine as her eyes fell on the girl's bare arms ── for her, it was still too cold to be without her blazer or jacket. The girl's bright yellow skirts were nearly the exact same color as the sunflowers her companion had picked as the perfect spot to stop and take a few pictures. Whereas the girl's style seemed a tad teenager-like, Clarke could tell by the way she behaved that she was just a bit older: she guessed early twenties, maybe a year or two her senior.

She could not put her finger on what it was, exactly, in the dynamic between the two that interested the blonde, but Clarke's interests were strangely sparked. The two girls seemed incredibly different, yet not. The way the photographer ── since Clarke didn't know their names, obviously ── turned this way and that to try and get the best shots seemed similar to how the photographed ── again, by lack of their name ── moved, somehow. Clarke Griffin was intrigued. Maybe they had been close friends forever and had adopted each other's mannerisms a bit? Briefly, she wondered if the girls might be more than friends and that that could explain it. However, in Clarke's rather limited experience, gay women didn't really wear attires like the curly-haired woman did. The photographer's choice of dress did fit with Clarke's image of lesbian women a bit better. She squinted her eyes, focused on the girly-girl's smile, checked if she saw more than friendliness, but she couldn't tell.

With a sigh, she decided that it didn't matter whether they were more than friends or not. She didn't know if it was the mystery she couldn't quite solve or not that made her fixate so much on them and feel compelled somehow, to freeze the scene before her. She blinked, and the twenty-two-year-old looked down at the sketchbook that lay in her lap, her pencil frozen on top of it. She took a hold of both items as she redirected her eyes to the two women by the sunflowers. Blindly, she turned the page so that she had an empty one under her hands again. She doubted whether she would finish the sketch that she had started earlier, of the tree by the flowing stream, but that mattered very little. She had more than one of such half-finished pieces in her sketchbook then, but it was the drawing, the creating, itself she liked most, not only getting to finish it. Of course, it brought her happiness when she could finish sketches, and fulfillment, but it wasn't of the most importance. It was all about finding things she thought were worthy of being put down on paper by her hand and as such getting captured, in time and in space, forever. The sight before her was one of those things she felt truly worthy, despite the fact she didn't know why it spoke to her, exactly.

Clarke's eyes trailed between the couple she attempted to draw as well as the paper on which she attempted to do so, noting angles, lines, shapes, before reproducing them on the page that was not empty anymore. The blonde's hand continued to float across the white sheet, creating lines ── bolder lines, softer lines ── as her gaze flashed back to the scene she attempted to freeze on paper at least every few seconds she could. Her main sketch was finished fast, as often was the case with Clarke's drawings, but it was the shading, the perfecting, the details that specifically characterized that scene and made it unique in every way, unlike other, however similar, things in the world, that took most of Clarke's time. Clarke's sketch might have started to take its shape relatively quickly, and one might have already started to see some sort of semblance to the result in it, but that's where it only started for the blonde, really.

The next time she looked up, to try to get the right shape of the soft yellow flower in the girly-girl's hair, she noted that she had risen to her feet, ready to take leave with the photographer-girl. Clarke couldn't help notice the way the 'girlier', taller girl leaned in slightly more than she thought friends would do as her companion showed her the display of her camera, undoubtedly to show her some if not all of the shots she had just taken. She saw how the two offered each other smiles, how they reached for each other's hands naturally, as if they hadn't known different in their entire lives. Maybe they hadn't either, Clarke considered. Well, they were definitely more than friends, she decided, as she saw both girls hold onto each other's hands tightly, while beginning to make way to the more flowery part of the park and, also, one of several exits. Clarke Griffin was very happy with her life the way it was, but when she saw such happy couples, sometimes, the blonde wondered if she would experience things like that, too.

Momentarily, Clarke felt the strange need to get to her feet as well and follow them, to see if the smaller girl would take more of those pictures, to get the detail she really needed to finish what she had just started. She tried to bear in mind that she was not a stalker and that she would not go for that option. She felt her heart sink a bit when she looked down at her unfinished sketch, though. This was one of those very few drawings she had ever started that really got to her, that she really wanted to complete, as if her soul couldn't rest if she didn't. Those feelings weren't unknown to her, but still, they were rare, and she couldn't say that she had ever experienced them when she had decided to draw a lesbian couple in the park.

Maybe they would be there when she was again, sometime. Clarke Griffin had hope.

Author's Note: Please review. I'm on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr as well, by the way ── feel free to hop on and have a look and follow me; I'm BrokePerception on all three!