Olivier-Land

"If I write you, will you write me back?" Natalie asked quietly. She didn't want to write him and then get her hopes up if a response wasn't going to come.

She was most taken with the prospect of his family going on holiday in France and writing back and forth, but she didn't know if his parents would listen to him, if he tried to get them to go away for a while.

Natalie was a little worried to write Landon any letters. She didn't want to write him pages and pages of how much she missed him and England and wished she could be there if he was only going to return it with a short note back. It wasn't going to stop her from writing to him though. She would just have to remember to keep her letters from going on and on and on.

She righted herself in the water and swam back over to him. "You're a meanie, you know that?" she poked him in the arm playfully. "How long do you think before they send Gabi back to fetch us? I give it fifteen minutes tops," she grinned. She just hoped that her father wasn't the one who came to get them, otherwise they were in for an awkward march back to the house.

Natalie wrapped her arms around Landon's neck again. "Well, we have a few options: we could go back of our own free will and have to explain why we're all wet, we could wait for someone to come fetch us and have them see for themselves why we're all wet, or we could go Neb hunting," she grinned. "What do you say?"

She laid the options out for him and decided to let him choose which one they did.

Natalie cocked her head to the side and looked at Landon with wide, innocent eyes. "What kind of questions?" she asked, truly not sure what he had meant by that. She knew what she kind of, sort of, may have wanted it to mean, but that didn't mean it was what he was thinking of.

Natalie laughed. "Well, then we just say that we went swimming, which we did, and that we're just friends, which we are," she replied. "Come on, let's go back before they send out a search party."

She let go of Landon and swam back to the other side of the lake and got out of the water. She squeezed the water out of her hair as best she could, but she was sure she still looked like a drowned rat. She slipped her flip-flops back on her feet and waited for Lando to be ready.

Natalie nodded. It was probably a good idea to not ruin his shirt, although her parents would be amused. She took his hand and started to walk back in the direction of her house.

It wasn't a long walk, no more than five minutes or so. When they were just about out of the trees, she poked Landon's shoulder and said, "You're it!" before running off onto the back lawn of her house.

Natalie was surprised to be tackled so quickly. She thought she was a fast runner, but apparently she wasn't as fast as she thought she was. Or Landon was just much faster. She was about to try to get up and run away again when her mother opened the back door of their house. She raised an eyebrow at the pair, but did not say anything about it, only telling them that dinner was ready.

Natalie hopped to her feet and led Landon inside where, thankfully, Gabi was waiting with a shirt for Landon that had probably belonged to their father at some point. Their mother must have said something about it to them.

In the kitchen, there was a large spread waiting for them with all sorts of different food, which meant that Natalie's mom had been cooking up a storm since deciding that Landon would stay for dinner. She told them to pick whatever they wanted and that they'd be eating on the back patio. Her mom left them to select their food and come outside when they were ready.

"I think she got excited that you were staying for dinner," Natalie giggled, looking at the abnormally large selection of food. She passed Landon a plate and then took one for herself, which she loaded up with a little bit of almost everything.

Natalie waited for Landon to make a plate, and then led him in the opposite direction of where her family was eating. It would have been easy to do what she was told, but she thought it might be awkward for Landon, eating with her family in a semi-formal setting like that, so she decided to break the rules and take him somewhere else. "Come on," she whispered, sneaking past the window that her family could have seen them through if they'd been paying attention.

She took him up the stairs and down the hall to the last door on the left. "This is my room," she said, nudging the slightly ajar door open with her toe. It was decorated mainly in nature colors, although there were splashes of purple here and there. She had a bookshelf that was more full of random objects that she had either found or made than it was of books. There was a desk that was half covered in art supplies, and her bed was pushed against the far wall, just under one of the large windows. The paintings on the walls were all done by her, ranging in subject from her sister to one of the Hogwarts grounds to one of an army of Finkledrops invading Lut-land.

She sat with her plate in the middle of the floor. "So, what do you think?" she asked grinning. She was proud of her room. She thought it was a very good representation of her.

Natalie took a couple bites of her food. Of course her mother's cooking would taste simply delicious. "Why can't she cook like this on a normal day?" she complained, taking another bite. "I swear, if you weren't here, this would be barely edible."

She heard a door open and close downstairs, meaning that someone had come in the house. She got up silently and slowly closed her door so it wouldn't make any noise. She crept back to her spot and sat down. "Hopefully they won't come looking for us," she said.

Natalie smiled and nodded in agreement. That was part of the beauty of being her; if her parents did come looking for them, they would automatically discount her room because it was so mundane. They'd probably check every room in the house but her room, then they'd go outside, and then they'd give up because she was nowhere to be found.

"I was planning on keeping you around anyway. This is just an added perk," she stuck her tongue out at Landon. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."

Natalie was a little confused at first, until she realized that Landon was kidding. Then she just felt silly for thinking for a minute that he was serious about wanting to get rid of her. She didn't want him to get rid of her, and she didn't want to get rid of him. Not one bit.

She scooted from her spot across from Landon and moved so that she was sitting next to him. "You know, yours looks better than mine," she said. She took her fork and stole a little bite of his food, quickly eating it. "Yep, definitely better," she decided.

Smiling as Landon tried to protest, Natalie didn't feel even the slightest bit bad about stealing his food. "You're welcome!" she said happily, though she knew he was being sarcastic.

She smiled again when he kissed her cheek. "Is that why it taste's better? I wasn't aware that you were some kind of expert on the subject. Please, tell me more," she rested her head against his shoulder and stole another bite of his food, her own plate forgotten on the floor beside her.