The fire crackled quietly, embers floating up into the sky, disappearing without a trace. Kenzie pushed the logs around with a large poker. Wendy stared at the wood burning on the bottom of the pit, imagining a small dragon ready to hatch and poke its little head out. Lee strummed his guitar, stopping every now and then to check his notepad full of notes and chords. His fingers squealed on the strings. “I’ve almost got it,” he whispered. Colin joined in with his ukulele, strumming a happy tune.
Andy had their camera out, filming their cabin mates sitting around the fire. They moved backward, setting the video camera up in a tree branch. Andy made sure the camera was filming and that everyone was in the shot. Once it was good, they joined the others, sitting down on a log near the fire. Their twin, Amy, wrote furiously in a notebook bought from the camp store. Her red pen crossed the page in a blur, leaving no line undone.
Wendy stretched and gazed at the stars above her. A few of them were out, twinkling and shimmering in the fire’s smoke. She grabbed a pair of wooden sticks from Kenzie, and took a bag full of s’mores ingredients from Bryce, who was passing them out to each of the campers around the fire. Handing one to Robin, she stuck her marshmallow onto the stick, and carefully moved it into the fire. The marshmallow bubbled up for a moment, oozing with sticky goo. Wendy pulled it out of the fire, blowing out the flames still lingering on her marshmallow.
Robin made her own s'more, burning her marshmallow’s every time. Bucky and Felix looked at her with disgust, but Robin shrugged. “What?” she said. “I like my marshmallows very toasty.”
Bucky laughed and returned to his sketchbook. He looked up at the flames, watching as they grew higher and higher in the sky. He added a few lines and created a small scene on his page. Slowly, he transformed his blank page into a little sketch of the campfire, pausing every couple of minutes to check his reference.
Next to him, Felix, Kira, and Sam worked on bracelets and keychains for the cabin, weaving in and out the plastic coords and thin colorful threads. Each one had the camper’s name on it, along with their favorite colors and the color green, to match the cabin’s main color. Sam laughed as she pulled out a misplaced thread, and continued to work on her little craft.
Further away from the campfire’s glow, Thomas and Bennett played a game of corn hole, cheering and groaning with every toss and throw. The bean bags landed on the boards with a loud thump, or in the pile of rocks and pine needles, sliding against the ground.
The fire continued to crackle even as the campers stuck marshmallows inside. Every now and then, more logs or fuel was added to the fire, growing more and more, filling the cool summer night with warmth, hope, and new memories.
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