& have a little faith in me , [josh]

'Look where you're going' would not have been an appropriate scolding for the college student, mostly because he was not going anywhere when the girl bumped into him. Instead, Joshua was glancing at a text from Annabel on his phone and smiling softly to himself—until a weight slammed into him and caused him to lose his grip on the device. "Fuck!" he cursed, fumbling with it for a moment before he secured the phone in his fingers and exhaled in mild relief. It was not like he was short on funds, he could replace it if it broke, but Joshua did not like to be outright wasteful. He'd blow a ton of money on extra sunglasses when he already had about two hundred pairs, sure, but he didn't want to buy another phone if he could avoid it. He had heard the apology but did not recognise the voice and so, after ensuring that his phone was alright, he turned a gray-eyed glare to the intruder of his personal space. "You should watch where you're going." Joshua did not like to be wrong or to own up to mistakes. If there was any plausible way for him to get out guilt, he would. Guilt did not sit well with him. As far as he was concerned, in this situation he had done no wrong. This girl had not been looking where she was going and he was merely an innocent victim of circumstance whose sister was probably wondering why it was taking him so long to get back to her by now. They'd been texting back and forth for several minutes, Joshua avoiding a call thanks to the general commotion of the courtyard at present.

He cocked an eyebrow when she used his name, then realised that he did indeed know who she was. He was good with remembering people and the moment he realised he knew her face, the appropriate name popped into his head. He nodded. "Sandra. I wasn't expecting you to bump into me." His tone was cool, his words suggesting the lack of apology. Joshua was not exactly trying to be rude to her, no, but he wasn't the best at dealing with new people. It took a long time for him to warm up to a person and learn what sort of things they did and did not like in conversation. Whether or not he'd care depended on how close they grew as friends. He did not consider Sandra a friend—no, she was Nell's friend. Probably a mutual friend with another couple of the Earths and Waters he knew, too. Not his own. Joshua hadn't spoken properly with her before. He noticed that she was clutching a teddy bear and wondered why in the hell that was necessary. He glanced at it, considered a remark, restrained himself. He was blunt to the point of being considered rude sometimes but it was not his intent to start an argument. He glanced down at his phone as it vibrated in his hand, then ignored the Water girl for a moment as he tapped out a quick reply to his sister, telling her that he had to go. "Where were you even headed?" He looked back up at Sandra as he pocketed the phone, gaze questioning.

[Gah my posts are shorter today, sorry xD]

Though he'd hung around his new alliance for a good year now, it was still taking some getting used to. Like the fact that they were usually much quicker and more willing to apologise for things, even if those things were not their fault to begin with. Sandra had some fault in the situation (Josh possessing the rest and ignoring this fact) but it still surprised him. The emotion didn't show in his face as he blinked at her, noticing the pink colour to her cheeks. She seemed sincere enough and so he decided that he would believe her, following her gesture toward the Earth elementals in question. With his fiancee being an Earth, Joshua had a respectful fascination with what they could do. He'd given Nell free reign over the garden at their mansion and he loved to see what she did to it each day. "It's fine. They definitely have a talent." There was no smile on his face, no real cheeriness to his words, and yet at the same time Josh was as sincere as she'd been when she apologised to him. He showed it in odd ways and it was not uncommon for people to misconstrue his words, his actions, everything and anything about him when they didn't know him well. He wasn't a particularly odd person, merely hard to get to know. It took persistence and (usually) about a year of effort. Once someone really showed they cared about getting to know him, he'd start to respond. Sometimes. It wasn't always fated to work out, and he couldn't help that, really. It wasn't in his personality to try too hard.

He did indeed assume the comment to be cheek and his gray eyes flashed with subtle warning. Trying to be funny, are you? It seemed to counter the genuine apology from earlier, not clicking to Josh that she could be kidding or simply not realise how her words might be taken. "Hilarious." His voice was dry, expression unamused. This was why so many people gave up in the quest of befriending him. He did not make it easy. Sandra seemed persistently friendly, though, cheery and rather forward with her next words. He paused, not sure whether or not he wanted to humour her at all, then decided it wasn't worth it to walk away quite yet. "I was heading here. I got where I was going." He'd been planning to sit down on one of the benches but they were, as of the current moment, occupied. There was a small open spot beside two friends sitting and laughing but he never felt comfortable sitting too close to people he didn't know. He was not shy, merely not as social as someone from Sandra's element. They'd befriend the scenery if they could, he bet. "Other than that, nothing important." Texting his sister was important, at least to Joshua, but he was not the type of person to open up about things early on in meeting someone. "Why are you carrying that around with you?" He couldn't help it, had to demand an answer for the bear in her arms. It was not spoken as a demand, though, merely an arid question accompanied by a raised eyebrow.

[He's so difficult when you don't know him xD]

He supposed that all elementals had moments where they envied the other five but it seemed Sandra and Josh agreed on something. He certainly wouldn't switch his power if given the chance, either. He did not bother saying this even if it would have given them a topic to relate on. He was a man of few words when you didn't know him well, saying mostly what was necessary and not much more. He was getting better with it, at least he wasn't silent around Sandra, but it was definitely a prominent quality all the same. He considered her with a frown when she apologised yet again. Was she being serious? It was hard to tell with some people. Some faked sincerity extremely well and others were as see-through as glass. He decided, once again, that he would take her word for it. What reason would she have to lie, anyway? If she was trying to be a smart-ass she'd probably have smirked at him when he caught on. That's how Josh saw it. My bad, then. He should have apologised himself, perhaps, for assuming that she was trying to be cheeky with him. He didn't bother. "No reason. I felt like being outdoors, this fit the criteria." He shrugged, not seeming too invested in the conversation. At least she was getting an answer and he hadn't simply walked away yet. He did that sometimes with people who irked him. Sandra was not a friend but she was not someone he considered an enemy.

He listened unsmiling to her explanation about the teddy bear, still not quite understanding the appeal. Annabel had a lot of stuffed animals around her room but she didn't carry them around at school with her. Not when she was younger and certainly not now. Teddy bears were for kids. He almost said something but before he could open his mouth, Sandra seemed to decide it would be a good idea to tell him the bear's name. Luckily for her, that caught his full attention and an understanding flashed in his gray eyes. "Like Theodore... Teddy, I see." I see what you did there. It was witty, he supposed, even though it would fly over the heads of most. Joshua loved history and anything referencing it and so it relaxed him against the blunt comment he might otherwise have made. He didn't necessarily try to be rude to people, he was simply honest to a fault with his opinions. "So you like History, then?" It was the first time he'd shown a real interest in their conversation since she'd forced it on him by bumping into him. He generally didn't invest much in strangers or near-strangers but his intrigue when it came to a favourite subject was too difficult to resist. A few of his friends were also friends of hers and that meant she was alright, he supposed, but he always formed his own opinions of people.

[Y U NO TALK MORE, JOSH? :| ]

Maple Hollow definitely had its good days with weather, though like any place in Canada it had its bad ones as well. It was like their weather couldn't decide whether it wanted to be pleasant or foul and so it simply switched between the two on a regular basis. They hadn't got any snow in July yet but he wouldn't be surprised if it happened in the near future. He nodded in agreement to Sandra's comment. He wondered if she lived there or whether she, like many of the boarding school students, simply went down to the city during the weekends with her friends to really experience the small but interesting settlement for themselves. To call Maple Hollow a sleepy settlement would not be all that accurate, for it wasn't boring so much as it was small. You didn't need hundreds of thousands of people to have a good time, at least not in his opinion. Josh wasn't fond of crowds. "That'll change come winter." He did not like the snow. The cold he could manage, for Joshua was a Fire elemental and there were none more adept to dealing with the cold than they were. The snow was different. Sometimes he wished that Maple Hollow had remained an elemental only settlement. Then you'd be able to tell where Fire elementals had walked in the snow by the perfectly cleared paths through it. Alas, it could not be so. It hadn't been that way in his parents time nor the time before that. There were a lot of humans in the Hollow. He had little sympathy for the first ones to arrive, ruining it for the rest of the population.

He blinked at her excitement, a little surprised by it, but the faintest twitch of his lips suggested that he did not really mind it at all. Joshua was not an overly sociable person but he did have a sense of humour and could find things funny, it was merely a rare occurrence that he actually let others onto this. It had taken him a while to start kidding around with the girl who was now his fiancée. "Clever." Oh, he was sure it had been done before, but at least it was more interesting than naming the bear Teddy for the sake of it being a teddy bear. Some people completely lacked creativity. He still didn't quite get why a teenager such as herself felt the need to cart a bear around with her but he decided against being rude about it. She wasn't that bad, he supposed. "I'm a History major, it sort of comes with the territory." Joshua shrugged, not seeming too interested even though he was. History fascinated him. His cues upon first interacting with someone he didn't know all that well were confusing, mixed signals if there ever were. He could not simply look excited about something when he was, he had to lead them in another direction first. He didn't do it on purpose, it was merely out of habit. Don't seem interested and people will go away, they'll leave you alone, you won't have to let them in. His trust issues were still present after all this time. "Canadian history, U.S. history, World history... I take a number of the classes." That was sort of the point of a major, after all.

[No worries!]

School to Joshua was what could be considered a relatively 'safe' subject. He was not afraid to talk about his majors or the classes he was taking because it was not something he tried to keep a secret, not something he was ashamed of or something so personal that he talked about it only with his close friends. It was also something he defaulted to when he didn't know a person well but wanted to make conversation. 'Hey, how's school going for you?' Most people didn't mind. Some of them complained about their classes, others enthused about things they were actually looking forward to, still others complained about tests or research papers. It was something. So when Sandra asked him, the pause he gave was only to consider how in-depth his answer would be. "For my History major? Well I'm talking ancient civilization and an advanced seminar." Going into the year he'd thought he was going to hate the seminar, required as it was for his major, but he actually found it pretty enjoyable. His Biology major was a lot more hands-on thanks to anatomy and labs but he really loved history and so the lack of physical work didn't bother him all that much. "I'm a double major, too, so there's that." It would have been simpler if the two majors had courses in common but the only one that counted toward both was History of Medicine. It was an interesting class but it was only one class.

The thing he liked the most about college was the freedom, really. He could take courses that he actually wanted rather than being stuck with gym or art. He hadn't liked the required art course because he was only good at plain old sketching and he was bad at gym because he couldn't do the whole 'teamwork' thing. He'd had to talk it out with the administration and do extra credit to make sure he kept his marks up in those classes so that they didn't drag his grades down. Now, in college, he had no excuse not to do his best. He still had to take some general classes like Math and the like but at least art and physical education was out of the question. He liked mathematics because it was like following instructions. As long as you knew what you were doing, it was easy. "Do you plan on going to college here?" He figured it was a general enough question and she was making an effort to converse with him so he might as well show her that he wasn't too impossible. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. He wouldn't have any friends if he didn't eventually relax around people and give them the time of day when they wanted it.

[i hate you for making me research history majors xD]

Joshua usually tried to be general in answering questions about school work, figuring that to go into a long-winded ramble about his studies was also to risk losing his conversation partner somewhere along the way. A physicist could claim they were studying physics and get away with it amongst a crowd of high schoolers, but once they started going in-depth about what they were studying it could blend into a mixture of confusing terms and the like. All the same, Sandra's question was not a difficult one to answer. "Well we're going over the Etruscan civilization at the moment. Studied the Incans and the Aztecs, too, though that was earlier. It's more general than anything." There were specific courses relating to each empire or at least a few of them per term but this was not one of those courses. It was a requirement of the major, though, and it was history, so Joshua was quite content with whatever he was "forced" into studying. There really was no forcing him when it came to school. Really, his parents should be proud that they didn't need to threaten to take away computers or video games (or, in someone like Joshua's case, his books and tennis privileges) in order to get him to pay attention in school. Then again, they'd had to deal with other issues in their place. Like his temper, for example, and the fact that it got him into a lot of trouble at school when he'd get into fights.

Was she genuinely interested in what he was studying or was the Water girl merely trying to be friendly? It was hard for Joshua to tell and at this point he didn't really mind either way. It wasn't like he had better things to do. There was texting Annabel, yes, but he saw her every day and sometimes their conversations got a little repetitive. She wasn't boring but there was only so much you could talk about your day when it hadn't been all that eventful to begin with. "Biology." Then, because he was getting used to tacking this on, he said, "When I graduate, I'm going to medical school." He said it so confidently, like there was absolutely no doubt in his own mind that he'd be accepted. Hell, Joshua voiced this as if he'd already been accepted into medical school. He had a lot of drive. If the one in the Hollow wouldn't take him then he'd be damned if he didn't get into some other school. If it meant leaving Nell it would be crushing but he knew his career mattered, too. If Nell was willing to wait for him, he would go off to pursue his studies. If not... he'd cross that bridge when and if he came to it. "Indecisive, eh? Can't say I blame you. There're a lot of choices." He shrugged his shoulders, not envying her the lack of decision. He liked things to be solid and concrete in his life, hated the gray areas.

Though he wasn't always the best at judging people five minutes into a conversation, Joshua was getting the optimist vibe from Sandra thus far. She seemed so positive, so cheerful. It reminded him a little of Nell and that was definitely a good sign for their prospective friendship. "That's true. There's certainly a lot to learn about it." Sometimes it got overwhelming even to Josh when he realised how much he didn't know in contrast to what fraction of it he did. Then he thought from another angle about how he'd hate to know everything because it would mean there wasn't anything else to learn. That comforted him. "I like it, though. Gets a bit tedious when we go over things I already know but I guess that's just the problem with passions." If you liked something enough that you studied it outside of a school environment, there was always a chance that in taking the classes related to that particular subject, you'd run into things you already knew. It definitely made the work load easier to cope with but Joshua wasn't the type of person that liked easy. He liked being challenged, he liked tackling new things and expanded on what he'd already learned rather than reading it all over again. His professors appreciated his enthusiasm, at least. It was like Pokemon, he wanted to be the very best. Except he was training for a career that didn't involve capturing creatures against their will and making them fight one another for a living, which in Joshua's opinion was way better.

A rare smile graced his lips when she pronounced his major as 'cool'. Yeah, I think so too. His gray eyes contained a hint of pride and he nodded when she asked him if he was studying to be a doctor. "Well, a physician-scientist, actually. They're doctors that do research, too." He didn't only want to work with patients, he wanted to work on finding cures as well. Solving puzzles was a favourite past-time of his, he liked to find a solution for everything. It was sort of a dream of his that he'd be able to find or at least help find a cure for something in his lifetime. Maybe not something major like cancer, just a lesser disease would do. Anything. Joshua wanted to be noteable for something, to know that all the years he was putting into his career would amount to something more than having 'M.D' tacked onto the end of his name. Though Dr. Dale, M.D sounds pretty sexy if I do say so myself. Yeah, he liked the sound of that. "Yeah, they usually don't force you into it until next year." Joshua, who had known what he wanted to do with his life since he was eight years of age, had not suffered the normal issues when it came to choosing his major(s) or deciding what school he wanted to go to. His decisions had been solidified pretty quickly. "Do you know what you're going for, at least?" She might not have known where she was going to college but maybe she had an idea of what major she'd aim for when she did go.

[three hours of research on physician-scientists later and this post was born >>]