"I mean, there were diagrams, but they were a bit ... unclear." Rebecca meant it as a sort of joke, and she smiled. "So many lines!"

Oh, right. It would probably help if she paid attention to their surroundings and figured out which way led back to her camp. She looked around. "Yes, this is the right way. In fact -- there's my tent."

Rebecca pointed at the sad, crumpled mess she'd left her tent in, in the bare patch of ground under a nice big tree. Ouch, it looked terrible. She hadn't thought she was that bad at camping. "I had to leave in the middle of setting it up because Galla ran off."

Oh, what had she done with the instructions? She'd been holding them when Galla ran off, but Rebecca found that she had absolutely no idea where they'd gone after that: she'd been too focused on finding Galla to pay any attention to where she put them. "Um, wait ..."

She patted her pockets, because she did sometimes have a habit of tucking papers in there, crumpling them hopelessly and often destroying them in the laundry. Nope. Uh-oh.

"I was reading them when I left ... They should be near the tent somewhere." Rebecca started to look around, checking under folds of polyester. "Oh, here they are!"

They were a little crumpled and dirty -- she'd just thrown them aside when Galla ran off -- but still legible.

Rebecca hurried over to grab the tent where Arris had indicated, listening intently to his instructions. She very much wanted to get good at camping; it would make her travels much easier. And her parents were still a little nervous about sending her off with only Galla for company -- she needed to show them that she could take care of herself. Or, in this case, rely on the kindness of strangers.

"The opening should face away from the tree, I think," Rebecca said, adjusting the polyester accordingly -- or so she hoped. So you laid out the polyester first -- smart. She appreciated the advice.

Rebecca smiled when Arris agreed with her. Then she stopped, feeling like she probably looked like a student whose teacher had just complimented her answer. Which she kind of was, but -- she didn't have to act so, so eager. Or easily pleased. Her fellow students tended to laugh at her for that, back in school.

"I see," Rebecca said, taking the tent pole and trying to put it together. It took her a bit of fiddling, but she managed it, and gave another delighted smile before remembering again that she was trying not to come off as a weirdo. For once. When the subject came to birds, she was always too engrossed to care, but at other times -- like this one -- she knew very well that she came off as strange. And she didn't want to be strange tonight, not when Arris was being so nice to her. "It's a clever mechanism. And -- yes, I see the sleeve for it."

She bent down and started to work the pole into its sleeve.

Had something in Arris' expression or tone changed? Rebecca wasn't sure. Now she was overthinking it, wondering if he was condescending to her, if he thought she was stupid for not knowing this stuff already, if he was treating her like a child. Stop it, she told herself. He's just being nice. But how would she know if he wasn't? She usually didn't notice people's bad intentions -- their sarcasm, their patronizing, their teasing -- until it was too late. And now that she was out in the real world, the stakes were a bit higher than in the schoolyard.

Trying not to give any sign of her worried thoughts, she finished putting the pole through and went to look for the stakes. They were in her camping bag, which she'd left here -- what if someone had stolen it -- while she went to chase Galla.

"Chi chi!" the Torchic told Rebecca brightly, watching them work, and Rebecca had to smile. It wasn't so bad. Arris was just being nice.

The reference to chicks in nests brightened Rebecca's spirits; the pleasant topic distracted her from her worries about how Arris might perceive her. She smiled. "Yes, Torchics grow up in nests, as do many other bird Pokemon ... They're called hatchlings until their feathers grow in, then nestlings while they're in town, and fledglings when they learn to fly."

Then Arris jumped back to attention and so did Rebecca, though she added, "Don't worry. Happens to me all the time."

She wasn't about to scold anyone else for zoning out when she spent more time lost in her thoughts than in the real world -- or at least she had before she'd had Galla and real Pokemon to drag her away from her dreams of them.

"So, like this?" Rebecca stuck a stake into the ground, then stepped on it with all her weight to drive it into the soil.

Rebecca smiled at the praise and got down to work putting in the other stakes, glad that there was a part of the tent construction she could do on her own. When Arris spoke again, she looked up from the stake she was pressing into the ground.

"I know a lot about bird Pokemon," she said, then realized that sounded like she was bragging, when she'd only intended it as a statement of fact. Brushing her hair out of her eyes, she added rather hurriedly, "Not much about anything else, but birds are kind of my thing."

With the stakes in, the tent stood proudly under the tree, ready to face the elements. Rebecca paused and looked at it with pride. Now she was ready to spend the night out in the wilds.