Into The Woods

Chapter Five: Adventures In Babysitting

Reyna's pov: 

Yesterday was a great vacation, and a major help with my ongoing identity crisis, but today is back to business as usual with the Scooby Gang. Damon, Jeremy, and Bonnie locked Elena in her house with a barrier spell and Damon took over taking care of Stefan for me while I go to help babysit Elena.

The first hour of babysitting is spent in Elena's room, having a competition to see who can sketch different things around the room better. Elena's never been much of an artist, but she wanted to try since we're stuck inside all day. I, on the other hand, have been sketching things at random since I was little. I don't take any real stock in practicing or trying to hone it since that's not really what I want to spend my entire life doing, but it's fun as a hobby. Needless to say, I won most of the rounds...

The second hour of the day was spent making lunch together... and making a mess in the kitchen as we tried to bake muffins for Jeremy and Jenna. Lunch went off without a hitch since we're both pretty competent in the kitchen, but when we started the muffins we got the ingredients everywhere. Jenna had us scrub down the entire kitchen as punishment for making the mess in the first place, which is completely fair on her part.

Once we were done, we went back up to Elena's room and watched a superhero movie on the tv in her room. It's a small tradition we've had for years now to watch action movies during sleepovers. This was close enough that Elena wanted to watch it anyway.

About halfway through the movie Elena wanted to pause it and go downstairs to get popcorn and a few of the muffins. Of course, I agreed, because who watches movies without popcorn? And I'm always a sucker for muffins.

Elena and I leave her bedroom door and I speed up to get ahead of her in the hallway. She giggles and tags me on the shoulder, rushing ahead and down the stairs with me racing behind to catch up. When we reach the bottom we're playfully shoving our shoulders at each other and laughing so much I can barely breathe.

"What are you two laughing about?" I look up to see Jenna smiling at us in amusement while she stands and takes a step away from the open closet in the hallway. There are a few boxes around her feet with various words written on them in sharpie.

Elena takes a deep breath and smiles at her aunt, shoving my shoulder lightly. "Nothing other than the fact that Reyna here is a slow-poke."

I lightly push her shoulder with my palm, making her laugh. "Hey! I would've run if I had any warning that we were racing!"

"Yeah, sure." Elena rolls her eyes at me, still smiling.

"Well, you girls are just in time." Jenna hands Elena a cardboard box before grabbing another and passing it to me.

I look at the semi-heavy box in my arms and give it a light shake. Nothing rattles though. "What's in this, Jenna?" I shake it again to emphasize my question.

She laughs at my actions. "It's my sister's files from the Historical Society. I got roped into helping Mrs Lockwood and by roped, I mean I'm very excited to participate."

Her fake cheer in her tone at the end of the statement makes me laugh as Elena smiles at her aunt and goes to say something. She stops when Jenna closes the closet door to show Elijah behind it, startling both of us.

He smiles casually at us. "Hey, I'm Elijah." Elena takes a minute step towards me, shifting her box in her arms nervously.

Jenna doesn't notice the change in the atmosphere. "Elijah's in town doing research on Mystic Falls."

I force a smile for Jenna's benefit, setting my box on the floor by the stairs so I can move to shake Elijah's hand. "It's nice to meet you. Are you enjoying your time in Mystic Falls?"