Who: Henry and Navi What: Photos for Navi Where: Deku's Nursery When: Start of September Rating/Warnings: Low/None - Henry is in denial about the net Status: Complete
Not every boss moonwalked while sweeping floors, but Navi liked to think that she wasn’t every boss. Most of the teenagers and college students that worked for her part time had done so for years, and her turnover was only ever because someone moved away. Navi was just a kind boss, and she was the one who did the most work at her business, which people could respect. She’d gotten there bright and early per usual, and was dancing as she tidied up.
Henry would never describe himself as a morning person, but he found that morning was the best time to get business done, right when he was fresh and coming off a full night’s sleep. All he needed was a cup of coffee and maybe a bagel. Yes, definitely a bagel.
He had been by the plant nursery a couple of times, had taken notice of it, but he’d never been inside. Henry was a little disappointed he hadn’t come in before. The inside of the nursery was warm and a little humid, but still nice. There was the smell of moist potting soil and freshwater. It was very nice and serene. Henry was smiling to himself as he made his way through the rows of various plants and flowers.
Henry came to a slow stop when he saw a woman moonwalking as she swept the floors. He couldn’t say that was something one expected to see at a plant nursery. It was amusing and Henry smiled a little to himself. Someone certainly enjoyed their work.
“Um, excuse me?” He called as he approached. “My name is Henry Townshend. I’m supposed to meet the owner this morning to take some pictures of the nursery.”
Looking up when she heard a man’s voice, Navi beamed. “Hey, you! I’m Navi, it’s nice to meet you! You’re so prompt, that’s really sweet of you.” She was still sweeping, but dancing less so she could focus on Henry.
Henry blinked. The dancing sweeper was the owner of the nursery. That was...unexpected. “Uh, hi. Good morning. Its nice to meet you, Navi.” He watched her sweep for a moment. “You wanted some pictures of the nursery for your website, right? Was there any specific shots you wanted?”
“Oh, maybe just some exterior shots, and one or two shots of flowers or plants you think are interesting? I just try to update the website from time to time. Keep it interesting!” She smiled at him, laughing when he looked taken off his guard. “You don’t whistle while you work, huh.”
Her request was simple enough. Exterior shots were easy. Henry glanced around the nursery. He didn’t know much about plants, so choosing an “interesting” one was going to be tough. “Right,” he said carefully.
He looked back towards Navi, glancing at the broom in her hand. He smiled faintly. “No, I’m not much of a whistler,” he admitted. “I mean...maybe sometimes in the darkroom.” He set his bag down and took out his camera. “How about you show me around the nursery? I’ll take a few shots and then you can pick the ones you like. I should apologize, I don’t know much about plants.”
“You still use film?” Navi beamed. She wasn’t a luddite or anything, but she did still enjoy older mediums for things - typewriters, film, postcards. She was the sort of person who still wrote letters because she really liked sending and receiving mail both. “That’s awesome!”
But his suggestion was a good one, and she moved to put the broom back into the supply closet. “Okay, so the supplies and stuff probably won’t be inspirational unless you’re moved by fertilizer. But here are the seedlings,” she motioned for him to follow her to where the flowering plants were. It was an explosion of green and every other color in the rainbow, warm because of the greenhouse, and humid because of the auto watering system.
“Yeah,” Henry chuckled softly. “I use digital for jobs like this since I can see a shot right away and know if it’s good or bad. They’re easier to send and use for things like websites.” He gave Navi a smile. “And they’re higher definition. But there’s something about a roll of film...I don’t know...I enjoy the whole process of developing it. The solitude of it, I guess.” It sounded kind of weird saying it out loud.
But Navi seemed excited and impressed that Henry used film and there as something about her excitement that Henry found infectious. It relaxed him considerably.
No, fertilizer wasn’t particularly inspiring, so Henry walked along with Navi. The greenhouse was impressive. Rows and rows of plants stretched in front of Henry. Flowers spread their petals upwards, turning their little yellow faces towards the light above them. The expanse and color alone made Henry smile. He paused to take the first set of pictures.
She noticed that he’d paused to take photos, so she moved along a wall to take readings on how much water was in the soil for a few blooming orchids. Orchids were finicky flowers, and she liked tech well enough, so why not use it to make happy plants?
Looking over at him, she grinned. “I’m glad you like it in here! ... and don’t have allergies. Though I do have Claratin and Zyrtec in my office!”
Flowers were great subjects. They didn’t move or blink or otherwise do things either on purpose or inadvertently to ruin the shot. Henry paused between each picture to look at the camera’s display. Henry may not know much about flowers, but there was no question that Navi’s orchids were beautiful.
He glanced up at Navi. “I’ve never had allergies,” he told her. He looked around the greenhouse. “This place is great, Navi,” he said. “Your flowers are beautiful.” And this was the first job he’d gotten from the net in which the client hadn’t brought up anything completely unbelievable. She smiled at him, absolutely beaming with pride. “Thank you so much! My grampa would be proud - I inherited it from him. It’s been in the family for years.” Navi hummed and resumed watering plants, tending to some of them by hand while Henry took photos. She didn’t want to press him - art took time! “I’m just grateful that you came on short notice. I can mark this off of my to do list now.”
“There’s something to be said about family run businesses,” Henry said. “It’s kind of a dying practise these days.” He finished taking photos from where he was standing and started walking among the plants looking to see if another shot presented itself. “Do you run it by yourself?”
He came to a stop to admire a set of red flowers, leaning over to smell them. Who could resist smelling flowers when they were practically begging for the attention? “Don’t worry about it,” he answered. “I can use all the freelance work I can get. The Picture Palace - my day job - pays ok, but not nearly enough for me to be able to really strike out on my own. I got two other jobs from that network site. If I can keep that up, I’ll actually be able to start saving money again.”
She smiled and nodded. “It is. But my grampa raised me after my parents died, so I learned that family’s really important. It’s not always blood, but the people in your family are important to take care of.” She beamed when he smelled the flowers, her back straightening and shoulders squaring.
“Well, I’ll be sure to recommend you to people I know. I’m big on the word of mouth thing, and I do a lot of B2B business. So you might get some landscapers calling. Sorry, you’re gonna be the plant guy.” Navi’s perky tone betrayed that she wasn’t really that sorry.
Henry straightened. Family had never been a huge thing for him, having been bounced around between his mother and father most of his life. “I’m sorry to hear about your parents,” he said. “But your grandfather sounds like he was pretty amazing.”
He started walking again studying the flowers and pausing to take a few quick shots when he saw something that demanded to be immortalized on digital film. He laughed lightly, easily. “I’m not going to complain,” he said. “The more work I get, the closer I am to not having to work at the Picture Palace.” He stopped suddenly and turned towards Navi, “not that its a bad place or anything. I mean the folks there are good and know what they’re doing it’s just….it’s really boring,” he said with a sigh. “Like really boring. I really want to be out on my own. I did some freelance stuff before coming here, but it’s really hard to sustain yourself on without your own place. You know? So, if I can establish myself here, I’ll have a leg up. And besides,” he paused to crouch down and get an upwards shot of a blue bloom that had caught his attention. Backdropped against the green of the taller plant behind it, it was very striking. “there are way worse things things to be taking pictures of.”
“You’ve got artistic vision,” she smiled. “You want to follow it.” Navi wasn’t really an artist herself, but she’d always appreciated beautiful things. “That makes sense to me, Henry. Do you need a drink or anything? I’ve got water or hot tea.”
“I like to think I do,” Henry chuckled softly as he got to his feet again. He looked through the pictures he’d already taken. A few were trash, either the lighting hadn’t been what he thought, or the framing was lackluster. He went ahead and deleted those right away, leaving the gems to sort through later. He glanced up towards Navi. “Yeah, actually, a water would be great.” It was hot in the greenhouse and Henry was starting to feel it. Sweat was starting to gather where his neck met his shoulders.
He glanced towards the front of the nursery and wondered if Navi wanted an exterior shot for the website. When he turned back to Navi, however, a completely different question left his mouth before he had a chance to stop it, “do you believe all that stuff on the network?”
He blinked a little surprised with himself. It wasn’t like him to blurt out a personal question like that, especially to a client. However, his other two clients had pretty much opened with the weird shit, the “psychedelic drug trip” as Revy had put it. It had been on Henry’s mind a lot over the last week. Be that as it may, though, it wasn’t exactly an appropriate question to ask.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Nevermind. Did you want any exterior shots?”
Navi moved to her office and poured Henry a glass of ice water from the Brita pitcher in the mini fridge. After handing it over, she smiled at his question and his quick back pedaling.
“An exterior shot would be great, and I do.” It was a lot easier to believe in multiple realities and universes when she had wings.
At least she was smiling at him. Henry took the glass from her, but didn’t drink the water right away. “You do.” He said. Somehow he wasn’t particularly surprised, but he had hoped that he would have met someone who didn’t really believe what was posted on Valarnet. Henry was starting to feel like the oddball in a community of oddballs.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “That was inappropriate of me to ask.”
“Oh, it was only inappropriate if you won’t give me the photos because of it, or something like that.” Navi chuckled, still watering her plants. “Everyone’s entitled to their opinions, and we can even get along with people who have different ones.” It was a more diplomatic way to say ‘just wait until it happens to you’. Secretly, Navi hoped Henry didn’t have any dreams, if only because so many people hated theirs.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Henry assured her. He shifted his camera in his hands. He agreed with Navi, of course. Everyone was entitled to their own opinions and beliefs, even if they seemed odd to Henry. And maybe he was the odd one for not believing. People were already hard to understand and this whole thing about dreams and dreaming did not help Henry figure them out.
Henry was starting to feel awkward standing there. He took a couple of big gulps of water if only to have something to do. He cleared his throat and gestured with the glass towards the front of the building. “I’ll, uh, go and get a few quick outside shots for you.”
“Thank you, Henry!” She smiled and wiped a forearm across her forehead to brush away sweat, but unawares she left a streak of dirt there. Somehow, it didn’t bother her, probably because she liked dirt.
The streak of dirt across Navi’s forehead made Henry smile. It completed her look. A gardner in the middle of her garden, happy and at home. “Hey, Navi?” He asked. “Would you like a picture of yourself? Not for the website or anything, but to have?”
Her blue eyes widened and she nodded. She didn’t honestly own many photos of herself, as she didn’t have many good friends who were the photo taking sort, and she never thought to take selfies. “You’d do that? Thank you.” She couldn’t help but grin. “Mrs. Townsend is a lucky lady!”
Henry was pleased that Navi had agreed. Some people were weird about having their picture taken, even if there was no intention of putting it out there for the world to see. But the way she was standing, the way she looked in her overalls with that streak of dirt and how the light was coming in through the windows, it was too perfect of a shot to pass up. And she seemed genuinely pleased at the offer, which somehow seemed to enhance the shot.
“You’re welcome,” he grinned back at her. “Ok,” he took her shoulders and moved her just slightly to the left so he could get the plants behind her in the shot, “stand there...like that…” he glanced up to check the light and then back at her. “Ok, perfect.” He gave her a thumbs up and took a couple of steps back and readied his camera.
“I’m not married,” he told her after he’d taken the first picture. “Uhm...hm...move a little bit more to the right...lift your arm up again like you’re going to wipe your forehead and keep that smile, ok?”
“Then your mom is lucky.” She filed away the fact he was single while simultaneously closely following his instructions. “LIke this?”
“Yeah, like that,” Henry nodded. He took a couple of pictures and smiled at the results, waving Navi over to look at them. Henry was most in his element when he was behind a camera and it showed not only in the pictures he took, but the smile on his face.
She went over to look at the photos he’d took, and it made her smile wider. “You know, that’s the first picture of me that looks like me?” Normally she stiffened up and looked all weird, which she hated.
“Really?” Henry looked up at her. His brows furrowed together a little bit. “Ever? That’s terrible.” He glanced down at the camera’s display then back up at Navi. “Did you want any more? Of yourself, I mean.”
Navi’s nose wriggled as she laughed. “Why? I mean, I dunno, I know what I look like, and I don’t really have much family to give them to?”
Henry shrugged. “I don’t know. If you normally don’t look like yourself in pictures, I thought you might like to have some that do look like you? I thought it’d be nice or something.” He shrugged. “You don’t have to, but if you want more for whatever reason, you can always ask me.” He smiled at her. “Not like I’m hard to find now that I’m on that network now.”
“You can if you want to.” Navi blushed and shrugged. “I don’t know, I mostly just like pictures that are scenery or plants. People in pictures just don’t look the same as you remember them.”
“I see,” Henry nodded. He could understand that. Pictures were concrete and memory was mealable. Sometimes people liked their memories more than what a picture could tell them of a person or event. And some people just didn’t care to have their picture taken. It was uncommon for Henry to meet such a person, given where he worked, but not unusual.
“Alright then,” he went on. “I’ll finish up with a couple of photos of the front and that should about do it You wanted these for your...website, right? I can either email you the digital copies or send them to you through the network. Whichever works for you.” Because some people weren’t all that comfortable just handing out their personal email address. Henry completely understood that. He was one of them.
She nodded, glad that he understood. Sometimes Navi wondered if she was cursed, though she hadn’t thought of it in a long time. Her parents had died, her grandpa had died, and she’d never really gotten close to friends after high school. She doted on her employees, but kept herself at a bit of a distance. It was better that way.
Reaching into a pocket of her shorts, Navi took out a busines card holder. “I have a business email, so it won’t get lost. Thank you so much, Henry.”
“You’re welcome.” Henry took the card. He balanced his camera in one hand as he reached into his back pocket for his own cards. No studio yet, but he had business cards! That was a step. He handed one to her. “Although, I really should be thanking you. I can use all the extra work I can get.”
As much as he really wasn’t sure about Valarnet or the people there, he had gotten more work in teh past week than he’d gotten in the past month. It felt good to do this kind of freelance stuff again and he was looking forward to doing it full time out of his own studio. The dream was getting closer and closer.
He also liked Navi. She was straightforward and honest (and not at all intimidating as the other straightforward and honest woman he had met a day or so ago). he was glad he had gotten the chance to meet her and he’d hoped he’d see her around, maybe work for her again.