Jen sat bolt upright, quickly and alertly surveying her surroundings, then smiled a gap toothed grin at Joe. “It’s sunny,” she said matter of factly. She leapt to her feet and ran behind the nearest bush before he had time to react.
Jen was lithe and supple in her movements without effort or awareness. Strength, too, was evident in her motions, sinewy muscles bestowing her with an agile grace. Her power was of a sort more akin to that of a cheetah than that of a lion. She sprang rather than mauled, but the results were usually the same for those who crossed her.
Her eyes, a rich blue when she was born, had taken on a catlike quality as she aged. They shifted from blue to gray to green depending on the light reflected. On occasion Joe could almost swear their tint changed with her mood or the squint she chose to convey it. Regardless of their color they were flecked, almost striped, with what resembled sparkling silver and gold. They were equally capable of mesmerizing and intimidation. Jen was quickly discovering their power and mastering the art of wielding it.
Like the girl whose head it capped, Jen’s hair was unruly. It suited her personality; beautiful, but not in a classical sense. There was a cowlick at her hairline just above her exceptionally high forehead making bangs or styling requiring anything other than being pulled tightly back difficult, if not impossible.
It was dirty blond, the dirt winning out more and more as she matured. The blond was more hinted at than present in any tangible sense. For someone seeing her for the first time the likely inclination was to label her a brunette, yet blond was there too, sensed more than seen. It was there when glimpsed from the corner of the eye or when she entered a room, then faded as focus on her gave a clearer picture, however, like a desert’s watery mirage or a Fairy fluttering into the shadows to avoid detection. In summer, when sun-kissed by long exposure, the blond streaks returned to brush the freckles on her slender nose and prominent cheekbones that seemed to pop out to greet them.
Jen’s fair complexion, hypnotic and almost translucent at times in its clarity, reflected her mother’s Irish and Dutch lineages. The particular beauty reserved for those with her build and grace was her’s in abundance as well. Even when walloping her little brother just because she still could, an observer would likely note the graceful beauty with which she did so. A friend had once told Joe to get ready, that Jen was destined to be trouble. Trouble the kind of which teenage boys would find absolutely irresistible. Thee dyings had made that a non issue up to now, but his friend had been right in every respect excepting the presence of teenage boys.
Jen was short, and not just a little, but exceptionally so. Standing at least two inches under the five foot marker she so desperately wished to reach, the likelihood of that wish’s fulfillment was rapidly diminishing. She compensated for what she lacked in stature with a stubborn resilience. Jen ceded ground only on her terms and at times of her own choosing. The personal cost to be paid for her entrenchment was simply not a factor once she’d set her boundaries.
Despite her stature, short wasn’t the adjective that first came to mind when meeting Jen. She was as well proportioned as she was small. More likely than not the first descriptors to come to a stranger’s mind were some odd combination of beautiful, scruffy and petite. Occasionally strangers would include vulnerable in their impressions, usually to their detriment. An exceptionally observant stranger may even add dangerous to his perceptions of her. At least, as had so often been the case with girls her age before, the label rival had, as yet, not been draped like a sash over her shoulder. The dyings had spared Jen from the consequences of its petty cruelty; a silver lining to an otherwise very dark cloud, Joe sometimes thought, when he watched his daughter
Being who she was, who someone of her size and disposition had to be if they wished to accomplish or acquire things independently, Jen became adept at employing whatever advantages there were to be gleaned from the diminutive first impression she inevitably gave. She knew she appeared significantly younger than she was. She was also fully aware that she, as people regularly told her before things changed, was as cute as a button. That description, despite the fact that she recognized it as an intended compliment, always left her feeling worse; smaller somehow. Perhaps it was that feeling that allowed her to justify using those attributes to avoid consequences for actions others, who looked more their age, or who weren’t lucky enough to have her ingratiatingly innocent good looks, would undoubtedly pay for.
In both thoughts and actions Jen was impulsive and impetuous to the point that she had to be on guard against her own tendency for irrational action. Luckily for Joe and Jake, not to mention herself, she was growing into a young woman who both recognized that necessity and possessed the exceptional underlying intelligence to pull it off. Her undersized frame developed within her an uncommon ability to stand her ground. It was her newly found recognition of the value of self control and her determination to cultivate its development within herself, however, that was making her a natural leader.
Joe caught himself wondering as to how she’d managed to skip what people with less beautiful or coordinated children referred to as some variation of “that awkward phase.” He paused to recognize the conceit that thought revealed within himself. He then allowed himself to think it, nonetheless.
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