william burke

Iann grouched as Will boasted, groaning,  “Stop, stop, you’re being all adorable again, talking about your lack of bark decay and all.  I got an automotive crisis here, I don’t have time to admire your sequoia redwood nymph-pride!”  Somehow as Iann complained, it turned into half-laughing.   

He was only teasing; but on the other hand, he was getting more desperate about the state of his poor van.  Iann loved that van dearly, the way other people loved their pets.  Where sometimes he believed that hanging with his van was preferable to hanging with people.  

“You mean you’re not into lackeys?” Iann asked, too socially inept to realize the implications of what Will had spilled.  That is, that the nymph had more interest specifically in being a friend, with Iann himself.  It only occurred to the human as Will beelined towards the small stump.

“Hey, are you - did you mean…” Iann started, but it sounded juvenile to ask ‘do you want to be friends?’.  Fortunately, Will was already wiggling his butt onto the stump, as if it was the comfiest couch he’d found.  Iann hadn’t particularly expected any flashy magic, considering that the realm of witches and fairies.  Nymphs could do some pretty incredible things of course, but as Iann watched Will, he realized he’d only seen nymph power during moments of great duress.  And usually saving his human keister.  Hm. 

He made up for Will’s matter-of-fact proclamation with a loud clapping of his hands, and a hop, rearing to go.  “Well hot diggity-dog!  Let’s do this thing, lead the way.”

The forest itself wasn’t trying to stop them, so with Will’s expert guidance the path was pretty easy…and increasingly familiar.  Not that Iann had much nature-intelligence, but it was his recent memories of this particular area of the forest that slowly became more and more apparent.  Until they reached one particular area and Iann stopped.  

“Ah shit. Are we here?  I know this place.”

Will gave a hearty laugh, in part at Iann's 'automotive crisis'—which he didn't understand in the slightest—and in part at being called adorable. He understood something of humans' attachment to their possessions, but surely the mushroom situation could be solved. Actually, it was looking far less of a problem by the minute: a car was considerably improved in being turned into a mushroom farm, by his standards.

"Yeah, lackeys. Fans. I might be, y'know, special or whatever, but no more special than anyone else. Being admired is great but it gets old quick. Rather just talk to a person straight up," he said, absolutely unabashed in his honesty. He did want to be friends with Iann, and any qualms he might have had about being direct about it were erased by the heady magic rushing through his blood.

Rein grinned a bit, picked up his glass and clinked it against Will’s. “Technically I didn’t pick it though”, he said with a small chuckle. “It was given to me. Which makes the whole deal feel way more special than just a name I randomly picked up would be.” Rein really did feel so honored to have that lastname to carry now. In a way it also gave yet another purpose of him being here on earth in general. Plus it was yet another reason to stay in this town instead of just traveling around.

The suggestion to just come over to talk and whatnot got a thankful smile from the other nymph. “The same right back. The doors are always open – literally. I don’t bother locking them. I know Ryden – the wolf that lives upstairs – locks his door, but I don’t bother with that. I don’t think there’s even any keys to the other doors, or even to the front door. Surely I could make a bunch – I did that for Ryden – but why bother. If someone is stupid enough to come to steal stuff, well, they’ll learn quickly not to steal from a nymph.” He shook his head a bit with a chuckle. “But a camping trip sounds great. I’d be up for that anytime.”

Rein looked rather amused. “You know why there’re no nymphs in charge? Because we take no bullshit and people don’t know how to truly react to that.” He tapped the side of his nose knowingly, but there was apparent joking tone in his voice. But there was still a bit of truth in there, because Rein knew nymphs could rule the world if they just wanted to – they just didn’t want that. They were too busy with their own things to care about all other species that much they’d bother to take control over the world.

“But hey, what if the vamp would be really hot? Would you mind getting sucked by that huh?” The way Rein was grinning you could definitely tell he wasn’t probably talking just about sucking blood. And he tried really hard not to start laughing at his own words. Usually he wasn’t this jokingly with things, but maybe it was William’s company – or the general fact he was a nymph – that made making these jokes feel all fine.

"Yeah, definitely more special. I just picked mine at random when I had to fill out a name tag and it stuck. Humans kinda expect you to have a last name. Ask too many questions if you don't." He shrugged. Will had never been bothered that his name was chosen arbitrarily. He liked it fine enough for the purpose it served, and wasn't the type to be sentimental about that kind of thing.

"So I gotta ask: who did it? Gave you a last name, I mean. If you don't mind my asking," Will said, curious. From the way Rein spoke about it, it was a special affair to be given a last name. Even among humans, changing your last name was a big deal, reserved for occasions like marriage.

He laughed at Rein's observations. "Yeah, yeah. Sure wouldn't hurt, though." The idea of being in charge had crossed his mind a time or two, and while he wouldn't have minded the extra responsibility, it was the idea of being tied to a place far from the tree he embodied that didn't sit well. He would always put his tree first and foremost, over anything else: having to split his responsibilities would be unfair to both himself and whoever else.

“Very tiny pixie spray paint cans,” Ephram said solemnly, trying hard not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the image (particularly given that pixies had been his own conjecture; it would be pretty damn rude to suggest them as the culprits and then laugh at poor Will taking the idea on board). 

His breath plumed more thickly in the air seemingly between one word and the next, though, and Ephram gathered his shearling leather jacket closer around himself as the ranger nymph remarked that they go inside. Will probably didn’t feel the cold, but he noticed, and Ephram was grateful that he had. “Please,” he nodded, and followed Will into the ranger station as the tips of his ears and nose started to get numb.

“That didn’t feel natural,” Ephram said, stomping and rubbing his arms, “did it? I mean I grew up in the mountains, I ain’t no stranger to sudden onset cold snaps, but not between blinks like that.” He peered out the window, then backed up a little as frost patterns started to form on the glass, in branching spurts and ice flecks that slowly began to resolve into something … recognizable.

“Well, shit,” Ephram said, squinting one eye. The head-and-shoulders portrait the frost sketched out was recognizable as Will Burke, but just barely … given that a huge jagged lightning bolt was stuck through half of his skull. 

Will gave an amused snort at the suggestion. "Next you're gonna tell me they got very tiny pixie sharpies, too," he returned, voice dry. He appreciated the humor, something to lighten the mood, as he had been feeling somewhat awkward around the sheriff. Dealing with Ephram on a purely professional basis was one thing, but he'd never really gotten to know the man except through second-hand information, until now.

They hurried inside the station, Will quick to bolt the door behind them. Thankfully, it was warmer indoors than it was outside, central heating doing its work against the sudden chill.

"Well that's certainly not natural," he said, staring at the sketching of himself. Will grimaced. "Guess someone's got a grudge against me after all, huh. Some kinda frost spirit, maybe?" he asked, pulling back the curtains to peer outside. The grass was turning white with a thin layer of frost, though the effect stopped abruptly not more than forty or fifty feet outside the station. 

Shaking her bleeding hand as her healing stung through it, Ciara jogged through the door (a plastic bag stuck to it to try and keep in the warmth as the glazing had never properly been attached to the frame) as she looked around for where the critter had gone. 

Her skin sealed once more as she spotted the man holding it. Up close, it wasn’t too bad. About the size of a raccoon, but its fur shifted colours as quickly as the wind. Perhaps it was trying to find some camoflage, but out in the cold street, being held out at arm’s length, it had nowhere to hide. 

Frowning, Ciara looked up at the man holding it. “No. Well, potentially. I’m not sure. No one told me anything was living here, but then I wasn’t told much at all. I think I disturbed its nest.”

Shaking her head, careful to stay out of the reach of its snappy jaw, Ciara stepped a little closer. “Sorry, you’re bleeding. Want me to heal it?”

Will was fascinated by the creature, whatever it was. He didn't mind the biting, though it did make it inconvenient to get a better look at its physical features. Any wild creature would struggle against the one who'd caught it, as Will was healthily aware.

"Ah. Must've been startled outta hiding," he said, lowering the raccoon-thing.

When she offered to heal him, he shook his head. "Nah. I heal quick." Though blood stained his skin, the scratches were healing almost as quickly as the creature could inflict them.

Maya laughed, shaking her head. “You shouldn’t feel too bad about that,” she replied, “That’s one of the things I like about baking. It’s never the exactly the same. Especially bread.” Recipes she made often were fairly similar, of course, but never exactly the same. This was especially true considering how often she experimented in the kitchen. 

She shrugged, “It was a long time ago.” 

Nodding, Maya agreed, “If it had just been a philosophical manifesto, it wouldn’t have bugged me so much. I mean, the woods are fucking great. Don’t piss in a cup and tell me it’s lemonade, you know?” She shrugged. “That and, again, I was a shit student. So we can’t really know how much of it is just that I didn’t want to do homework.” 

Will grinned in return. "I'll take your word for it." After all, she was a professional. He, on the other hand, bumbled around the kitchen whenever the urge struck him: while he enjoyed baking, he was far from good at it. Even when following a recipe to the T, sometimes loaves failed for seemingly no reason. Which was disappointing, but never stopped him from trying again the next week.

She didn't seem over-eager to share on the subject of her father, and he didn't want to pry, especially for something so sensitive. His curiosity would have to wait.

“Pshhhhhh,” Iann literally pshawed.  “Semantics!  That’s semantics.  Uh-huh.  you see.” He couldn’t help but grin - partly from an amused frustration - when Will countered him, but then said he could anyway.  Typical.  This was eerily typical and Iann loved and hated it at the same time.  

“Like literally,” Iann echoed, putting on a bit more of a SoCal emphasis.  “But like mushrooms grow on trees all the time.  What if you become sequioa mushroom man?  Honestly, I would revere you if you did.  I’d be your one-man revering band if you were a mushroom mantree.”  Iann hardly knew what he was saying, because it was more just a stream of thought as he continued hacking at the mushrooms.  He peered over the top, exclaiming at the beautifully harvested cap that Will got.  

Unfortunately the delight was short-lived as the mushrooms clearly had no intention of stopping.  

He clambered ungracefully off the top of his van, scampering to keep up with Will’s loping.  Iann got close enough to lightly whack at any mushrooms (or anything he thought could be a mushroom) sprouting from Will’s clothes, like a bird pecking at a rhino.  They came to a glade soon enough, with a loose circle of tree stumps, clearly formed by people rather than nature.  

“Choose your stump, but choose wisely,” Iann intoned. He was excited to see how Will was going to do this.  The fact that he required a stump was only the beginning.

It most definitely wasn't semantics, but Will let Iann's rebuttal stand. Even if it was just a little bit offensive to lump all rangers into the same category, but Will didn't mind the comparison to Tolkein. Aragorn was very cool, after all.

"Not on sequoias," he returned. "We're very mushroom-resistant. Redwoods, too. Our bark doesn't decay as easily as other species," he said, bordering on bragging. He was very proud of his tree. 

"Plenty of people revere me as-is. Well, not me personally, but General Sherman. Which is me in a way, but kind of not," Will struggled to find the right words, but he was pretty sure Iann understood how nymphs worked and the explanation wasn't needed. 

"And turning into a mushroom-man would literally change who I am. I think. Anyway, I'd rather have a friend than a follower. Y'know what I mean?" He hadn't meant to say that last part aloud, but it spilled out of him regardless.

As they reached the stump circle, Will bee-lined for one in particular. A smallish stump where an aspen used to grow. Though the tree above ground had long since been felled, its root system was expansive, kept alive by nutrients fed from neighboring, interconnected trees. "This one," he said, plonking down on the stump. He closed his eyes, as if meditating. 

If Iann was hoping for some flashy display of nymph-magic, this wasn't it: all the action was happening below ground as Will tapped into the root system, poking around for anything unusual. 

She let out a bark of laughter when the cat tripped the guy. The cat and its shenanigans were quite amusing when it wasn’t aimed at her, really. “You know you don’t have to be able to breathe underwater to go for a swim, right? I assumed you’d just go deep enough into the ocean so the cat wouldn’t be able to follow you–” At that as if it could actually understand what Isa was saying, the cat turned around and hissed in her direction, its little pawns grabbing towards her. Isa stuck her tongue out at it. “So I still think you’ve got that option if you don’t find the owner after that thorough search of yours.”

“Oh, no, there’s no would about it,” Isa shook her head quickly before Will completely misunderstood her. “I’m also in the theater, performing. Well, not fully yet, I haven’t been here for too long so the play I’m going to premiere in didn’t have its first performance yet, but it’s coming in December, so if you’re into theater - and why wouldn’t you be, theater plays, in general, are awesome and this was is going to be especially great because it has me in it -, you should check it out. Watch the show.”

She nodded. “Not hiking specifically, but I did wander around thereafter I arrived at Soapberry, so I think I know the building you’re talking about. That’s a strange place got the cat to wander to, though, right? So off from everywhere else. Maybe if we are not lucky with Mrs. James, do you think it could be the cat of a hiker?” Did people bring along cats for hikes? She didn’t think so, she usually saw dogs on walks, but why couldn’t this cat specifically go onto hikes, right? It seemed… attached enough to not wander off. Which only made it confusing why it wasn’t with its owner if Isa really thought about it. “Do you like the job? It sounds like you’re… spending a lot of time in the forest.”

"We'll save that as a last resort," he said, grinning at Isa. "Though if it doesn't start behaving," he added, pitching his voice loud enough to be sure the cat would hear, "maybe I'll have to throw it in the ocean myself. Don't claw at people," he scolded the cat. His chiding fell on deaf feline ears, however, as the cat merely pranced ahead, tail swishing haughtily. He hadn't actually thought it would work, but the cat did seem to understand them when they spoke. Maybe it was smarter than he had given it credit for.

"Yeah? Gotta confess, I'm not usual a theater kind of guy. I haven't been to too many plays." He didn't add that the few plays he'd been to had been somewhat less than stellar performances, or that he'd fallen asleep halfway through. "But I'm sure it'll be amazing," he added, since she sounded so enthusiastic about it. "Where's it being shown?"

"People bring their familiars on hikes, sometimes. Or send them out to the woods to fetch mushrooms and such. Maybe it got lost, or decided not to go home?" Will shrugged. "All I know is that we gotta find whoever's responsible for this thing. If it's a familiar, there's gotta be a witch who owns it. Fairy familiars don't get lost like this."

“I think you’d realize people would stop staring if you managed to cool down.” Although small in size, Aislin had a temper to make up for it. She had always been quick to anger and right then, the tailor was really pushing it. The condescending tone was one thing, but towering over her to force his importance– that made her blood boil. Cosmo had sensed it. He crept back over to his fairy’s side and began to growl, ready to pounce in defense of his dearest companion. Fortunately, the other man stepped in before the situation escalated any further.

When the second man stepped in and the owner backed off, Aislin let out a long breath to restore her own composure. As she relaxed, so too did her familiar. She nodded gratefully to the man for his intervention, letting him know that no authority had been overstepped. “Aislin Iomhair. SBSD,” the fairy offered her name respectively. She was more cautious of her title, however. She worried if she announced she wasn’t an officer, Doug might become aggravated again.

“Now that we’re all introduced, do you mind if we take a closer look inside your shop? You said it was raided by rats, but… was there anything strange about them that stood out to you? It’s just– I’ve never heard or seen rats behaving like this before.”

The tailor, Doug, nodded, seemingly placated by the simple fact that she was associated with the police department. "Yeah. Go ahead, I'm gonna have to close early today anyways," he grumbled. He stepped aside from the shop's doorway, revealing toppled shelves, reams of fabric unraveled across the floor. Doug scratched his head. "Anything strange about them? Err. Well I went back to the storage closet to fetch a length of cotton and they were all over the place. Looked like they were eating the cloth or somethin'. Made holes in just about everything in there they could get their hands on." He frowned. "Yeah, they weren't normal rats, that's for sure. Might'a been seeing things but they looked like they had lil tiny hands." At that, Will piped up. "Did their eyes glow in the dark?" Doug nodded in response. 

"How about their tails?" Will asked next. "Bushy? Or more skinny 'n ratlike."

"Yeah, bushy, kinda like a squirrel or something. I reckon so. Hard to see cuz they move so fast," Doug answered, slowly. "You know somethin' about this?" he prodded the nymph, eyes narrowing accusatorily. 

Tuah was still thrashing as he was being pulled out of the waters, though fat load it did to have the creature release him. Not to mention that he was still coughing murky waters as he struggled, his chest hurting and feeling like he was about to cough out his lungs at any moment. Gods, he hated deep waters.

Later, however, he would be thankful that the roots had kept him afloat, and the man who had practically saved him from being dragged deeper into the lake and was forced to relive one of his greatest fear. But for now, he was too much in a state of panic to think of anything else.

He grabbed hold of the man as they waded through the shallow parts of the lake, collapsing onto the ground with his hand pressed onto his chest as he continued to cough. “Thank you,” he said between wheezes, getting rid of his wet hair from his face as he glanced towards his saviour. “I would’ve been a goner if you weren’t here.”

Tuah plopped on his arse as he took a deep breath and exhaled through his mouth slowly, feeling his chest still hurt from all the coughing. He was soaked to the bone, his coat and jeans felt heavy now that he was out of the waters. He had a moment of thought of wanting to take his clothes off, though that would be most inappropriate, and he didn’t have any means to dry his clothes.

He heaved a sigh, running his fingers through his hair so it was slicked backwards and turned his attention to the other. “Oh heavens, were you hurt while trying to get me out of there?” Tuah asked, alarmed to see that the other had been hurt. Ignoring the pain that he felt on his hand and figuring it would take care of itself, he reached for the other, brows furrowed together. “We should get this looked after.”

As they stumbled to shore, Will collapsed in a similar manner, dropping to an unceremonious seat. "No problem. Don't make a habit of it, yeah?" he said, glancing over at the stranger with a weary smile. Will tried to keep his voice steady. Though they'd escaped immediate danger, his heart was still pounding with adrenaline. "You alright?" He looked the man over, concerned. Aside from nearly being drowned, being attacked by a kelpie was dangerous, to say the least. He himself would have been lucky to escape unscathed, let alone someone who didn't have near-invulnerability to injury.

His limbs felt leaden, waterlogged clothes sticking uncomfortably to his skin. He desperately wanted a nice hot shower and a change of clothes, but that would have to wait. He went about tugging off his boots, dumping out the water that had flooded each one. That much would have to do for now.

"Ah—I'm alright, it'll be gone in a minute," he said in regards to the reddish splotch on his palm where he'd grasped the iron. Will offered out his hand for inspection. "See?" The angry redness was already fading to a more sedate pink, his skin tingling with an uncomfortable itch.

“I meant a magical source-point that you can, ah, track,” Iann elaborated a little impatiently, giving Will a flick of his fingers as if to wave away the nymph’s dogmatic explanation.  Not that Iann didn’t, somewhere very deep and buried inside of him, appreciate the lecture-mode.  Specifically from Will Burke - the nymph had knowledge, buried in him like the roots of an ancient a tree.  And Iann was old enough to know he didn’t need to cut down that tree to access that knowledge.  A good maple tap could work, metaphorically speaking of course.

“You being a ranger and all, c’mon.” Iann elaborated with a haphazard grin.    “ According to Tolkien, you’re supposed to be able to chat with birds and guide hobbits. Maybe if you focus on that magic-y fuzzies in your veins, you can bloodhound the source-point, hm?”

Iann gave his machete a wrist-spin as he warily eyed the mushrooms  (it looked cool; granted the enemy Iann prepared to face was fungi). “Yeah,  After we clear my van,” he agreed, and hoisted himself up to the roof of the van, boots sliding slightly until he found his balance.  He could feel Will inside the van, like a large animal hacking away at the mushroom. Will sure knew how to handle that huge-ass hunter’s knife of his.

“Mine’s bigger than yours,” Iann called out from above with a grin, as he started to slice at the mushrooms. They went tumbling off the sides, with a pleasant plopping, bouncing sounds.  Literally everything about mushrooms was awesome.

Except, of course, the way they started to grow back on his van, twice as many.

“Will- “  Iann looked over the back, watching Will tugging his sweater off one-handed.  “It’s getting worse Will.  If it’s in your veins, then we gotta find the source, Will.  Before you turn into a mushroom yourself.”

"That's a different kind of ranger," he pointed out. "Plus, witches'd be better at this whole tracking thing. Not to say I couldn't do it," he said, unable to help but give the most roundabout of answers. "I'd just need to sit down and focus. Which is a little hard to do with this whole mushroom-van ordeal," he said with a grunt as he chopped away at the stem of one of the larger specimens. 

"Mushrooms first, then tracking. And I am not gonna turn into a mushroom. I literally cannot, as humans would say."

Piece by piece, the biggest of the mushrooms was cut to size and tossed out the back of the van, big squishy hunks of mushroom-flesh rolling and bouncing as they landed. Last came the giant cap, miraculously harvested in one piece—Will clambered out with it hoisted above his head like some kind of bizarre trophy. "Look at the size of this thing!" he called up to Iann, grinning. 

After showing off his prize, it was back to work. Will carefully set the mushroom cap aside and went back to the van, only to find that more had grown in its place. "Hey, uhh. Iann? This doesn't seem to be working." The mushrooms were damn persistent, sprouting on just about any surface they could find, and didn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. He couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity as the van was once again blooming with shrooms, his work undone.

“Yeah, I hear it.” Ephram was – necessarily – attuned to when living creatures went suddenly quiet; it tended to be a feature of when the demon inside him was close to the surface, and it had been something he noticed right away. But a quick rub of the heel of his hand against his hip reassured him that the magical seal branded into his flesh and the Cinquefoil artifact sunk into it were still charged and still working, and whatever this was, it wasn’t the effect of the demon.

At least, not his demon.

Ephram could tell that getting the Sheriff Department involved wasn’t Will’s first choice when it came to whatever was happening out here, but at least the nymph was being cooperative and not outright hostile or anything. “Could be pixies, maybe,” Ephram started surmising out loud as he squinted up at the waving toilet paper at the tops of the trees. “Since they fly, they could do that easy. And they love mischief, if they saw the insult graffiti gettin’ a rise out of you they’d keep on doing it.”

But what reason would pixies have? What reason would anybody have, that was the question. “Will,” Ephram said, bending over slightly to stare at the traces of graffiti that were left, “has it been you mostly at the station lately, or have other rangers been here? Do you guys keep a schedule anywhere of what your shifts are? I guess what I’m askin’, here, Will, is –” Ephram straightened and looked at Will, rubbing the back of his head. “Would they know it’s you? Would they be targeting you.”

Will folded his arms, paced around the clearing surrounding the station. "Pixies wouldn't've been my first guess," he started. "I mean, I've never seen 'em use spray paint. I don't even know how they'd get their hands on the stuff. Or toilet paper, for that matter." He frowned. "Unless someone left it out near their nest."

While Ephram investigated and Will paced, a bit of toiler paper had gotten stuck to his shoe, which he begrudgingly leaned down to deposit in the nearest trash can. He was restless, the silence of the wood making him uneasy. "Yeah, we keep a log if you wanna take a look. I've been covering Donna's shifts cuz she had some family business come up, so. Mostly been me around here." As he spoke, his breath clouded in the air.

Will scratched his chin, circling back to the sheriff. "I mean, I ain't exactly hard to find." Will wiped at a spot of graffiti, smudging the black stain. "They could be after me, sure. Just dunno what for." With confidence typical to his species, Will wasn't perturbed at the idea of being targeted. He knew he could handle whatever it was that might be doing the targeting. 

In the midst of that thought, Will frowned. The metal sign that marked the station had a sheen of frost which definitely had not been there before, frost which defied the fairly temperate autumn sun.

Rein chuckled at William’s comment. “I’m pretty vague guy”, he replied but then got a bit more serious. “To put it short, things from my past appeared, revealed some true shit about things and made things all messed up. But now that shit is dealth with, so I sort of only have all the end result of that to handle. Like a bunch of shitty questions with no answers.” He shrugged a bit but then a small smile crawled on his lips. “But the good things.. Well, I learned stuff about myself, did something I’ve never thought is possible to even do, I got closer with my friends and I even have a last name nowadays.” Rein had never had a surname because he had never had any kind of need for one, but now he actually felt proud to have one. Especially because there was such a special story behind the name. “But yeah, shitty and less shitty, and I guess the shitty stuff will get solved out eventually.”

He looked at his fellow nymph and patted his shoulder. “If they don’t get it, just yell louder. Or make some trees grow a bit more so they’ll trip on the roots.” Time to time Rein truly was a total prankster and he definitely would go and prank stupid people who did stupid things.

Rein laughed and then winked. “Like they’re totally drunk or extremely high. There really is like zero to none control over things. Although I don’t know are some of them able to resist getting totally wasted by a nymph and fae blood, but from my experience the answer is a negative one. But why it happens? I really have no idea. Maybe we’re just too magical for them.” He wiggled his brows a bit, clearly imlpying they were more than ‘just magical’ Because it was a funny joke.

"Well, hey, congrats," he said, raising his glass to clink against Rein's. "Always wondered if you'd ever pick up a surname. And you've got time to work out the shitty stuff. And if you wanna get away from the shitty questions 'n kick back in the woods, my door is open. Any time." Will had a half-smile, but he meant the offer seriously. "We could go camping," he added. Rein seemed like he'd be a fun guy to go hang out in the woods with. Especially if he brought his guitar. 

Will swooped another couple of fries, working through the plate with habitual efficiency. "Yelling only works if people're gonna listen. These fools never listen," he pointed out. "I say let 'em poke the metaphorical pixie's nest and learn their lesson the hard way. Otherwise it'll never get through their heads." Will shook his head, letting out a sigh. "Guess that's why I'm not in charge."

Darla had a feeling Will wasn’t quite as impressed with her advances as she’d hoped. Probably all for the better, really. This town was so full of attractive folks Darla was almost starting to wear herself out on them. Still, losing a potential conquest was a bit of a blow to her ego all the same. “You’re no fun,” she teased finally, smirking and giving him a lingering once over before sighing in defeat.

She posed for the picture and rushed up next to him when he offered her to have a look. A frown creeped onto her face. “You got your thumb in the way,” she said bluntly, taking the phone from his grasp. She pinched at the screen for a few moments, squinting in concentration.

“I can crop your thumb out and I’m in focus. ‘Spose there all I can really ask for,” she sighed, a bit ungratefully. She turned to him, plastering a smile onto her face. “Thanks Will. This place really is beautiful.” She looked around for a moment, trying to see if she spotted anything out of the ordinary. “Anything magical ‘bout this area? Sorta just assume most places in the town for somethang goin’ on.”

He allowed himself a slight grin. "Like I said, part of the job." He had to admit, Darla was entertaining; a refreshing change of pace from his usual more sedate company—or the absolute stillness of no company but his own. Will raised an eyebrow in response to her lingering look, meeting her gaze with an expression of dry amusement.

As she fiddled with the phone and inspected the picture, Will tucked his hands in his pockets and pretended to know what she was talking about. "Yeah? Alright then," he said with an easy shrug. If she was content, then he considered his job done. 

"I've always found that the best views are never from behind a camera lens," he remarked idly, giving her a look. He had nothing against photographers, but held a tiny bit of dismay for those tourists who spent their entire trip camera in hand, never stopping to appreciate nature in its most immediate form.