#bergen_county

Dag also made rather short work of her food. Teenagers.

"So." Adam rinses off his hands. "Wanna hang out or something?"

"Um. Okay?" A little smile.

He nods. "Ok."

"...Do you like video games?"

"Or we could go for a walk, there's trails all through the woods..."

"Some..... I like tabletop better but...." Sheepish shrug. "Yeah, walk sounds good. Like, protecting the place, right? Well, practice-protecting......."

"Hey, maybe we can get you on patrols, too? We can ask." She heads to the hallway door. "WE'RE GOING FOR A WALK!"

A loud grunt of message received from her father

"Okay, we're good."

Adam steps back into the sunlight outside with Sam. "So, you better show me which way."

She nods. "I like to go see the bridge over the creek. Saw a bear once. If you're quiet, though, you see deer pretty often."

"Yeah? Cool! We used to get animals up near where I was born and stuff."

"Oh yeah? Bet you miss it."

"We moved away when I was kind of little. Mom met dad after that."

"Oh. So where was most recent? Me, I moved around.. um.. a lot. But I've been here a year and a half."

"Before here? Alpine, here in Jersey."

"Cool."

The edge of the Ironhawk homestead and the start of the woods is... fuzzy, but the trees do get nominally more dense.

"So......" his voice drops in harmony with the woods. "So, like, what are we looking for? What are we gonna see?"

"Oh. Uh - not anything in particular? You gotta be quiet and see what lets you see it. Or just... if we wanna talk, be okay with not seeing a lot of animals."

"Hey! Dagmar!" Further down the path Sylvi is waving to them. She's got her staff with her, and Flopsy lopes along at her side as she approaches. "Hi, Adam."

A few steps later. "Well... you wanna....Oh, hey Sylvi." He grins, waving to her.

A quick grin in response. Flopsy sits up on his haunches, appraising Adam with one ear cocked.

"Oh, hey Sylvi."

Adam regards the giant rabbit back.

(Well...sizable for a hare, yes, but hardly as tall as Sylvi. All told, top of her ears comes up to about her waist.)

"Mmmm" Flopsy says, ears twitch "Welcome to the dreaming, son of man"

"Everything okay? I'm doing patrol."

"Yeah, things are good. We had fight practice, and thought.. dunno.. to hang out? Want company?"

"Oh, right...Adam, this is Flopsy. Flopsy, Adam."

"Flopsy's a chimera like Snow."

"Well..." Sylvi eyes Adam a moment, but then nods. "Sure. I already finished over on the north side." She resumes walking, staff resting against her arm.

"Uh... hey, Flopsy. Flopsy?" He gives Sylvi a puzzled look.

He grins as she eyes him.

"Yeah. He used to be my stuffed toy when I was little. Then I got older...and he came with me." A fond look to the chimera.

A blink. "You can do that?"

"I wasn't expecting it. Sometimes the Dreaming does stuff we don't expect. A lot of times, really."

"Well, I can..." Flopsy says, "i'm magical...and Flopsy is a fine name thank you," He cleans his whiskers

"...Dad probably despairs because I sort of collect pets..."

Sylvi grins a bit at Dagmar. "Oh, your dad loves those animals, too."

"You do? You mean like Snow?"

"TwoBit is his dog, for sure."

"Yeah, Snow is not exactly a pet, because, like, she's her own monkey... but she's also like a little kid?"

"And there's Odin and Two Bit, and the Lodge kept Brown Dog because I begged..."

"She's a bit of a snitch," Flopsy observes about Snow "I lost a carrot to her once. THEN she discovered it wasn't fruit. I could have told her that"

A snort-laugh.

"Learning opportunity," Sylvi shrugs.

"I've seen the dogs, I think, but what's Odin?"

"Odin's seen you. He's a cat."