fancy meeting you here || Nell

"Oh you know, just..." He stopped for a moment, looking for something to say. He didn't usually visit the forest for any specific reason, it was just one of the places where his feet took him if he wasn't thinking much about where he was going. "Just enjoying the view." His voice rose a bit at the end, as if to suggest a question, despite the fact that he hadn't meant for it to come out as such. Fox was like that. As sure as he may be about himself, there was always a sense of incompleteness to him, like he wasn't finished with... Well, you could never quite put your finger on exact what it was he wasn't finishing, and still somehow that increased the sensation. It was almost like he himself wasn't finished, and it never helped that he was so distractable he could hardly ever complete a whole thought without going on a tangent that inevitably made him forget what he was even talking about in the first place.

His eyes lit up at the mention of a scavenger hunt. "Oh yeah?! A scavenger hunt! What're you looking for? Could I help?" By this time there was a grin taking over his whole face, the kind that reaches to the tips of your fingers and suggest that some serious adventuring is about to go down. "I could so help - I mean, not that I know the forest any better than you, of course. But two pairs of eyes is always better than one, right?" The prospect of a scavenger hunt was perfectly brimming with possibilities to him - and what would they be hunting? Probably some specific sort of plant, he supposed, but maybe not. Maybe they were looking for a secret message hidden where no one would be able to accidentally discover it, or perhaps Nell had been so fortunate as to stumble across a treasure map, and now they were on the hunt for buried treasure. People told Fox time and time again not to let his imagination get him carried away, but he didn't see the fun in that. If you're going to live your whole life looking only at what's right before you, what's the point in living at all? He didn't like to limit himself that way, it was too stifling.

"I totally don't need to be back for a while, I can help!" He nearly clamped his hand over his mouth after that just to stop himself from blurting out any more useless information about how complete and totally available he was to help with the scavenger hunt that she may not want or need. Maybe she was looking for a secret message, and if that were the case he shouldn't expect she'd want him there to see it. This thought only brough his spirits down for a moment before he skyrocketed into the excitement brought on by the idea that maybe she wouldn't mind him tagging along, in which case he'd get to bear witness to this message or treasure or plant or whatever it was - at this point he didn't care, so long as he got to be a part of it.

tag; nell words; uhhh... outfit; tada
thank you noa ?! of caution!

Fox beamed at her compliment. Not that it would seem to be one to most anyone else, but he usually assumed anything even suggestive of being complimentary was. Some may call it conceited; he called it staying positive. He followed Nell's gaze as she looked back towards the tree he'd been sitting in a moment ago. “Yeah, it's nice.” He said it absent-mindedly, since he hadn’t actually been paying much attention to the view when he was up there. He rarely did; scenery wasn’t exactly his thing. It was to still.
Fox didn’t like still.
”A pig? Okay. A pig...” He wondered for a moment why a pig - was there some sort of significance? But the question wasn’t in his head for long before he simply shrugged his shoulders and moved on. That was his solution to most things, because there was usually far too much flowing in and out of his head for any one thing to get stuck for too long. Occasionally something his subconscious deemed truly important would find a nook or cranny in his mind to lodge itself in and he’d be able to concentrate on it for a while. ”Oh, right.” He nodded once she gave some explanation; it made some sense to him. He certainly wasn’t horrible with directions, but if he didn’t pay attention - which was common - he could get confused as to where he was and where he was going.
Fox could tell Nell was cold, seeing as she was shivering and all, but you couldn’t say the same for him. He was usually moving around a bit too much for that to be a problem. He wished he had an extra coat to offer her or something. Of course it likely wouldn’t fit her if he did, seeing as he was notably shorter than her - not that he’d ever point it out. He liked to go about life believing he was average height, but sometimes it was hard. ”Yep. Just got out, actually.” Fox didn't usually realise it, but once someone asked him about his day or how he was doing he'd tend to go off on a tangent... Sometimes a long one. "Yeah, you know. It's school. I sorta miss Christmas already. But I was thinking today, during math," He hardly ever thought about any actual math during math class, "about, like, how lame is it that all the good holidays are lumped into one end of the year? I mean, nobody really cares about Easter, you know?"

tag; nell words; uhhh... outfit; tada
thank you noa ?! of caution!

"Easter's... Early April, usually. Depends on the year." Fox didn't personally care too much about the traditional western holidays, but his mum sure did. She was a practicing Catholic who simply insisted that the rest of her family follow along. At school he definitely fell out of practice; no church, no grace before meals. But one thing he wasn't quick to forget was the gift-giving holidays. When he was younger even Easter was a cause for excitement - then again so was anything that gave him a special excuse to eat more chocolate than usual. It's not that he preferred receiving to giving, (though come on, every kid loves presents) but the atmosphere around gift-giving holidays was always somehow better than throughout the rest of the year.

"Oh, we're not lost. The castle's right over there." He offered nonchalantly, pointing a bit left of the direction they'd just come from. "Don't want to run into a moose?" He asked, looking cofused. "I dunno. I imagine meeting a moose could be fun. Do you think you can ride them, like horses?" He stopped walking for a moment to lean against a tree and think about it before jogging to catch up. "How big are they, anyways? Like cow sized, or...? Can you imagine riding a moose?" Without ever realising it Fox had managed to talk about everything and nothing for long enough for Nell to find the pig - Winston, apparently - without any much help from him at all. He didn't mean to, and of course he wanted to help, but searching for a rain washed boulder in a forest full of boulders just required so much attention, and he had so little to give.

"Well I'm not sure he's really a pig anymore. Maybe a dust bunny?" He tilted his head sideways and squinted one eye in an effort to see how the odd assortment of seemingly randomly placed marks might have once been a pig. The way the rain had distorted her drawing only interested him for a moment or two, and then he was circling the area looking for something else that might interest him; perhaps that hidden message that he'd hoped would accompany the pig-marked boulder. But no luck. "So what now?" While Nell had bent down to get a better look at the chalk marks Fox had found himself an oak tree with branches the perfect height to hang from, which he was doing by the time Nell stood back up again. "You know," he offered as he pulled himself up into a better sitting position in the tree, "The more you explore the forest, the more you'll be able to figure out where you are. I used to get lost in here for hours - it might have been hours - but now, I can usually find my way back, easy."

outfit; tada
thank you noa ?! of caution!

"Oh. They just always seem so... Chill, y'know?" He shrugged once she released his shoulders. "Like, in National Geographic and stuff." When Nell held her hand up as high as she could to demonstrate the approximate height of a moose, Fox watched in awe. It was quite tall for an animal he'd never given much thought to before. Not the mention the fact he had to look almost straight up just the see Nell's hand; she was taller than him and stretching as high as she could. Once he got over the surprise of how massive a moose supposedly was, he was all over the idea of taming one. Imagine the look on people's faces if you showed up to the a horse show (or whatever it was that you did with horses, he didn't know,) on a moose! "Dude, let's tame a moose," he agreed enthusiastically. The idea was hilarious, not to mention preposterous, but it was sort of growing on him. So long as you can ignore the uncomfortably high probability of severe injury or death. But when has that ever stopped him?

Fox laughed at Nell's explanation for her drawing. "Got your wires crossed, did you?" He didn't mean it as an insult, just as a bit of a joke, the same way he'd perceived what she herself had said about it. Her quirks and idiosyncrasies didn't bother him. That is, if he even took the time to notice them. Fox could know someone for years without noticing those things about them that might drive someone else crazy after knowing that person for a few months. Maybe he was forgiving or patient, but it's more likely that he simply never bothered to notice the way you chew the ends of the pencil's he let's you borrow or how you're always tapping your foot to a tune nobody else can hear.

The question 'should we explore more,' or any variation of it could only ever have one answer from the high energy Water. "Of course!" was the only thing he'd ever be able to say in response. "Pick a direction," he said, gazing around from his seat on a relatively low hanging branch of the Oak. He thought he might have caught a glimpse of the lake glittering through the trees in one direction; almost enough to give him a decent idea of where they were in relation to the rest of the school grounds.

thank you noa ?! of caution!