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Torack shrugs. “One bit me in ‘98. Still won’t look me in the eye.”

I pause, staring at him. “Are you joking?”

He shrugs again.

“Oh my god, you’renotjoking.”

He moves closer, picking up my abandoned boot from the ground like it’s a crime scene artifact. “You’ll need new ones. Those aren’t built for mountain soil.”

“I got them on sale,” I mutter.

“They lied to you.”

I sigh, then finally plop down on a flat rock and start wringing out my sock.

“You’re not quitting, are you?” he asks after a beat.

“Over a boot?”

“Over a swamp. Over Groth. Over… this.”

I glance around. At the piles of lumber, the buzzing of saws, the distant sound of Lillian shouting something triumphant to a squirrel.

“No,” I say. “I’m not quitting. I came here to prove myself, and I haven’t even had the chance to break a printer yet.”

Torack raises a brow. “You’re waiting to break office equipment?”

“It’s a rite of passage.”

His lips twitch. Almost a smile. Progress.

“You’re more stubborn than you look,” he says.

“Is that an insult or a compliment?”

“Both.”

I smirk. “I’ll take it.”

Across the field, Lillian is crouched in attack mode behind a tree, holding out what I think is a granola bar to a butterfly.

“She told me it’s a dryad in disguise,” Torack says when he sees me watching.

“Honestly? I believe her.”

“She’s either going to rule the world or burn it down.”

“She’s already doing both,” I say.

We sit in silence for a minute, the weird, comfortable kind.

“You know,” I say, “this place is a mess.”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s got something.”

He nods slowly. “That’s why we’re here.”