There's something about being planetside, out in the open- in a forest even- that's more refreshing than words can say. Not that Jack's ever been all that much for forests, but there's something to be said for nature, and for mankind's tendency of embracing it. And, after the year he'd had, well. The fresh air is a welcome change. So welcome, in fact, that he finds it almost hard to remember his purpose, why he's out here; there are lives at stake, people have gone missing. They need to be found. Since his continued search of the stasis pods had yielded no results yet, and he still wasn't ready to face Ianto, answering the call to find Dranbu and its missing residents had seemed the perfect chance to get away. Yet, now that he's here...
It should disturb him, probably, how easily his attention slides. How often he finds himself thinking not of the search, not of a mysteriously missing village and its people, but of the forest in which he searches. The air is fresh , cool and soothing; the lush vegetation, so much of it unique and alien, is fascinating, the scents of the flora far more pleasant than the sterile air of the station, or the acrid smoke of the Valiant before that. The wildlife, well. It's stayed out of sight, out of reach, present but elusive, nothing more than shadows through the trees, sounds drifting from far away. It should disturb him, how easy it is to focus on how inviting all of it is, rather than on his search... but it doesn't.
Instead, it's simply.... pleasant. Inviting. Everything about the forest is inviting, welcoming. So when he hears the tinkling sound of water somewhere up ahead of him, he follows the merry sound without a thought for the people he'd come to look for. And when there's a woman sitting at the edge of the water, the small stream that had caught his hear, he doesn't wonder if she's another searcher, or one of those he should be searching for, he only returns warmly,
"It is, isn't it?" He takes a moment, looking around to take in the meadow around her, before nodding to the space beside her and asking, "Mind if I join you?"
All roads lead to...
It should disturb him, probably, how easily his attention slides. How often he finds himself thinking not of the search, not of a mysteriously missing village and its people, but of the forest in which he searches. The air is fresh , cool and soothing; the lush vegetation, so much of it unique and alien, is fascinating, the scents of the flora far more pleasant than the sterile air of the station, or the acrid smoke of the Valiant before that. The wildlife, well. It's stayed out of sight, out of reach, present but elusive, nothing more than shadows through the trees, sounds drifting from far away. It should disturb him, how easy it is to focus on how inviting all of it is, rather than on his search... but it doesn't.
Instead, it's simply.... pleasant. Inviting. Everything about the forest is inviting, welcoming. So when he hears the tinkling sound of water somewhere up ahead of him, he follows the merry sound without a thought for the people he'd come to look for. And when there's a woman sitting at the edge of the water, the small stream that had caught his hear, he doesn't wonder if she's another searcher, or one of those he should be searching for, he only returns warmly,
"It is, isn't it?" He takes a moment, looking around to take in the meadow around her, before nodding to the space beside her and asking, "Mind if I join you?"