"Oh trust me," he said, grinning, his eyebrows waggling. "That's exactly what my wildest dreams are."
He tossed his bag on the bed, wincing as it missed, and crumpled to the floor with a clatter, before he turned back to her.
"So you need to get changed into your hikin' gear or what? I want us to get out before it gets much past midday, I reckon it's a good hour's mission there if we make good time, a few hours to explore, another hour back, maybe more if we're tired. Just a little concerned about makin' it back here before it gets dark."
Cole was used to the outdoors, but not the forest, and he'd had enough experience with the kind of trip into the wilderness that they were about to undertake to know that it was very, very different terrain to what he was experienced in. His old man had warned him about that when he was a teenager - thinking about it, it had almost seemed like he held a healthy nervousness about that kind of environment.
He was more than a little excited, though. The Families hadn't been able to find a new artifact in more than a generation, and they were possibly on the verge of adding another to their arsenal. He didn't quite know what they'd do with it when they did, of course, but he suspected the Wards would take custody. It was their family's right to do so.
"You bring all the stuff I told you to on that list?" He asked.