"C'mon, come oooon. Let's go outside. Let's go shy boy. Uppity. Come on." I tugged at the arm of the man I had met five minutes ago. The shy man. The man named Vaughn. I knew this particular type of shy person. The type who couldn't see the world outside, as cheesy as that sounded. He looked pretty damn sad. I didn't know what was upsetting him, it could've been something major. A family member could've just died. I didn't know. I didn't care. I didn't really want to know, either. It wasn't my problem. I just wanted to show the poor guy that the world wasn't as bad as he was treating it, if the way he treated me was the way he treated everyone.

He didn't budge, by the way. When I started pulling at his arm. I think I caught Denny and Lannas attention but I didn't mind so much. He tried tugging his arm away from me, this strange cowboy with the albino features. I laughed at his attempt to make me go away. I pivoted on my foot so that my upper body was leaning around the side of his chair and my face was almost in front of his. "It's gonna take more than that to make me go away, mate." I closed my eyes and flashed him a grin, then straightened and resumed tugging at his arm.

I could feel the anger radiating off him. At any moment I knew he was going to snap. Any moment. I was just waiting for it. To my surprise, he actually didn't snap, instead jerking his arm away from me and standing up, walking towards the exit of the diner. This was neat. I didn't even have to get him out by myself, he was doing that for me. What luck!

I followed him out the diner door, a smile still on my face, a scowl still on his. I caught his wrist as soon as I stepped outside the door. He tried to jerk it away but I was having none of that. I didn't let go. He hissed at me with a tone that implied physical violence. "Stop following me. Let go of me."

I just looked up into his eyes and smiled, "Nuh-uh. Not until I show ya some stuff." "I don't want to see anything you're going to show me." He retorted, "Trust me, I won't leave ya alone until ya do." I said back with the most innocence I could bring to my face, taking in the fact that I was smirking like hell.

He made a face that looked like he was having a mental war, and then sighed and snapped his wrist out of my grasp. "Fine. But don't touch me." I shrugged, "That's okay."

"Okay, time to go to the beach." I started walking towards the beach, and looked back over my shoulder to make sure he was coming. He hesitated for a bit, looking torn, but in the end he reluctantly followed behind me. We walked over the bridge onto Sprout Island, and I took my shoes off once we crossed the bridge. He stopped and waited, raising an eyebrow at me. I shrugged, "Barefoot is always more fun. You should take your shoes off too." "I'm not taking my shoes off." He huffed at me. I shrugged again, "Your choice, I guess you won't feel it, then." I turned away from him but didn't move. I heard a little bit of ruffling a second later and my smirk grew.

I looked back at him after a minute and he was holding his shoes. "You lie." I said, smirk planted firmly on my face, dragging out the word 'lie.' "I just thought that whatever I'm doing I might as well do it all the way." He snapped at me and continued walking to the beach. I jogged a bit so that I was in front of him, keeping the smirk on my face and feeling the hot stone pressing up into my feet from below, the rough surface scratching the bottom.

We reached the beach and I saw Vaughn look around curiously, wondering what he was supposed to be seeing, or experiencing. I turned towards him and smiled, "What? Ya don't see it?" He gave me a look like he thought I was crazy. I laughed at him. "Fine. I'll point 'em out to ya."

I pointed up at the sky, the massive, blue sky. With white voluminous clouds floating through it and distorting the suns rays to make a scene that was beyond amazing. "See the sky?" I said, and looking at him. He was looking up at the sky so I turned my head up and continued. "Look at how big it is. How blue it is. Have ya ever seen anythin' like that? Well of 'course you have. Of course you've seen it. At least figuratively. But have you really seen it? How amazing that is? It's the same sky for the whole damn world, mate. The whole damn world. Sky means freedom. Lookit the sky and you feel like your problems don't even exist, like your whole life doesn't even exist."

I brought my hand back down and glanced over at him. He was still looking at the sky. I turned my head towards the sprawling blue ocean and pointed at it.

"Now the ocean. You've seen this thing tons of times am I right? Tons. But it's a different world underneath I swear. Ya know, all the mountains we have on dry land, all the valleys we have, all the hills and holes and everything? Yeah. The ocean has those too, underwater. It's a whole goddamn planet under there really. A whole planet. It's huge, so huge, bigger than the size of all the dry land and much deeper. We don't even know what's down there because we can't breathe down there. All new species. No humans. Hell, if prehistoric animals were gonna exist nowadays they'd be in the goddamn ocean you know that? People say there are no frontiers left. The oceans a frontier. The oceans definitely a frontier. It's a frontier with life, mate, it's a frontier that's unexplored."

I glanced at him again, and he was looking out towards the ocean. I don't know if he felt what I was trying to convoy, I really don't, but his facial expression had changed.

"There's space, too, ya know. We know nothing about space. And then there's things so microscopic we don't even know if they exist and hell, maybe there's a universe inside a cell but we wouldn't know it's too damn small, yea? So don't be so damn grumpy. The worlds a big place. Real big. When you get bored of the world go out and explore the damn universe. Ya never know, ya know?"

He turned is head and looked at me, wearing a funny expression on his face. I just smiled back at him, a big smile, with closed eyes.

"Who're you?" I heard him say gruffly from in front of me. My eyes flew open, "Oh, my mistake, my mistake, I'm sorry mate," I stuck my hand out for a handshake, smiling, "I'm the new rancher, yea? I'll be takin' care of the ranch on this island." He looked at my hand for a moment, not doing anything. Then he reached out and shook my hand. Strong, like a handshake should be. I shook it back with equal force, my grin never leaving my face.

"Name?" He asked shortly, after he released my hand. But it was more of a forced harshness now. He was out of common ground and feeling probably not like he usually felt. It showed.

"Oh my name. Right, yeah. How about you figure that one out yourself." I widened my smile a bit, "Like a mystery sort of. Well, kinda. But yeah, you find that out on your own, hows about it?"

An expression of annoyance flashed across his face, "I don't like mysteries."

"Oh." I replied, expression fading back to normal, almost regret. "Oh well that's too bad then, mate. Really too bad. Too bad that you don't like mysteries."

I stepped backwards away from him and bent over a little, with my hands behind my back, and with a grin said, "'Cause the world's full of 'em." I turned around and ran on my bare feet, laughing as I sped away from the man I had only met 30 minutes ago. Leaving him very confused and a little bit more curious about what the hell was even possible anymore.