This chap is a bit shorter than the others but I thought it was an appropriate place to stop!
Finn didn't miss the chance to splash in every puddle on the way down the road towards the entrance of the Mynach Falls.
"Finn will you please stop that you're soaking me." Ianto sighed as he tugged his nephew away from the next puddle on the side of the road. Somehow Finn still managed to splash through it, splattering Ianto's wet jeans with mud.
"Finlay!" Ianto barked, giving another tug on the young boy's hand.
"Sorry Uncle Ianto." Finlay sung, not a trace of being anything but sorry as Jack grasped at Finlay's free hand. Finn took this as encouragement to try out his acrobatic skills.
Finn squealed as he jumped from the pavement to cross the road, swinging between Ianto and Jack's hands happily.
"Again!" He enthused as they let him down once they had caught on to the game. Jack and Ianto exchanged amused glances.
"Ready?" Jack asked. "On three?"
Finn nodded wildly as they continued to tramp down the road.
"Three." Jack pulled Finn up into the air, Ianto mimicking on the other side, swinging Finn back and forth through the air so he squealed in delight again as other walkers without children smiled as they passed.
They paused when they reached the bridge.
"That's a long way down." Finn commented as he peered through the bars in the bridge, Ianto and Jack peering over the top at the waterfalls of the Devil's Punchbowl.
"Why's it called Devil's Bridge?" Finn asked suddenly, reluctantly looking away from the mesmerizing ebb and flow of the water below to glance between Jack and Ianto. Jack frowned for a moment, no clue about anything to do with the waterfall before Ianto, as usual, was ploughing into an explanation.
"Well," Ianto started, taking Finn's hand and leading him towards the turnstiles over the other side of bridge.
"A long time ago,"
"Is this like a fairy story?" Finn asked excitedly as they paused to let a lorry full of logs pass them on the bridge.
"Sort of." Ianto replied. "It's called a myth."
"Is that a fairy story?" Finn asked again.
"It's like a fairy story only a long time ago people thought myth's were real." Ianto tried to explain as Jack dug through his pockets looking for change to pay for the entrance fee into the falls. Finn nodded, encouraging Ianto to continue.
"Well a long time ago there was a woman who lost her cow on one side of the river. She was very sad about this so as she was trying to figure out a way to get her cow back the devil appeared to her," Ianto explained as Jack handed over the money to the woman behind the counter.
"Sounds like you don't need a guide book." She joked, giving Jack the change and a map.
"No," Jack smiled. "Got my own personal walking tourist information centre." Jack replied as Ianto shot him a filthy look from the other side of the turnstiles before continuing his story.
"So when the devil appeared to the old woman he said that he would build her a bridge so she could get her cow back on one condition. That he could keep the soul of the first being that crossed the bridge."
"What's a soul?" Finn asked innocently as he made his way carefully down the first flight of stairs, holding onto Ianto's hand.
"Its like the part of the person that lives on after death." Ianto tried to explain. "Like a ghost."
"But ghosts are scary." Finn looked up at Ianto slightly wide-eyed.
"Well they're not all like ghosts, it's sort of the essence of a person." Ianto tried again.
"What's an essence?" Finn asked again as he tried to splash through another puddle.
"People in olden days thought that souls were who people really were." Jack supplied when Ianto struggled to answer for a second time. This seemed to satisfy the four year old enough to let Ianto continue with his story as they stopped so they could see all three bridges one on top of the other.
"So the woman thought about this and finally agreed to the devil's condition. So the devil built the bridge, which is the one on the bottom." Ianto said, pointing at the bottom of the three bridges.
"And so the woman didn't lose her own soul she threw a stale piece of bread across the bridge which her dog chased after so the devil got to keep the dog's soul and the woman got her cow back." Ianto finished.
"Awww the poor doggie." Finn pouted, frowning before turning away from the bridge and heading back down the trail towards the waterfalls. Ianto rolled his eyes before he followed on after Finn, smiling to himself as he grasped Jack's hand in his own.
Jack frowned before looking down at their entwined hands with an almost disbelieving look on his face, families and elderly couples passing them by for the information point without a second glance. For the second time in as many days Jack had a glimpse into the real world and found that he liked it just as much as he had the first time he had peeked.
They were finishing their lunch in an awning halfway down to the bottom of the waterfalls when Jack pulled a rather aged looking camera out of his rucksack.
"Where did you get that from?" Ianto asked dubiously as he tied off the bag that contained the remainder of the cheese sandwiches that Jack had made that morning, fishing around in his bag for wet wipes.
"Found it down in the archives." Jack replied absentmindedly fiddling with the shutter trying to figure out just how it worked.
"Eh, maybe we shouldn't be using it then Jack." Ianto tried to take a step towards Jack who was now aiming the camera at Ianto.
"Smile." Jack chorused before he pressed the button on the top and prepared for the worst. Nothing happened and Ianto sighed, relieved.
"Oh hang on I've still got the lens cap on." Jack pulled the cap off and then with a flourish took a picture of a rather startled Ianto.
"Oh that's going up on the staff notice board." Jack chuckled to himself as Ianto scowled in return, wiping at Finn's sticky fingers with a little more vigour than was necessary.
"Can I try?" Finn asked, pulling away from Ianto, grabbing at the camera with sticky fingers.
"In a minute kid, you get cleaned up while I see if I can remember how to work it." Jack beamed, revelling in the moment as he turned the camera over several times. There only seemed to be the one button, and the socket for the flash was gummed up with something black and sticky. It didn't really matter anyway, Jack had been unable to find the flash on his search of the archives, not wanting to disturb Ianto's filing system more than was necessary. He fiddled with the zoom a couple more times and tried to clean the lens with the end of Ianto's t-shirt before he sat down next to Finn on the bench to try and explain how the camera worked.
Ianto moved a little away from them, listening to the chatter and the giggling as he watched the water plummeting down over rocks through the trees. He could see a family of three over the other side of the river at another platform, a little girl sat on her dad's shoulders as they watched the river gushing by. Ianto saw the mother pointing at some trees beside them and followed her line of gaze, but whatever was fascinating the family was out of Ianto's line of vision.
He heard the camera lens snap a couple of times, sure that Jack was taking gratuitous pictures of his arse. He glanced over his shoulder to check and found Finn with the camera strap round his neck trying to hold the camera up high enough to snap a picture. He managed what were no doubt a couple of blurry pictures of the bench in front of him before he waved vaguely at Ianto.
"Picture!" Finn waved again, pushing Jack on the arm to encourage him.
"You want a picture of us?" Jack asked, looking down at the four year old.
"Yeah. Then one of me and Uncy Yan, and one of me and you." Finn beamed at the idea.
"Daddy always used to take pictures of me and Mummy when we went places. Everyone needs to get a picture then we can put them in the photy album that Uncy Yan has on his bookshelf." Finn explained, pushing Jack away from the bench with the heel of his wellie now.
Jack smiled as he moved over to stand beside Ianto, pulling the younger man closer to him with a strong arm round his waist. Ianto smiled a little hesitantly at first before his arm slipped round Jack's back to rest on the railings they were leaning against.
"Say cheese!" Finn yelled loud enough to frighten the birds in the nearest tree. The camera wobbled slightly as Finn pressed the button to take the picture. The shutter clicked and Ianto knew the photograph would be lopsided, blurry and probably cut off half of their heads, but it didn't matter. It captured the moment, the here and now of the situation; slightly off kilter and not entirely focused. It was perfect.