“Did you hear that?” I asked. Jim pauses in his tale, listening as hard as he can, straining for any sounds from beyond the canvas. The soft crunch of dry grass prickles in our ears.

“It’ll just be a rabbit,” he mutters, gazing back down at the page to find where he stopped. The tale continued, a dramatic sort of adventure on the high seas with pirates and sea witches and a great leviathan. Comfortable on our cushions, we were lost in those pages for several hours.

We’d read the book several times before, but as one of our favourites it was nearly always packed for camping trips.

When the last chapter ended and the late hour left our eyes sleepy, Jim placed the book to one side with a chuckle. “I wonder if the rabbit outside enjoyed that story.”

I huffed in amusement. As if! Wild animals would be much too scared of a story like that to sit and listen!