"I have been listening to you kids caterwauling all up and down the river for the past week, and I can't take it anymore!" She wasn't so elderly as she first appeared, but she was definitely stooped, if only to more easily bear the weight of a ridiculously oversized backpack.
"Who are you?" Erin started to ask--
"It doesn't matter. Just please, please, please--just don't talk anymore. And if I hear that shriek one more time, I'm just gonna snap!"
With that, the woman snapped a few twigs, grabbed some pine straw, and in minutes had a crackling fire going. Like magic, she drew from the pack a gourmet camp kitchen and snapped out a fresh white linen tablecloth onto the ground. Dishes, forks, spoons, napkins flew around the cloth and in minutes it looked like the table-top of a five star restaurant.
As she strode briskly down to the water, the woman cast a disdainful glance in the direction of Blake and Adam who were just getting pathetic now, still whining and moaning over their various contusions. She grabbed the branch of a nearby shrub and tossed it to the boys.
"You might want to put some witch hazel on those cuts, then go help the girls gather up some fire wood. Jeez."
"Who is that?" the boys looked at each other and shrugged.
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