I took my time, I hurried up

Mateo

"Mm. I have never been to it - if I go, I will take some sketches for you and send them." It would give him something to do on a day off when he isn't hungover or waiting to be hungover, at least. Also if he takes ThirdEye and goes to look in a telescope, that's absolutely going to be worthwhile, right?

"Oh, Papà. I can make any time convenient for me," he says with a flash of teeth and a wave of his hand; speaking of hands, though, as the conversation turns back to Remi's, Mateo falls into quiet curiosity to listen and observe. "A vessel for a spirit," he repeats, matching his whispered tone to his father's.

Clearly the mere idea of it is thrilling to Mateo, and when he finally gazes from the spirit-arm and back to the man who owns it, he's grinning from ear to ear. "But you can write again. And draw and paint," he points out, gesturing to the bag on Remi's shoulder as if to ask if he wants to get started.

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

i'm not the man they think i am at home

Had they been a normal father and son, they'd likely have planned on going together since it was something they were both interested in. Given that this was only Remi's second outing in over a year, he didn't want to over-commit himself, and so simply nodded and smiled. 'I would like that. Perhaps you can use it to spy the lighthouse on the tallest mountain in the Cordillera, mm?'

Watching as Mateo's hands add physical flourishes to his words, Remi nods gravely as he eyes the fingers on his right hand. "Mmm." He hums vaguely, but doubtfully, before nodding. Removing the bag with his left arm, the Lullaby nods at his son to pick a spot. Within the bag are two blocks of watercolour paper that Remi has made himself. The wax binding their edges smell faintly of the botanicals he uses in his gin and are stained a subtle blue. There are also two small tins with a handful of colours and two glass jars filled with a few paintbrushes.

"I was going to ask if that cat was your friend Everest, but he is far too polite to have ignored the number of times I have said hello silently." Remi remarks with a crooked smile. "How is he?" It's a precariously close topic of conversation to Finn, but given how little Remi knows about his son's life, not asking about this specific friend seems absurd. So ask he does, doing his best to busy himself with his art supplies to keep his thoughts on track.

Mateo

"There is a lighthouse up there?" Mateo raises his eyebrows and shuffles a little to the left until he feels that the sun is in a position that will allow for good lighting without blinding them. As Remi begins to remove everything from his bag, the botanist helps to arrange it on the wall so they each have access to the paints and the brushes. As he receives the block of paper, however, he falters for a second to examine it.

And although it's probably weird to anyone who isn't part of their kooky family, Mateo takes his time in running his fingers across the edges, feeling the texture of the paper, the cool warmth of the wax, wondering if the blue will leave a stain on his fingers despite its subtlety. Lifting the canvas to his face, he inhales slowly and fails to stop a smile creeping across his face. "It smells like home," he confesses.

Gently setting down the paper once more, it takes a moment for him to properly plug in his mind towards other subjects, but when he does, it's with a crooked grin to match his father's. "No, Ever is slightly bigger as a cat," he remarks. "He is good, though. He is still training to pilot skyships, he's away at the moment on a delivery job."

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

i'm not the man they think i am at home

Holding his breath slightly as his son investigates the watercolour block, Remi exhales a subtle sigh of relief at Mateo's remark. "Speaking of...we brought the houseboat with us." He murmurs secretively, though this time it wasn't to keep his hand from overhearing, but rather because the presence of the houseboat was something he wanted to keep precious. "We named it il Tramezzino." Remi adds, letting his fingers ghost across the texture block of paper in his lap.

"Is he now." Sounding both impressed and somewhat doubtful, the Lullaby raises a brow before nodding. "Well that is good. Perhaps one day he can fly you to the Cordillera if we ever figure out a dragon repellant." Little did Remi know that this was a trail of thought Everest and Mateo had already begun to wander down.

"How is...everyone else?" Such was Remi's attempt at asking if Mateo had any other friends or perhaps some sort of significant other. Though to hide his intentions he quickly added: "Do you speak to your sister much?"

Mateo

"You did?" Mateo's smile deepens as he hears about the houseboat, though his gaze is already on the scene before them, his busy hands reaching for a wider brush that he might start his work. "I thought the Stone Symphony must have washed it away when the river burst its banks," he admits quietly - because that is admitting that he had gone looking for it, of course.

Il Tramezzino is simultaneously the weirdest and most accurate name for his parents' home, and the peal of Mateo's laughter says as much. "Bella scelta," he compliments. As for Everest and the Mighty Dragon Repellant? "We considered that, but we realised we would need to get close to some dragons prior to figuring out a repellant. Everest decided it was not such a wise idea."

Everyone else is simultaneously too vague and too not, Mateo itching at the stubble on his cheek with the end of his paintbrush. "Er," he says slowly, "well, I am going to see Paige soon. She mentioned an island here made of bones, so we are going to look at it. Business is good, I keep busy." You know - busy drinking and getting high and making drugs and testing them, busy making too many friends whose intimate tattoos he knew but whose names he did not, that sort of thing.

His sister, though? Mateo shrugs a little too casually. "I used to try," he says. "I would visit her here every couple of weeks. We argued last time, though, just before Enzo's thing. So I haven't been back since."

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

i'm not the man they think i am at home

"I say we, but really it was Ronin. I could not fly when we first moved to the mountain, so he had to carry it up all on his own." Remi's expression softens then, as his dimples deepen. It takes a moment to come back to himself, but soon he's chuckling along with his son. "Così ho pensato." He agrees crookedly, selecting a large fan-shaped brush and begins to cover his paper in water. "Probabilmente no...ma.." Raising his eyebrows and frowning in such a way that he somehow appeared to be smiling, the Lullaby shrugs. "Perhaps we could conduct some experiments without Everest so that he will not worry."

An island made of bones? Gods, if Mateo kept it up Remi would be skulking figure in Torchline again before the season was out. "That is nice." He remarks of Paige, trying and failing to put a face to the name before immediately giving up. Whatever other pleasantries he might have mumbled half-heartedly about Mateo's business were lost in the way Remi seemed torn between what he wanted to say and what he ought to say.

Wincing slightly and grabbing at the inside of his cheek with his molars, the Lullaby sighs heavily as he lets his paintbrush drift back and forth across the paper to make sure it was wet everywhere. "She...likes to argue, I think." He begins, sounding unsure. "She seemed to have many thoughts and feelings about you at Enzo's thing.' Remi uses Mateo's turn of phrase because what else was there to call the family meeting they'd had with their dead son/brother? "You were quite restrained, from what I recall." Which was not much, all things considered.

Mateo

Mateo grins at that, and for a second the paper on his lap threatens to become a watercolour not of the serene, Torchline horizon, but of a rugged mountainside and the silhouette of a dragon with a boat on its back. "Of course he did," he hums. As for the dragons, "Maybe we could. If I am up at the Cordillera with you, it would be silly not to take advantage of that, right?" As if there was ever any doubt.

Nice is not the term he'd use to describe Metacarpal Island, but he chooses not to go into that more clearly; instead, with an amused smile still curling at his lips, father and son seem to move in unison with their paintbrushes, as if it's some strange and rhythmic dance they're performing, rather than the act of preparing a canvas. If only it could remain that way.

Luckily (or perhaps not) for the Lullaby, Mateo has always worn his heart on his sleeve, and he snorts an initial response to his comments. "I was high," he corrects, unintentionally shattering the image he's been building of himself in the process. "And she seems to have thoughts and feelings about everything, all the time. But no one more than poor, poor, Enzo." He's scowling down at the paper now.

"I know I'll never get it, because I wasn't a twin and Hotaru wasn't my mother and whatever, but after a year of seeing her just existing, I felt like every visit was my apology for not being dead instead."

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

i'm not the man they think i am at home

"Mmmm." Remi agrees affectionately, before nodding in earnest. "It would be silly. Besides, we could always give you a compass while we are experimenting so that you can leave if there is any sudden danger." This, of course, has the Lullaby thinking of the compass he'd given to Flora and Enzo for precisely the same thing, such that the merriment on his features dies away and his dimples grow shallow.

Mixing a hint of blue with aquamarine, Remi begins to let the paint dribble onto his canvas, ignoring the spiderwebs of colour that form and instead focusing merely on splots of saturation. Picking up his block he twists it this way and that, letting the paint run and spread as it pleased. Not taking his eyes off of the paint, Remi nods gently and without judgment to hear his son hadn't been sober.

"When..." Pausing, as if needing to remove some great weight from his chest before he could speak, Remi sighs slowly and begins again. "...when Aoife died, every relationship I had changed. With those, I was close to like Ronin and Vai, and even those I only knew enough to wave at. There was the Remi who had Aoife, and then there was a new Remi who did not." His voice had taken on a winding affect as he circled around the point he was trying to make. Gods knew Remi was out of practice giving advice, and giving it to his son about his daughter was all the more foreign a concept.

"I think Flora needs to learn how to be your sister, now that she is someone new." Letting the block settle in his lap, the Lullaby glances over his shoulder with a soft stare. "And maybe you do too. You are no longer the older brother to a set of twins. Now it is only you and Flora and what that relationship looks like might not be anything at all like the old one."

Mateo

"Sudden danger? In the Cordillera? Papà, you cannot be serious," Mateo drawls, though his tone remains good natured and teasing, and his eyes are on his own canvas such that he doesn't notice how Remi's own attitude is cooling off. When Aoife's name leaves his lips, however, the botanist doesn't need to see his father's face to know. "I wonder how different things would be if she were here," he mumbles before he can stop himself, and instantly a flush of embarrassment colours his cheeks. "Mi dispiace."

Wiping at his forehead with the back of his hand and leaving an accidental streak of cobalt in its wake, Mateo glances up at Remi and rolls his shoulders in a shrug. "When I last spoke to her she was not interested in being someone new," he says. "And I was not particularly kind to her myself. I do not even know how to go about repairing that." And given how similar volatile the two of them could be when together, one wrong word from either could spell disaster.

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

i'm not the man they think i am at home

'There is no need.' Remi replies in response to his son's apology, and though the smile on his lips is meant for Mateo, it's only the spiderwebs of blue on his page that see it. "I wonder that all the time." Never would the alchemist trade the lives of Mateo, Flora, or Enzo to have Aoife back...and yet no part of Remi is sure that had Aoife lived if any of them would have come to be. Oh, he and Ronin would likely still have had droves of children, but would their marriage have ever opened to allow for Hotaru? Would Remi have ever locked himself away in the dreamworld where Mateo had been conceived in the first place? He thought not.

So, despite whatever he might say on the surface, wishing that Aoife had never died was a death sentence to the children who had come after her.

"Being someone new is a lot of work." Remi murmurs, mirroring Mateo's shrug. "Well, you will always be family no matter how many grains of sand run down until things are fixed. And if they never are...well.." Reaching for a bit of yellow, Remi hits his brush against his finger so that it splatters like rain onto his painting. "..you will be family even then."

Mateo

Mateo nods, because if there's one thing that growing up does to a person, it's make them more open to the big picture, tragic as it might be. And so despite wondering the same thing himself, he's also painfully aware that had his older sister lived and grown as she had meant to, he'd likely have never existed. There was simply no need for a Mateo in a world where Aoife was whole and happy. Even so, he hopes she'd have liked him.

Tilting his block this way and that after adding a few shades of darker blue, Mateo's watercolour is turning out a great deal moodier than the skyline allows for, but such is creative interpretation. (That's what he tells himself anyway).

But as Remi continues, the boy can't help his smile, and he reaches out suddenly to drag a finger through one of the splotches of yellow on Remi's canvas, creating a shooting star of sorts. "Thank you, Dad," he mumbles. "I wish she would speak to you the way I do, though. She..." His brow furrows and he shakes his head. "Sometimes it feels like she blames you for everything. It is one of the things we argued about."

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

i'm not the man they think i am at home

"WH-" Remi huffs instantly as artistic panic flares brightly in his chest. It's normally only Ronin who he has to endure such shenanigans, and it takes Remi a moment to remember that he's here to spend time with his son and not try and create a masterpiece. Still, he shoots a frown in Mateo's direction, clucking under his tongue. "You have done it upside down." He complains with a grin as he turns the pad over as if righting it.

The fingers on Remi's right-hand pinch at the side of his leg in response to the defensiveness prickles rising up the back of his neck. 'Well...she can blame me if it makes her feel better. Sometimes it is easier to work through things if you can shove your anger onto something or someone else. Gods know I have done it enough." He'd hated Loren, Ronin for a time, Sunjata and Nate, the gods..

Sighing, Remi turns to Mateo, stretching an arm around his son's shoulders. "You do not need to defend me to her." He says softly as his fingers conform to the shape of Mateo's shoulder. "Some of what she says is likely true, and the rest...well, I doubt you will change her mind anytime soon if she is upset as you say."

Mateo

"It is not upside down, it is just the reflection," Mateo says wisely - or as wisely as a man with yellow paint on his hands and blue on his forehead can seem. "You will need to make another in the sky for it to match now." His own masterpiece is currently looking like Torchline on the verge of monsoon season, so he selects a vibrant pink to fleck across the landscape in an attempt to make it more stormy sunset than gloomy as fuck.

Scoffing, Mateo shrugs his shoulders and forces himself not to hunch in on himself too sullenly. "That is the thing, though - I do not even think it makes her feel better. She still knows it is her fault, what happened." He scowls, then, because even he knows it doesn't sound fair out loud. "I just think it is unfair that she will not say it to you directly. Instead she just blames you behind your back."

Huffing and trying to shake off the sudden chill across the back of his neck, Mateo takes a second to collect himself. "Maybe I am a little upset that they chose not to come to the refuge as well," he admits. "Even though it has been over a year now."

i've told you time and time again
i'm not as think as you drunk i am

i'm not the man they think i am at home

"Oh, I see." Remi drawls, turning the painting again and smothering a bit of the sky with his brush to leave an impression meant to match the one Mateo had made below.

Not wanting to diminish his daughter's ire, whether righteous or not, Remi swallows back some of his laughter such that what presses between his lips is no more than a scoff. "I have faced down far worse than your sister's anger." His son's regret though? That was a harder pill to swallow.

"I know. I think about that often as well." The Lullaby admits. "The line between letting your children do as they please and wanting to shelter them.." Whatever the remainder of that sentiment was meant to be, Remi opts to swallow it away with a shake of his head. Tugging Mateo closer, he leans over to press a kiss against his forehead (while avoiding the blue smear there).

"It is easier to regret than it is to move on." Remi says softly, closing his eyes. "I think we could all use a bit more strength these days, because blame has gotten us nowhere." Nowhere but the side of a mountain, in Remi's case, anyway.