Kintsugi

[Raffe]

Raffe was content with the distraction. The space was small enough that he’d had to hunch to squeeze in, but once sat down it didn’t matter much. Morgan was a talker and chatted away with carefree aplomb. It tickled a small smile to his lips, though his thoughts kept slipping away too, away to a place he couldn’t quite capture. Not that he chased too hard. It felt like he wouldn’t like the answers he found.

“Real pretty,” he agreed as she showed off the next in a long line of treasures. Then her attention whipped up, and her quieter sister exploded at Nox’s entrance. Talk of family was like an uncomfortable stab in his chest, though Kallisti had always been that, and he knew without considering it that he’d offer to help look after the girls for as long as they were with them. The rest he tried not to linger on.

Still, he couldn’t quite fault the little one’s venom. For a moment his eyes bounced away, though he felt ashamed for it. His attention returned in time to meet Nox’s words, which he knew were meant for him too. He looked back down soon after, to where Morgan was still handing him stones and explaining animatedly what they were and where she had found them. “I’ll show you my plants when we get back,” he told her. “Maybe you could help me look after them. They like stories. I think you’d be good at that.” If Nox had good news he would have shared it into the silence by now, especially given Mackenzie’s anger at him. He glanced up at her, fierce and glaring.

“We could do with you about the place, Mackenzie. Keep Nox out of trouble. And we’ll come back here regularly, keep this place clean and tidy; make sure it stays yours.”