Paint it Another Colour

Chapter 6

Tino yelped as a crash echoed through the Nordic household. Berwald didn't flinch. It was normal for Lukas and Matthias to fight. Across from where they were sitting in the lounge, Emil was curled up on the sofa, bobbing his head along to music of some kind from his earphones and typing so fast his fingers were a blur. Either he didn't hear, or chose to ignore the crash.

"We should probably do something about that" Tino muttered, turning to look up at Berwald, who grunted and turned a page in his newspaper.

The windows to Tino's right rattled and he put down his book, standing up and sighing. He walked through into the kitchen, debris everywhere from the fight. In the middle of the room, Lukas was on top of Matthias, his arms pinned to his side, punching him.

"I will kill you" Lukas hissed in between punches. It took both Tino and Berwald who had come in to help to drag him off Matthias, who leapt to his feet, unsteady and gingerly tapped his face, wincing in the process.

"What happened?"

"What didn't happen?" Matthias shrugged and put his hands in his pockets, grinning sheepishly.

"Has anyone seen Mr Puffin?" Emil came running into the kitchen, not halting or even blinking at the mess and Matthias' battered face. "He's vanished again."

"No one cares right now Emil" Lukas screeched.

"He's in a bad mood" Matthias said bluntly. "And says this is my fault."

"That's coz it is" Lukas made a lunge forwards and crashed into Tino who stepped in the way. "It's always your fault."

"Lukas is on his period" Emil stated and walked out, Matthias close behind.

"You're dead to me" Lukas shouted and then sat back on the floor, folding his arms across his chest and muttering angrily into his shirt.

"Shall we leave you?" Tino crouched down and glanced at him, careful to stay a good distance away. Lukas was known to lash out at everyone when he was in a bad mood.

He didn't respond so they left, walking out of the kitchen and closing the door behind them. Matthias was lying down on the couch, a bag of frozen peas across his eyes, Emil squashed up in the corner like nothing had happened.

"He needs to chill" Matthias said without taking the peas off his eyes.

"Says you" Emil glanced over and removed one earplug. "When you're in a mood we quite often have to leave the house and take everything valuable and fragile with us."

Matthias pondered this for a second before giving a half hearted sigh and sitting upright, the peas falling off his face. "Is he okay?"

Tino nodded. "Just..."

"Seriously hating us all right now" Emil said, still not having replaced his earplug. "But seriously, has anyone seen Mr Puffin? He's not in his usual hiding places."

"Try the garden" Tino shrugged.

Emil sat blinking for a second before groaning and getting up and trudging out to the garden.

"Bet he ran off coz of Lukas" Emil muttered, opening the backdoor and dropping it, only just remembering how pissed everyone got when it slammed and catching it with the toe of his boot.

He didn't bother calling, the puffin never answered him, or came so he carried on across the lawn.  From inside he could hear raised voices again, but chose to ignore it. Nothing good would come of it if he helped, so what was the point in him getting involved. Instead, he rolled his eyes and took another step forwards, not looking where he was going. There was a crunch and he froze, trying to match the noise with something. He glanced down and nearly screamed. It was a bone. Not quite picked clean, with little bits of pink meat stuck to the sides of it, not quite pearly white, but more of a bloody colour in places, in others it was more grey than white.