Stuck With You

Chapter 11 - Adair

Dray's hand dropped into Adair's and they used this to turn his arm over. "No. The five of us are all a part of this now. Don't you see?"

(This chapter of Adair's would take place in the middle of book 1 [Colorweaver].)

The door burst open and slammed against the wall with enough force to rock the wagon. Adair's heart and hand jumped, causing his pencil to leave a dark line across his sketchbook. He erased and erased, but the deep gouge remained on the paper after the graphite had gone. If only the correction paint he'd tried to make had worked the way he'd wanted it to! Instead of returning a page or canvas to new, it only turned it invisible, which was even worse than permanent indentations on the page. At least he could draw over a line. He still had no idea where the invisible sketchbook had ended up.

It turned out that the line didn't matter anyway. Blythe had crossed the room to give Sol a talking down- or possibly a talking up since Sol towered over everyone except his brother- for being reckless about opening the door. Adair sighed and closed his book. Blythe had been the perfect stationary model while she was inventorying seeds, but going into tirade-mode meant she wouldn't return to this until she cooled down. If past experiences were anything to go by, he had about twenty minutes before he'd be able to sketch her again.

Unless he could speed things up by taking away the source of her annoyance? He waved at Sol to get his attention, then winked to tell him that he had a plan. It was hit or miss if Sol would catch on to what a wink meant, but it was worth a try. "Hey, Blade? Sol's just excited because he found my paint. Let him go this time, okay?"

This was a stab in the dark, or at least a stab in a mildly dimmed room. Adair's yellow paint had gone missing from his bag this morning and he was pretty sure it was because his best friend had borrowed it. If any warm color went missing, it was usually in one of Sol's pockets. Sol always intended to return things, so Adair could never be too upset about this. Unfortunately Sol's intentions only lasted a few minutes before he forgot about them.

"I do? Oh! I do have it!" Sol poked through a dozen pockets of his vest before he found the jar and held it up triumphantly. "See, it's just like Addy said. I'm giving him back his paint. Just here for that. Yep, just returning my buddy's paint. That's definitely why I'm here. Giving him back his paint."

Adair covered his eyes with his hand. At least Sol understood the winking thing now, but his acting really needed work. Etri laughed softly from his spot on the floor next to Adair and leaned over to whisper, "Subtlety will be forever lost on Solei. Watch."

Blythe muttered an unamused grumble and began checking the wall for damage while Sol stepped past her and headed towards where Etri and Adair sat. Etri nodded once at Adair, then waved his arm in a wide gesture as he said to Sol, "Make the house for yourself."

A big, toothy grin meant Sol misunderstood his brother's scrambled idiom. "You want me to build a house? You've never let me build a house before! I can do that! I just need some nails and my favorite hammer and some wood and a couple of grapefruits and oh, some paint! Addy, do you have more-"

To Adair's relief over the state of his diminishing paint collection, Blythe closed the door and stopped Sol mid-sentence by talking over him. "I think Etch is inviting you to make yourself at home."

"Oh! Okay, sure!" Sol missed the sarcasm in her voice just as he'd missed it in Etri's and he hoisted himself into Dray's loft bed. There he flopped onto his back with a comfortable sigh.

Now that Sol was safely in a spot that couldn't possibly make any more distracting noises, Adair opened his sketchbook. With Blythe pacing the wagon and muttering to herself, he would just have to switch to drawing Etri. A tornado could touch down next to the wagon and Etri still wouldn't put that book down. If there was one thing Etri was good at, it was being stationary. And if Adair managed to finish this sketch, then Etri would become stationary stationary.