Temple finishes his sip of water and speaks. "Oh, and this is like, the first wave of gossip. It's purposefully outlandish. Makes it more fun to talk about."

"I don't recall if they thought Sawney was a half-brother, but I am sure there was gossip about that. But we did suddenly vanish for a few days and came back with you guys. It stirs people up. Sawney just gradually moved in after visiting a few times."

"Guess that makes sense, yeah." He leans back in his chair, smirking, "Honestly, that doesn't even sound all that outlandish, considering. We should go into town, start some more interesting rumours."

"Or we could go into town to clear up the rumours," Alex says, rolling his eyes at him. 

"Clear up rumors by creating a more outlandish one."

"You." He points at Alexei. "I like you better."

Snort. "I'm flattered." 

"Aw," Jamie pouts at him. 

"What's there to do in town, anyway?" He asks after a few more bites. 

"Not enough."

"Nothing is enough for you, Temple. And there is like, we have movie theater, a dance club. Uh, and I guess bars for the people that don't sneak into the woods to get drunk because they are teens. The town's square hosts something every other Sunday."

"Guess it could be fun for a while at least," Jamie says, shrugging. "And there's all the wilderness, too. And the scenery! It's all very picturesque." 

Alex raises an eyebrow, "You going to get back into painting landscapes?" 

He snickers, "Not the scenery I meant, but maybe, yeah!" 

"Oh, yeah, camping sites and I think some caves visit thing near-ish. We went there, but I only remember being bored."

"Oh, yeah, that too. I guess you could go there to paint the underground scenery or something."

"I'll, uh... pass, on the caves. But camping," he glances at Alex, "We haven't been on a camping trip for fun in a few years."

"Talk to Aaron and Franklyn then, they might be interested."

"Is this going to turn into boot camp, if we get Aaron involved?" He wonders, thinking back to their first stay. 

"He won't be pushy, though, his idea of fun while camping does involve a lot of moving around."

"You can tell Franklyn to sing 'I will make a man out of you' every time Aaron is being too pushy."

Jamie laughs. 

Alex smirks, "Could be fun," he says, "We'll talk to them about it." 

Anyway, back to magic?

Magic! Jamie does turn out to be a faster learner than Alex, as he'd guessed he would, but they're both learning at a decent pace. 

Besides that, though, Alex starts spending time in the music room with Adam, reacquainting himself with the piano and violin and trying out a few of the other instruments he has. Jamie, as he'd mentioned, starts working on a painting, though it's not easy to tell what he's working towards yet, as it's slow-going - he keeps leaving it to work on other things whenever the mood strikes. They also start joining the family for meals, rather than eating upstairs or outside as they had been, and Jamie continues coming down early to help Morgan with breakfast. 

Alex keeps working on breath exercises, slowly but surely getting closer to unraveling his breath gift. A few days later, they're practicing in the library when he suddenly opens his eyes.

"Oh, there," he says, sounding a little surprised. "I think I have it."