"A mustached flowerpiercer, really?" Roddy asks incredulously.

He became curious about what was up when the first thing Amelia did after arriving at their parents was to pour herself a large glass of wine.

"If you think that's bad, you should hear some of the names we had for marine life." I try not to laugh as his sister refills her glass. "Sure, there are low effort names like the wonderpus and the slippery dick, but the ones like the spiny lumpsucker and the tasseled wobbegong. Well, you just can't make names like that up."

"It's alright, baby." Kaitlyn rubs her daughter's back. "No one's perfect, and there are much worse personality traits than to be a follower of Temmie." This just sets me and Apricot to giggling.

"If it helps." I say after catching my breath. "My first thought was to animate a ten-meter tall version of Temmie and her mount, and have it walk through town." Even her family starts to laugh at the look that crosses Amelia's face when she hears that.

"Alright, enough teasing Amelia." Apricot comes to her rescue. "We came here to tease her brother. Did you know that Ashley is back in town?"

"What?" - "Ashley?" His head perks up, but then his eyes go wide when his mom focuses on the girl's name.

"She's a guardswoman that we met on the way back from Southwood." Amelia sets her glass down to twist the knife in her brother's back. "I'm surprised he hasn't mentioned her, they seemed to hit it off."

"Her squad was heading north because of the bandits." I help fill in the puzzle for his parents. "We only shared the camp for a single night, but those two 'really' seemed to get along."

Turner is biting back his laughter while watching his son squirm as Kaitlyn focuses in on him like a laser.

"She helped escort the guild shipment of mana stones back down." Amelia continues oh-so-helpfully. "Since she was on the road so long, they're bound to give her several days to rest and recover before sending her back. So, there should be plenty of time for you to reconnect, maybe you could even invite her to dinner here. I'm sure Mom would love to meet her."

Roddy glared at his sister before turning to their mother with a wide, if somewhat fake smile. "I'm not sure if she'll be free, but I'll try looking her up tomorrow." He's careful to make no promises about bringing her about.

Kaitlyn still grills him for a few minutes about Ashley and his love life in general. I end up feeling a bit bad for him, having gone through much the same from my mom. So, I help him out by distracting her.

"Kaitlyn." I interject when she pauses the interrogation long enough to take a breath. "I forgot about it last time we were here, but I painted this picture of Rodrick and Amelia when we were on the road." I bring out the image of her fussing over his clothes by the fireside. "I thought you would like it, and perhaps a few more formal portraits."

"Oh, it's wonderful." She starts gushing over the drawing, and Roddy shoots me a grateful look. "You captured them perfectly. Even though she's the younger child, Amelia would always fuss over her brother."

"Would you like a family portrait with all four of you? It will only take a moment." I offer. "I just restocked my art supplies yesterday and I'm feeling a little artistic."

"Well, maybe just of the kids." She hedges. "If it's not too much trouble."

"Nonsense." Turner smiles at his suddenly bashful wife. "We need some of you too." I quickly capture him coaxing her hesitant form forward with a beaming smile.

"Oh, Mom we need one of you in that dress Daddy got you last fall." Amelia dashes upstairs and returns only a moment later carrying a double armful of clothing. It looks like she grabbed a couple of outfits for each of them.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"No, that's too much." The woman shakes her head vehemently. "I don't even want to be in the picture in the first place, I'm not going to get changed for it."

"That's alright, Ma'am." I take the full-length, shimmery, silver dress from her daughter and hold it up to get a good look. "I can make it look just like you're wearing it."

"Thank you, Babe." Amelia stretches up on her tippy-toes to kiss me on the cheek. "Can you have us all in the formal clothes for this first one?"

"Easily." I smile back at her and we all ignore the death-glares that Kaitlyn in filling the room with.

At Turner's prompting, they all stand in front of the fireplace for the first portrait. The parents in the middle with their grown children bracketing them. I doused their enchanted lights and played around a bit with my newly learned light spell to make the scene look like something out of a renaissance portrait.

"The resemblance between you two is truly remarkable." I say when Kaitlyn refuses to loosen up. "If I didn't know any better I would swear you are sisters." It may have been a bit heavy-handed, but the appeal to her vanity did the trick.

I do my best to capture her shy smile, Turner's loving eyes, and their children's amused expressions. Once I have their faces and body language down, I call them over and will their clothes to take their place.

"Eek." Kaitlyn jumps when her dress sits up from where I laid it. "Bloody magic!"

"Hehehe. Sorry, Mom." Amelia apologizes for me. "You tend to get used to things moving about on their own when Sorrel's around. But, look at it this way, now we get to watch him complete the rest of the portrait."

She doesn't look very happy, but Kaitlyn still watches with a hint of anticipation as the rest of the painting fills itself in.

"Oh, Katey." Turner wraps his arms around his wife. "It's perfect."

While they stare entranced at the finish work; I stealthily start another drawing of just the two of them holding each other. Their expressions full of love and pride as they look upon what their family has grown into.

"I want a copy of that one too, Sorrel. Please." Amelia's pleading tone draws their attention to the new painting.

"Of, course." I smile at the mixed expression on her mother's face right now. It looks as though she wants to be angry, but is too happy at the moment for it to come out. "Now, why don't you and Rodrick sit at the small couch with your parents standing behind you?"

While they're getting positioned, I speak so that only Apricot can hear me. "I know it hurts, but please bear with it for a while longer." Her head snaps around to me, a hint of panic in her eyes. "Shh, she hasn't noticed, but your magic flares slightly when you try to hide your emotions."

"Stupid, overly-sensitive, lunker." She rests her head against my shoulder as I paint the happy family.

This silly pixie still hasn't told us her whole story, but it's not hard to see that she has lost just as much as I have, if not more. So, no matter how well she hides it, her pain is as clear to me as my own.

I get one more picture, this time with just Amelia and Roddy before Kaitlyn decides to turn the tables on me. "I would love to have a portrait of the three of you." Her smile turns wicked. "Roddy, go help your father get the big mirror from our bedroom."

"That shouldn't be necessary." I smile back, calmly. "That first scouting spell that Nicholas showed me may not have been what I was looking for at the time, but it's perfect for something like this." I cast Farsight with the target set as myself and Apricot.

"That is perfect." The pixie's stiff expression smoothes into a genuine smile. "Come on, Amelia. We can all sit together on the couch and make funny expressions while Sorrel tries to paint."

"How about we do one silly picture with you in the middle, and one serious one with Amelia there." I counter with a laugh.

"Hey, I'm not always serious." The blonde hmphs.

"No, but I'm sure that your mother would rather see that than the three of us making faces." I pull her into a hug before settling us together on the couch.

Amelia crosses her eyes and puffs out her cheeks, while Apricot puts on a serious face which looks sillier on her than anything else she could have done. I, on the other hand, just stick my tongue out, and out, and out, sending it in a loose spiral over and around my head to poke the top of Apricot's.

"Hey, no fair." Amelia whines. "Shapeshifting is cheating."

"I'll say." Her mother's words were so unexpected that Amelia's face just goes blank for a second before filling with shock. Roddy and Turner have matching expressions, but hers is the only one I care about as I lock it into the canvas.

"Perfect." I chortle when the blonde's face goes from shocked to embarrassed in record time as I show her the painting.

We never did get the serious version of that painting, but Kaitlyn didn't seem to mind. The woman kept teasing her daughter for the rest of the evening. So much so, that Amelia dragged us out of there as soon as dinner was finished.

When we got back home, I made the executive decision to skip my second day of exercise to focus on my girls. I don't know how much Amelia picked up on earlier, but she was happy to spend the lion's share of our attention on Apricot. Not that my blushing beauty was left out though as there may have been some shapeshifting involved.

***