Welcome to Gaia! ::

One earfin twitched as he overheard the kids' conversation in the back seat, but Zhane said nothing as he gave Nani a nod and followed her directions. A moment later, and the car was idling in the parking lot of a small out-of-the-way store with a colorful sign.

"So what're we after again, Ren? Yellow, green...." he was half-humoring her and half-intrigued as he pulled the keys out of the ignition and undid his seatbelt. The colors selected weren't the usual fare of what small children dreamed up for painting rooms. They actually sounded like they might look nice together in the right shades.

Zhane smiled, catching Nani's eyes for just a moment before her hand slipped out of his as she got out on her side and he stretched across the seat to swat at the door latch, making sure it was locked before he likewise got out.

Taking a moment to stretch, watching as both girls seemed excited about the venture, Zhane's eyes next fell to Seiji who seemed to be getting moodier by the minute.

"You holding up okay, Seiji?" he asked after a moment, discreetly enough not to put him on the spot in front of everybody else.

He had opened his mouth to answer, to tell him he wasn't nervous. Not....exactly, anyway. Thankfully, Ren had interrupted before he could fumble his way into a verbal corner.

"We'll talk later, all right?" he said, putting a hand briefly on Seiji's shoulder as the three of them started forward to meet Nani at the shopping baskets. The inevitable was going to happen whether the offer was extended or not, he decided, so he may as well let Seiji know the door was open for it.

The store was not a terribly-large one and the entry was marked by a sharp chiming from the doorway to alert those on-duty that there were customers.

It seemed to work as, a moment later, a man wearing a blue vest and black slacks appeared, smiling as he saw the family. "Hi there." he greeted pleasantly. "Help you folks find something today?"

"Only if you can help us figure out a good combination of blue, yellow, green, and white for a new room we're putting in." Zhane replied, eyes flicking briefly to Ren where she clutched Seiji's hand nearby.

"Sure!" the employee replied, motioning for them to follow him. "If you guys wanna follow me up to the desk, we can pull out a sample book and get started."

"So what kind of room are we looking at here?" the clerk inquired, picking up one of the books to begin to thumb through the various slips of paint samples therein.

"A bedroom." Zhane replied. "For a young child." Though it was the truth, it felt like lying. With Ren and Seiji right nearby, though, he couldn't exactly dive into detail.

"All right, so....probably something light, then...." the employee murmured, flipping past the darker mustard and maize colors to the pastel yellows and creams, looking to Nani and Zhane now and again as he went through the selection.

At Ren's question, Zhane blinked, placing what she'd asked. Fingerpaint....? Oh. Wait, he got it now. "Maybe not with -these- paints, Ren." he chuckled, dropping down to a half-kneel to be at eye level with her. "They're a lot thicker than what you'd put on paper. But tell you what...we'll show you how to use a brush, and you can help us make it look nice, okay?"

Looking to Seiji, he was happy to see that, at least for the moment, the ponderous edge was gone from his features. "Sure you can help!" he told the boy. "I figure if we all work on it, and get started early enough, we could have it done in a day."

He looked to Nani then. "What do you think, gorgeous?" he inquired, giving her an impish smile. The compliment came from nowhere...feeling things at least start to come together had put him in a good mood.

Zhane breathed an inward sigh of relief as the paint was fetched that Seiji had unwittingly helped him dodge a bullet. An answer having been supplied meant he didn't need to offer one of his own.

"Sorry." he told Nani, drawing back to his full height to give the side of her head a peck. "Its a little exciting, that's all."

Its PAINT. You are going to paint a room. And that's all. Get down from Cloud Nine and get back to earth where you're needed. You keep this up and you may as well be wearing a sandwich board that says "SOMETHING IS GOING ON. ASK ME WHAT."

Deciding to heed the advice he was giving himself, he took a deep breath and let it out again, reassuming a calmer state of being.

His arm had gone around Nani's shoulders, hugging her as her head rested against him, wordlessly reassuring her that things would be fine. That, as he told her before, he was going to do whatever he could to make sure this time was different.

As his leg was tugged at, he released his hold on Tinania momentarily to scoop up Ren and allow her to have a look at the book her cousin was flipping through. "Its not a bad room scheme." he said to both kids. "Probably makes you want to fall right asleep at night..."

No sooner had he said so than there was a clunk from nearby as buckets of paint were set down on the countertop.

"Sorry for the wait." the clerk smiled at them, having returned while they were otherwise distracted. "The new shipment came in and we're not done unpacking yet, so everything's still on palettes."