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Zac reached back and pulled up his hood, umbrella or no umbrella sometimes you just needed to hide in your hood because of blushing.

"Right!! Logic... that... yes, very logical. Godhelpme." he mumbled. "Um... this way!" He said pointing, and started leading his way through the town. He was heading towards his Mother's house, because there was a small bird house he'd built when he was very young. If there was anywhere that might be dry, hidden and dusty that was his best bet.

It wasn’t terribly far at least, enough to make you a bit tired walking but not awful. Utter suburbia, the houses all being rather close in appearance to each other. Not perfectly at least, not like the old song that referred to houses made out of ‘ticky tacky’ meaning the almost identical houses built for early suburbia, often distinguished only by the colors of their doors.

“There…” Zac said at least. “The Dove grey door on the off white house with the blue-grey shutters.” He said pointing to indicate it. There was something of a color trend to it apparently.

“That’s where my Mother lives, I mean, other side of things obviously.” He said turning with an embarrassed twitch of a smile. He pulled his hood down and opened the low gate, well-aged wood once painted white but fallen into some disrepair and faded.

“If we just go around back, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have bothered to take it down.”

“Yeah… Inside it’s the same, It’s a bit creepy but since I was um, stuck here for a week I sort of split some time between here and Detective Mercer’s house. At least till I found out I could get into the Library. I just… I didn’t really go out back here. I didn’t have a reason.”

He led her around the side yard, squishing through puddles where the rain didn’t run off as well, but clearly familiar with the terrain.

“There… the… little lop sided thing there. It’s my birdhouse. I’m not sure anything EVER lived in it, not while I was here. But if there is a place for birds and nature that might have dust, that’s a pretty good bet right? And it’s…it’s pretty well hidden, if only because it um, it is kind of in the brambles.”

“Alright.” He nodded. “Im going in. Please um…please forgive the cursing. It was a great idea to plant blackberries, and raspberries, until it came time to tend them right?” He said with a small chuckle. He dragged his sleeves down as far over his hands as he could and tried to remember where the gap between the bushes had been once.

There were certainly a nice variety of curses, some of them had undoubtedly come from Mister Mercer, as they weren’t really in your standard American rounds of curses, but he did reach the small, lopsided bird house and managed to make the rusty old hinges at the roof work so he could tip it to peer inside and see if there was aught he could shake out for dust.

He leaned hard over it to keep what he found dry and shook it out into his hand before awkwardly returning the house to its former home and cursing his way back to her, quite covered in scratches and with a few thorns still clinging tenaciously to shirt.

He gave a small slightly pained laugh of his own. "So do I... after um, after a few trips here I started keeping a small first aid kit in my bag." He admitted.

"Between us I think I can look less like I hugged Edward Scissor hands. Come on, I'll open the front door and we can work inside here if that's alright?" He lead her towards the front of the house and fished under several artificial rocks to find the hide-a-key. It seemed there were more than one to add to the probability of not finding it.

He did practice, quite a number of times till he had a fair feel for doing it and not having to stare repeatedly at the design she had laid out for him to copy.

“Alright…” he said at last. “I think… I think I can do this.” He said trying to sound perhaps a degree more sure than he felt.
He laid the key on the table to prepare himself, adjusting it till the angle felt correct and comfortable to write on.

“Just.. right on it, with the brush…” He repeated as though by saying it he could confirm that it would go well.
It was not the biggest surface to work on, but he wrote small anyhow…right? At least for when he used a pen. He could do this gosh dang it.

He braced against the work surface to try and keep his hand steady before he took up the brush.

He nodded, feeling a boost of confidence at her words. It made him feel a bit like a little kid to be so pleased but to hell with it, this was amazing. America was amazng for doing this.

“Right.” He confirmed, and shook the dust gently over it before then placing his hand over it.

“Like so?”

“Safe places.” He repeated, and wasn’t this a good place to focus on such things. The corners where he’d hidden to read or listen, crawling under the low slung bed and the wiggle you had to do to work your way past the sway back nature of the old mattress even when you were very young. He even thought of when the brambles weren’t quite so over grown how they had made a small arch way that he could shimmy under with minimal scratches back to where he had borrowed the hedge clippers to hollow himself out a nook. He’d gotten in such trouble when she’d found the clippings, but they were places he felt –safe-
Like when he used to hide in the back of Jeremiah’s wardrobe behind the suits smelling of cedar and a little bit of moth balls. And of course, in Jeremiah’s garden, even now there was a little nook, very small indeed now but he still fit. Where Jeremiah himself maintained a tree shaded hollow just big enough for him to creep into and hide, and read and just find that bit of peace.

These places were his focus, and the warmth of her magic helped make it so easy to picture them clearly. He could almost remember the exact smells of them, the feel of each space and how close it was around him, how dark and how light.

As she said, he took those thoughts and imagined them into that brush stroke shield. Like each mark was there to embody those places and the feeling of being safe and hidden within them.