Soul not Included

Chapter 60

"So your family are artisans?" He asked.

We were sitting under the canopy of parrots. Edward looked more at my hand moving hazardously across the pages than the birds. The parrots moved around so much that I couldn't be bothered with accuracy and focused more on the general shapes before ripping the page lose and doing another. I made sure to capture Edward too. The parrots wouldn't really approach him but they hovered around him enough to make it look like a fucking Disney princess.

"No, we just had a lot of interest in creative things," i muttered and scratched my brow with the tip of my pencil. I wore another short dress, small shorts underneath with my hair pulled up. The heat was a bother. 

He hummed, "I think they would have gotten along well with my family. Your mother and Alice would have had a lot to talk about."

"My mother specialized in uniforms and basic attires. No visionary scope like Alice."

"... but you learned from her?"

"Yes, she taught me the basics. I designed and she created. I only sewed when she hadn't the time. Can you— shush. For a sec."

The birds were loud and I still wasn't quite sure if I liked them or not but there was this one that was just watching us since the moment we arrived as if it was aware of what we were doing here.  Since it was so still I wanted to swatch the appropriate colors, which Edward pulled out for me since his eye sight was much better than mine. I marked the names of the colors on my page and quickly got some color on the sketched bird to see the general way the colors merged down the feathers.

"And your sister, she— she did freelance work?"

"No, she had passing interest and they never lasted more than a week. Too busy working, what my father would call, an actual job."

I stretched out my legs feeling the blood circulate back down. I hit them a bit to wake them from their numb slumber.

He hummed again, "passing interest you say... was wood work, wood burning, rug making and... abstract sketching?"

"Yeah. Lot of money spent and nothing to show for it."

Edward passed me a bottle of water. The heat causing the dress to stick to my skin. I tried to pull at it but it just kept sticking more. I want to go back to the house.

"And your brother, a musician."

"Hardly. Piano and guitar. He played often as a child and dropped it late middle school."

"Why?"

"Bored, he said. Your family have any more hobbies other than... you know, the usual?" I asked, finally feeling life return to my legs. Edward nudged my legs with his foot. I groaned and shoved him. Laughing he just scooted closer to scoop up my loose pages so they wouldn't get blown away.

"Well, we certainly picked up a lot over the years," he answered vaguely. "We all know an instrument or two although I'm the only one that actually likes playing. As you could tell Rosalie has a talent for it but it isn't really in her line of interest. She enjoys engineering and has followed Carlisle's footsteps in nursing."

"Right, cuz becoming a nurse is a hobby not a career."

He smiled, "learning for us is a hobby within itself. Something we do to kill the time. As you could tell by Carlisle's vast collection of books, acquiring knowledge itself is more enjoyable sometimes than the actual practice of it."

"Which is annoying."

He sighed, "Yes, I am aware how much you hate learning new things... there wasn't a single day you didn't complain about something while you were learning... but you did it and didn't you feel great when you finally accomplished it."