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It took several minutes for Blake to finally manage to secure his hair under the hat, then climb back up the tree and retrieve his sketchbook. He settled back onto the branch he’d been on, no longer quite as comfortable as the first time he’d been up there, and vaguely considered picking a new branch to sit on as he stared at the church. This branch had a large, conveniently placed gap in the leaves, though; the others probably wouldn’t.

A few minutes later Blake shook his head, adjusted the hat that he’d disturbed in doing so, and went back to sketching. He was drawing slower than he had been, but still quickly enough.

Once the sketches were done, Blake spent a few more minutes staring out at the church, idly sketching what could be the outlines of an angel struggling to fly, if you assumed the lines that seemed to be unraveling were meant to be wings.

Blake closed the sketchbook carefully, making sure none of the pages caught and tore on the spiral binding, then tucked it and the pencils into a bag and climbed down from the tree. He had to adjust the hat again before going inside, wandering around a bit to find Miss Jackson. “Hey.”

...Did this woman just carry hats around with her at all times, in case someone needed to hide dyed hair? Blake didn’t know many women who were willing to wear hats at all, much less without planning it, because female hair was fragile or something.

However weird it was, though, she had a hat, and not a particularly obnoxious one either; Blake approved of black. So he balanced the sketchbook carefully on a pair of branches, slid pencils and charcoal into his pockets, and climbed down the tree to get the hat. “It’s not good to disobey priests.”

“Um.” Blake glanced down at the sketchbook, flipping through a few pages before looking back down at Miss Jackson. “Maybe like… two thirds?” He had a couple sketches of the whole doors from ground level on different sides, and detailed sketches of nearly all different areas of the door. Including, even, two pages of detailed study of the texture of the wood. He had a complete sketch of the doors from the higher perspective, too, and some sketches of details, but he hadn’t yet gotten down everything that looked different or interesting enough from the higher perspective to be worth studying, and the higher sketches were going much more slowly since he had to keep using the binoculars. Plus he wanted to get a couple sketches with the doors open.

So, really, he probably wasn’t quite two thirds of the way done yet, but he was close enough, and ‘about two thirds’ always sounded better than ‘less than two thirds,’ even if they meant the same thing.

“…Two thirds done with all the sketches,” he clarified after a moment. It wouldn’t be at all unlike an adult to assume he only meant one sketch, either because he was lazy or because he didn’t understand the concept of ‘sketch.’ Or both. It was quite gratifying to correct people like that, but Miss Jackson probably wouldn’t give him the opportunity to correct her, anyway.

…Plus, he’d better listen to the priest, too. “I, um, should go get a hat.”

Blake did not, in fact, see the woman rolling her eyes at the priest; he was too busy trying not to look like he was cringing. Giving the priest any hint that he was a mutant, regardless of his hair, was not something he wanted to risk. Even if the priest would probably never meet his parents, he might know Blake’s family’s church’s priest, and tell him. Or tell anyone, really. Blake’s mutation was far too dangerous a secret for him to risk letting anyone ever know.

Fortunately, the priest seemed not to have noticed anything, and left to go… do whatever priests did on summer afternoons. Praying or something, Blake guessed. He blinked and peered down out of the tree as he noticed the woman. Whose name he still didn’t know. “I’m fine. I like trees.” They liked him, too, as far as he could tell, or at least they didn’t not like him, which made them better than humans. “What’s your name, anyway?”

Binoculars, it turned out, were about as helpful as magnifying glasses. That being slightly, but not much. They allowed Blake a closer look at the top of the doors, even though it was annoying to have to look between them and his sketchbook constantly, but they didn’t give him any kind of a different angle to look at anything. So, he climbed a tree.

Blake was soon perched quite comfortably fifteen feet off the ground, letting his feet dangle as he sketched, occasionally peering through the binoculars that otherwise hung off his neck in order to be sure he’d gotten some detail or other right. The binoculars were quite necessary, and quickly redeeming themselves in his mind; there just wasn’t anywhere high enough to see the doors from a good angle that was close enough to them to also see enough detail. Which made sense; they wouldn’t look very impressive if they were hidden behind something.

That the particular tree Blake had chosen to climb was still on church grounds, and thus probably not meant to be climbed on, did not bother Blake at all. It wasn’t going to hurt the tree, at all, and it wasn’t like he was climbing just to have fun. His climbing the tree was going to benefit the church, quite directly. So there wasn’t really anything wrong with it.

Still, the approaching priest wasn’t entirely unexpected, either. Blake ignored him. Just because he’d kind of figured someone might disapprove didn’t mean that their disapproval was justified, or that he necessarily had to admit that he’d expected it.

Blake finally paid attention to the priest once he’d stopped under the tree, looking up and surveying Blake with an expression that wasn’t approving at all, but wasn’t angry either. Blake stared back with an expression that resembled either innocence or a pout, depending on whether you asked him or anyone else.

The priest’s first question was much more unexpected than the priest himself. “Hello, child. Have you dyed your hair?”

“Uh.” Blake was too surprised to even protest being called a child. “Yeah.”

...Oh. Well, that made things a bit harder. What would Blake do if he couldn’t find something the woman had missed? He would not give her just what she’d already gotten. He eyed the painting again, studying all areas of it now, instead of just the statues. He… couldn’t think of anything obvious she’d missed, from his memory of the doors, but he hadn’t really looked at them, anyway.

Well then. He’d just have to find something. Blake nodded, mostly to himself, and started toward the doors.

It was still fairly early in the day. He should have time to draw every foot individually, if he had to, before the sun set.

Blake might not be talented at much, like Ace was, or at popular things, like Irri was, but the things he was good at, he was good at, and he’d prove it. No matter what. Even if that meant spending two hours ignoring weird looks as he drew every part of both doors from every angle. And even if he had to run a few blocks away halfway through for binoculars, because really, those doors were tall, or a block in a different direction for new pencils and a sharpener because the ones he’d brought wore out, well, there was nothing wrong with that. He was getting practice, and details, and he would impress the woman, and get to see the statues, and get money so he could keep dying his hair.

…What was the woman’s name, anyway? Blake paused, then shrugged and went back to drawing. He’d recognize her, anyway, and he was recognizable; he could figure out her name later.

Blake’s nose wrinkled in automatic distaste at the woman’s suggestion, but he hid the expression as soon as he could. It wasn’t dignified. Even if it was accurate. Blake didn’t want to be anyone’s assistant. Or anything, really. He already knew he was going to have to get a job next summer; he was perfectly entitled to do nothing this summer. At least, nothing that he didn’t want to do.

But he did want to see those statues…. Blake’s eyes drifted down to frown at the floor as he thought. He might be able to get something by remembering the woman’s painting and drawing from that, but memories of a painting weren’t nearly as good as actually seeing the real thing. And she probably didn’t paint all the statues, and certainly hadn’t painted them from every possible angle, anyway. So even if seeing the painting was as good, he was still lacking opportunities.

Of course, that was assuming that being her assistant would actually let him see the statues, and asking at that moment wasn’t just a way to trick him. It wasn’t like people hadn’t tried to trick him that way before. They’d never succeeded, of course, except maybe once or twice when he was really young, but that didn’t count. Anyway, they wouldn’t trick him again.

Blake looked back up, trying to learn the woman’s thoughts from her face. “...What d’you need an assistant for?”