Although everyone had finished with their oceans, Emma couldn't help adding a few more little white swoops to hers to indicate small cresting waves. The blue she'd mixed for her sky had turned out a touch grayer than Killian's and she figured making her ocean look a little rougher would help offset the mistake.
Across from her, Henry also seemed to be having trouble. Since she was looking at his painting upside down, she couldn't tell what his issue was but the little frown on his face as he examined his work refused to budge.
Killian, too, must have noticed because he gently asked, "What's the matter, lad?"
"I think I'm having a perspective problem," Henry said as he turned his paper to Killian could take a critical look as well. "I feel like I'm closer to the island than everyone else is."
Killian glanced from Henry's painting to his in an effort to spot the differences. "It looks like you went a little bigger with your lines than I did. It's perfectly all right. When we add the trees in, just make those bigger as well. That way, the perspective will balance itself out."
Henry grinned a thank you, and Emma's heart did a little flip-flop in her chest. She honestly could sit there and watch her pirate and her kid bond all day. Killian was so good with Henry, and Henry quite clearly adored Killian and wanted to make him proud.
Emma set her brush in the cup of rinse water and sat back to allow her painting to dry, finally satisfied with her now slightly more angry ocean. Left now with nothing to do but wait, she couldn't help stealing peeks at everyone else's paintings.
Killan's was of course the master copy but it was interesting to see the spin the rest of her family had put on it. Due to her paint mixing error and subsequent course correction, hers now seemed a bit more ominous than Killian's serene view of the island. Killian's ocean was calm, his sky light blue and clear. Emma's sky appeared tinged with the darkness of an approaching storm and the more abundant waves gave the impression of a sea just beginning to rise with the winds.
Henry's picture did indeed look more like a close-up view of the island due to his aforementioned perspective issue. His sky was even lighter than Killian's, giving the impression of a ship approaching the island during the brightest point of a calm, clear day.
It was no surprise to Emma that her mother's painting was almost an exact copy of Killian's. The woman had taught elementary school for twenty-eight years. If anyone was going to be able to follow verbal directions precisely, it was Snow. The only difference was she had added a bit more white at the base of the island, giving the appearance of breaking waves crashing against the land.
What surprised Emma the most was that her father's was just as good as her mother's. His sky was a little darker, somewhere between Killian's and Emma's, but his ocean was calm and his island damn near perfect. Emma hadn't known that her father had any kind of artistic talent.
She watched with fascination as he expertly added a final crashing wave where the water met the land. Then he leaned back in his chair and regarded the painting as a whole with a critical eye. He gave a slight nod of satisfaction and then set his brush in the water to rinse.
Still in mild shock, Emma didn't look away. When David finally glanced up to see how everyone else was going, he caught his daughter staring at him in wonder. A touched smile split his face for a beat before morphing into a teasing smirk. "Busted."
Emma felt heat rushing to her cheeks. Totally busted. "Yeah, well," she said, blinking as she tried to force herself back to the present, "I just didn't realize you could draw, too."
"There's not a lot for a young boy to do in the fields while the sheep are grazing," he explained, that teasing smirk of his settling into a gentle smile. "Either I took a sketchpad with me or I risked falling asleep against a bale of hay."
"I still can't believe you didn't carry a horn around with you," Henry sighed, shaking his head in mock disapproval. "And I still can't believe that none of your sheep ever followed you to school."
Everyone minus Killian chuckled. The poor pirate simply shot the kid a confused frown, clearly not understanding either of Henry's references.
"No, there was no horn," David confirmed, "but since the small corner of our cottage near the fireplace was my classroom, I suppose a case could be made that Lulabelle followed me to school."
Lulabelle was a favorite sheep of David's when he was a kid. Emma had heard all kinds of stories about Lulabelle, from the most likely true (she was born premature, cared for in the house until she was strong enough to join the other sheep outside, and bonded closely with a tiny little David during that time) to the patently ridiculous and quite obviously made-up (she ran back to the cottage to get David's mother when he sprained his ankle in the fields, like an Enchanted Forest version of Lassie).
"I knew it!" Henry exclaimed, a teasing smirk on his lips. "There's one more face put to a nursery rhyme character's name."
Judging by Killian's grin, he'd at least figured out that Henry was still trying to associate people in town with the characters in the stories of his childhood. "Dare I ask if this alter ego of the prince's is worse than my utterly ridiculous alter ego in this world?"
Emma had finally broken down and used her phone to pull up pictures of the Disney version of Captain Hook to show her Captain Hook. The poor pirate had been appropriately horrified, rendered completely speechless for a full fifty-four seconds. (Emma had counted while trying and not exactly succeeding to stifle her laughter.) Then he'd muttered something about blasphemy and desecration of his reputation before telling her he needed to find a way to cleanse this world of that terrible image. "Yeah, good luck with that," she'd chuckled before putting her phone away.
"Not exactly," a grinning Emma replied. "The nursery rhyme character Henry's talking about is a little schoolgirl named Mary."
"Obviously the names were changed to protect the innocent," Henry teased, giving a dismissive shrug.
"Obviously," Emma smiled.
By now, all five of them had set their brushes down and were waiting for their islands to dry before moving on to the next step. It took Emma a moment to remember how they'd gotten onto the subject of Lulabelle and Mary having a little lamb in the first place. Oh yeah, David bringing a sketchpad out into the fields with him to help pass the time.
And suddenly, maybe just because no one had ever really taken a special interest in hers, she really wanted to know how the rest of her family had come to hone or discover their artistic abilities. "What about you, Mom?" she asked after a moment. "Did you draw during your free time or did you have a structured art class?"
A touched Snow smiled at her baby girl. She glanced across the table at David, their eyes shining with love over their daughter's interest in their past, and then addressed Emma. "I had a structured art class. Pencil drawing, mostly. Miss Samantha would only allow me to use the paints on very rare occasions. She always had me do sketches as gifts for my parents on their birthdays."
Just like with David and Lulabelle, Emma had heard multiple stories of her mother's school life. Miss Samantha was a governess who'd lived in the castle. She held lessons for a young Snow in the mornings and early afternoons. Some of the lessons mirrored what Emma herself had learned in school: reading, writing, mathematics, history (though history of a different land, of course … Emma learned about the Civil War, her mom learned about the Ogre Wars). And then some of the lessons were not at all the lessons that were taught in this world's public school curriculum, lessons like dancing and etiquette.
It completely boggled Emma's mind to think that if Regina hadn't cast the Curse, her own schooling would have been the same as her mother's. She would have had one-on-one lessons with her own governess who would have taught her how to be a proper, educated princess.
"What kinds of things did you sketch?" Henry asked, bringing Emma back to the present.
"Things found in nature, mostly," Snow shrugged. "She'd have me do sketches after nature walks, drawings of this flower or that tree. The ones she'd have me do for my parents, though, were always whatever I wanted. The one I was most proud of was the one of the three of us sitting by the fountain in the courtyard. I was never very good at people or animals but I liked how that one turned out a lot."
Emma felt a little smile pulling at her lips. She was never very good at people or animals, either. A little thing, to be sure, but that little thing somehow inexplicably made her feel closer to her mother.
"What about you, Killian?" Snow asked, her voice soft and gentle. "Where did you learn to draw?"
Emma's heart fluttered in her chest as she looked over at Killian. It seemed like such a small thing, Snow continuing the conversation by bringing Killian into it, but they all knew it was much, much bigger than it seemed.
It was a way of forging their bond that much deeper, of filling in the little gaps of knowledge left by meeting someone as adults. It was a way of sharing their pasts to help pave the way for understanding and deeper connection in the future.
It was a way of welcoming Killian into the family, and from the touched expression on the pirate's face, he knew it. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he said, "My drawing began for reasons much like your husband's. When you're a lad on a ship full of sailors and you're too young to be put to work, there's not much to occupy your time. Drawing helped fill the lonely hours."
"Yes, it did," Emma said softly. "I used to lose myself in artwork, too. When I was little, I mean." She glanced around at her family and was encouraged by the anticipation on their faces. Talking about her past was still hard for both her and her parents but they absolutely ate up every little tidbit she was willing to share. "You're actually not going to believe this but one of my favorite things to draw was a castle. It was always the same, a big brown castle with turrets and a big gray drawbridge."
She used to pretend she lived in that castle, far away from the loneliness and the sadness. She used to pretend she was a princess and her parents were a king and queen who loved her more than life itself.
She'd had no idea how right she would have been had life not intervened.
As she got older, she first stopped drawing the castle and then stopped drawing altogether unless it was for art class in school. With no one to nurture any talent she may have shown – no drawings hung up on the fridge or taped up on a bedroom wall, no one to send her to extracurricular lessons to help her hone her artistic skill – it all had seemed kind of pointless.
She didn't voice any of that, though. She just let the story end there, leaving her parents with the image of their little princess drawing castles in an unconscious recognition of her birthright.
Killian had always been able to read her, though, and he knew the direction her thoughts had taken without her having to voice it. He reached under the table for her hand and squeezed, giving her as much physical comfort as he could without drawing attention to it.
Taking strength from his touch, Emma squeezed back. Then, after clearing her throat so she wouldn't sound choked up, she said, "How about you, Henry? Your talent can't just be from elementary school art class." She sent an apologetic glance to her mother. "No offense, Mom."
"None taken," a smiling Snow assured her.
In answer to his mother's question, Henry just shrugged. "I don't know. I never had any formal lessons or anything but I've always liked drawing and Mom encouraged it so I kept doing it."
"Your father liked to draw," Emma told him gently. His affinity for drawing was one more thing she'd discovered about Neal in Neverland. "You probably get it from him."
Henry smiled at her. "And you, you know. And Killian's an awesome teacher so I'm learning from him, too."
"He is indeed," Emma said with a smile at her pirate, who was now blushing and sheepishly scratching behind his ear.
"We're all learning from him," David said softly, making Killian's cheeks flush even darker and tears of gratitude prick at Emma's eyes. Her family was coming together, and it was absolutely wonderful to witness.