The first time Mason met Jamie, the pretty art talent fairy with a knack for losing his paintbrushes, was when he was born from a baby's first laugh. He was confused and surrounded by a group of fairies, all gawking at him, whispering to each other as they leaned in for a closer look. Having that much attention on him had been overwhelming, and his eyes quickly flitted from face to face, taking in the range of emotions on the other fairies' faces; hope, intrigue, assessment, disinterest, and boredom.
But then his gaze landed on vibrant blue eyes, and the boy gave him a warm, welcoming smile that somehow settled the nerves fluttering in Mason's stomach. Then the fairy raised a colour-speckled hand and waved.
Mason couldn't help but smile shyly back, and he started to wave back when a tall, elegant fairy in a gold dress to his left started speaking.
"Welcome to Pixie Hollow." After introducing herself as Queen Clarion, the woman told him about the fairies living in Pixie Hollow and their roles on the Mainland, and how he fit into it all. Then she encouraged him to find his talent from the floating symbols before them.
There was a snowflake, water droplet, flower, tornado, squirrel, and more. He paused when he was in front of the paintbrush, his eyes flittering up on the blue-eyed boy. The symbol didn't call to him, though, so he continued and didn't stop until he approached the floating hammer. It looked perfectly balanced, and he reached out to curl his fingers around the smooth handle.
The weight became grew in his hand, the hammer turning from glittering magic into solid stone and wood in his hand.
The other symbols disappeared, and Queen Clarion declared him a tinker fairy. The tinker fairies in the audience cheered, flew down to welcome him home, and chattered over themselves in their excitement as they began to lead him to the tinker section of Pixie Hallow.
Before being dragged away, Mason looked back to the pretty fairy, hoping it wasn't the last time he saw him.
"Morning, sleepyhead," a familiar voice says when Mason opens the door of his home to step into the morning sun. Looking up, he sees Jamie perched on a nearby tree branch, his bag of art supplies hanging from a twig on the branch next to him.
Flying up to him, Mason says, "It's not late."
Jamie swings his feet and shoots him a teasing grin. "I've been up for hours already."
"Why?" He sits on the branch when Jamie pats the spot next to him, taking the wrapped pastry he hands him. It's still warm, perfectly buttery, and practically melts in his mouth. Hands down, Dulcie makes the best croissants he's ever tasted.
Ever since they first met over nine years ago, Mason and Jamie quickly became best friends, spent most of their time together and were rarely seen without the other. They meet every morning to have breakfast together and find each other at the end of the workday. Jamie often stops by Mason's tinkering station, too, asking him for paint pots directly instead of looking in the art talent fairies' storages. He's also constantly asking Mason for more paintbrushes.
Jamie is notorious for losing his brushes, misplacing them or dropping them, losing them to rivers and forests. If it were anyone else, it might drive Mason crazy- being interrupted to remake the same item over and over for a careless fairy- but it's Jamie, and Mason would do anything for him.
"To try to paint the sunrise. It's always so pretty and vibrant and- ugh," Jamie cuts himself off with a noise of appreciation.
Of course. Mason should've guessed. Jamie's been obsessed with painting the sunrise lately. He's always loved it and has gushed about the pretty blend of colours to Mason many times, but he decided recently that he was going to try to replicate it and has been getting up extra early a lot to sit in the Pixie Dust Tree with his paints.
The sunrises and sunsets are two of the few things that are beyond the work of Pixie Hollow, two of Mother Nature's natural beauties, along with the pretty blue lagoon, which is the same gorgeous vibrancy of Jamie's pretty blue eyes.
"I wish there were some way I could just catch the colours," Jamie says, closing his fist in the air with emphasis before his body says, and his voice turns wistful. "Then I wouldn't waste so much time and paint trying to recreate the hues."
Even as he's patting Jamie on the back to console him, Mason's mind is spinning in a new direction.
Over the next few weeks, Mason spends more of his free time tinkering with spare knick-knacks and lost things, fitting them together, adjusting, and readjusting, only to scrap it and try again from the start. He also spends a lot of time pouring over his blueprint sketches- rewriting and revising- and groaning when it doesn't turn out how he wants.
Finally, finally, he gets an invention that produces a result. A little bowl of blue powder the colour of the nearby lagoon.
"Can you paint with this?" Mason asks, standing in Jamie's doorway that evening, a bowl containing the powder in his hands.
Jamie has questions, Mason can tell, but he keeps them to himself for now while he takes in the powder. He holds it with one hand and dips the fingers of his other hand into the powder, swirling them through and picking up a pinch. He grinds the powder between his thumb and index finger. It leaves behind a vibrant blue streak. Looking back at him, Jamie says, "I think I can. I'll try making some with water or oils to see what I can do with it."
Leaving the door open in invitation, Jamie moves to the art corner of his home and starts digging through his supplies. Mason steps in, closes the door behind him and moves to the little kitchenette to make some tea for the both of them. They often spend a lot of time at each other's homes, enough that Mason is as familiar with Jamie's place as he is with his own. He knows where everything is and knows how Jamie likes his tea.
He even knows to move Jamie's tea away when the other fairy absentmindedly reaches to use it as his paint water cup. Mason has seen Jamie rinse his paintbrushes off in his drink on more than one occasion.
Today, he watches as Jamie mixes the powder into pastes of various thicknesses, and when he spreads the first batch of paint across his canvas, they both gasp. The blue pigment is rich and gorgeous, but most of all, it shimmers.
"Mason," Jamie whispers, staring with wide eyes at the paint glistening like the sun hitting the water of the lagoon. He swipes his brush across the canvas again, and it leaves behind a second glittering streak of bright blue paint. "Where…?"
"I, um. Made it."
Jamie narrows his eyes at Mason at his vague answer. Even after seeing the pretty blue lagoon paint, Mason thinks Jamie's eyes are the prettiest blue he's ever seen. "What do you mean you made it? How? From what?"
"I was tinkering around with some spare parts," Mason says as he reaches into his bag for his invention and pulls it out. "Around a month ago, you mentioned capturing colours instead of trying to copy them, and I started wondering if there was a way to capture colours."
He leads Jamie to where the evening sun is shining warm and golden through the window.
"You line up the colour you want through these two pieces of glass to pinpoint what colour you're trying to capture, then turn this knob here." He twists the knob to demonstrate while he continues explaining how his invention works. "This compartment holds pixie dust, and when you turn that part, the dust gets crushed into powder the colour you wanted."
The second compartment on the bottom of his invention fills up with a warm gold powder.
Jamie gapes at the invention in his hands, then turns to look at where he was testing the blue paint. "Pixie dust. That's why it's glittery. Where's the blue from?"
"The water in the lagoon." Mason holds his yet-to-be-named invention out to his best friend. "Now you can paint with the colours of the sunrise."
"You… made this for me?" Jamie's voice is soft as he takes it. He turns it over in his hands for a moment before his gaze rises to meet Mason's, tender and full of admiration, causing Mason's stomach to go all fluttery and his heart to race.
"You were always talking about painting the sunrise, so…" Overwhelmed with his affection for Jamie and unsure how to finish his sentence, he shrugs, not meeting Jamie's eyes. "I'm a tinker. It's what I do."
He hears Jamie put his invention down, then gentle hands cup his cheeks and guide his face up. "You created an invention to make paint for me. So I could paint with the colours of the sunrise, just like I've always wanted."
Mason licks his lips. Swallows. "I did."
Jamie closes his eyes and tips his head forward, gently bumping his forehead against Mason's and nuzzling their faces together. Mason's eyes slip shut, and his wings flutter, but he folds them down and tucks them against his back. They quietly stand there with their eyes closed for a few minutes, their faces pressed together, Jamie's hands on his cheeks and his on Jamie's waist, their wings down and unmoving. An extremely intimate position and a sign of unwavering love and trust.