"Okay," Mateo continues without a beat, a smile in his voice. He's sure the tall stranger is a lot of things, even if he doesn't say what they are. Everyone is a lot of things, even if those things are a lack of things. Capiche? "Nice to meet you, Mr. Grey, and I'm sorry again about earlier." It's clear he has a wealth of experience with apologies. Wings clasped respectfully at his sides, tone earnest, almost reverent. The perfect sound and picture of a good boy.
Some day his skin might crawl with the pictures he's painted of himself, the unattainable image drawn from song and story.
Today his manners are the only things holding him and his many, many questions together by the seams. As the two walk together through the field, serenaded by grasshoppers, Mateo can barely contain his intrigue. If the man's tone was just a sliver more inviting, the boy would have bravely pressed on. But Grey's single sentence ends like the closing of a book, and Mateo's unanswered questions lie pressed between all those unread pages.
"Okay," he says again, but this time his cheerful tone sounds a little hollow. He was never talented at pretending to feel something he did not. He had too many wild, vivid, real emotions to feel. Fake emotions just didn't seem worth the effort. "Well..." he scrambles to reinflate himself. "Well... what..." he steals a glance at Mr. Grey, "exactly is it... that you're looking for?" His voice has the effect of tip-toeing across a squeaky wooden floor, trying not to make a sound. As though with enough delicacy he could sneak a question past the stony stallion's defense.
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@Grey
