if they only knew how thin the ice they walk on is

As often as Ishiah had once berated Robin for not knowing his own limits and being reticent about asking others for help, the peri often fell into similar habits himself. There was a touch less self-awareness, of course. Robin Goodfellow knew very well when something was too much for him, and ran just about as often from life and his troubles— Ishiah, on the other hand, was precisely the opposite, convinced that he could handle himself and all of the responsibilities foisted onto him, until all at once it became too much and left him floundering with no way to break the surface of the water.

Those days, the problem was Caliban.

Perhaps that wasn't the best way to describe it. Caliban wasn't, after all, a problem in of himself. The island had removed the most practical concern that the once half-Auphe brought about with him, and sharp though his tongue could sometimes be, for the most part he was as decently well-behaved as someone in his position could be. Niko had done a miracle of a job, raising a child with an X written on the back of his head, with the worst melting pot of genes imaginable, into a young man who knew how to respect. The average American parents couldn't even say that much.

But the point was, however well Caliban had been brought up under the hands of his guardian, Ishiah wasn't well-equipped to take that man's place. When peri came to Ishiah, he knew precisely where they'd been, the lives they once knew, and could retrace his own steps well enough to be as helpful as could be. This was different.

This had him waiting on Trixa Iktomi's doorstep, brow furrowed in thought. He knocked on the door.

and somehow we told him what to do, but he won't ever listen to you

Ishiah was in the middle of quite the quandary.

He'd taken up a seat on the rec room couch some time ago, with the intention of finding himself some text to read, something to pass the time between then and his shift at the Hub. While for weeks, Ishiah's priority had been trying to find a way off the island, in those days he found himself pressed with the more immediate concern of looking after one Caliban Leandros. Filling, some might have accused him of, the void left behind in Niko Leandros' wake, and trying to provide as much normalcy to the young man's life without deliberately calling attention to the way that their group was broken. Only half of the membership it once had— or not even. Caliban was, however, singularly the most frustrating person Ishiah had ever met, even more so than Robin Goodfellow in recent days, and so sometimes the peri needed a good break from all of his worries, finding some textbooks on birds, or a birdwatching manual, anything that could provide him with a reprieve. That day, however, the bookshelf had decided not to comply.

Instead, all of its shelves were filled with a series on parenting, the modern couple's guide to helping their child through his formative years, step by step. Upon seeing the spread, Ishiah's expression had immediately turned into a frown, one laced with confusion.

"I don't understand," he said, moments before he heard someone else enter the room. "Is this trying to suggest that Caliban is a child?"