Bella must have been hoping you had an idea; she frowns, and puffs in frustration.

"Everyone gets bored," Salvi notes without reproach; "I did, anyway. But I never felt the need to turn on my family and become a thief. There's a world of things he could do - join a mercenary crew, or the rat-catchers, or work a farm, or go to school. Why do this? It makes no sense."

"It's me," Biagio says with a despairing sigh, rubbing his cheeks. "He blames me for his mother leaving. He might be right - it was painful split, and in the end we just couldn't get on and she packed her things and went back to Tobaro. But I've raised him since then - it's been him and me. I just wish-..."

He cuts off his commentary as Maso Cestié makes his way down the stairs. He has been through the emotional ringer, but when all is said and done, he seems less burdened coming down than when he went up. "Well... He's still mad, for sure. I can't blame him. But I said what I needed to say - maybe that's enough. We'd better start heading back to Grifone's house, before the light starts fading."

What follows is one of the most Tilean things you have ever seen: three brothers and a son surrounding Maso and telling him over and over how he must stay for dinner, he must stay over night, he must accept their hospitality; how can he insult his family like this, how can he imagine he won't stay, how has he come back into their lives to slander their wives cooking by not sampling it, and so on. The haranguing is atleast fourty percent conveyed with hand gestures - forefingers pinched to thumbs, wrists flapped at chin height - and is one hundred percent toothless excoriation.

You are forced to stay - trapped in a den of Cestiés.

At the end of the day, the displays in the shop are moved and tables cleared and pushed together to make a massive, long dining table, and then a second one along side it; and the Cestié clan descends to fill the building with the smells of fine cooking and a thunderstorm of gossip. In the kitchen, the women of the family swarm and gabble and help and correct each other's cooking. It is a job that would require a much smaller number, but it is an excuse to have their discussion away from the men, who themselves have a great deal to catch up about and yak and brag around the table; while a horde of children play elaborate games of make beleive, or a regional chase and catch variant called Rats and Terriers.

Between the patriarch and his maid, the sons and their wives and children and the children's children and some of the children's children's children, and the wives, husbands and unmarried sweethearts of this extended clan, there are almost a hundred Cestié's or Cestié adjacent parties in attendance. Almost half of them are Salvi's truly Olympian contribution - seven daughters, five sons-in-law, eighteen grandchildren and twelve great grandchildren. You and Bella are free to move around the tables - the personalities of the horde run the gamut but most are genuinely sweet and very interested in meeting you - but Maso and Biagio spend most of their time seated together, talking to each other when Maso is not fielding questions from his other relatives. A place is put out for Augusto, who does not show - but it is important for Biagio that his son never for a second, even if glancing through the window as he sneaks by, think he is unwanted or unwelcome.

Hard shelled maxenete crab, bean soup with noodles, a half dozen kind of small, fried, strongly salted and onion'd fish are present in plenty; in shorter supply, but insisted upon you, are a additional dishes of chopped and fried beef liver with onions and leeks, and some supple cuts of a creature you've never seen - a bizarre creature of the water that, before it is prepared, looks on the chopping block like a slimy wet hand full of boneless fingers, with eyes at the wrist which then transitions into a broad... sleeve, or hat, or something. The Sepe, is cooked and then served in an inky thick black sauce which you are assured it makes itself and; but which also does the work of dying the bed of fettucini with which it was cooked black as well. It is unappetizing by its strangeness to look at - but if you can get past that, it is a rare and worthy taste indeed.

Spoiler: OOC:
Show
How does Taalia spend her time at CestiéCon?

Also, if you wouldn't mind... make me a listening based perception test for something that occurs the next day (thus your fate points are available).