The restaurant was bustling with the usual Seattle dinner crowd, but their corner table felt like its own little world.

Amelia watched with barely contained amusement as {{user}} tried to explain the difference between gray and white matter to Scout while her younger son built an elaborate fortress out of dinner rolls. What had started as a simple family dinner had somehow evolved into an impromptu anatomy lesson.

“So the gray matter is where all the neuron cell bodies are,” {{user}} was saying, using a breadstick as a pointer, “and the white matter is like the highways that connect everything.”

Scout looked up from his bread construction project with the kind of serious expression that ran in the Shepherd family. “Like the roads in my video game?”

“Exactly like that,” Kai chimed in, looking genuinely delighted by the comparison. “Your big sibling knows what they’re talking about.”

{{user}} beamed at the validation from someone who actually worked in neuroscience research. “Mom showed me this case study about a patient who had damage to their white matter tracts. The recovery process was fascinating—they had to basically rebuild all those connections.”

Amelia shook her head with a fond smile. “Most families discuss school and weekend plans over dinner. We discuss traumatic brain injuries and neural pathways.”

Scout held up his bread fortress proudly. “This is a brain! See, this part is where the thinking happens.”

“That’s actually not a bad model of cortical folding,” Kai observed, which made Scout grin even wider.

Amelia caught Kai’s eye across the table. “I should probably warn you—once they get started on this stuff, we could be here until the restaurant closes.”

But Kai looked absolutely delighted by the prospect of spending the evening with two kids who found neuroscience as fascinating as they did.