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It was cheaper than paying a babysitter. In fact, it was free. Which suited Max just fine. It was a gorgeous early spring day, the sun shining brightly among the still-naked trees. A perfect day for the park.

The Childhood Creativity Club met every wednesday afternoon for various activities in the park. It consisted of two or three volunteers in smocks and a group of youngsters who partook in arts-and-crafts which were generally simple and messy. Just what Darsh enjoyed.

Today there were huge sheets of white butcher paper spread on tarps on the ground. Scattered all over were bowls of brightly colored paint and different sized brushes, sponges and rollers. Darsh clapped his hands and ran straight for the paper, eyes gleaming. Skipping over the utensils he slopped his hands directly into a dish of red paint and started smearing it on the paper.

The red looked wonderful spread across the white paper. Vivid and bright. Darsh grinned, immensly pleased with himself. It needed more, though. The red made him think of flowers, and flowers needed leaves and stems. That would require green paint. Darsh looked around, there was a bowl of green nearby and he trundled his way over to retrieve it. But just as he reached to bowl so did a small... girl? She got there just a moment before him and the boy blinked, staring at her. That was supposed to be his paint.

"Hey!" Darsh shouted. He tried to look big and intimidating, puffing out his little chest. But he couldn't help but admire her art. When it came down to it, Darsh liked pretty things. Green handprints appealed to him.

He wanted to frown and stomp his foot and demand the paint. But at the same time he didn't. The conflicting emotions made him frown a little bit despite himself. "S'good." He said, settling on a wise and solemn nod. "I'm Darsh." He added, his chest puffing out again, this time with pride. "Who're you?"

That meant the green was free. Darsh snatched it up and poured it on the paper, then got down on his hands and knees to smear it around. "Whats a dwarf?" He asked. The word seemed kind of familiar, but he couldn't place it. The paint covered the whole front-half of his legs from the knees down. The little boy decided he liked the way the green looked against his blue skin and smeared some on his bare chest.

Inspecting her, Darsh frowned. "You don't have a beard." He pointed out. Then his eyes lit up. "We can paint you a beard!" That would be fun. The girl would look nice with paint on her face, he decided. "You could have a purple beard! Or a blue one!" Blue, of course, was the superior color.

Oddly enough, it didn't even occur to Darsh that girl-people didn't generally have beards. Neither of his guardians had any sort of facial hair and the toddler wasn't really old enough to understand such concepts anyways. No, the think that concerned him was that if dwarves were supposed to have beards, and she didn't, was she really a dwarf? "If you dont have a beard how do you know you're a dwarf?" He asked with a frown, paint momentarily forgotten.

"Oh." Lying down on the paper, he made a front-ways snow-angel out of paint and then clambered back to his knees to inspect the blotchy green figure. Hmmm. Dipping his finger in purple paint, Darsh added some swirls.