Bright watched the other buck as he drifted into a course of thought that led him away from the rocks that had been troubling him. The other had taken up the challenge of teaching him how to do what he did... how to arrange flowers and weave leaves and make pleasing designs with sticks and rocks. The bigger work seemed a little duller, but the small, fine tasks... those were where he excelled. He had to admit it was enjoyable, learning how to do some small, difficult task well enough to have it come off, and look, well - especially when Clem rewarded him with that beaming smile. His ears almost warmed as he remembered the first time they finished a leaf-and-flower cape with rainbow colors, watching the other buck smile at their work before draping it over his back. And then, of course, how he had insisted that they make one for his teacher, and after a bit of a laughing debate, how they had done it.
And now, Clematis had asked him for help on his rock arrangement. A nudge of one stone to the right, and another a bit furher down towards him and a touch to the left, made the thing feel a little more balanced, and then he started ambling about, taking the buck's far-off glance as an excuse to unabashedly stare at his beautiful purple hide, falling back into the fantasy of painting him.
His pigment mix would be mostly white, was the first thought, the familiar one. A little of the yellow, but not too much... just barely... wouldn't want to muddy up the blues. And then enough red to make a blushing peach-pink, like on his chest. The buck imagined the beetleshells and poppypetals that would go into crafting the thing, maybe cheating with a little red clay... no, only a touch for the markings near his eyes, the rest of the pigment would be slightly off if he cut corners. And then, after all of that, separating the paints into two shells and adding more red and yellow to the one, and about equal amounts of blue and red to the other. A third, smaller turtleshell would have lightning-, or if he could manage it, fire-charred ground wood added, with slight bits of blue and maybe a tiny touch of red to balance the usually yellowish gray that resulted from it.
Of course, to get the colors right, he'd need the buck nearby. Yes, they'd be similar without - similar enough, even, that even were he to stand next to the rendition, other kin wouldn't hardly be able to tell the difference. But gazing at the paints, he would know - had known - and that had caused him to ruin more good sheafs of bark than he cared to think about on days where he stayed to render pigments and store them in his hiding places. Which meant asking the buck over near his dirt board, and the rocky outcropping that stood over a depression too shallow to be called a cave, where he stored his brightly-colored works, before rinsing them and reclaying them to start anew... to let the creative, artistic buck see why he knew color and shape so well, and why he was so precise and accurate with distances and so meticulously careful with dealing with things.
And then I'd paint him. Make him stand and work my way over a sheaf of bark, nosing colors into place and blurring them with my tail. He'd have to stand still, one pose... He imagined the other in relief like that, with his strong forelegs, both down, and the hindlegs wide-set enough that he wouldn't have to wobble or shift to move them. His tail would probably have to be half-curled about a leg so he wouldn't have to hold it up, but if he stood, looking forwards, that would make for a very boring pose. And holding his head down as if he wished to graze would be even worse, dizziness threatened the grey buck whenever he hovered low over his paints for too long. Maybe if he were to look back? He almost shivered delightedly at the thought of painting the buck's shoulder and neck muscles, pulled taut underneath their lilac trappings to allow the wonderfully-horned buck to gaze behind himself...
He was startled from his reverie when he heard the scrape of one of the stones as it rolled after being nudged, and smiled down at the other buck.
"I think it looks much better now," Bright said, after giving it a cursory glance to make sure it wasn't a complete and total mess.
"Shall we stand back and look at the result?"
