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Luxton picked up the particular stick and turned it over in his hand to determine whether or not it had any strange markings or damages to its color. Frowning, he discovered from fungus growing on the end and dropped it. In his other hand was a collection of other sticks, all similar in thickness but varied in length. Wrapped around his arm was a long piece of string that trailed off over his shoulder, leaving the loose end dangling off his back.

He was standing alone in the courtyard, growling softly to himself whenever he had to drop a stick back onto the ground due to its imperfections. He had several in his arms already, but it wasn’t enough. Luxton didn’t have a solid plan on what he wanted to make, but he knew that whatever his end result was going to be, only the best materials would yield him the best results. Wandering underneath a particularly large tree, Luxton glanced upwards for a moment. If only he could get to the ones up top. Luxton could have tried to climb the tree, but then he would have to worry about the sticks he already in his possession. If he set them down, there was no telling what might happen to them.

With frustrated sigh, he brought his attention back down to the ground. There were quite a lot of sticks lying about, but many had been damaged already. It appeared as if someone had walked through a bunch of them, snapping the sticks into pieces. He wasn’t too surprised; it wasn’t as if he was out in the middle of the woods. This was a courtyard and it was bound to get some sort of traffic on a daily basis. It was just a shame so many potential materials were no longer of use to him.

When he saw the two figures approaching the courtyard, Luxton eyed them from a distance. He stayed away, going about his business collecting sticks, eyes turning up to look at the two bodies every now and then to keep tabs on them. He wasn’t suspicious of them or anything, but Luxton had previously gotten yelled at for being out here without supervision before. What kind of supervision was he supposed to have? He was an orphan by all definitions of the word and his caretaker had dozens of other orphan Freshlings to also look after. As if the caretaker would have given him the light of day if he asked them to supervise him in the courtyard.

Luxton only perked up when he saw Ledie start running towards him. Did she want something? The expression on her face didn’t look like she intended on causing any problems. Luxton grinned widely at her introduction and replied with his own, “I’m Luxton!” With a big grin, he pointed at himself with the newly found stick he was holding in his hand. “Got a down face because I’m having trouble gathering non-broken sticks for my art project.” He lifted up the pile in his other hand to show Ledie before placing the lone stick into it.

His ears perked up even more at the mention of the woods. He had scolded the last time he went in alone, but if he went with these two, then it would probably be okay. They were going to have a grown-up with them, so it wasn’t as if he was going without a responsible person tagging along. “Yes! I bet there are lots of good sticks in the woods!” Luxton’s eyes lit up with excitement at the thought of being able to find the prime materials for his project.

Luxton let Ledie grab him and drag him along. Usually he was the one who was pulling people towards new things; it was nice to be on the other side for a change. “Thin ones,” he replied without skipping a beat, “and they have to be clean too. No weird fungus growing on it. I want only the best materials.” What was the point in putting time and effort into a sculpture if there were weird green patches? The point of using all of the same material was so that the final piece would all be the same color.

“I’m going to tie them together and make something pretty to display in my window,” Luxton boasted. He was thinking about some sort of star or circular-shaped contraption that he could tie to the nail hanging above his window sill. Even if the item itself was a sore for the eyes, he could make the shadow something cool so that when the sun shone through his window, it would reflect a cool-looking shadow in his room.

Luxton stopped abruptly when a certain stick off the path count his eyes. “That one!” he exclaimed with gleaming eyes. He pulled Ledie a little harder than he meant to towards it due to his sudden discovery. Shaking his hand free of hers, he went to pick it up and show it to her. “It’s just thick and sturdy enough to use as a center piece! I can tie others easily to this one!” he was excited, ears perked up with a grin on his face.

Luxton's face crunched a little as Ledie started making suggestions about his piece. It didn't need flare. The craft was for him and he hated all that flashy stuff. What he was making was not supposed to be a centerpiece to his room but rather just an additional background item to help make the window less boring. Plus, shiny things would just create unattractive random lights floating around his room. How was he supposed to concentrate then?

His facial expression turned into a visible frown and she kept making more suggestions. "No," he stated flatly, "I want to build something simple. I'm not trying to impress anyone." Sometimes he wanted to, but this wasn't one of those times. "Stick castle?" Luxton asked quizzically, "I'm making something small to hang in my window."

Luxton looked at the pile he had and the pile Ledie had managed to secure in such a short period of time. She was much better at finding the materials than he was. "I think we have enough, lets assemble it here," Luxton suggested as he put his pile down gently on the ground and unraveled the long piece of string he had brought with him. "You can make something too. I think there's enough stuff here for both of us. Just tie them together into a cool pattern. I can cut the string with my claws to the length you need." Luxton's claws weren't super sharp, but he discovered that if he held the string at a certain angle and ran it alongside one of his claws, he could get it to fray and break.

"That's okay," Luxton commented as he started to cut up some pre-determined lengths of string for her, "you don't want them anyways. They're annoying and destroy things." Sometimes, he wished that he had normal hands like most others did.

It had taken him such a long time to get used to moving around without hurting anyone. His caretaker suggested that he trim them down so that they weren't sharp and while Luxton had taken their advice, he didn't want to make them just look like larger nails. They were claws, and there wasn't much he could do to hide that fact.

He started fumbling around with his sticks, tying them into a sort of hexagon pattern with the middle part open. Then, he started to lay some more across the hexagons in an attempt to make the center look a bit more interesting. Taking an extra long piece of string, he started to weave it hap-haphazardly around the sticks going through the hexagon. "Hopefully it will hold, " he muttered under his breath. "Do you need help with anything?" he asked Ledie as he gently put his art project on a fallen log, "I can hold something for you while you tie?"