Colours of Orange: 1

"Oof! These things are heavy!" Kalina gasped as she lugged yet another large pumpkin for her birds to work on. Earlier that day Luath, Sahari, Glazi and Veraz as well as their rider had spent the day gathering pumpkins, and, now that that work was done, were all patiently waiting for their own gourds to exercise their artistic skills on, and Sahari's was the last. Once everyone had been given something to use, it was time to hand out the rest of the supplies. Bird-sized paint brushes, pots of paint, and other such materials were being brought over so that everyone could have a good time getting their gourds ready for the season of harvest.

"When you're all ready, you can begin."

*******

Okay. She had her own "canvas" to work on, Sahari noted while Luath was busy carving up his own fruit with his beak into... Whatever it was supposed to be, and his enthusiasm had her pumpkin half-covered in guts. If she wanted to paint it, she'd have to move it away from the white-headed hawk.

With a nudge, she rolled it off the pallet it had been placed on, onto the ground, then proceeded to struggle to get it to move away to someplace cleaner.

"You want help?" Kalina offered, then began as together she and the long-leg pushed it out of Luath's range. "Better now?"

Sahari trilled.

Kalina went to get Sahari's paints and brushes, then helped her get re-set up.

"Give me a hoot when you're done."

*******

Oh dear. Poor Sahari. She'd had such a wonderful idea for what her pumpkin should look like, but what she ended up with was something that looked like it had been covered in seven shades of mud, and she was now making some very unhappy sounds as she looked at the disaster she'd made.

"What's wrong?"

A sad whistle.

"Did you remember to clean your brushes off between colours?"

Oh. Was that what she was supposed to do?

"No problem. We'll clean it off and you can try again."