It is not hard to make paint. A few plants, tossed together to form a base – some seed-oil and a few other things, easily found in Dalaran. Boil the plants, then grind them smooth, mix well until the consistency is, well, constant. That's the hard part, the bit that requires all of the work and the sweat and stains the fur and needs old clothing, lest the new stuff become old almost instantly. It smells bad, and it's hot – but it's not *hard*.
Then, you add color. Normally, this -is- the hard part. Drying flowers, grinding them fine, mixing colors to form the perfect shade, then hoping it takes that color in the paint itself. It's this part that makes most would-be paint-makers avoid the process entirely.
Normally Petal would too. But the flowers –
They shimmered, and changed colors when you weren't looking – sometimes between blinks. Thousands of colors, all in one glorious bloom, and there were dozens… hundreds of the things. She could feel the magic radiating off of them, the sheer joy and ecstacy in just being flowers, being alive, being in bloom.
All of this, for a prank.
Nightpetal sighed, stirring the paint base, inhaling deeply the scent of the flower that seemed to change along with its color, but was never less than sweet. The petals tickled her nose, and she couldn't help but laugh. She knew then what had to be done. It called to her, as sure and certain as the sunrise.
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Tucked just inside Kun's tent were a set of buckets, filled with paint that sparkled and shimmered and rolled from color to color in a slow roll that amost seemed to leave them boiling, the lavender and ozone scent of Petal's magic filling the air with an electric promise. Another basin sat nearby, filled with bright-pink dye.
On the paint buckets was left a note, written in Petal's flowing calligraphy –
"Kun –
Have fun!
-Petal"
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The painting wasn't a large one – perhaps three feet wide and four tall, stretched, new canvas of the sort avaiable (not at all cheaply) from the portraiture in Dalaran. Perhaps more impressive than the painting itself was its placement on Cael's bunk, precisely dead center, with no note or anything more than a simple wrap of muslin to protect it from the elements.
The painting was of a sunrise, on a cold mountain, facing out of wide double doors of a vaguely Pandaren style onto a landscape of a sky of a thousand golds and reds, touching thin clouds and transforming them into brushstrokes of some heavenly painter against the heavens.
All of that is a backdrop, though, to the subject of the painting; a worgen, a little too thin, sitting in meditation in near profile, eyes reflecting the orange of the sky. The detail is truly astounding – the female worgen seems to -be there-, with impossible realism on the shading of her fur, like imagination painted directly onto the canvas. One can almost feel the breeze that must be blowing, the chill on the air, the rough stone of that lofty perch – and even the scent of the cherry blossoms showing tucked behind one of the worgen's ears.
Despite the ferocity of the subject, it's a moment of peace – and also, obviously Cael.
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