Chapter 21: Norneau
Kordia finished Kir's sketch so quickly that he wondered if she might have taken a shortcut like only drawing his head. Instead, when she showed it to him, it was a perfect rendition of his entire body - wings included - in the thinking-man pose he'd held until she said he could stop.
"It's... um... wow..." he couldn't believe the level of detail she'd gotten in only an hour, and with not a drop of ink wasted or a single unnecessary mark on the page. "It's very... flattering?" he tried.
"S-so you like it?" Kordia asked, her tail wagging.
"It's amazing," he replied. "I almost want to keep it myself..."
"I'll draw another!" she said, her eyes lighting up. "Maybe a different pose... or a change of clothes..."
"No, no. That won't be necessary..." He laughed nervously. "Here, let me show you how I clean my claws after using ink..."
He showed her a simple method where he gathered water out of the air and used it to pull the ink off her claws.
"There's plenty of water in the air, depending on humidity," he explained. "You just pull it into a ball, use magic to rotate it, and... there! Done. All you have to do is evaporate the water and let the ink fall back into the pot." He demonstrated.