[stick] The Keibwa-fish

"Um...Keibwa...what are you...doing?" 

The Aramelle stood, looking a bit perplexed at the mess of paint and brushes on the table in front of him. Keibwa was hard at work trying to create what she called the "perfect fish stick" for the moonchill festival, but all Quinn could see was a sea of chaos in front of him. He quietly approached, looking to see exactly what Keibwa was doing.

"Is this for the moonchill festival? You seem to be...very thoughtful about this." 

He hadn't expected someone to take the creation of their fish stick so seriously...but he supposed Keibwa had her reasons.

Keibwa, for her part, was sitting hunched over at the desk, fixated on the stick in front of her. She had begun with painting the whole thing white, and was slowly adding black skull-like markings to it. Quinn wasn’t sure what kind of fish looked like that, but he also wasn’t one to venture into the ocean much to check if such a fish existed. He kept to the tidepools which was much safer in his opinion.

Seeming to realize he was there, Keibwa lifted her head and looked at him. She looked between him and the stick, before saying “It’s a zebrafish. Can’t you tell? It has stripes and everything.” She continued to paint, making the “zebrafish” look more and more like a skeleton than a fish.

Quinn could only nod “Uh huh…yeah. Okay well I guess it looks like a zebra…but I don’t think zebras look like that…you know what, nevermind. Here, why don’t I help you?”

Quinn sidled up alongside Keibwa, ignoring the strange look she gave him as he sat next to her. Picking up a brush, he dipped the tip into a bright green  color and began to draw on accents. He added eyes, a few green stripes to highlight the white ones, and even bright green gills to really sell the effect. 

Looking at his details, he finally noticed that Keibwa hadn’t moved since he started painting. He looked at her and noticed she was staring at the fish stick with a look of concentration. 

Quinn blinked, “Hey uh…is everything alright? I didn’t ruin your grand project did I? Sorry if I did, you can just paint over it in white or black. Here, let me help…” He reached for the white paint, but surprisingly Keibwa swatted his hand away, shaking her head vigorously.

“No….keep it. I like it. The colors look a little like me. The green I mean. Did you do that on purpose?” Keibwa looked at him questioningly. 

Quinn looked between Keibwa and the fish stick, before smiling and saying “I’ll admit it was unintentional…but it does look a bit like you now.I think I chose the green because I was thinking of you, but subconsciously. Now we can say this is what you’d look like as a fish stick I guess,” he chuckled at its Keibwa-like appearance. Between the skeleton-like look and the vibrant green paint, it really did look like a Keibwa variant fish.

Keibwa nodded, before smiling and dipping her paintbrush into the paint once more, “well, we cannot leave her unfinished. Help me paint the rest.”

Quinn nodded, humming thoughtfully as he got to work.