Submission (#6795) Approved

King decided, after spending only a few hours in Faerindell, that there were simply too many flowers and colors here.

Unlike Ahza, which had vast deserts and was made up of mostly shades of yellow and brown, Faerindell had a lot going on. After arriving in the region King immediately felt a sense of unease, and it wasn’t until he was sitting down and could take everything in did he realize that it was the flowers and colors bothering him. The large kittom had sat himself down on a small cobblestone bridge that was built over a small stream of water. Even in the water, which should have no petaled flowers and no colors behind some shades of blue, King watched as flower petals floated down the stream. Ridiculous.

When he looked up from the stream and idly looked around at the town and its townspeople, something caught his eye. It wasn’t another dumb flower or pink leaf falling- right? No, something strange was happening. There was an older elnin with a large crate of apples in his arms casually walked across town. However, which each step the older elnin took, small colorful flames appeared at his feet. King had never seen anything like that - was that elnin on fire? Was the whole town going to catch on fire?! But the flames that appeared at the older elnin’s feet didn’t spread, and the flames quickly disappeared. Then, like the colorful flames they left behind, the elnin had disappeared out of sight.

King desperately wanted to know what he had just witnessed. Too proud to go up to the stranger and ask, the large kittom got up from the stone bridge and headed into town. His disgust for all the flowers around him quickly disappeared as he focused on trying to find a library, or some place that held information. After walking through town he eventually found a small library and looked through the books. He was definitely someone who judged a book by its cover (literally), so it took some time for him to grab the right book off the shelf, but once he did he looked through the pages and learned about a wonderful thing that elnin could develop.

“Phantom step…”

It was the coolest thing King had ever seen. And he wanted it. He needed it! Unfortunately for him, there was nothing written in the book about how to get such a wonderful mutation. That meant that the book was ultimately useless to him. With a huff the kittom stuffed the book back on the shelf (in the incorrect spot) and headed out of the library. He expected every elnin in the town to have butterflies or leaves dancing around their feet as they walked, but he was disappointed to see that the only interesting thing by anyone’s feet were the petals from the flowers and faerie blooms that hung from nearby buildings.

Still mulling over what he had read, King finally set off to get a room at a nearby inn and stock up on supplies. He purchased some snack food and drinks to stuff into his bag, then saw the variety of art supplies the store he was at had. Unsurprisingly, all the paints and craft paper they had were in bright colors like the flowers outside, but it gave him an idea. On any other day King would have never imagined actually buying several containers of brightly colored paint, but today was no ordinary day. After paying for the food and paint the large kittom was practically skipping out the door back to the inn.

Once he was in his room at the inn, King dumped everything out of his bag. He set the food and drinks on the table but let the paint stay on the floor. King moved to sit down on the floor next to where the paint containers had fallen and reached out for one of them. He hesitated for a moment, surprised to see how bright and vibrant the color purple could be, then twisted the lid off of the container. The plan he had come up with before was still brilliant in every way, but now that King was about to go through with it he felt a little… silly. No matter, he was only going to stay in his room, so no one would see him.

Before he could have any more second thoughts, King dipped his paw into the container of paint. When he withdrew it he watched as purple paint splashed to the floor from his paint soaked paw. He moved his clean paw and dipped that one into paint, too. With two paint soaked front paws, King reached down and brushed some of the paint from the fur of his front paws onto the paw pads of his back paws.Now all four of his paw pads were covered with paint.

Carefully, King moved to stand on the floor on all four paws. He carefully lifted up his right front paw and saw that he had left behind a purple paw print. Brilliant! With a grin he walked around the room, leaving behind purple paw prints. While the phantom step he had seen earlier today was amazing, watching himself leave behind all these pawprints was pretty awesome, too. And these ones weren’t disappearing!

… Wait a moment.

It dawned on the large kittom what he had done. It was fine if he was making a mess in his own room, but this was an inn room! King went into the bathroom, grabbed the soap after lathering it up under some running water, and got to work cleaning up the paint. With quite a bit of effort, he managed to clean up most of the paint. There was one paw print that refused to disappear, no matter how hard he scrubbed. He couldn’t help but smile a little to himself, proud that he was able to leave behind such a powerful paw print. He decided the next best thing to do was move the bed so it hid the paw print. Now that everything was cleaned up to his liking, King turned in for the night, his mind full of thoughts about paw prints and paint.