. Keep the Surprise .

<sub>H A P P Y | D R I E | N O V O

♥ ~Leaftail's Alisi ♥

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Kengali was starting to feel like he wasn't very lucky with the deer-taurs of the Valley, but he tried to make a good impression anyway. His last meeting with the lovely Emsy, another deer-taur who had been assigned to find him a present, had been strained at best. He'd never seen anyone blush so much, but he felt bad for intimidating the poor thing. Upon looking at who he had been assigned, he let out an almost exasperated sigh, and a chuckle. Another deer-girl. He asked around, wondering what she might like, and nearly everyone pointed out that green was the way to go. Kengali set out, determined to find something pretty and dainty and green, befitting of a petite deer-taur.
He rounded up some beads and shells that he had kept from his old lands, and traded them for green silk fabric. Then he searched high and low in the Praevelere forests to find a spider who could work together a fine sheer fabric, with little bird and flower designs inlaid.

He was very proud of his present as he held it up, paying for the work with a handful of wooden beads. It was as pretty as he could imagine. As he was walking to what he had established as his home, he found his ears were starting to tingle with the onset of frost, and he came up with another idea. He found a few broken reeds scattered around the frozen river, made little cuts in them with rocks, and bent them in a u-shape before wrapping them with the remainder of the green fabric. Finding what was left of his cowrie shells, he traded a bear-taur for some rabbit tails, which he dyed with some mashed mint-leaves, giving them a very slight green tinge. There. The perfect gift. Hopefully seeing what nice things he brought her would make the mystery deer-taur warm up to him more.

Not in the slightest. The wind blew clouds of snow in their direction as they both shivered under the straining sunlight, his gifts held in his large hands. Alisi bit her lip, looking up at this looming, goofy beast, unsure of what to make of him. He smiled at her, his ears twitching as he held them a bit lower for her. and she inched closer, her hand hovering over the gifts, hesitance betraying her wariness. "They're not going to bite you, I promise." He said gently. She smiled and blushed as she took hold of the ear muffs and scarf, before darting away as quickly as she had come. Oh well, he tried.

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Finally, this picture has done. It feels like it's taken me much longer than it should have because I was overthinking the trees. I knew I had drawn snow-laden trees before, and I looked through my gallery and found one of my Christmas pictures from last year. After literally 7 hours of desperation, I just decided to go with the same style, and it was decent. Not as I had hoped, but decent.

I am very proud of the figures in this piece though. I wanted to show Alisi's hesitance, and Kengali's eagerness to give her these presents he was so proud of. With how tall he is, he kind of looks like a pedo even though I'm pretty sure she's older than he is.

In the end, I kind of wanted it to look like a screenshot.

I hope you like it, ~Leaftail and Alisi!

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• Alisi © ~Leaftail •
• Art, Kengali © *Diikae •

• Artist Comment Layout heavily inspired by *Frosted-Signature •

• Please do not copy, heavily reference, trace, claim as your own, reuse this image on another site, reproduce in any way, shape or form, without explicit written permission/consent</sub>