"Hey, stop eating our paint!" Huo Linghun said laughingly as he set down another basket of berries.

"But it tastes good," Xiao Xin replied sheepishly.

Huo Linghun used his finger to swipe some berry juice from Xiao Xin's lips and stuck it into his own mouth. "It does," he agreed. "But we only have so many blueberries." He joined him in grinding the berries, and soon they had several bowls of paint.

"Now what do we do?" Xiao Xin asked.

Huo Linghun carried their bowls over to a large tree stump, the top of which was flat. "We paint!" he said. He demonstrated by dipping his finger into the blackberry paint and creating a line on the surface of the tree stump.

Xiao Xin watched with great interest and amazement. "What are you painting?" he asked.

"I'm painting you."

"Then I'll paint you!" Xiao Xin said excitedly. He reached for the paint too. After a while he said, "There's no green paint... it's hard to paint you without green."

"Sorry about that, I don't know how to make green paint," Huo Linghun admitted.

"I'll use blue instead."

"I rather like blue."

They spent the afternoon painting on the tree stump, and when they were done they stood back to admire their work. There was a rough depiction of two people there; they were outlined in blackberry paint and their clothes, ears and tails were colored with blueberry paint.

"It's us," Xiao Xin stated the obvious.

"It's beautiful," Huo Linghun said.

Xiao Xin looked down at his blue-stained hand and said, "We painted more than just the tree stump."

Huo Linghun laughed. "Well, as you said earlier," he began, leaning in to kiss Xiao Xin's blue-stained cheek; "it tastes good."