He cautiously takes one of the pencils and tries (a little clumsily) to imitate the hold Daisy showed him. He pulls one of the sheets of paper towards him and puts the pencil to it, pressing a little too hard. And then just...stopping. Because he doesn't know what to do now.

He looks sideways at Daisy.

She draws a little stick figure in the margin of her paper. (It's a perfect copy of a young child's drawing she saw in a display at the library a few months ago, but he doesn't need to know that.)

He copies the stick figure, somewhat imperfectly, and a little more heavy handed. He frowns at it and tries again. The stick figure itself is better, but he's pressing hard enough that the pencil lead snaps.

He puts the pencil down and tucks his hands into his lap.

But doesn't panic! Progress!

The sharpener is tucked into the side of the tin; she fixes the pencil and offers it back to him. "These aren't very good for starting out with, I think. I'll see if I can find something better in town. But keep going, it's fine, just try holding it against the paper without pressing it in so much."

He reaches for it slowly, and nods at the instruction. It takes him a couple of tries to find a happy medium between 'too much pressure' and 'not enough'. Eventually he finds it and tries the stick figure again. (He seems a little discontent with the way his lines wobble.)

"You'll get better at it with practice. Can you draw a goat?"

He frowns at the paper, and manages a slightly inept attempt at something that could be a goat.

"Not bad. A chicken's harder, do you want to try a chicken?"

He looks less sure, but is at least willing to try it. The first attempt is scribbled out, the second attempt is two blobs connected by spindly lines and a triangle that is probably a beak.

"Not bad. What other animals do you know?"

"Um, sheep," he makes an attempt at drawing one, a cloud-like shape with four stick legs and another bubble as a head. "Cows," (a larger version of his goat drawing). "Horses," he frowns, not sure where to even start trying to draw a horse.

"Horses are like goats, but tall, right?"

He makes an agreeing noise and tries again. It comes out looking very similar to the cow drawing, and he looks discontent about that.

"Cows have horns, sometimes, and horses have manes. And cows are fatter."

"Oh." He adds something vaguely resembling a mane to the horse drawing and scribbles out his original cow drawing, replacing it with a fatter version with horns. He seems at least somewhat proud of this.

"Yeah, that's better. You're pretty good at that for just starting out."

He shakes his head as he ducks it, blushing slightly and with just the faintest hints of a smile. Then he looks up at Daisy, worried. "M'not disturbing you or keeping you from something?"

"No, it's fine. I like having a list of what I'm going to do in town, but I don't need one, I can figure it out in my head on the way. And I'm going to need to get the biscuits out soon, but they're not ready yet."

"O-Okay. F'you're sure."

He turns his attention back to the paper, and has a third try at the chicken. It comes out about the same as the second.

"It seems like you're getting the hang of it. You can draw whatever you want, but a lot of people like to draw things they can look at while they draw, so they can see how the thing looks and make the drawing look more real."

He hums thoughtfully. Squints sideways at Daisy, and tries to copy one of the flowers.

She holds very still.

What he manages is tentatively identifiable as one of her flowers, although not an entirely accurate one. He sighs, going to score it out.

"You might want to keep that. So you can look at it later and see how you've gotten better."

He stops, looks between the flowers on Daisy and his attempt. "I- o-okay."

He abruptly seems at a loss, not really wanting to try the flower again right now, and not sure what else to try and draw.