Lalli crept up behind Mikkel to peer over his shoulder, curious. The big man had been sitting quietly outside the truck, across from Emil and Sigrun, for some time, doing something with a pencil and notepad.
Mikkel turned his head, said something, and angled the notepad so Lalli could look at it: it was a rough sketch of Emil and Sigrun as Sigrun told her stories.
Mikkel returned to his drawing and Lalli watched, fascinated, as the picture came to life beneath the pencil. He leaned forward a little more and Mikkel stopped drawing, said something else, and then pulled out a piece of paper and produced another pencil, handing them both to Lalli. Accepting the gifts, Lalli withdrew and began laboriously scrawling on his piece of paper at a short distance from Mikkel, his brow furrowed in intense concentration.
Sigrun's voice rose in raucous laughter, signalling the finish of one of her hunting stories, and she launched into another as Emil listened, eyes bright with excitement. The faint, muffled sound of Tuuri's singing wafted from beneath the truck as she performed some mysterious mechanical ritual that would solve an equally mysterious mechanical problem. Mikkel and Lalli drew.
There was a light touch on Mikkel's shoulder, and he turned to see a piece of paper with a crude, but carefully drawn, representation of a seated man in profile. Lalli watched Mikkel's face with intent blue eyes as the healer took the sheet of paper and examined it closely.
The drawing was childish, amateur, uneducated, displaying all the mistakes of a young beginner. The single too-large eye was too close to the triangle nose, pupil and iris showing in a way never seen on any human, the head was a narrow, lopsided oval, the mouth an upturned line to the side, the ear a flap with a spiral on it, the hair isolated and scraggly, the neck an odd rectangle, the body at an impossible angle, the arms and legs disproportionate and wooden, the hands unnatural circles, the clothing existing on its own plane. But it was unmistakably Mikkel, drawing on a crooked square that represented his notepad. The subject of the portrait eyed it critically as the artist stood by, hands behind his back, waiting judgement.
Mikkel smiled---a warm, genuine smile very different from his general smirk of amusement---and said something encouraging that he knew Lalli couldn't understand. He carefully placed the picture between two sheets of blank paper, and Lalli, pleased that his gift had been accepted, headed back into the truck.
That night as Lalli prepared to head outside, he noticed something on the wall and stopped to look. It was the picture he had drawn, carefully taped up where it was clearly visible to anyone who passed by. Lalli stared at it for a moment, and then a small smile crept over his face. He was still smiling as he slipped outside.
