They both are wonderful and lovely <3

At this rate, I wonder who's going to snap first, Zaphira and Shen finally getting sick of Captain No-Fun-Allowed, or the good Captain finally getting sick of nobody listening to him.

It's the captain, no doubt

Just imagine; Zaphira ordering him to have "fun", while on the job! The horror to the stick-up commander :o

Money on the latter.

Wait’ll he discovers that Zaphira is drawing a nasty caricature of him in her journal.

XD

I don't think Zaphira has a nasty bone in her body.

You’ve got a point. She really is sweet natured. But even the nicest person has a usually hidden inner Stonetoss that get’s unleashed when he or she finally gets fed up. That’s all I can stands, I can’t stand no more!

"Of course I like him! It's just that sometimes, he makes me want to curl my fingers into a ball, and push it into his face really, really fast, again and again and again..." -- Dulcinea the cat, The Adventures of Puss In Boots

“I’m not a vindictive man, but I wouldn’t mind chopping off Mr. Jimson’s head with a meat ax.” -Quote from The Horse’s Mouth, starring Alex Guiness.

Back when I was a kid in a rich family, I was always amazed and satisfied by poor people comforts, food especially.

Im sorry I had to respond to this

What was it like? I was always amazed by poor and rich people comforts growing up

I’m not sure I understand your question.

Ok let me try to state it more clearly

what was it like to live under a rich household?

It was nice. We ate out often, had a large house with neat technology and entertainment, and went on vacations every now and then. I miss it terribly. My parents divorced, and their finances were supposedly ruined as a result.

Damn.. sounds like a nice life to me, sorry the rest happened to your folks and you

I can understand why she's so excited about them; needing ink to write just seems annoying to me.

Worse people always pull out us birbs' feathers to write with ink. Im happy pencils are a thing.

That would be especially awkward in a setting with anthros.

*tucks feathers under cloak* What? Me? Ulterior motives for selling pencils?! Preposterous sir! D:<

*swan hisses at you*

Hmmm, interesting that they're made with graphite and not lead~

Silver was also a favorite drawing medium with artists. When you see a drawing labeled as "silverpoint", this is what it is.
Wood bound pencils are actually pretty high tech items. Her guard shouldn't sneer at them.

Never did understand why they're called pencil leads. Pencils have never used lead.

Yesno. While the "graphite held in wood" pencils never used lead, this was only developed around the (correct me if I'm wrong) 17th century. Up to that point they used lead or silver sticks for sketching and writing, that often were held in wood to keep the fingers clean.
So it was easy for most users to assume the new pencils were merely a further development of the existing lead pens, which contributed to wrongfully calling the content pencil leads. I guess it would have been that centuries "uuuhm, actually" topic. In German they're called Bleistift (lead pen) even to this day, despite never having contained it.

The predecessor, in some sense, to pencils were lead styli in use back in the Roman days, but they were used as an inscription/etching tool for wax tablets rather than as a "drag it on a surface and it leaves a mark" tool the way pencils are. Lead was used in those cases because it could etch the wax without cutting it the way harder metals would.

Edit to add: This is a big-ass "from what I know," which is almost certainly underinformed or flat out wrong.

"As a technique for drawing, the closest predecessor to the pencil was silverpoint or leadpoint until in 1565 (some sources say as early as 1500), a large deposit of graphite was discovered on the approach to Grey Knotts from the hamlet of Seathwaite in Borrowdale parish, Cumbria, England. This particular deposit of graphite was extremely pure and solid, and it could easily be sawn into sticks. It remains the only large-scale deposit of graphite ever found in this solid form. Chemistry was in its infancy and the substance was thought to be a form of lead.[citation needed] Consequently, it was called plumbago (Latin for "lead ore"). Because the pencil core is still referred to as "lead", or "a lead", many people have the misconception that the graphite in the pencil is lead, and the black core of pencils is still referred to as lead, even though it never contained the element lead.The words for pencil in German (Bleistift), Irish (peann luaidhe), Arabic (قلم رصاص qalam raṣāṣ), and some other languages literally mean lead pen."

^ This is from Wikipedia. I took out a bunch of citations, tho.

Back in the day before the pencils we know, the wood was in the form of a holder that looked a lot like a modern clutch pencil.
Now I have no idea what the world is like beyond the desert, but because I can't help taking an idea and running with it, now I'm imagining something like the Fire Nation in The Last Airbender, only it's a society of steampunk beavers who have mastered the art of wood bending, and trade writing implements for slaves.

The Borrowdale “wadd” was originally used to mark sheep so local shepherds could tell their flocks part. Chunks of wadd were called "marking stones”, and string-wrapped sticks of it were sold on London streets by hawkers who chanted Buy marking stones! Marking stones buy! Much profit in their use doth lie! I’ve marking stones of colour red, passing good, or else black lead!"

Actually, the first proto-pencils did use common lead (and tin, referred too as “white lead”) because it left a mark on paper or canvas, though the line quality was inconsistent. When graphite (also known as “wadd”, “black-cowke”, “plumbago”, and “kish”, was used for pencils, it was assumed to be a form of lead, hence “lead pencil”. Sometimes lead was used to extend a pencil’s graphite core either to market a cheaper pencil or because your graphite stockpile was low and couldn’t be easily replenished. Extenders also included sulphur, clay, and glue. The best graphite came from Britain, and if it wasn’t available, inferior substitutes from Spain and elsewhere had to be used. When a British embargo cut Revolutionary France off from quality graphite in 1793, Nicolas-Jacques Conte’ would invent the Conte’ Crayon, an excellent subsistute for British lead pencils that is still manufactured and sold today. Technically, pencils of any kind should be obsolete nowadays thanks to AI, but they’re still easily available everywhere, and let's be honest, doesn’t it give you a secure feeling to draw with a medium that doesn’t depend on a power supply?

Today I learned. :)

It’s the teacher in me.

I also just learned something.

Why would pencils be obsolete because of AI?

You can “draw” anything with AI without having to struggle with a “wet” medium like pencils, markers, or watercolor, etc. All that stuff is obsolete thanks to AI. Corrections can be done with the touch of a button, no erasing or using white out of some kind. No getting your hands dirty. No paint on your clothes. And best of all, no talent necessary.

I can't tell if you're joking or not. No one can draw with AI. Splicing preexisting images together is not drawing. And pencils are a dry medium...

I know. “Wet”medium is a metaphor. Granted AI isn’t “drawing” as defined in the dictionary, but it is a way of creating artwork without pencil, pen and ink, brushes, watercolor or acrylic paints, paper, canvas, et cetera, et cetera. It’s a debate if AI art really is art, but more and more of it is being created. Whether AI will render classic artists materials in the future, we shall see...

Missing fifth word in the last sentence- “Obsolete”.

It won't. Besides the fact that it doesn't actually create something from nothing, it's not a replacement for writing tools. Suggesting it might be is just weird. There are a lot of ways to create art digitally, none of which have made pencils obsolete, because alternative mediums just add to the pool of available mediums, which have different experiences of creating and end results, thus they are not replacements, just additions.

That said, the "debate" over whether AI can create real art is asinine as hell.

Oh, I agree. But as I also said, we shall see...

I love that even as a tiny background doodle, that Camel has just the most shit-eating grin from what he just got away with.

I was also wondering if the camel did get away with his prize or was Shen clever enough to have a decoy for just such things in the market...

I mean, pencil lines and fillups look so nice and its an addiction to just scribble ._.

You underes... Overestimate the taste of your queen, Basa!

Can I slap that guy, please?

Ermmm not wanna cause a major uprising but... you wrote stradrop instead of stardrop in pennel 4 of the wonderfull comic Viktria ^^

Thank you, I fixed it ^^

Its so nice how Shen makes Zaphira happy with the simplest things and his "knowledge" he gathered in his "old life".

Totally love it how Zaphira instantly starts to write something down. XD


And bruh, looks like someone didnt get the "A gift doesnt need to be expensive"-message... XD

I swear this has to take place in the same world and setting as Tree of Life.

I never thought the word scribble could be so goldarn cute <3

Aww, she's so practical!

Her love for the simple little things is so adorable.

Nice. Lol.

So did those big fennec ears not pick up on the old guy pick-pocketing them but can hear water underground?

Regardless that I quite like how happy Zaphira looks with Shen's gifts, I think it's more than obvious that Basa is going to end up being quite annoyed by her majesty for the use of those pencils. XD

I am calling it. She is going to be rising artist. xD

Her curiosity is the cutest

pg. 14 and still no seccs

Imagine when she discovers colored pencils!

Well one effect with the barely-visible crowd in the background. Crowd scenes are tough to draw without distracting from the main action.

Have remember this comic about them having sex due to a prophecy.

I'm still waiting to know what that merchant lifted or planted

I see him still smiling in panel 1...I don't trust him

Zaphira is so stinking adorable!!! Yes, sometimes the simplest of things can make one smile.

Wait until she discover one can create diamond from coal using heat and pressure, or create marble from chalk (IIRC)

To seifuku_ichi: We had a blowjob on page two. Be patient, like Zet said: Let them be, they'll come eventually.