Her answer made him smile. He liked thinking that everyone was different, even now when there were so fewer people to be different. "That's true. I mean, I think deep down we all break down into the same kind of base instincts, but beyond that, we're all different, aren't we?" For an artist, Evan saw the world far more black-and-white than it actually was at most times.
She added to the statement to tell him that he wasn't either and he smiled. "Well thank you. That's quite the compliment," he told her.
Evan laughed again when she drew a hat on his smile, a gesture that he responded to by leaning over and drawing a quick sketch of a Russian style hat covering where the head and ears of her own smile's head would be. He imagined that she would look adorable in a Russian style hat. With another quick glance at her, he dashed his brown pencil from the box and drew long brown strands of hair coming from the bottom of the hat. Just for emphasis.
And then he looked at her and grinned wildly. "It didn't seem accurate without your hair."
But it's still not as pretty as you, he considered adding, but inevitably chickened out at the last second.
She explained what the scribbles meant and his smile widened exponentially, his eyes turning down to the page. "I feel like this deserves a companion piece," he said, gathering a couple more of his charcoal pencils and using one of the small corners of the page to sketch a quick patch of brown earth, with a large, yellow chrysanthemum coming from it. "Yellow, to me, has always symbolized happiness. And green, luck," and as such, he felt pleased and lucky that she'd come to visit this morning. "And brown, comfort," and he was comfortable, too. "So…" he added a quick signature to the bottom, And His Feelings, Too, by E.R. Marchand.
"I would call this quite the productive morning, wouldn't you, Eloise?" he asked, turning to her with a soft smile.
The next gesture was hesitant, but he reached his arm out, sliding it around her shoulders and pulling her into a gentle one-armed hug. If she reacted poorly, he'd know not to do it again. But if she didn't, well… he didn't know.