Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sakari noticed the slight heat and quiet breathing that meant someone was looking over her shoulder, but caught up in her picture, she didn't fully process it until she'd put a few last strokes down and moved to turn the page. She twisted sideways quickly (but smoothly, not with the ugly, jerky motions her mother had scolded her with until she'd learned to be a proper lady) so she could look up. Short for a man, though likely still taller than her, round-faced, and with a gray-speckled beard. Sakari dropped her eyes instinctively-- it wasn't proper to stare so openly at a male elder-- but after a moment's careful deliberation, raised them defiantly and met his eyes. She wasn't at the North Pole anymore, after all, and it was more than time enough to start acting like the improper runaway she was.
The man's comments squelched any impulse to be openly rude, though; she hadn't shown her art to anyone but the old woman who'd taught her and a few of her fellow female students, and none of them had ever been so generous with praise. "Thank you," she replied, her lips twisting into a tiny smile. She would have continued with a polite insistence that her skills were not that great and then maybe asked the man about his profession-- people liked talking about themselves, so it was almost always polite to give them a chance to do so, and maybe it would turn out that he was a professional painter and then she could ask for advice or a recommendation for a new teacher-- but then a pair of monkey-birds attacked the poor man. Sakari wasn't quite sure how one handled the creatures, having seen them only from a distance, but she set down her supplies and made an abortive grab for one of them. It wouldn't do to let them maul someone, after all.