[1] Writevember - Pumpkin

You know, for a goat that is hellbent on doing everything and anything, it’s a miracle Willow has never carved pumpkins before. At least, that’s what Bowtiela thought as she was prepping her kitchen. Willow was impatiently tapping their tail on the floor before perking up when Bowtiela showed up at the counter. Just a week before, Willow had brought up how they had never carved pumpkins before. Bowtiela eagerly offered to teach them as an early birthday gift, and Willow seemed ecstatic. So much so that Bowtiela found Willow inside her kitchen right as she was getting home. 

“Are those the goods?” Willow asks as they stare at the shopping bag Bowtiela had placed on the counter. Bowtiela giggled as she pulled out one of those pumpkin carving kits. 

“Yeah! I’m going to start you off with one of these. We could just use knives but- I like having a specific tool for everything!” She admittedly does not trust them with knives either. Willow could easily make anything go wrong, even if it was unintentional. She’d rather be safe than sorry. 

“By the way, do you know what you want to carve? You can do something free hand or use a stencil!” She slides over the stencils that came with the kit before they were quickly flung away by Willow. 

“I’m going to do my own thing; I don’t need any stencil! Now let's start already!” Willow was jumping up and down and whining now. You can almost tell they’ve been tired of waiting all day in the same spot. Bowtiela laughed at how desperate Willow was. She found it endearing. She quickly rushed to a different counter and grabbed a knife from her drawer. She came back to the two pumpkins and began to make an opening so the two could easily reach inside. She grabbed a tray and a trash bag from cabinets underneath her and placed them next to the pumpkins. 

“Alright, say no more! First step, we clean them out. Just take out all this gunk and put the seeds on the tray. I like cooking pumpkin seeds, so don’t feel too bad if you don’t get every seed.” Bowtiela looked up and saw Willow squinting at the inside of the pumpkins. They stared for a solid thirty seconds before they started cleaning the pumpkin like there’s no tomorrow. 

Bowtiela just kept staring at them. Almost all of the seeds were thrown away, and even then, they were leaving a mess everywhere. She blinked out of her trance when a piece of pumpkin residue landed on her face. She rolled up her sleeves and began to clean hers. She still found herself completely distracted by how… messy Willow was. 

“Done!” About five minutes had passed when Willow proclaimed that. Bowtiela had barely even scraped the surface of hers and she was left speechless again. At least Willow looked proud of themself. They began to pluck out gunk out of their fur and hair. Bowtiela looked into their pumpkin and, sure enough, it was cleaned out a bit too much. The walls looked much thinner than before. 

She looked over at the tray and saw a grand total of seven seeds! She didn’t know if she was impressed or disappointed by how easily Willow missed the instructions. “Well… I guess you can start carving! You can use any of the tools to make whatever you want!”

“You bet I will! And no peeking when I’m carving! I want my masterpiece to be a surprise.” They smirked evilly before grabbing a sharpie and beginning to sketch. Bowtiela couldn’t help but giggle at how close Willow was to the pumpkin. If only they liked wearing their glasses. Bowtiela really appreciated Willow’s enthusiasm, but she wished they could’ve been the tiniest bit cleaner about it. Oh well, she’ll remind them to clean when they’re done. She went back to cleaning her pumpkin. This was always her least favorite part, but she doesn’t trust Willow to clean hers for her. Think about the pumpkin seeds! 

This process was a lot more calm for both of them. Now the two of them could communicate without Willow rushing to finish! 

“I’m surprised you’ve never done this before. I feel like you’ve done everything!” Bowtiela comments as Willow laughs. 

“Well I’ve wanted to! But there was just never a good opportunity to do it. Anes was never as into it as I was.”

“Hey better now than never!”

“I’m already an expert at it.”

“You haven’t even finished yet!” 

 

“Just you wait. This is going to be the greatest pumpkin you’ve ever see-” 

And just like that, Willow went quiet. All Bowtiela heard was a small thud as she saw them stare at their pumpkin in disbelief. Bowtiela looked over and saw a big circle carved in the center of the pumpkin. 

Bowtiela could barely make out what Willow’s sketch was supposed to be, but she did see no way of fixing their mistake. Maybe she shouldn't have left them unsupervised. Willow just set their knife down on the table and attempted to fix their mistake. They seemed to get more frantic about it as they were comprehending what had just happened. 

“An expert, huh?” Willow slammed their head on the counter at Bowtiela’s response, “Shut up.”

Bowtiela had to stop herself from laughing. She stared at the pumpkin and tried to think of a way to salvage it. There has to be a way, right? She used to make mistakes all the time when she carved pumpkins, but that was forever ago. She had only carved them as a fun tradition for her birthday. But she’s usually good at salvaging mistakes. She thought long and hard about it before immediately getting an idea. She grabbed the sharpie and put two dots about the giant circle. It was a very overexaggerated ‘:O’ face. 

Willow looked up again when they heard Bowtiela laughing at it now. It took them a moment to notice what she was laughing at, but they let out a chuckle as well, “The hell is this?”

“It may not be the greatest pumpkin… but it is funny. I know you like things when they’re silly.”

“I do like funny…” Their voice trailed off before they grabbed the knife and carved the two dots out. Perfect. What a masterpiece. Bowtiela was not going to think about how you could easily see the candle when it was lit. Willow seemed satisfied, and that’s all she needed. 

“How about this, you can help me finish my pumpkin.” Bowtiela gave them a smile as Willow began to slide over towards her end of the table. At least they still seemed excited about it, even if their first attempt was… an attempt alright. She shook the thought out of her head as she began to let Willow clear off the seeds she had scooped out. They were having a fun time, and that’s all they needed.