Rubbish Collector

A scene from a roleplay *sunshinenorcas and I used to play.
It's the beginning of Ava's and Sequoia's friendship.
I've always loved these two together, and I found this old sketch from part of the RP I had laying around on my computer and had to colour it.

If anyone is interested, this is the excerpt from the RP (removing content related to other characters and unrelated events).

Ava ©
Sequoia ©
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Ava
Ava groggily peeled her eyes open. It was early morning and she sighed as she recalled the dream she just had. The same dream she had been having every night for the past week since she arrived here. Ava began to absently swim around the perimeter of the pool and pick up little leaves, sticks and anything else that had fallen into the pool over night.

With a mouth full of bits of rubbish, sticks and leaves, she made her way over to the edge of the pool, closest to the trainers’ building, and spat all the contents in her mouth on the concrete into a neat little pile. She looked at the clean water, then at her rubbish pile proudly, forgetting her dream. Collecting the rubbish in the pool every morning was something she had done since she was a baby. It was her way of helping out the trainers, and she enjoyed it.

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Sequoia
Everyone was still asleep.

Except for him.

…and that one other whale.

Sequoia dove back underneath the water to watch the smaller female go around the pool, picking up trash and things. Intrigued, he watched her until she spat out the pile by the trainers building.

How odd.

Ava. She seemed to be shy, he hadn’t heard her call as much as the little chatterbox over there or even her quieter friend or Nina. It was like a black hole, everything went in but nothing was coming out.

He crossed over to her, pulling away before he actually got close enough to touch before realizing… he didn’t know what to say. Oops.
Spotting a loose rock he dove to the bottom, picked it up with his teeth and came back up.

“You, um, forgot this?” he offered, opening his mouth to show her the rock. Never mind it was smooth and small… just like the rocks that littered the rubbing area of the pool. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. Maybe she was blind as well as mute.

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Ava
The voice startled Ava and she spun around only to be confronted with a large bull. She recognised who it was instantly and soon relaxed. There was no reason to be afraid of this one. From what she’d observed, he wasn’t very high in the rankings and wouldn’t hurt her…But what was his name again? She sorted through a list of different combinations in her mind, trying to remember.
S…Seto…Sec...Sequoia!
That’s it!
Ava had done her best to memorize everyone’s names as best she could. She didn’t know why, it wasn’t like she could have a conversation with them anyway. But she just thought it was common courtesy to have that knowledge. Ava then directed her attention to the small object he had in his mouth, and then gave Sequoia a quizzical look. It didn’t take her long to realise at all that what he had was a rock. The same rock as the ones covering the rubbing area. It was not rubbish; it belonged in the pool. But who was she to ignore an obvious attempt at a conversation?…An attempt at a possible friendship, maybe?...An attempt. Full stop. It’s what she wanted more then anything.
She reluctantly took the rock from his mouth and placed it on top of her pile. She really didn’t want the rock, which belonged in the pool, on her rubbish pile of things that did not. What would the trainers think of her when they saw it? Would they be angry at her for taking things out of the pool that should be left alone?
She never let any of these thoughts be known to Sequoia, however, as her face showed nothing more then a sweet smile.