Challenge #01587-D126: Care Worn
it's made by hand, piece by piece, often with the recipient in mind, and often prayed over. -- Knitnan
Rael took some cumulative Standard months to realise that Shayde was winding him up. Apparently, in her version of reality, true friendship meant that there was a certain volume of light-hearted teasing between... alleged allies. Humans still did this. Hostile speech in a friendly manner between allies that knew that it was friendly. Slurs used freely between those who used to be slurred. And, especially amongst N'Ozzies, vile curses used as a friendly greeting.
With Shayde, it was, "Got yer travel blankie, then?" whenever they were packing for a rare journey.
"You know very well it is my travel suit," he would ice, before he realised that this was something of a bonding display. "It was made for me by my tutor and it is the first thing that was made strictly for me. With consideration for my needs. Which you still lack."
The last time, before he realised what her banter was about, she had said, "Oh give over, ye know I love ya."
That was also the journey in which she not only noticed a fraying section of the hand-crocheted squares that made up his omni-size warm suit, but also began darning it. He nearly didn't notice until she got slightly aggressive at getting some frayed ends to meet.
Humans had a great deal of strange ways to define, express, and show love. The sight of the Known Universe's Most Annoying Ambassador studiously repairing his most treasured garment as he wore it made the meaning of her words as clear as crystal[1].
But he couldn't stop the feeling that this was some kind of elaborate prank. "Why are you doing that?" he said.
"It's goin' tae seed, ye ken," she said, not taking her eyes off her work. "Ye would'nae let me fix it when it's off'a ye, so I'm fixin' it when it's on. This is a treasure o' yours. It's important."
Those small balls of yarn were selected to match, or at least blend in with, the multitude of colours that Dode had used in a time too long ago. He'd have to send her a catch-up message in the Masters And Apprentices section of the JOATnet.
It occurred to him that Shayde must have spent a lot of time 'fossicking' in assorted rummage stores just to find those colours. And more than a soupcon of observation to know what they were in the first place. What she was doing, right then, represented a potential Year's worth of observation and covert acquisition.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I was mistaken in my belief that you were inconsiderate."
Now she looked up from her work with a smile on her dark lips and a gleam in her luminescent eyes. "Yer welcome," she said.
"It would help if you weren't so... abrasive... in your choice of vocabulary."
"Self-preservation instinct," said Shayde, back to her careful needlework. "It's gonna take a bitty while tae get it out o' me system."
Her last 'bitty while', Rael remembered, took five hundred common years.
[1]: In so far as any of Shayde's words or actions are clear, she usually rates somewhere between Smoky Quartz and Moonstone.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / TsuneoMP]
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