It was normal. It was ominous. Pay attention: pay attention to everything you see. But he couldn't see the network of city lights from inside the shop. He went to the door to look. It wouldn't make any difference, but paying attention was the one thing he could do.
He met her coming in just as he was on his way out. She had something cradled in her arms.
"I wanted to see if your Dad could fix it," she said. She rubbed at her eyes. Her hair was frazzled on top.
"Poppy still teething?" he asked.
She smiled weakly. "Yes."
It was an awkward jumble of thin flat metal pieces sticking away from each other with a winding handle set on the side. He recognized it as a yarn swift, something the yarn shop needed constantly. One of the flat metal pieces was bent beyond repair.
"Poppy dropped it down the stairs," she said. Her hands mimed a bouncing motion, dropping lower and lower until they hit the street and one fist smashed down into the other to show how a pedestrian's boot had ground the swift against the paving stones.
His Dad had stepped out to get groceries. He had left Doon in charge. "I can fix it," Doon said.
He brought her into the back of the shop and gave her a cup of tea from his Dad's deadly-looking coffee percolator and two crackers to nibble on while she watched him work. Neither of them mentioned the lights flickering. Flickering was normal. Only blackouts were worth discussing.
He set the yarn swift on his Dad's workbench and went to a shelf lined with bins of flat pieces of metal. None of them matched exactly but he found one that was close enough. He removed most of the old piece with a pair of metal snips, leaving stubs to solder onto. He plugged in a soldering iron, pulled on a pair of gloves with holes in the index fingers, and soldered the new piece in after double-checking the fit. Check twice, solder once; that's what his Dad always said.
He could fix simple things as well as his Dad could. Pleased with himself, he held it up to show Lina, but she was asleep in her chair with half a cracker in her hand. He put the teacup quietly in the sink and laid an afghan over her. She had been nodding off in school too lately.
The solder had cooled. He gave the yarn swift's handle a crank. It worked.