Dalinar grumbled to himself as he shifted boxes, more boxes in his garage filled endlessly with boxes, trying to find his old competition achievements. Finally, a box with a light dusting of glitter caught the light.
"Ha!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Adolin! Get in here, I found it."
The kid thought he could "shot the put" further than his old man? At 23? Unlikely. Dalinar had been the shot put champion of his day. Adolin poked his head around the door into the garage.
Dalinar tore open the box, sending a shower of glitter through the still garage air, and tossed his Personal Best, framed in Shinovarian hardwood, at Adolin. Adolin scrutinised the certificate for a long moment, even though the glyphs were simple, and the boy couldn't read the women's script that embellished it. Could the boy even read the glyphs? At least the picture of the shotput was clear. Dalinar turned back to his Trophy Box. Another box ornamented with glitter caught his eye; the glitter was black, the surest sign of sorrow and mourning in the creative community. It couldn't be. After all these years?
Yet he knew in his heart of hearts exactly what it was. He remembered hauling the box here, slamming it to the ground and haphazardly showering the box with the black glitter that seemed to consume all light around it, giving the box the kind of desolate aura it deserved.
Adolin had been speaking, but it was only a buzzing in his ears. He fell to his knees before the box, tears rising unbidden in his sorrowful blue eyes. He ran his hand across the gritty surface, the old glitter pricking his hands. Of course, that was a warning to himself from the past.
Don't open this box, Dalinar. It brings only pain.
But, storm it, he was the Blackthorn. Cardboard could not contain what it would take to intimidate him. It had been long enough. He unlocked the metaphorical chest of memories that had been closed to him for so long, tearing the old tape away with no thought for flair not flourish. The memories hit him in a vertigo inducing wave, accompanied by the dust that had accumulated over the many years.
He stared.
He sat.
He remembered.
Reuknit them.
By the time he came back to himself Adolin had left and the sun had set. Dalinar cradled the box in his arms. It had caused him so much pain, but it had also been responsible for so much of the joy in his life. Dare he tempt fate and bear the burdens hidden in this box?
Reuknit them.
There is was again! A ghostly voice from nowhere! Reuknit them? He stared back at the box, wondering if he was going mad, imagining a call to action to justify his own deep seated desires. A tear dropped tremulously from the end of his nose and plinked on the end of something pointed, sending out a small shower of droplets.
His doubles needles. Their doubles needles.
Dalinar tugged the needles out of the box. The pairs were all separate now, but the four could be attached to each other and form two massive needles that the team could knit with, one in front, the other behind. The one in front was in charge of the precise details of the stitches, while the other was in charge of the speed and physicality. The latter had always been Dalinar's forte. As well as knitting in tandem, the needles could be used to knit from one end of a piece and meet in the middle. Dalinar had once constructed a unity scarf for all the highprinces of Alethkar to wear when they had meetings together. Well, Dalinar and… And Sadeas had constructed it.
Sadeas was always the one on the other end, or in front of him when he knitted.
It wasn't like that now. Hadn't been for years. Not since…
"What are you doing?" Dalinar dropped his glitter pen and handmade condolences cards from numb fingers. Shock and horror had filled him to the brim and spilled over into his voice. He had returned to the Craft Competition Hall to retrieve Renarin, who had lost his glasses and had been hiding under one of the stalls, but instead he had found Sadeas hunched over a table that did not belong to them. The flash of dressmakers scissors could not be disguised from Dalinar's experienced eyes, even in the dim twilight of the Crafter's afternoon tea break when all the lights were extinguished in the Competition Hall and ancient rivalries briefly set aside over finger sandwiches and tea in the rose garden outside.
"What am I doing? What needs to be done," Sadeas rasped. His lovely long dark hair swung around his face in a sinister curtain more fine than any human craftster could create. Dalinar had been around craft halls his entire life, and he had no illusions about what was happening.
"Sadeas, you're out of control! First, knitting for personal gain, now sabotaging our competition? We're better than this...or, I thought we were."
Sadeas chuckled menacingly. "Are we really better than this, Dalinar? Knitting is a young man's game, and if we don't decorate using every shell we find on the beach to keep up, then we're going to become irrelevant very quickly."
"Sadeas we had a dream once, we were going to darn the holes of this great nation of ours, and make it something to be proud of again."
"Dalinar, you're a dropped stitch in the scarf of time. Idealists like you won't survive in this society." He stooped down to the victim of his scissors, and with one smooth movement tugged a thread from the gorgeous feat of human ingenuity. When it was picked up, the whole artwork would unravel...just like Dalinar's dreams for the future were unravelling before his very eyes.
"Have you forgotten all our plans, Sadeas? We were going to send socks to the poor! No one was going to be cold. Not while there was yarn in Alethkar, and life in my fingers."
"Yes Dalinar," Sadeas spat. "I remember. Of course I remember! But it just isn't feasible, not any more."
"Because you've become too Mighty for such a noble goal?" Dalinar rumbled in disdain.
Sadeas stepped closer, eyes full of distaste, a sneer curling his lips. "Because no one has willingly worn home knitted clothing in decades, you fool."
Dalinar snapped painfully back to the present again. The rough concrete of his garage floor was digging uncomfortably into his knees through his trousers, and he was alone, again.
His eyes were drawn back to the open box with the inevitability of dreadful fate. He knew that underneath his colour-coordinated tray of bobbin thread was the last scarf they had ever started together. He reached out tremulously to take Destiny back into his own hands- that was the name of the scarf and his fate- but he stopped at the sight of his tear drenched sleeve. He had been crying this whole time. He gasped, his head was pounding, his throat was raw, a deadly error in the crafting scene. He hadn't hydrated himself before approaching an emotionally taxing task. He staggered to his feet, wiping yet more tears on his, luckily, colourfast blue jumper and careened out of the garage, the kitchen his destination, and a glass of water his goal.
Dalinar seized the doorframe for support, but as he swung himself forward he collided blindly with something.
"Whoa, dude, sorry, I didn't see you there in the dark," said a tall voice. The stranger attempted to catch his slipping, half-zipped backpack and protect it's contents. "I was just here to play some b-ball with Ades." Dalinar looked up, eyes still filmed with tears. He heard the unmistakable sound of high quality knitting needles plinking to the ground, and soft yarn unravelling from its spool. The look of anxiety in the young man's eyes told Dalinar that he heard it too. Quickly they both stooped to gather the knitting essentials from the ground before the luxury merino yarn was sullied by the floor. Luckily Dalinar kept his floors spotless for just this reason.
"Quite a project by the look of it," Dalinar choked.
"Yeah, I guess I'm a bit of a yarn-smith!" the boy chuckled, shifting his grip on his skateboard uncomfortably. Dalinar ran his fingers over the meticulously tight stitches.
"I guess I could call myself one too…" They locked eyes, and the young man understandingly handed him a water bottle in a hand crafted cosy cooler.
"I'm Kaladin," he said, slinging his backpack back over one shoulder from where it had slipped.
"I'm Dalinar," he replied. "I think we might get on quite well, son. Do you believe...in Destiny?"