"Use the chalk pencil and a ruler, girl, are you insane?"
"I can do it straight!" Lona's back hurt, her eyes were gritty and her fingers were sore from gripping the needle. The lamp was aggravating her headache.
The chalk pencil landed in her lap. The ruler was intended to be close behind but she jumped up to take it from her mother instead of being pelted with it.
"Who the hell is this for, anyway?"
"Someone with too much money and pride to be seen darkening our doorway."
"Well, then I hope he chokes on this damn coat, because I'm sick of looking at it."
"We haven't even set the sleeves yet. You had better not be sick of it."
Outside, a trio of young boys chased each other and their toys over the street. They splashed through puddles barefoot, flying over the rough ground, punching each other, shrieking in their high, serious voices.
My daughter should be there, her muscles growing strong, resistant to illness. She should be free.
"Careful with that corner, Lona."
"I know, mother."
She was that small once, and that quick on her feet. Now she's old enough to think about marriage. Lord, such a short time ago!
"Mama, I think I can work on the outer pieces."
"I don't believe you should."
"But I can stitch as tiny as you! Look at this!" She held up the silky inner lining, put together tightly with stitches as small as the crossbar of a "t", perfectly straight, nubs like beads in the satin. The fabric lay like a blanket over her lap and puddled on the floor.
"Stitching by hand," her mother said gravely, "is as unique as an artist's brushstrokes. No two people sew alike."
"How could anyone ever tell?" Lona exploded, growing more frustrated by the minute.
"Normally, no one would," Robette said. She read the hot anger in her daughter's face and was relieved by it. She would grow up passionate and strong with desires like that. "But this is a very specific commission. Not one stitch can be out of place. If it's anything less than perfect—"
"What are they going to do, shoot you?" Sarcasm dripped from Lona's voice. She was angry, all right.
"They could. They very well could." Robette turned back to the leather, slick and warm under her fingers. Her stitches were perfect. Not one was out of place.
"Isn't there any embroidery on this? I'm bored to death with straight seams."
"No, Lona."
"How about a buttonhole?"
"It will have buckles."
"Can't I sign it somewhere? Inside the lining, maybe?"
"No, Lona."
"Well, dammit! This coat is going to be the most boring thing anyone's ever seen!"
A silence.
"No. It won't be boring at all. It's going to be quite beautiful."
"Mama…"
"Don't talk to me right now, girl."
They hung it up, infinitely careful not to let the leather stretch, on the dressmaker's form. It was only four clicks away from its tallest setting. The coat almost touched the floor. Many of the seams were only pinned, and the little flecks of silver appeared suddenly in Lona's vision as she walked around it, admiring the shape.
"Is it supposed to be floor length?"
"No, just to the calves, I believe."
"But it's so big!"
"It's for a tall man, Lona."
"He must be a monster."
The coat hung, sleeveless, like a shroud that had become animated and now sought its master. They stood in silence, Robette contemplating the type of officer who would commission a coat with such a range of motion; Lona simply trying to imagine what type of man would fit into such a magnificent garment. Her imagination was, unfortunately, not near so accurate as her mother's.
The things this coat can do, Robette thought, knowing the limits of leather, knowing its delicacy and its dislike for being rent and twisted; knowing, also, the strange instructions she had been given. To anyone else, they would have been pure nonsense. To someone with good knowledge, like Lona, they would have seemed redundant, bizarre, even slightly insane. But Robette had more than great experience; she had an instinctive kinship with the engineering of garments. She read through the detailed directives once with disbelief, a second time with a nagging curiosity; and the third time through, the full implications broke through to her amazed mind. Somehow this coat could move in ways leather was not made to move—not once it's off the beast, anyway. It was heavy and looked awkward, with all that expanse of material, but it could form and stretch with a body in any possible position.
The coat was engineered to fit to a body—
Am I sewing a garment or a weapon? The thought came unbidden, and she clamped down on it. Perhaps only the sheath for the weapon. Remember that, when you next hear of it. You created nothing dangerous, Robette…
"Mother."
Robette looked up from the leather, the endless leather, her eyes throbbing from the strain of wrenching sight and shape from that deep blackness. Lona was silhouetted in the doorway, beautiful in the frame as she never was indoors. Her hair was mussed, hanging around her face in a shaggy mess, her eyes burning.
"Something wrong, Lona?" Robette parked her needle in the next chalk mark.
"This is for Shinra?" Lona demanded, unmoving.
Robette wasn't sure how to reply. "What? Of course it is. What do you think 'the military' means?"
"I know that!" Lona snapped, "But you didn't mention this was for the officials."
"What did you hear?" Robette was suddenly suspicious.
"I heard enough." Lona stepped into the shop.
"Who have you been talking to, girl?"
"The kids in the street! They know! They heard it from their parents! They know who's important, who's getting awards… They heard it from higher up!" She spoke these last two words as a sort of incantation.
"Girl—" Robette stood, her back and knees groaning in protest, having been cramped for hours under the leather, that endless damned leather. "—this is not your project. This is not something I'm keeping from you just for fun. This is one you can't help me with. So get it through your mulish head, do you understand me? You are not to touch this coat. You are to finish your projects as I assign them to you and no more. This is the most delicate piece I've ever worked on."
"I'm not a child!" Lona shouted, her face reddening. "Why won't you believe I can do this? Why won't you even tell me who this is for?"
"Stop challenging me!" Robette screamed back. "Go to your room! GO!"
The girl ran through the shop and into the house. Doors slammed behind her, close and loud enough to rattle the beads in their boxes, then more distant: the door to her bedroom.