A Seamstress' Silent Reminiscences
Beanstalk's metal crabs cafe was, under most normal circumstances, not a place Shamare would visit out of her own initiative. She had nothing against the furniture, the theme, the snacks or drinks, nor was the cafe so far away from her room that just getting there would've taken too much time. The metal crabs themselves didn't annoy her either. No, the problem was simply the noise. To say that the place was always bustling with customers would've been -unfortunately, some might argue- an overselling of Beanstalk's entrepreneurial success, but the cafe pretty much always had at least half a dozen or so people in it, at least as far as Shamare herself was aware. Still not really a crowd but, taking into account the somewhat limited space aviable in the first place, the noise still felt quite a fair bit too intense for Shamare to relax there. And that was on the assumption that neither Ceobe nor Bubble would be around.
... Popukar wasn't a problem though. Shamare could stand Popukar. Maybe she even liked her a little bit.
Leaving that one detail aside, the cafe was not the place anyone would go searching when looking for Shamare either. Doubly so on that particular afternoon, since Beanstalk was tending to the pen in the Convalescence Garden and the cafe was closed.
And yet it was precisely because of that reason that Shamare could indeed be found there on that particular afternoon.
The cafe was in a relatively underutilized hallway. Not the best location for a business, admittedly, but that's the only place Beanstalk managed to snatch after all. That did mean, however, that only a few people walked by when the cafe was closed. Few people, little noise.
Shamare was currently taking advantage of that, as a matter of fact, sitting at a table far enough from the entrance, a backpack lying on the bench next to her, a doll in one hand, needle and thread in the other. The glass panels making up most of the store's front were covered by green shutters, and the lights were off. Someone who were to try and take a peek inside would probably notice the light of her lamp, but the aforementioned shutters and the sign reading "closed" in plain sight on the door had kept all those who happened to walk by from looking through the shutters. It was... a calm place, on such occasions. And the metal crabs themselves didn't bother her either. Partially because most were at the Garden in the first place, yes, but those who had ended up taking residence there did not constitute a presence Shamare was annoyed by.
There were around a dozen or so simply sleeping on the floor, next to a somewhat large but currently empty inflatable pool. A few more were playing quietly enough among themselves, still on the floor, and a few more still were simply strolling around the place. Those were all very young crabs too, so tiny that even a child could hold one on their palm, so they hardly even made any noise as they skittered around. There usually were a few adult ones around too, but on that particular day they were all busy with some tasks elsewhere. The one exception was Biggie, a metal crab around as large as Shamare's head -ears included- and, among those present, the only one whose name the vulpo knew. Or remembered, at least. Having received the role of both keeper of the cafe and overseer of the younger crabs, Biggie was currently sitting atop the highest point of the counter, his eyes wandering from one youngling to the other and occasionally on Shamare and Morte as well. The metal crabs hardly ever approached the vulpo on their own, something she was fine with if not even a little happy about. They were kind of vaguely pleasant to look at but not terribly so to the touch, after all. As far as she was concerned, at least.
As for how exactly Shamare had gotten ahold of the cafe's spare keys, one day Beanstalk had the sudden idea of asking the vulpo if she could watch over the cafe every now and then while it was closed to make sure the crabs were fine. Whether Shamare herself was responsible for such an idea popping up into the reproba's mind in the first place or not, however... well, that was anyone's guess. With "anyone" being another word for "nobody" in this case, as there were only two people who even knew about that arrangement to begin with, with one of those two not quite being fully aware of it either.
In short, Shamare was relaxing.
But nice things are rarely meant to last and, as is sometimes the case, their end starts approaching disguised, so as to not alert anyone.
In other words, Shamare's nose caught the distinctive scent of Suzuran coming from the hallway.
Her left ear made half a twitch, her hands stopping as a couple of different thoughts entered her mind, uninvited but not unwelcomed. ... should she go out? Suzuran was supposed to help out a little at the medical ward that day, but a quick look at the clock told her that that time had gone by already. So she was on her way to the greenhouse then, Suzuran had a few potted plants there she was taking care of and she had told Shamare she had to- no, no, that had been yesterday, she had promised to help out Perfumer with something before dinner that day. Suzuran was a little too eager to help out others, Shamare believed. Still, with that being the situation, calling out to her was probably not a good idea, she didn't want to make her end up being late. That, and Suzuran didn't know that Shamare sometimes used the cafe when it was closed. Granted, she would probably catch her scent the same way Shamare had caught hers, but chances were she would simply assume Shamare had been there recently.
Then, however, came the voices. Two somewhat high-pitched voices Shamare didn't recognize.
"Look, look, a crab! A giant crab!"
"Ooohhh"
"Don't run off, you two!"
The third one was Suzuran, of that Shamare was sure, but she had no idea who the other two might've been. They sounded young though. As for the crab, they were definitively talking about the one drawn on the wall next to the cafe's entrance.
"Ah, I know this place! It's a... a... a cabaret!"
"No, the lady said it's a cafe... "
"Eeehhh"
"I told you to stop, if you keep running like that you might... "
"There's a light inside! Look Sara, look!"
"Geez, you shouldn't jump in the hallways. ... oh, there's really a light inside. ... wait here for a moment"
Shamare felt conflicted. On one hand, the other two people sounded like children. Well, she herself was a child, true, and Suzuran too, but she had a feeling those two were decidedly younger than even them. On the other... well, that was Suzuran knocking and asking if there was anyone inside.
The metal crabs, on their part, all stirred to life, used as they were to such noises signaling the arrival of people. And so, perhaps against her own better judgement, Shamare put her needle and doll away, got up, turned on the lights, off her lamp and walked up to the door with Morte following her. A brief moment of silence, then she opened it.
"The cafe is closed" she said flatly "... good afternoon, Lisa" she also added.
"Oh, good afternoon, Shamare" the vulpo replied with a warm -if admittedly quite surprised- smile "I didn't- "
"Tiny shiny crabbies!"
"Ah! Eren, wait for me!"
Without giving Suzuran the time to finish her sentence, two little liberi children -twins by the looks of it, with pale blue hair and feathers and somewhat dull amber eyes- dashed inside and past the two vulpos, one leading the way and holding her twin's hand.
"Wait, you two!" Suzuran shouted.
She wasn't angry, but she had managed to put enough firmness -or maybe just decibels- in her voice to make the two stop in their tracks. Mostly just the boy, as the girl seemed to follow him around to a degree.
"You can't run up to the metal crabs like that, you will scare them away" Suzuran told them, making an hand sign to Shamare to apologize for the entire ordeal while she walked to get between the twins and the metal crabs, which had mostly gathered around or behind the inflatable pool "These are also very young, and if you don't touch them with care you might hurt them"
"We don't want to do that"
"Hurting others is bad... "
"Right, so be careful"
"Can we touch them if we're careful?"
"They look cute... "
"... a-about that... "
Now that was kind of a problem. Suzuran had to get to the Garden, she couldn't go back on her word. Or rather, well, she could for once, especially under those circumstances, it just so happened that she didn't think so herself. Either way, she was already on the verge of being late, but she also had to keep a look on those two children. As a matter of fact, her original plan was to take them to the Garden and ask Popukar and Bubble to play with them a little, she knew they were there after all. And, rationally speaking, she really should've put her foot down and made the children follow her. Who knows, maybe Beanstalk would even wrap up her work in the pen and they'd get to play with some metal crabs there anyway.
But the way they were looking at her and at the little crabs behind her was just so...
"... Lisa" Shamare then spoke, almost startling her "I can keep them here for a while"
To be completely honest, she didn't actually want to. But she felt responsible for the current situation, or for what she believed the current situation to be at least, and that was her way of apologizing.
"Ehm, are you sure?" Suzuran asked back, since while she wasn't completely sure, she did have a feeling Shamare didn't like younger children.
... well, she kind of didn't like most children her age either.
... or older children...
... Suzuran had never quite brought it up as she felt it would've been a bit rude, especially if she happened to be wrong, but she kind of had a feeling Shamare just didn't like people in general...
"You are busy. I have some time. That's all"
"... sure. Alright then! Thanks, Shamare!" Suzuran accepted her offer, shaking her hands with an amount of vigor she knew wouldn't upset her "Alright, you can stay here while I'm busy, but you have to be good kids and listen to Shamare, ok?" she then added as she turned back around to face the twins.
"Mmnh!"
"We will be good"
"Oh, right! This is Erendel, and this is Estara. And... sorry, I really can't stay any longer" Suzuran concluded, having taken a look at a clock hanged on the wall.
And so, after having thanked Shamare again and waved the twins goodbye, Suzuran dashed back out, not quite running because running in the hallways was dangerous and rude, walking as fast as she could instead. Now left alone -small horde of small crabs aside-, the child and the two even younger children took a somewhat better look at each other. Shamare, from her part, couldn't really find anything special about those two, except one thing. They both had an hand puppet on, Erendel on the left, Estara on the right. The two puppets themselves were very simple and frillless, depicting the same fowlbeast with only the color to differentiate them from one another. And they were clearly old and worn down. Quite clean, yes, but a passing glance was all Shamare needed to spot the stitches and patches to close up old holes, not to mention that the cloth itself was visibly threadbare. As for the twins, well...
"... she is kind of scary" Estara commented as she snuggled up to Erendel, partially hiding behing him.
"But Lisa said we should listen to her, so she must be good. You're a good person, right?" the boy asked, holding his sister's hand in his own.
"You're not here for me. You're here for them" she dodged the question as she pointed to her side, the twins following her finger to the metal crabs.
"... Eren, look at that one on the can- the counter"
"Oohh, it's so big"
With figurative sparkles in their eyes, the two made their way to Biggie, which on its part had been standing on attention for quite a while by that point. Shamare simply looked on as the two tried to reach it with their hands then, since the counter was too tall, helped each other up the stools.
"It's so shiny!"
"Can I touch it?"
"Ah, they told us to be careful though"
"I will take care then"
And so, with a little bit of hesitation, Estara reached forward. Biggie moved its head -or rather its entire body- a little bit, making the flower sprouting from the moss covering it wobble softly left and right, catching the children's eyes. After an admittedly somewhat long pause of contemplation for the pretty flower, however, Estara moved her hand the little bit of distance left and started touching Biggie.
"How is it?" her twin asked.
"It's soft and cool... oh, but it's hard here" she added as she ran her hand down along the shell, reaching a part not covered by moss.
"Let me try!"
"Not like that, Eren, they told us to be careful... "
"Oh"
The initial bout of perhaps somewhat excessive enthusiasm reined in a little, Erendel started touching the metal crab too, still with more vigor than his twin admittedly. Not that Biggie really minded however. Nothing could ever traumatize it as much as his first meeting with Popukar after all, the cautus didn't really know much about metal crabs -or animals in general, really- yet and hugged the poor thing with way too much strength, nearly cracking its shell. Compared to that, the twins' curious touches and pats were even a little relaxing.
The other crabs had started to gather around them too. They were quite used to people to begin with, and seeing their elder be at ease with the new guests had convinced them to approach as well. Upon noticing that, the twins got down to softly poke and touch them, at which point Biggie jumped down on the floor too to join them.
That wasn't quite what Shamare had in mind, but mostly because she didn't actually have a plan on how to deal with those children in the first place. If anything, that turn of events benefited her since the more focused the twins were on the metal crabs the less she would have to interact with them. In fact, she silently took a couple of steps back and kept looking without making a sound. Doing so felt quite boring, not to mention unproductive, but she couldn't focus on sewing with those two there. She had promised Suzuran she'd keep an eye on them, after all.
As it turned out, however, Shamare had underestimated just how tedious the situation would be for her. Erendel and Estara were having a lot of fun, that much was obvious. Especially after they had started playing tag or catch or however that game was called with Biggie, the metal crab happily scuttling after or away from them as they ran around the cafe. Good thing they were too short to reach any of the shelves, so the worst they could do was accidentally knock over a chair or run into a wall. Neither of which had happened either, to tell the truth, not yet at least. The other crabs weren't quite playing with them, to avoid getting stepped on by mistake if Shamare had to guess why, but they did follow the three around from a certain distance. Most people would've found that to be an endearing sight, but all the vulpo could think about was whether that accident would compromise her future use of the cafe or not. As for the twin's enthusiasm, it clearly had failed to infect Shamare.
Nearly an hour went by just like that, hour during which Shamare nearly ran out of ways to keep her mind busy without resorting to either boring or annoying tasks such as trying to recall what might be on their next geography test or whether Morte's knives needed to be sharpened. She was mildly surprised that the twins had only then gotten tired of running after each other and Biggie, and slightly more surprised by the fact that they hadn't run into anything or anyone the whole time, but now came the matter of what to do with them, or even better what have them do.
It was then that Biggie turned towards her.
That much made sense. She had casted a little, shall we say, suggestion on the children to make them less likely to notice her, at least so long as she didn't go out of her way to get noticed herself, but she had taken no such measures with the metal crabs. And while she didn't really know why the actual keeper of the cafe had suddenly decided to look at her, she sort of got the gist of it when Biggie turned towards the jukebox. With an exceptionally faint but still perfectly noticeable -to herself, at least- annoyance, Shamare walked up to the mechanical contraption and started to fumble around with it a bit. She had never operated one before, but she had seen others do so on a couple of occasions. That, and jukeboxes didn't exactly requite mobile platform engineering theory to be used anyway, no. All in all, it took her just a couple of minutes to figure out how to get a song to play, after which she went back to her corner of the cafe to remain as ignored as possible.
Erendel and Estara, on the other hand, seemed to light up when the music started, and doubly so when Biggie started... dancing, Shamare guessed? She supposed it was reasonable to call the metal crab's movements a kind of dance, one the other crabs joined in almost right away. Had she had at least a passing interest in at least some of what was happening around her, Shamare might've even found the show endearing. But she didn't, and thus she had no feelings to express about it. Though if one were to take a look at the twins it would almost look like they had taken all the enthusiasm Shamare didn't have into themselves, dancing and singing along with the small herd.
That day, the vulpo discovered that it was possible to not only be a worse dancer than a metal crab, but to be a worse singer as well. So very nearly impressive. Alas, she saw no other course of action for herself than to grit her teeth -figuratively- and bear with the noise. Some songs weren't annoying to listen to, at least, and after some time she came to the conclusion that maybe she just didn't know enough about dancing to tell whether those two were really so bad at it. They sure seemed to be having fun though, and so long as that kept them from bothering her then she saw no reason to complain.
... there was, however, one thing she had noticed.
Those puppets they both had on one hand. Or gloves, maybe? Those things, anyway. She had sort of... expected them to use them? To pretend to talk with them, or to pretend they'd talk, or move them around a bit, or... something, but they hadn't. Shamare wouldn't have minded all that much had they simply used those puppets as peculiarly shaped gloves instead, but they hadn't done that either. In fact, it kind of seemed like they were making an effort to use those hands less than the other ones.
... were they scared of ruining the puppets? Shamare could... kind of understand that. And, assuming that to truly be the case, she guessed they kept them on their hands to be sure they wouldn't lose them either. She could understand that too.
That didn't really make the scene as a whole appear all that more interesting anyway, however.
The twins tired out after three or four songs, apparently. Shamare believed that giving them something from the pantry would've caused more troubles than it would solve, but tap water was probably fine. So she walked around to the sink, filled a pair of glasses and brought them to a table. Then she brought them back to the sink, left them there and picked two smaller glasses, taking those to the table. She could wash everything later on her own.
"You two. Drink a little"
The twins nearly chirped in surprise, turning around and staring at her with bewilderment all over their faces since, from their point of view, she had just popped out of thin air, the question of where she might've been up until then not even appearing in their minds. But then, be it due to Shamare's Arts or simply due to their character, they walked up to the table as if nothing weird had just happened, getting on their tiptoes to get a better grasp on the glasses. They were sweating a little bit, the vulpo noticed with remarkable indifference.
"Thanks for the water, miss... miss... "
"Eren, that's rude. She's miss Shabale"
"Thanks, miss Shabale!"
"... it's Shamare"
Estara's face turned a little red, her cheeks puffing up for some reason. Looking at her like that, she did kind of resemble a little fowlbeast chick.
"I'm sorry... "
"Sara, don't be sad! People not from home all have weird names, it's not your fault!" Erendel tried to cheer her twin up, with success too by the looks of it. Though Shamare was of half a mind that his snuggling up to her had been more effective than his words.
... what a weird thing to think, she caught herself musing.
The twins drank their water then looked around a little bit. Maybe looking for food. But they didn't ask, perhaps because it wasn't dinner time yet, perhaps because they'd been taught that it would've been rude to, or maybe they were just thinking about something else entirely. All Shamare was certain of was that they were at least quite polite, thanking her again for the water and asking her if she wanted to play together. She declined the offer, however, using her Arts once more. A new song started playing, the two turned around to go back to the metal crabs, and the moment the vulpo left their field of view she left their conscious perceptions as well.
The twins weren't quite as energetic as they'd been earlier, but by that point the entire herd of crabs had joined in with the dance, the little ones mostly imitating Biggie with a few odd ones out improvising some decidedly weird moves. Erendel and Estara were absolutely thrilled by their presence, however. Who knows, maybe they even thought the noises the crabs were making were meant to be a song too. They for sure weren't as out of tune as the two liberi, at least.
Shamare looked on without a word, without moving, silently pruning unpleasant questions as they tried to sprout to life inside her mind.
Then it happened.
Astara -no, actually, that one was Erendel- tripped on his own leg somehow. The moment he began to fall, a good chunk of the metal crabs surrounding them scattered to avoid ending up beneath the little boy while most of the others remained still. By the time his twin had realized what had just happened, however, Biggie had already dashed in to intercept Erendel, some of the smaller crabs having joined it as well, although to no practical consequence of any kind. The layer of moss on top of Biggie's shell was thicker than one might guess at first glance, thick enough to dampen what was ultimately a rather short fall to begin with, and the young liberi ended up pretty much lying atop the crab, somewhat confused by what had just happened.
"Eren, are you... are you fine?"
"Geez, Sara, you worry over nothing!" he said, though it was quite evident from both his face and the tone of his voice that he had gotten quite startled himself.
Maybe the twitches of his tail feathers also suggested that, but Shamare didn't know enough about a liberi's body language to make any assumptions about that.
"... ah"
"... ah?!"
Maybe he had felt the air on his skin, or maybe his eyes had simply landed on it by chance. Whichever the case, Erendel noticed a by all means conspicuous hole in his hand puppet, or glove, or however he saw that fowlbeast-shaped piece of cloth on his hand.
Shamare's ears nearly twitched. Her tail moved from her right to her left.
"Ah... aaahhh... "
"The puppet... "
For a moment, perhaps two, Shamare turned towards Morte. Her doll had been playing dead pretty much since the two children had walked in, lying on the floor first and sitting on a bench then, but now it had turned its head towards them. She walked up to it, adjusted its position a little and whispered something, then something else too. In response, Morte went back to pretending to be an ordinary doll, and Shamare turned back around to the twins, taking a few steps towards them too, not enough to enter the circle the small herd of crabs had formed around them.
"Don't cry, Sara, this is... this is fine!"
"I'm not crying, you are, Eren... "
"I'm not!"
Well, now that was... nothing, Shamare found herself thinking. If she had to take a guess, she would say the glove had gotten caught on either Biggie or one of the other crabs' pincers when he fell down, and if the cloth was just half as worn down as it looked that would've been enough to cause some damage. She had no obligation to take any guesses though, which is why she found it odd that she had just done that anyway.
"Will mom be sad? We broke the puppet she made for us... "
"Mom wouldn't be! But we shouldn't have broken it... "
"They said mom would come back if we act good... but good people don't break things... "
"Mom... "
"... move" the vulpo told the metal crabs as she stepped through their ranks, the little critters making way for reasons which had decidedly less to do with her word or the coldness in her voice than they had with Shamare herself.
She got all the way to the twins, crouching down next to them and to Biggie, the crab apparently being unsure of what to do.
"You"
"Waaahhh?!" the two liberi shouted -chirped?- at the same time as Shamare suddenly pushed herself back into their conscious awareness "Miss, you're scary!"
"Let me see it"
"Eh? I can't! This is from mom!"
So, those things were gifts from their mother, alright. Shamare could understand the attachment then. Although, if she had to comment on it herself, she would say it was the same kind of understanding one would have of math after having studied it on a book.
"I can repair it"
"You can?!" the two chirped together once again, sparkles in their eyes, excitement and hope in their voices.
But Shamare didn't like to repeat herself, so she simply nodded instead.
"She says she can fix it!"
"That means we can let her have it for a little bit, right?"
"I think we can!"
Despite all of that, Erendel still hesitated to take the cloth fowlbeast off his hand. Following what could reasonably be called an intuition, Shamare turned away, and the child took the opportunity to remove his glove and hide his now naked hand behind his back. A couple of questions entered the vulpo's mind, but she let them back out right away.
"Here, miss"
"Thank you"
"Right, thank you"
"Mnh"
Shamare took the puppet and turned it around in her hands a little bit, slowly. The cloth felt thinner than she had expected. As for the damage, a patch which had been sewed on to close up an hole had fallen off almost completely, barely hanging on. She couldn't comment on the needlework's quality in itself because there simply wasn't enough thread in there to properly hold the thing together in the first place, something she would attribute more to a lack of resources than to a lack of ability. So, without saying a single word, she turned around, sat on the bench where she had left her backpack, pulled out a pin cushion filled with needles -not all of which were meant for sewing- and a few rolls of threads. She stared at the glove again, at the color of both the main body and the patch, and settled on a color to use. Then she fully removed said patch, grabbed a needle, ran the tip of a thread into it, tied it close and started sewing the patch back on from scratch, the twins looking on with bated breaths and eyes wide open.
It was... slightly annoying, to be honest. Suzuran would occasionally look at her as she ran her needles through a doll or some other piece of fabric and cotton, pulling and adjusting strings, yes, but she always did so from somewhat of a distance, silently, and never for long. Probably because she didn't want to bother her, Shamare believed, in which case her approach was, all things considered, successful. Suzuran might've been the one person on Rhodes Island Shamare didn't actually mind getting stared at by, in truth, but that was an entirely different matter. Popukar used to stay a lot closer when Shamare happened to fix her bunny doll for her, and while the cautus wouldn't quite stay as quiet as Shamare would've liked, she didn't exactly make a ruckus either. She had stopped repairing her doll after finding out Popukar actually had a whole lot of them, all an exact copy of each other, but that too was another matter.
Those two children, on the other hand.
They were standing right next to Shamare, their little heads poking out from beneath the table, their eyes transfixed by the vulpo's fingers as they swiftly worked the needle and thread and cloth, stitching the patch back in its place. And they weren't quiet at all either, no, if anything they were quite vocal about how marveled they were by the vulpo's handiwork.
She... could let it slide, she figured as she cut the excess thread off, tied it and finished the last touches.
"Here" she said, handing the puppet back to Erendel.
"You are so fast!"
"You look scary, but you're not really scary... "
"... I can fix up the rest, if you want" Shamare technically offered, pointing to many other parts where the thread holding the entire thing together was either coming undone or simply too little to properly do its job. She was fairly sure it wouldn't last all that long if left in that state "Of yours too" she added, turning slightly towards Estara.
"Ehm, mom told us we shouldn't bother other people with our problems because it's bald men- it's bad manners... "
"But mom's puppets don't look too good anymore... "
"I like them!"
"I do too, silly!"
"It's not a bother" Shamare interrupted their back-and-forth chirping "Sewing isn't a bother" she specified, or maybe justified to herself.
"Really?" they asked almost-but-not-quite at the same time, metaphorical sparks all over their faces.
She nodded.
"Thanks a lot, miss!"
"Thanks a lot... "
And so Erendel handed the glove back. Shamare took another, better look at all the stitches, looked for the threads which best matched in color and material all the parts and started working.
Not quite the way she'd normally do, however. The puppet was a very simple one, so she would've had an easier time simply pulling it apart and sewing all the -few- parts back together, if only because that's how she usually fixed dolls. A rather peculiar procedure, admittedly. But that little tint in the twins' eyes, that faint hint died a vaguely familiar shade of black seemed to suggest her that they wouldn't have liked to see it torn down like that, no matter how good the end result would've been. So she gradually pulled out the old stitches while sewing along their paths, a process which not only required more time -for her, at least- but also annoyed her ever so slightly.
But she did that anyway, the two liberi's eyes growing wider and wider as she properly fixed the side stitch holding the puppet together, adjusted the beak which was hanging on rather loosely, patched up the little scarf, filled out the eyes which had lost some of their color -or rather, of the thread they were made of- and then even gave the entire thing a very soft scrubbing with a comb. Had there been any stuffing of any kind to that puppet, she would've also had enough to add some to it too.
She... sort of tuned out what Erendel said when she gave him the glove back. It sounded polite enough, she guessed, and that was in itself somewhat surprising given how over the clouds he seemed to be, but a part of her didn't quite want to listen for one reason or another. So she simply presented her open palm to Estara, who looked back at her with a blatant mix of excitement, expectations and a little bit of apprehension still before hiding behind her brother, taking off her glove and coming back out to give it to Shamare, hiding her now bare hand behind her back.
Shamare could think of... several reasons why they might be hiding their hands. But she didn't actually want to, so all those reasons never managed to surface into her conscious thoughts, remaining as bitter stones lying in the deeper, more murky parts of her mind instead.
No, what she had to do now wasn't thinking about that, it was looking for another set of twines, because the only differences between the two puppets were -improvised stitchwork to patch up the damage aside- in their colors. But she had a lot of threads with her, and it didn't take long at all to find some that matched that puppet's tonality.
She also changed needle, for reasons which had nothing to do with the sewing itself, and got back to work, taking a passing notice of the metal crabs which had surroundered them to look on without actually paying them any attention.
... a tune slowly appeared in her mind. A memory from the past, a sound she was intimately familiar with, a melody she knew perfectly. The soft, musical sequence of notes she had first heard when her grandfather sewed Morte for her, the sequence she heard every time he would fix Morte for her, the sequence she would hum along to when learning how to use needle and thread.
The melody resurfaced in her mind, but she didn't sing. She didn't hum. The pace her fingers were moving at changed a little, taking on a different rhythm, but her lips remained shut. She didn't want to turn that memory into sound. It was not a tune she had come up with herself, and she didn't want to risk... ruining it somehow.
"Here" she said as she presented the little puppet to Estara, who was hiding only one arm behind her brother now "It's done"
"Wooohhhh... "
With eyes full of the kind of admiration, awe and gratitude one could hardly ever find in an adult, the little liberi took the glove and put it back on, neither the care she had put in the gesture itself nor in making sure Shamare wouldn't see her naked hand escaping the vulpo's gaze.
"Thanks a lot, miss. It's all healed up now"
"You look scary but you're not actually scary, miss Shamare!"
"You're like mister Federico"
... like who? ... it didn't matter.
"Are those puppets important?"
"Absolutely!"
"Mom made them for us"
"They're pretty"
"They keep our hands warm when it's cold"
"And they look nice"
"They're really comfortable to wear... "
Shamare took another look at them. She doubted those things could really keep their hands warm during autumn, let alone winter, but that was not something she wanted to comment about. She had done what she could, but the cloth itself was old and thin, not to mention of low quality. How long could those two little puppets still last exactly, she found herself trying to figure out.
"... I can teach you. How to fix them yourself"
Somehow, the two liberi's eyes lit up even more, their tail feathers quivering, the feathers in their hair trembling with excitement too.
"You can?"
"It's not a bother?"
"I can"
"Thanks a lot, miss!"
"... sit here" she said as she moved back along the padded bench and tapped the spot next to her exactly once.
Those two were still small, but Shamare had a few needles with a rounded tip and a plastic pin on one end in her bag. They were easy to hold, easy to spot were they to fall on the floor, and they wouldn't risk hurting themselves with them either. But, as she searched for them, for some spare cloth and some extra thread, she saw something weird. She saw wrinkles covering her hands, wrinkles deep and dry, running all around her knuckles.
Warm looking wrinkles, the sight of which soothed her somehow.
A most silly thing, she thought. Foolish, even.
But as she started teaching Erendel and Estara the very basics, that old tune kept playing inside her mind.
Thank you for reading.