hadriel | 第3: [text]

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第3: [text]

i'm aware i asked this a few months ago, but now i actually have materials to get started, so i'm asking again:

does anyone know how to sew? hand stitching, specifically. i now have really nice cotton (thank you, delight!!!) that we can make clothes with

right now, we have a bolt of white cotton fabric. if you want a different color, tell delight a happy memory, and she'll give us more fabric. but don't, like, dogpile her or anything. be nice, for fuck's sake

[Emily, who are you to talk about being nice...................]

if you're interested in sewing, meet me here: [and she attaches an image of a map with one of the shops circled]

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So I read.

[ He steps farther into the shop, eyeing the table and her supplies with approval. A little shake makes the garments over his arm rustle. ]

What do you want to make first? I brought some things, so we can take them apart and you can learn to pattern.

[ She looks so much happier than when they first met, now that her project is getting somewhere. He knows that feeling, how productivity makes you feel better. ]

[Amazing how some good cotton will help a person mellow out after over a week of traumatizing dreams, and that one time she was made to try and murder someone. Shithole cavetown indeed.]

Oh, awesome. [She looks up at the clothes he's brought (and a pang goes through her, because even though they're made of shitty fabric, their colors are all nice), then meets his gaze and shrugs.] I already started a shirt for me, and I'm going to make a hoodie for the woman who brought the yellow fabric. So we can make a hoodie each so I follow along with you.

Sure. Those are the warm shirts with long sleeves and hoods?

[ Pell's never heard the term hoodie before but is pretty sure he knows what she means. The clothes here are very different from what's in fashion in his world, which varies from tribe to tribe. He's wondering if he should make some things that remind him of home... For now he pulls a knife from his belt to start cutting seams on a couple of the shitty-fabric things, taking a seat beside Emily. ]

What else have you been doing lately?

Yep. They won't be exactly right, [because she's not going to bother with drawstrings] but they'll be close enough. Like, I'm making the pouch in the front.

[She spreads paper out in front of them both on the table, placing a few cups and rocks on the corners to keep it stable. At his question, she shrugs. Shithole cavetown has really made her think about what she chooses to spend her time doing. On the one hand, she's got time to spare here. On the other, there's not much to do.

It's weird, and she doesn't like it, but she has thought about it a lot.]

I started reading this book on turnip farming just because it's in English. And I still look around the stores to see if there's anything close to good clothes. [She grabs a pencil and holds it out to him.] What about you?

Alright. Hoods are easier than they look but I can pattern it out first so we don't make mistakes on the good fabric. Do you have her measurements?

[ His knife makes soft tearing sounds as it cuts through the stitches, then he sets it down and takes the pencil instead, starting to draw. ]

I work at the clinic sometimes. And while you were reading about farming I was actually farming. You don't need any extra food, do you? I've got plenty. My old roommates had a garden and I'm the only one working it now. I know there might be a bigger one soon but for the meantime there's fresh produce ready to pick.

[Emily frowns a little.] No. I was just going to base them off mine. She's shorter than me, so I could always make them a little smaller. [Hoodies are good like that.

She watches him as he works, following along attentively, yet still listening to what he says.]

We're not, like, starving at all, but we wouldn't say no to some extra food. You might have something new for us to try now that we're all vegetarian.

[She pouts a little, but the frustration passes quickly. When she'd first seen the garden, it was Newt she'd seen working on it. No one else here ever mentioned one, which makes Newt one of Pell's old roommates. And yeah, she knows Newt's gone, figured it out pretty quickly thanks to having lost Jess earlier, but to hear it confirmed like this is still kind of sad.]

That sucks about Newt. We were supposed to do this whole sewing thing together.

There's squash, potatoes, broccoli, spinach, that sort of thing. They've grown very well considering the environment here.

[ He's not surprised that she makes the Newt connection -- she's sharp. But he does look a little sad at the mention of his name. It's been difficult losing his friends. ]

I know, he'd mentioned it too. He would've been so happy you got the fabric.

Maybe I'll ask Delight for a bolt in green.

[All good stuff, Emily thinks. All familiar.] I'll go get some when I'm done here for the day.

[Yeah. Newt's probably a touchy subject for Pell, but at least it's out of the way now.]

Green's a good color. [Newt would probably like it. She hopes he's okay, wherever he is now.]

Do you cook too? We're a little bit hopeless at the house, but we manage.

Great. I can cook... nothing fancy but a few steps above 'edible.' Maybe I could make you all dinner? Who lives with you? [ Anything to get him out of that big empty house... ]

It's probably more than we can do. [If she tried harder, Emily could manage pretty good meals, but she doesn't really feel motivated to do that. Besides, sewing is more important to her. Clothes are more important.

Not wearing itchy clothes is more important.]

Josh, Ashley, and Chris. You might've met them? Josh is the idiot who posted that dumb PSA about safe sex, Chris is the nerd who coded the emojiis I drew, and Ash is the nerdy redhead who wears a beanie.

Let's go by the garden after this, then, and we can bring some vegetables to your place. I'll cook.

[ He thinks, remembering Josh's PSA but not replying to it, since it didn't apply to him. Chris, though. ] I know a Chris, we met at the bar.

[Oh god, Pell is a fucking angel.] I'm so not going to stop you.

[She picks up a ruler, turning it over in her hands, thoughts going briefly to their project. Three or four yards should be enough fabric to start with for the hoodie.

She's still listening, though.]

That's probably him. He goes by the bar a lot to serve people coffee.

That's him. He said he didn't drink anymore but was helping serve... he made me something very strange. Coffee with whiskey in it? Took some getting used to.

...he's nice. You're lucky to have friends here.

[Sounds about right, though Emily isn't sure he's going to stick to that resolution.] An Irish coffee. It''s kind of his thing, as a barista. [As a wannabe barista.

That last comment, though, has her pausing a few seconds. She is lucky to have her friendss here. Yeah, they're in a complete shithole, but it's not the mountain, and it's forced them to deal with some of their shit. But more than that, they're familiar faces, people she can count on.

Pell had roommates, and now they're both gone, and there's no one here from his home to fill that void.]

So what you're saying is that I don't count? [They may not have been hanging out regularly, but how long does a person really need to feel kind of like friends with someone in shithole cavetown?]

Barista? I've never heard that before.

[ And then he laughs softly, smiling at Emily. Of course she counts... a few people here do, it's just not the same as having Cal or Mima, or even people he hasn't seen for years like Flick and Kate. ]

Friends from home. You count. Peter and Newt counted too, it's just never been quite the same since I got here. I'm also the only one of my kind, which is strange. I'm lucky I haven't gotten sick from it.

[Ah right, what's normal for Emily is new to a lot of people.] A barista is like, someone who's like, more than jsut someone who gets you your coffee.

[Good. She got him to laugh. She can't do much for her friends here, but she can make them laugh.]

Yeah. Wait-- you're not human?

Like a bartender for coffee, then?

[ That's sort of what Chris was doing, he figures. ]

Oh -- no, I'm not. Not for a few years now. I was born human, though, and it's not so different in the end. No matter what some people among my kind think. We're all just people.

Exactly. Though of course you can put liquor in your coffee, so there's a little bit of crossover.

[Or there can be. Whatever, Pell gets it.]

Oh. Huh. That's pretty cool. [All of it. There's a lot more there, but now is probably notn the best time, not when sewing bings up memories of Newt.] Here, it's like... there's all these different people here, and some of them aren't human at all, but we're all in the same boat as far as the gods and their shit.

[It's weird, how differences fall away when there's a greater goal ahead. If there's friction between humans and others back in Pell's home, maybe some kind of shared interest will help.

Or not. Sometimes people are shit. God knows Emily and Jess fought over a guy who Emily is realizing more and more was so not worth it.]

I think the reason people don't like other groups, or other species, is because they're different and they can't understand that -- or they're not willing to. They want to be the better ones, they want their ways to be the right ones. When that isn't the case. Sometimes different is just different -- being stuck here makes us all have the same thing in common.

My world's at war and it's miserable to watch. We should be helping each other survive, like everyone does here. I've never really understood that hate others have, that need for superiority.

People can get like that where I'm from, too. [It's ugly as hell. Emily doesn't like to think about it.] I guess that one good thing about this shithole.

[Not that there aren't people Emily doesn't like here, but if it came down to it, she'd choose them over those asshole gods.]

Me either. They'd get more done if they weren't busy wondering whose dick is biggest.

[Honestly, who gives a shit who has the bigger, badder gun.]

[ That makes him laugh again, and he gestures to the ruler in her hand. ]

Down to the millimeter. You're right.

Now. Cut this off, and I'll pattern you a hoodie.

[Oh god, she'd totally forgotten she was even holding this. She laughs too, setting down the ruler and picking up a pair of scissors in exchange.

She cuts where he indicates, the sound of sharp blades on fabric making all of this -- the shithole, the monsters, the last few months -- haven't been so bad after all. Have been normal.]

You're not allowed not to hang out with me for so long anymore, got it? [She says it with a smug grin, classic Emily. It's how she might've talked to Jessica, if she were still here and they'd talked their shit out.]

Alright. We'll hang out more. My life isn't that interesting, though, I hope yours is. Mine's just garden, clinic, empty house. Not much to talk about.

[ He picks up a piece of chalk when she's done cutting, marking the fabric based on one of the garments he brought. ]

The garden and the clinic must be pretty cool. My life is just-- [She pauses, shrugging, her eyes on his hands as he draws lines on the fabric. He makes it look easy. It has to be. Emily will master it. There's nothing she can't do if she doesn't work hard at it.]

Well, it's sewing, now. Before, it was just dealing with whatever the gods decided to do to us. [That whole murderous rage thing, for example. That was bad.]

They keep me busy. It's always good to have something to do besides just dealing with what's done to us. I'd offer to teach you gardening, too, but it looks like we won't need Newt's garden much longer. I might keep it up anyway. My family runs a farm, and I worked on one in the last city I lived in.

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