第3: [text]

[unfollowing]

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]

Comments

[pellameno]

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... ]

[unfollowing]

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.

[pellameno]

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.

[unfollowing]

[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.

[pellameno]

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.

[unfollowing]

[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?]

[pellameno]

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.

[unfollowing]

[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?

[pellameno]

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.

[unfollowing]

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.]

[pellameno]

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.

[unfollowing]

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.]

[pellameno]

[ 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.

[unfollowing]

[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.]

[pellameno]

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. ]

[unfollowing]

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.]

[pellameno]

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.

[unfollowing]

You should. Who knows if one of Sorrow's perfectly edible fruits is going to end up, I don't know, making us want to fuck the first person we see after having a bite.

[....PLEASE DON'T LET THAT HAPPEN.]

[pellameno]

[ Oh geez Emily. How do you think of these things? ]

That has the potential to be a terrible side effect.

[unfollowing]

[Probably from spending so much time with Jessica, honestly.]

Yeah. So... definitely keep up your garden.

[Do not trust the gods. Except Delight. Maybe.]

[pellameno]

Alright. It can't hurt anything to have it, and I've got plenty of spare time. Maybe I'll ask for bean seeds... since there's no option for meat around here than monsters or trusting the gods. It can't be healthy for us to have so little protein.

[unfollowing]

[Bless you, Pell.] Awesome. I can probably figure out how to make good sauces for those veggies, too. [She did offer to make eel sauce for if Kamina manages to catch any eel. Teamwork and all of that.]