sporesprouter | Open Post: What a yarn

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Open Post: What a yarn

There's still quite a bit of winter yet, according to the calendar, not to mention whatever Dark is, and Tress got an idea for a project fairly recently. It's appropriate and it gives her a chance to stretch out a skill she hasn't really gotten an opportunity to use in a while.

So she's in a cozy parlor, sitting curled up in a big comfy armchair right by the window, a basket of yarn at her feet, and she's knitting. It's still too early to be immediately obvious what it is she's knitting, but she's moving with the easy confidence that indicates it's definitely not a new craft she's just now decided to take up.

Sometimes, after all, it's nice to go back to something old and familiar.

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She goes over and gives him a tight hug. "Oh, you must be so happy."

That gives him pause. He hasn't seriously considered the state of his happiness for a while, but he was, he thinks, happy before he asked Claudius to be engaged to him. It was because he was happy that he wanted to ask -- if he hadn't been happy being with Claudius, he wouldn't have wanted to do something that bound them closer together. It's a covenant, he thinks, as he did then. But betrothal is usually a covenant for the future, because couples aren't truly joined together until marriage. He and Claudius already live together and sleep together and take care of each other. They've promised something to each other that they were already giving. For the first time the size and shape of that truly sits with him: he hears Laertes' words from the day before, there is nothing that he would have in place of thee, like a scrap of a psalm, like a molten drop of glass in the center of his chest.

"Yes," he says softly. "I'm very happy."

Tress steps back with a smile. "Good. I'm glad. You deserve to be happy. Both of you do."

He has also never considered whether he deserves happiness before, but he puts that particular mental digression aside for now. "When you see him again, admire his ring."

"I absolutely will." She grabs her work back from the chair and retakes her seat. "I'll seem extremely observant."

He alights on the couch near her, still -- admittedly a bit tentatively -- smiling.

"May I draw you?"

"Oh, if you'd like to, of course! Do I need to stay very still?"

"No." He flips open his sketchbook and takes the box of charcoals out of the pocket of the embroidered corduroy overalls Magnus picked for him. He's content to work with her in silence for a long while.

She's quite happy to work in silence as well, especially with the lingering joy of Galahad's good news. But after a while, she does speak up. "I was going to make it a surprise, but I figure I might as well tell you. This is going to be a gift for you."

He looks up, caught off-guard.

"It's just... when we switched, your hands..." She shrugs. "I decided I should knit you some gloves."

He flushes slightly. It makes sense that she noticed, and it's a kindness, but it makes him feel terribly shy. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Besides, I haven't done any knitting in a while, so it's nice to make sure I remembered how." She can intuit a little bit of the reason behind Galahad's somewhat muted reaction, and hopes that at least giving an alternate reason besides just making gloves for him helps temper it at least a little.

It does remind him of the nuns embroidering religious scenes, gathered together in the afternoon -- if the weather was fair and it was spring or fall, sometimes in the courtyard of the nunnery near the kitchen garden, but otherwise in a room appointed for that purpose. The older nuns would give the younger ones advice, or comment on the neatness of their stitches. Sister Mathilde couldn't see well, so Galahad would sit at her feet and thread her needle for her when she told him to. Being with Tress while she does her work makes him feel a little sense of hominess. He focuses on that instead of how silly it feels that his hands should be too cold and that Tress should have noticed while she was in his body.

"Thank you," he says again, a little more confidently.

"Of course," she says easily, smiling down a bit at the glove in progress as she works. "I hope green's all right. If you'd prefer a different color, I can change it and just leave it green at the wrists."

"Green is good." Green makes him think of Shen Yuan and Percival.

She nods. "Then they'll be green." The yarn she picked is as close to the shade of the Verdant Sea as she could find, to as best as she good spread warmth with a little bit of her home.

Galahad returns to his careful study of her hair, shading in the waves. "--Do you know what a scrunchie is?"

She furrows her brow thoughtfully. "No, I don't think I've ever heard of one. What is it?"

"Magnus uses it to hold his hair back. It doesn't come loose like a braid does."

She blinks. "It doesn't come loose at all? Wow."

"It holds differently from a piece of cloth. Better. I think it would make working easier."

"I might have to figure out how to get one. No matter how hard I try, it never all manages to stay out of my face."

"I know." He's been watching her, although he doesn't say that, mercifully.

"Scrunchie," she repeats quietly. "Thank you. I'll see if I can get a drawer to make one."

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