#well met jane. have some implied marchil for dessert.

[psiroller]

chilaios, laundry

Laios should have been on laundry duty; instead, he watched over Chilchuck’s shoulder as his needle punched between cords of tightly woven green wool. Chilchuck couldn’t help but feel like a bug being burnt up under a magnifying glass whenever Laios watched him do anything. It wasn’t exactly paranoia; Laios’ motivations were always weirder than outright malice, but his curiosity had been focused to a searing point, and Chilchuck was starting to sweat under it.

“What? You got something to tell me?”

“Hm?” Laios blinked dumbly. “No. I was just watching you work.” Somewhere along the process of folding Falin’s sleeping gown, holding it half an arm’s length out in front of him, he’d frozen in place. He put it down in his lap, finally, with a sheepish glance away. “It’s… kinda hypnotic,” he admitted.

“You know I hate that,” Chilchuck hissed, the tips of his ears hot. “I’m not a bard, I don’t need an audience.”

“Yeah, I know. But you’re diligent about patching that thing up, I was just...” Met with a long, terse silence, Laios shrugged. “Never mind.”

Laios returned to the Sisyphean task of rolling his sister’s laundry up with his own, the way they’d always done it before they were separated, as tightly as possible to save on valuable inventory space. Chilchuck continued mending the loose hem in his neck warmer. The gold thread glimmered in the low spellight, wound around his fingers in rings that gradually loosened as he pulled the needle through.  Laios kept watching out of the corner of his eye, and Chilchuck felt every glance like one of Marcille’s magic missiles whizzing past his head.

Chilchuck heaved a weary sigh and rolled his shoulders, trying to stretch his back out. “It’s uh. My girls. They… made me this thing,” he ground out, waving his knitted neck warmer like a white flag. “Before that whole thing with—y’know, they—"

“Left you,” Laios said, automatically. Helpfully, ideally.

“Before my wife—y’know what. Forget it! Forget it. Hah, yup. Last time I listen to an orc!” Then Chilchuck was muttering half-foot curses to himself; he stitched at a machine’s pace. Laios considered running to get Falin to salvage this wreck of a conversation, but he’d done alright while she was slowly dying in the dragon’s stomach and unable to rescue him from his own mouth.

“It must mean a lot to you,” Laios said. Chilchuck scratched at the fur on the back of his neck. “It’s—nice. I think they did a good job.”

Chilchuck snorted. “Yeah, me too,” he said, more softly. “As far as sentimental keepsakes go, it’s lightweight, so I can take it with me on the job. I just have to take care of it, but, y’know. It’s worth the effort.”

“So… they all made it together?”

“Yeah. Flertom came up with the design, Mayjack helped her with the pattern and cutting the cloth, and Puckpatti did the stitching.” He chuckled. “Which is why it keeps coming loose. She was still learning back then.”

Laios couldn’t see Chilchuck smiling, but he heard it. Falin would have been so proud.

“Does that thread you’re using come from home, too?”

“Oh, nah. This, uh… it’s Marcille’s hair?” He chuckled awkwardly. “It’s got defensive magic in it. She gave it to me a few floors ago to patch my vest, and I’m pretty sure that’s what kept that big frog from swallowing me all the way. Been using it for everything ever since.” Chilchuck’s grin turned wry and dark. “Though, knowing what kind of magic she does now, I might end up regretting that.”

Laios made a grim noise of assent, but couldn’t commiserate, having so recently profited from the dark arts. Chilchuck was content to let the conversation drop while his blood pressure was falling, though, and Laios could finally return to laundry duty. Of course, the roll had come undone for the fiftieth time. As Laios gathered up his shirts to try again, something caught his eye, made him pick up a tunic and fold it out—and there, an inch below the collar, was a ring of threaded gold.