She pushes her pillow and book aside, glancing automatically at the floor before putting her feet to it. This is the technique. "I'm sorry. I suppose we could... find places for everything. New places."
A system means nothing if Gela won't use it. She stoops to sweep a tangle of fallen hair between fingers. There are three of them in here, it's tumbleweeds no matter how you try.
"Things are in order from the beginning of the process." Sewing pins and needles, kept nearer to the ground (sometimes on it but in identifiable containers! Usually!); patterns on the shelf in a heap and in need of sorting; fabric on the chair and the desk and in the closet; buttons on the window sill.
It gives her a headache. The whorl of colour and goods packed tight, like some cramped voyage below-decks; seasick for hammocks and stale air. Claustrophobic as a market.
She doesn't say this. It invites questions. Instead:
"I think this is good way to damage cloth. They give you no workspace?"
"It isn't," Gela says helpfully, already beginning to gather things. Her question went unanswered but the way the topic was brought up in the first place makes her think things would be much better for her roommate if she tidied, at the very least, the buttons and the pins. "And I have an office but I use it for paper and not cloth."
See her half of the bedroom: it betrays the inevitable state of the office.
She adds, "I have too many things, I know, but I used to travel around so light, all the time."
An overcorrection, then. It's flawed. It's also mollifying. She knows the particular irritation of an absent tool.
"Where do you travel?"
Which must pass for: Good, we're agreed, or thank you, I appreciate it. Too proud to stoop to gratitude — not so much that she won't begin winding a loose skein of thread. If you spy a problem, you pitch in.
"I don't much any more but I used to. I came here from Nevarra and I stopped at most places in between.
"How about you?"
Doubtless she came here from some place else. She smiles when she sees the skein being wound. Gela doesn't need the promise of gratitude to want to be accommodating but the help is a silent little thank you of its own.
"Seheron," She's learned not to expect that name will ring here. The jaws of the Imperium eclipse its prey. "Big island in the north. Many more islands, before ocean and Qunandar. Places in between."
Across the ocean — no, never. She has paused in the middle of gathering buttons in one palm to tip into a jar, intrigued, and now sits up a little straighter in order to lean in. "What's it like?"
Dangerous, she'd told Strange. It is. That isn't what passes before memory's eye:
"Climb a tree and your head finds mist. The bark hangs red with rain, any time of year, but in seasons it is hard to breathe for sweetness of flowers."
"It sounds strange." Beautiful should be the first word here perhaps but it doesn't seem right to say that though the mist does sound ethereal. Looking down to deliver the buttons to the jar, "You're good at describing it.
"Do you feel... like you could be home, here? Somewhere so different?"
"Home is the Qun." That isn't a lie, but it's only one truth. You learn to hold them together, the pieces side-by-side. Dangerous, strange, home. "And your harbor has fog enough."
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Gela sits up, hair loose. Glancing from the hands on hips to the shelves she says, "I know where everything is."
Boldly.
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She pushes her pillow and book aside, glancing automatically at the floor before putting her feet to it. This is the technique. "I'm sorry. I suppose we could... find places for everything. New places."
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"Tell me why it is where it is now."
A system means nothing if Gela won't use it. She stoops to sweep a tangle of fallen hair between fingers. There are three of them in here, it's tumbleweeds no matter how you try.
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Gela, pointing each out in turn says, "You see?"
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She's known some minds to vanish for a box.
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So many colours and textures. But, "I can pack things up if you don't agree. I don't mind it."
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She doesn't say this. It invites questions. Instead:
"I think this is good way to damage cloth. They give you no workspace?"
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See her half of the bedroom: it betrays the inevitable state of the office.
She adds, "I have too many things, I know, but I used to travel around so light, all the time."
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"Where do you travel?"
Which must pass for: Good, we're agreed, or thank you, I appreciate it. Too proud to stoop to gratitude — not so much that she won't begin winding a loose skein of thread. If you spy a problem, you pitch in.
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"How about you?"
Doubtless she came here from some place else. She smiles when she sees the skein being wound. Gela doesn't need the promise of gratitude to want to be accommodating but the help is a silent little thank you of its own.
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A sidelong smile in return.
"I do not go this far south before."
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Across the ocean — no, never. She has paused in the middle of gathering buttons in one palm to tip into a jar, intrigued, and now sits up a little straighter in order to lean in. "What's it like?"
The big island, in the north.
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Dangerous, she'd told Strange. It is. That isn't what passes before memory's eye:
"Climb a tree and your head finds mist. The bark hangs red with rain, any time of year, but in seasons it is hard to breathe for sweetness of flowers."
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"Do you feel... like you could be home, here? Somewhere so different?"
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"This is very different from road,"
A prompt. Gela had traveled light.