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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
She doesn't say this. It invites questions. Instead:
"I think this is good way to damage cloth. They give you no workspace?"
no subject
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."
no subject
"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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
A sidelong smile in return.
"I do not go this far south before."
no subject
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.