ORIGIN

Siren had had a very busy few weeks.

Between trying to figure out what she was meant to be doing and trying to settle into a new place with a newly-found, vaguely traumatized sister, she had been occupying herself with one very important priority-- one that had dismissed the others into the dust, for now.

She had to find a gift for Azure-- a Sister-Gift, she had called it --so that they could officially be sisters. This was stupid important. Serendipity didn't have any family of her own; she'd grown straight out of the wall and had been plonked down with no rhyme or reason and Azure's family was, in the hybrid's own words, 'sort of totally fucked up.'

Serendipity tried not to pry, but she did find it a little more important than finding the Blacksmith, or the Thing with Yellow Horns.

For the first week of her endeavour into Sister-Gifting, Dip was mostly stumped. She had given Azure something to wear already-- a little moonstone ring that she hung around her neck --and she didn't really want to repeat that sort of thing. It would look lazy, and it wasn't a Sister-Gift, it was a Friend-Gift, like she'd gotten for Laurel.

She couldn't get her food, because that sort of thing wouldn't last. She couldn't get her flowers because she had no idea how to grow them, or to escort them and take care of them in Orion without them just dying. Giving her something that would just die seemed, to her, sort of weird.

Soon, however, Serendipity made a discovery.

Some cave deer had pelts that were soft and light. They were a little dirty, sometimes, but they were nice. She realised, while taking her time in eating a dead deer, that they felt, just a little bit, like the soft scraps of cloth she wore and liked to sleep on.

From there, an idea hatched. But not without trial and error.

With some finagling, and a lot of scraps of deer-fleece lost to the wind and rain, she had found out one could theoretically comb bits of wool out with their fingers and twisting them until they formed one very long, thin, fairly tough strand.

Figuring this out had taken the better part of the week, but trying to make something with it was taking much longer. At present, she had been trying to make an entire blanket-- large enough for Azure to lay on and use --for two weeks, now.

She followed the way the yellow sarong had been made-- or so from what she could make out --in that bits of the long wool-strand had been woven together, up and down and over and across, and all other types of bullshit. It seemed simple enough to follow, but far worse in practice.

She knew how to do it-- she used her fingers to weave bits of delicate yarn together, but in the time allotted she'd only really matched the size of the sarong itself. This thing needed to be at least twice that size.

On top of that, she had to try to keep it a secret from Azure.

Which, was not great. Especially when you're living with a paranoid victim of abuse.

But it was nice to be alone, even if just for a few hours a day. Serendipity liked to sit near a lake which had grown larger over the turning of the cycle, threatening to flood if it were anything the size of the lakes in Pisces or Fornax. She liked the smell of water, and she liked watching the deer pause to drink from the rippling waters.

It'd be nicer if I could get this dumb thing done, she thought spitefully, dunking her feet down into the water as she spun the pale wool between her fingers, the half-blanket draped over her lap but not touching the surface yet.

Quietly, she heaved out a sigh, and quietly, she continued working.