Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 29593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 148(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 99(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29593 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 148(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 99(@300wpm)
“Your poor tunic,” she says, coming over to me. “There’s a toast-sized jam stain right on your front. Do you want to take that off so I can clean it for you?”
Heat creeps up my ears. “It’s just a stain.”
“I know, but it’s my fault.” She makes a “hand it over” gesture with her fingers. “This isn’t me seducing you, by the way. This is me feeling bad that I got my breakfast all over your front and wanting to help.”
I hesitate again. “It’s one piece. A singular uniform.”
She makes the gesture with her hand again. “I’ve seen you naked already.”
When I hesitate once more, she looks around the workroom and then grabs a length of fabric. “Towel,” she says. “You can put this around your hips.”
Then she waits, staring at me expectantly.
I take my uniform off, my ears pricking with the loud sound of the fastener activating. It falls open, revealing my chest, and then I strip it off, hoping Melody doesn’t notice how nervous I am. I have to pull off my boots, and then I’m standing there naked in her workroom, my tail violently flicking as I try to tuck the towel around my waist. It’s too small, and barely covers my cock.
Which is also too small. Keffing moden ancestry. But that’s a shame I keep to myself most times. I hope she doesn’t point it out. That might destroy me.
I watch as she goes to the sink with my clothing and scrubs at the reddish stain. While she works, I glance around the room, noting that it’s full of metal parts and what looks like nothing more than so much junk. “You still work on scrap, even five years after your freedom?”
“Yeah. I thought I’d do something else when I got here. I have a degree in business management from back home so I thought I could apply that to this world, too. People still have businesses to run, right? But when I got here, I was depressed. It was hard to get out of bed.”
She pauses in her scrubbing but doesn’t look at me.
“Because of what happened between us?” I guess.
Melody glances over at me and smiles. “Yes and no. Yes because I’d felt safe with you and you’d discarded me like an old shoe.”
I wince.
“No, because it was more that I was realizing this place was my future, and I didn’t know what to think of that.” She gestures at her surroundings. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gorgeous, quiet planet. Everyone here is lovely and we’re so lucky to be here. But it wasn’t home, and every time I turned around, they were trying to get me to run my own farm. It was…stressful.”
She scrubs a little harder.
“It was difficult for me when I got out of the military,” I offer. “I know how it feels to be at odds with yourself. Like you don’t belong in all the places you did before. I’m glad you didn’t end up like me and steal things. You get sent to a penal colony for ‘light labor’ for those sorts of crimes.”
“No stealing,” Melody says, glancing over at me. She chuckles. “Just a lot of dramatic angst. I was a bit of a mess for a good month or two, and so I’d go for walks. I’d walk up and down the town here, which isn’t exactly a long walk, granted, but it made me feel better to see the progress people were making. That they were settling back into their lives again. There were lots of buildings going up at that time and I started to look around, and I noticed all this scrap being tossed away.”
Her mouth quirks with amusement.
“Let me guess. You took it?”
“Asked for it as sweetly as I could and no one could understand why I wanted it. I shoved it all in my bedroom upstairs at first.” She points with one sudsy hand at the building above us. “It just made me feel better to save that scrap. To me it wasn’t trash, it was potential. It made me angry that no one else saw it. I decided to make some stuff out of the crap I was collecting. At first it was just small stuff. I made a fruit basket out of some wire mesh that I bent. A wind chime out of some tiny bits of metal. And I’d give them away, because it made me feel good to give people things. What I didn’t realize was how much of an effect it’d have on others. I gave a woman named Dory the wind chime and she cried because hearing it was the first thing that had brought her joy in a long time. I made wind chimes for other people, and then I tried to remake things here that we’d used back home that no one bothers with here. Then I made a toaster for a friend, just because she missed her breakfasts back home so much. After that, I started getting all kinds of requests for things that we had back home. Not just toasters, but bicycles. Curling irons. Someone even asked me for a piano, but I haven’t figured that part out yet. Told her the best I could do was a harp, and I’m trying a guitar off and on, but it sounds like crap. So I just…make stuff for people. And they pay me, and I don’t have to farm. It works out for everyone.”