Day 17—Lace

Her windows were constantly covered with black lace.

“I don’t want to see outside,” she said. “The world makes my eyes sad.”

All her lace was tatted; homemade. Doilies were her favorite to make, even though the public always found them the most useless. There must be some better medium that she could work with. Occasionally she felt the tinges of arthritis creeping up, but she thought little of it.

“My husband didn’t need me. He left without me. So now I make this.” She would watch her favorite electro-box shows from the 2010s while she was making it. She was one of the few who had retired with enough money to have an electro-box. She also had enough for animalskin coats and to hire a private hunter. The food from the markets usually caused pods and growths to sprout in peoples’ stomachs, and there was a large business in extracting them.

She could have easily sewn creations with artificial lace imported from Gondwanaland Main but she did not care for it. Small elastic pieces would stick out from between the mesh gaps after a year or so. She did not prefer that kind of quality for her works.

One day she had been drinking some bark tea and her stomach convulsed up something fierce. Her heart palpitated and her steel ankle couldn’t remember what body parts it was attached to. She lay down and slumbered off.

She awoke in a medical center with Sherise, the head of the local Crafter’s Guild at her bedside.

“We got a distress call,” explained Sherise. “Todd tried to ElectroComm you and you weren’t answering for over three hours. We know that you never go out, so we were worried.”

She attempted to respond. She saw and heard, but could not speak.

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Days and months passed, and for some reason she could not fathom, she kept alive, or they kept her that way. One day her shaky hands were able to write words again. She wrote one of the few she recalled on the board: “Lace.” They brought it to her, along with her hook. She worked on the pattern steadfastly, remembering her favorite arrangement. She worked long into the night with the black thread.