Like every other skill she’d once had, Cal was rusty when it came to smithing. She hadn’t been that good at it to begin with, and what skill she’d had was focused on shaping small parts out of scrap stock. Forging and axe was an entirely different skill.

  It didn’t help that Sever’s anvil, such as it was, was not very heavy and not affixed to much of anything. It also didn’t help that Sever’s equivalent of a hammer was a fairly heavy piece of metal with no handle or particularly flat side.

  The only thing the setup had going for it was that the clay tube nearby was a furnace rather than a fireplace.

  ‘This is going to be a lot more work than I expected,’ Cal had said, hunting around the riverbed for a rock she could use as a hammer to make the hammer with.

  Sever shrugged. ‘I know, right? Gotta grow the plants, gotta pick the plants, gotta spin the cotton into thread, gotta make a whole loom, gotta weave cloth, gotta make a sewing needle, gotta hand-sew clothes together.’

  Cal snorted. ‘Yeah, alright.’

  Cal picked a couple of stones out of the riverbank, shrugged to herself, and carried them over to the ‘anvil’.

  ‘Oh, wait a second.’ Sever dashed inside and came back with a big, leather smock. ‘Not so good for shoes, but better than nothing.’

  It had been about four years since Cal had done anything that could be called blacksmithing. She’d heated metal and hit it with a hammer a couple of times since then, but it was hardly the same thing.

  It had been never since Cal had tried to smith with stones and no proper hard surfaces to work with. It had been never since Cal had tried to smith with no tongs or gloves.

  Cal really had to start at the start. She’d never made tongs, or a hammer, or nails, or punches and dies. It was exciting in a way that Cal knew would fade the moment it started being difficult.

  If Cal stopped to think about it, which she did at least a couple of times, it was odd how easily she and Sever fell in together. It was no surprise that a teenager who had been out here by herself for several months was lonely, but Cal was surprised to discover that the same had been true of her.

  Why, exactly, she was surprised was not an question she examined.

  Cal accused Sever of ‘farming instincts’ more than once over the next several days. The first time was that first night, when she discovered just how much food Sever had stockpiled: dried meat, picked vegetables, and a squishy substance apparently called pemmican. It seemed like enough to feed the both of them for years.

  In return, Sever accused Cal of ‘urbanite instincts’ every time Cal complained for the lack of power tools, electric lights, warm water, or intact clothes. In Cal’s defence, Sever got the intact clothes and she got her pick of the rag pile.

  Much worse, Sever accused Cal of being a nerd twice. The first time when, instead of getting straight into smithing, Cal decided to make up a plan to settle on what to work on first. And second when, in a moment of weakness, Cal asked what Sever’s favourite video game was.

  Over the few more days it took for Sever to decide that the cotton was ready to harvest, Cal managed to make a terrible set of tongs, a mediocre hammer, a better set of tongs, a slightly better hammer, a thick plate made from several thin plates, a tiny drift, four nails, and something approaching an actual anvil, made from the plate, nails, and the log that had already been there.

  Harvesting cotton was exactly what Cal had expected it to be, except for being a less pleasant experience. The plants were in raised rows and came up to Cal’s waist, and so harvesting them involved most of day bent over, picking and fluffy balls and dragging a large clay pot after her.

  It was decisively worth the effort and back ache, though. Sever really knew what she was about when it came to spinning and tailoring, and most of the leatherworking tools Cal made for her were quite small and delicate and very much within her skillset.

  Apparently the only thing they were missing was a type of glue called rubber cement, which Cal thought she might have heard of, but had never used. In its place they had extra stitches and glue made from boiled bones and leather.

  Three days after the cotton was harvested, Cal finally had shoes, or in this case she had almost knee-high boots. She didn’t wear them much, since she didn’t have socks, but it was a vast improvement to working with a small sheet of leather resting against her shins to stop hot metal and scale burning her toes.

  Weaving cloth took much longer.

  It wasn’t exactly hot, wherever Cal had landed in mid-Central. But it wasn’t cold, either. It was, in fact, very pleasant. It was very much not the sort of environment suited to clothes made entirely from leather.

  Though Sever clearly knew what she was doing, at least compared to Cal’s attempts at smithing, it just took a long time. She got a bit faster, as she kept going, but it still took most of a day to make a piece of fabric about a metre long and a bit less than half as much across.

  And before Sever could even get started, the two of them had spent nearly three days designing and then building the loom in the first place. It was the first thing either of them had made that had moving parts. And though Cal had been used to working with tolerances back in the day, she didn’t have any of the precision tools she’d once had.

  Of course the cloth that Sever wove wasn’t as tight or even as the remains of her machine-made clothes, it was still amazing, and Cal said so.

  Ten days after Cal had crashed into the middle of a nearby field, Sever carefully cut the first bolt of cotton cloth off the loom as the sun was setting behind them.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ Cal said. ‘That’s like… cloth. Amazing.’

  Sever blushed, as she did whenever Cal said something she’d done was good. ‘It’s a bit uneven, you know. I could have pulled the wefts a bit tighter.’

  ‘Unless there’s something I don’t know, you’re not a machine,’ Cal said, and didn’t think about it. ‘So that’s amazing. And look… you saw the first hammer I made. You learn as you go, right? Outstanding work.’

  Sever had blushed harder.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  If Cal had thought Sever was blushing hard at being complimented, it had nothing on a week later when Sever, a knotted string in hand, was bright red and couldn’t even make eye contact.

  ‘I…’ Sever tried. ‘It’s… I finished… I think there’s enough cloth for some clothes,’ she managed. ‘But… um… I need to… well… it’s… like…’

  Cal, who had had quite a lot of money before she got on that ship a few weeks ago but had never been rich, had no idea what was happening. ‘You need to what?’

  Sever chewed on her lower lip. ‘I… it’s not like…’ She scrunched her eyes closed and took a deep breath. ‘I have to measure you,’ Sever almost shouted.

  Cal nodded, that only made sense. And then she went ‘oh’ and snorted. ‘You’ve already seen me naked, it’s hardly a big deal, is it?’

  Sever kept chewing on her lip and not looking at Cal. She shrugged.

  ‘Only way to get it done is to get it done,’ Cal said. She pulled off the smock and her boots and led the way inside. She did Sever the minor favour of keeping her boxers on, but she shed the nearly shredded tshirt turning to face the furiously blushing teen.

  Sever was staring at the floor, the knotted string she used to measure things in one hand. Her mouth opened and closed and she was visibly resisting the urge to cross her arms.

  There was no way to make this less awkward for Sever.

  ‘Alright, where do you want me?’

  Sever took a deep breath and, without looking at Cal, nodded a few times and said ‘Just stand there, normally.’

  Cal did exactly that. It was, of course, hard to stand normally upon request. But Cal had at least enough to sense to guess that Sever meant more like ‘don’t tense up or stand in a way you normally wouldn’t’.

  Sever took several more deep breaths, then shook her head, then took another deep breath, and knelt right in front of Cal’s crotch. Cal valiant resisted the urge to cackle. Sever could have simply not done that.

  Now Cal had to take several deep breaths to untense and stand ‘normally’ with a deeply flustered girl right at crotch level.

  Except that Cal couldn’t do it. ‘See any blue eyes?’

  Sever spluttered and almost fell over cackling. ‘Shush. That’s a new instruction. Shush. How am I…’ Sever took a deep shaky breath. ‘No blue eyes.’ Then she broke down again.

  Of course Cal cracked up when Sever did.

  It took several minutes for the both of them to recover, bent over and howling.

  And it would probably have worked to break the tension if Sever wasn’t still directly facing Cal’s crotch. Cal had been too busy cackling to think of moving.

  At the very least, Sever had relaxed enough to actually start.

  Except that she seemed determined to make it awkward. With charcoal and a piece of leather for note-taking, knotted measuring string in both hands, Sever paused. ‘I’m… are you ready? Do you… Can I touch you?’

  Cal blushed. That was a nostalgic question. She didn’t think it reached her voice, though. ‘Yes, you can touch me,’ she said. ‘How else are you going to do it?’

  Sever’s hands were warm and sweaty. Her fingers trembled slightly as she wrapped the string around Cal’s mid-thigh. She took a deep breath, adjusted the string a bit, but didn’t pull it tight. Sever looked away and then back, presumably confirming the measurement or something.

  Finally, Sever took the string away, holding it carefully at two points, and laid it on the piece of leather to mark out.

  Cal hadn’t realised she was tense. But it was like a wave of relief when Sever let go of her leg.

  The second thigh was easier. Cal was ready for Sever’s warm touch this time. She was ready for Sever’s warm breath on the inside of her leg. She wasn’t relaxed, but she was closer.

  Cal made a discovery about herself. Her calves were ticklish. When Sever wrapped the thread around her calf, she twitched and giggled. Very undignified.

  ‘I said stand still and shush,’ Sever grinned. ‘Are you… is that fine?’

  Cal blushed again. Another very nostalgic question. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Apparently I’m ticklish.’

  Sever smiled. ‘Oh, you’re going to hate the armpit measurements then.’

  ‘I reckon I will,’ Cal smiled back.

  Among the many mistakes that Sever made in regards to trying to reduce the awkwardness of this experience was what she did next.

  Cal assumed that it was totally possible for the experience of being measured for tailored clothes could be conducted in a professional way, with less blushing and heavy breathing. She doubted it could be done by a teenager.

  It occurred to Cal that there was no reason she couldn’t measure herself just a little too late to stop what was about to happen.

  Sever leaned in quite a bit too close to Cal’s crotch, at about pubis level, and put her arms around Cal’s butt. It only made sense to measure the butt, of course. That was not the problem. The problem was doing it at exactly mouth-level with someone’s vagina.

  Even Cal was blushing at the feeling of Sever’s breath on her stomach as the girl resolutely didn’t look at anything. Cal was blushing at the feeling of Sever’s fingers on her arse, spreading the string around her hips.

  Sever, blushing furiously and starting to sweat, leaned away, holding the string with one hand on the outside of Cal’s boxers from her public hair. She did that same manoeuvre where she looked away and back before taking the string away and marking down on the piece of leather.

  Thankfully, it had also occurred to Sever that she could get Cal to measure at least some parts of her own body.

  ‘Um…’ Sever cleared her throat again. ‘I need… can you…’ She took a deep breath, gulped, and cleared her throat again. ‘I need to measure the inseam. Can you hold this end of the string right at the top of the inside of your…’ gulp ‘your thigh?’

  Cal did just that and measuring the inseams was easy. Sever got her to measure the gusset herself. And finally Sever stood up, taking several steps away to take several obvious deep breaths and clear her throat again, and put the leather and charcoal on top of the stack of jars.

  When she came back with the string, she finally had the sense to stand to Cal’s side. ‘Can your raise your arm a little, I’m just going to measure you’re waist.’

  Sever measured Cal’s waist and shoulders and then handed the string over again. ‘Can you do… um… you know… your chest.’

  ‘My tits? That’s fine. It’s… you’re not going to make a bra, right?’ Cal took the string and wrapped it around the middle of her chest. Adjusting and tightening in places to that it didn’t just sag back down to her waist or hips.

  Sever shook her head, and blushed. ‘No, just… for space inside the clothes, you know?’

  Cal handed the string back over, pinched where she’s measured to.

  Sever stepped away to make in on the leather. ‘Alright, arms up. This is the armpit part.’

  Cal snorted. ‘If I had a dollar for every time a girl’s said that I would have two dollars. Which isn’t much, but it’s odd that it’s happened twice.’

  That didn’t help at all.

  Sever coughed into her hand, gulped, blushed, and shrugged. ‘Not… it’s… that.’

  Cal held her arms up. ‘Just measure, small child.’

  The feeling of Sever’s fingers in her armpit did, indeed, make Cal twitch and giggle. But they got it done.

  ‘Alright, that’s it,’ Sever said, standing about as far from Cal as she could get in the little hut. ‘Sorry it was… I’ve never had to do that before myself.’

  Cal nodded. ‘All good. It was fine,’ she said, grabbing her ratty tshirt back off the ground. ‘I’ve never had it done to me before.’

  Sever nodded back. ‘Alright… um… it might take a bit. It’s way slower to sew without a machine, you know?’

  Cal nodded some more. ‘No problem.’ She went back outside before she started blushing again.

  Surely she wasn’t that lonely? No way. Sever had just made it really awkward, there’s nothing complicated about that.

  Not that she’d done it on purpose, probably. It was just… Cal took a deep breath. Sever had already said it. Neither of them had done that before.

  Cal went and climbed into the river. That, too, was a mistake.