Not an hour later, Tuesday and Hannah were sitting against the wall shoving honey stained apple slices into their mouths with both hands, tails bouncing contentedly while Varus had gone back to working on his manuscript.
The feathers of the birds which had so vexed Lithia earlier were now in a pile against the wall, waiting to be sorted and turned into replacement quills. In the meantime? The pile now served as her place to sit against the wall beside the pair and bury her nose in her new book. ‘Humiliation has never been so comfortable.’ She thought as she wiggled against the soft black pile. A smile etched on her face, all her heroism and bravado forgotten as she scanned the words on the page.
Varus suppressed a chuckle as glanced over in their direction.
‘About time you got back to us!’ His protagonist exclaimed, the ghost of the man modeled after the hero Varus once knew sounded more than a bit put off, but also at least somewhat amused by the whole situation.
‘Y-Y-Yeah! I was getting bored! You left off at the g-g-good part!’ The priestess declared, her imaginary visage was screwed up in an almost childlike annoyance and she wrung her wooden staff with impatient hands.
They felt so…real in Varus’s own mind that he felt actual guilt about leaving them ignored for hours on end. “I’m sorry, I’m here now and I swear I’m going to finish this book even if it kills me…again.” he muttered, and this seemed to satisfy his characters, as he heard no more complaints.
There was only the scratching noise of his quill as he made a world out of ink and paper.
He forgot the world he sat in while he lost himself in making a new one, the voices and sounds, the sights and smells of that one replaced everything in the cottage and beyond…
Until he felt a tug on the black robe he wore, and saw the sticky faced smile of Tuesday looking up at him. The imaginary world of his dreams was forgotten, and as one voice his characters cried out in his head…
‘Oh come on!’
But he ignored them.
“Yes?” He asked, tilted his skinless head down at her.
“We’ve been done eating for a while, you were going to show us how to make quills out of feathers, right, Mr. Varus?” She asked, and more of reality returned with her question.
Lithia looked up from where she sat, and from what Varus could see, she’d gone a fair way through the book already. Hannah looked over too, a sheepish smile on her face when she realized Varus could see that she’d stuck a number of feathers through her hair with no rhyme or reason he could discern.
She felt Varus’s red eyes on her and without losing her grin she shrugged her shoulders and said, “What can I say, I was bored?”
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“I’m about to lose my spot, aren't I?” Lithia asked, and as an answer to her, Varus pointed to the wooden chair at the table.
Her mouth took on a disappointed pout, but she sighed and rose to her feet to go take a seat.
“I’ll show you how to make it, but if you finish,” Varus’s voice took on a gentle pitch that was at odds with the one raised finger of caution, “you have to work on your letters after that and not interrupt me until I’m done. If you can manage that, you can have two more honeyed apples.”
Hannah and Tuesday licked their lips in unison, eyes sparkling with eagerness, the flavor of the smeared honey on their faces was still there, and reinforced their childish resolve to not get in the way.
“Deal!” they shouted at once and thrust their fingers up above their heads as if they’d made some grandiose discovery rather than just bargained away noise for treats.
Varus went to the pile of feathers and crouched down to pick one up. Tuesday and Hannah sat on their heels with hands on the tops of their knees as they leaned forward to watch with wide, interested eyes. “First you need space for your fingers, so you have to scrape away some of the vane. It’s not hard, but you have to be consistent and remember how delicate it is, you can’t be too rough.” He then drew his finger along the surface from the tip, to the length of one of his fingers up the shaft.
“Humans usually use knives, you both have small claws, so you can use that. I can use my fingertips, they’re natural weapons, so I do this a little differently than you will.” Varus explained, but Tuesday raised a hand, her foxtail bounced around behind her when Varus nodded her way.
“But your fingers have touched us before, a lot, like when you carried us here, how come that didn’t hurt?” She asked, and Varus answered her promptly.
“Because I can control it, and I don’t want to hurt you.” He replied, though why that alone was enough to make Tuesday and Hannah’s faces light up like the sun, he didn’t know, or want to know.
He focused on the lesson instead.
“Once you’ve stripped enough of the vane, smooth out your stripped off surface, I have a bit of sandpaper in my desk you can use for that, just rub it back and forth all around until it’s smooth to the touch.” He gestured to the one he had been using as an example, and the pair gingerly passed it back and forth between one another, touching the smooth grip where Varus had been holding it only minutes before.
“Finally, the nib.” He said, drawing them back to focus on him and away from the quill he gave them as an example. “There are six steps to this because you need a particular shape. You’re probably going to need some work to get it right but…” He glanced at the pile of hundreds of black feathers, “that’s fine. Don’t worry if you destroy a few.”
They nodded with wide eyed, sage understanding and watched as he used his finger to cut a sloped forward point and a recessed curve, a tiny cut from the finely cut tip along the intact curved upper side, and it was done. “...And there you have it.” He said, then added, “Or, I have it. I’ll use this one. You can take my old one to work from. Just keep it up and you’ll be done before you know it.”
“Okay! Can we get extra treats if we don’t waste many?” Hannah asked when Varus was on his feet again.
He stopped to think it over.
“It’s only fair. That’s a lot of quills, you know.” Lithia pointed out, the smirk on her face said she already knew what he was going to say.
“Alright, for every twenty-five you do correctly, I’ll give you each an extra honeyed apple.” Varus promised.
They didn’t even shout ‘yay’ before they started scrambling to grab feathers to get to work.
And with that, Varus could get back to work…
For the moment, at least.
He wasn’t at all surprised when he heard his character’s annoyed, ‘About time!’ Rebuke in his head when he settled into his seat to resume his work again.
