You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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“Fields and seas away...”
Honeydew glanced to the tall bronze mirror. Her eyes met the reflected ones of the tailor. “What?” she asked.
The tailor stared at Honeydew from below a pincushion-hat brimming with needles. Her mirrored face showed no trace of understanding. Honeydew click-sighed. She switched to the local accent. “What was that you asked?”
“Didn’t ask nothing dearie,” said the tailor. She plunged a needle into the fabric a grapeskin away from Honeydew’s neck. “You’re distracted’s all. You haven’t said seven words. Not since you came in.”
“I told you what I wanted. This pattern, your style. What more do you need?” Honeydew twisted her arm instinctively to display the sunflowers on her robe. The tailor just managed to pull her needle away before an awkward stick.
“Yeesh, forget I asked,” said the tailor, with a moody tone and a roll of her eyes. They fell silent.
This was a problem for Honeydew.
She’d turned to the tailor’s shop after day upon day of failed interviewing. The shop itself, Stitches-of-the-Times, came recommended by one of those interviewers who’d told her they’d, “Let her know,” Honeydew had abandoned the search for a job. In Honeydew’s defense, she’d put supreme effort into her hunt; spent every waking hour applying, traveling, and interviewing. She only surrendered the search when there seemed not one position available. That is, not one available outside of candy producery.
She felt like a quitter.
Honeydew felt that she owed something to Mr. Grey. After all, Wine Medo would be only a half-fermented idea if it hadn’t been for his invitation. Without Mr. Grey, there wouldn’t be any new tailored robes, new plays to attend, new magazines to browse. Honeydew wanted to solve Mr. Grey’s treasure dilemma herself, while finding out what Toscamo had to offer.
But she’d failed, and she’d come to a tailor seeking comfort. And who has not fought failure in one part of existence with failure in another? The factory-worker, returning home from a day of much-berating, argues with her family. The marble-throwing giant, after forgetting to dislodge a traveler before compressing a marble, cheats on his diet.
Honeydew, after failing to find an income, bought a tailored robe.
On the one hand; if Honeydew were giving in to this impulse, she wanted a well-tailored robe. She realized that putting herself on the tailor’s bad side gave worse odds of meeting that end.
On the other hand; Honeydew knew she was in the right. Such entitlement from this tailor, expecting garrulous, gabblesome, gossipy chit-chat! Had Honeydew not already given, as down payment, the pinch of paprika and two calcified bugs? If she chose to brood during the fitting, that was her right as a paying patron.
Honeydew wanted a nice new robe. But she wouldn’t apologize when she’d done no wrong.
So what to do?
Honeydew twisted a shoulder and inspected the tailor’s progress in the brass mirror. “My thoughts dwelt on the wearing,” she said. The tailor plunged her needle through the air in a violent whoosh. “An age of galas; an age over the catwalks. Will this piece hold up?” Honeydew affected an air of disinterested.
The tailor hesitated, her needle halfway through a dive. “Galas and catwalks?”
Honeydew rattled off three high society shows she planned to attend wrapped in the tailor’s robe. She included details: so-and-so she’d meet, such-and-such a shop’s work she’d sported previously. She left out the extraneous details: that she’d be attending the shows as an audience member; that although she might see the so-and-so’s, she wouldn’t speak much with them from spectator seating; that such-and-such a shops were Starharbor ones, with a Wine-Medo-spin on their names.
After this short discourse, the tailor’s hand swooped with greater care. Honeydew relaxed.
Had Honeydew been the only patron, she might have slept to the pattering rain.
Rowdy discourse from two other patrons stopped her. These were men. They were being fitted by another tailor for suit-robes.
“Haven’t you noticed? How these fittings take all day? Do show some kick, dear,” said the one to the tailor at his elbow.
The other man stood by the open sliding door, watching rain drum the passing umbrellas. He continued his own narrative, heedless of his friend’s comment. “How about that new listing; At-the-Water’s-Edge? Promising prospects?”
“What was your question?” asked the impatient one. He showed his character with a hurrying wave at the needle-bearing tailor.
“The newest farm home,” said the idle one. “Worth investing the treasure?”
Honeydew angled an ear. Her tailor adjusted just in time to avoid puncturing the fidgety patron. She rolled her eyes when Honeydew shifted hers to the men.
The patron being fitted said, “How did your last returns go?”
“Not all that poorly… But farm homes are a frontier. A new treasure stake.”
Honeydew leaned forward in her chair. She unconsciously dragged the careful hands of her abused tailor with her. She listened to the businessmen’s conversation, and watched them slyly out of her golden eye’s corner. Their motions were the lazy, stretching, casual kind, of people with funds to purchase any shop they patronize from its owner. They spoke about rates of return and probabilities of success.
Honeydew’s interest grew. Her interest stemmed, not from desire to bet her own fortunes on these farm-homes, but from her special skill.
A knack for chance.
After they’d gone on loudly for some time, the impatient one checked his pocket ticker. Honeydew thought of Mr. Grey. “The stakes can’t be known,” he concluded simply. “Now can we please hurry up?” He shifted once more, dragging his tailor.
Honeydew found that conclusion intolerable. “They’re not unknowable odds,” she said with a sudden click and a snap of her fingers. Then she winced. The movement had finally caught the tailor, who’d been swooping with the needle, by surprise. The tailor apologized profusely. Honeydew paid no attention. Her eyes met the suspicious pairs of the businessmen.
“Were you eavesdropping?” asked the one by the window.
“Your farming odds are simple,” she said, ignoring the question. She went into a careful explanation of probabilities and percentages, based on what she’d overheard. Her logic was sound; her statistics, crisp. The two men listened close. All three customers sat very still during the explanation, to their tailors’ incalculable relief.
When Honeydew closed her assessment with a to-the-nearest-hundredth chance of success, and a self-certain click, the two businessmen stared at her, eyes wide, mouths slack.
“You are a Wisdom,” said the one by the window. His voice was full of awe. The other nodded agreement.
Honeydew played along. “Chance is clear to see. When you’ve got experience.”
“You come from another place?” asked the formerly-impatient gentleman.
“I’m from Starharbor. It’s where I mastered the wheels.”
“And now you work in teaching?”
Honeydew treaded the dialogue with care. “I have varying pursuits. I have taught before.”
“Will you gift us your knowledge!?” The two pleaded with her to teach them probability’s secrets.
Honeydew had no intention of tutoring these businessmen. But, she wheedled information from their enthusiasm. She learned that ‘Wisdoms’ were Wine Medo’s teachers and scholars. She learned that understanding of odds, probability, and mathematics made for a rare Wisdom in Wine Medo. She learned that such Wisdoms were prized on a local school’s staff.
Honeydew felt inspiration’s rush. She said, “I’ll work at a school!”
“I thought you were a model!” said her tailor.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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