Chapter Text
Snow came down over Nod-Krai thick and slow, and Sandrone was making the tea herself, exactly as demanded, because half an hour of arguing with Columbina had gone the way it always went.
"Two sugars~" Columbina sang from the armchair by the fire, folded into it with her feet tucked under her, holding a half-finished wooden puppet hand up to the light and wiggling its fingers.
"Put. That. Down. Those joints took me three days, and your grubby doll-poking is going to loosen the calibration, and then I will have to dismantle YOU for parts, do you understand me?"
"It waved at me. It likes me more than you."
"It's a hand, Columbina. It doesn't like anything. It doesn't have the capacity for taste, which, incidentally, puts it above you."
Three days of articulation work and she's making it do little waves. Little. Waves. Why is that… fine. Why am I letting this be fine.
The tea was good tonight. Sandrone knew it was good the moment she poured it, in that annoying way you know a thing before you can prove it, and she set the cup down on Columbina's side of the table maybe a little harder than the tea deserved. Then she dragged her backless workbench stool over to the fire, heel hooked on the crossbar, and sat forward on it, key clear behind her, braided bun surrendering a few beige strands after the long day. Columbina finally gave up the hand, standing it upright on the table where it sat with eerie good posture, a third guest politely joining the party.
"Mm. You made it good tonight. You only make it good when you're happy."
"I made it correctly. There is no emotional variable in steeping time, you absolute void of a woman. Four minutes is four minutes."
"Fiiive minutes tonight, though. I counted."
"You cannot count."
"One extra minute of love~"
"I will pour this on you."
She counted. She sat there, eyes shut, useless as a painting, and counted my minutes. Horrifying woman.
Columbina hummed something tuneless into her cup, a melody that had wandered off from whatever song it once belonged to.
Snow kept gathering on the sill. The storm couldn't actually keep Columbina anywhere, both of them knew that, but it was thick enough now to serve as paperwork, an official-looking reason a person could point to, and Sandrone had been glancing at it for the past several minutes the way she glanced at any tool she was about to use.
"…You're staying the night. Yes, I'm aware you could stroll through that blizzard whistling and arrive wherever you please without a single flake daring to land on you. That's precisely the problem. I refuse to spend tomorrow imagining you being smug about it. This is my workshop, my storm, my rules. Sit."
"Yes, ma'am," Columbina said, and saluted with two fingers, which would have been tolerable if she hadn't done it with her eyes closed and gotten the angle wrong so it landed nearer her ear.
"Don't 'ma'am' me in my own workshop. I outrank you here by every metric that matters."
"Mmhm. Where do I sleep, Lady Metric?"
Sandrone yanked open the storage chest by the wall. One blanket. She stared into it a while, as if a second one owed her an appearance. One blanket, fourteen calibration rigs, and a spare kettle valve she had never once needed. Priorities were a personal matter, and she stood by hers.
"You get the blanket. I run warm. Don't argue with me, I've measured it."
"You've measured your own coziness?"
"Thermal output, and yes, twice, under controlled conditions, so keep your commentary."
She threw the blanket across the room. Columbina caught it without looking, draped it over her knees, and patted the arm of her chair in invitation. Sandrone ignored the pat and reached for the puppet hand instead, meaning to shelve it for the night.
The index finger drooped.
She lifted it to the firelight and pressed the joint. It swung loose. She pressed it a second time, then a third, on the theory that some things behaved if you gave them enough chances. It did not.
"COLUMBINA."
"Hm?"
"The joint. The JOINT. You loosened the joint! I told you! I said the words with my mouth, in order, and you sat there wiggling it anyway, and now look! It flops! It FLOPS, Columbina! Three days!"
"It looks relaxed."
"It looks DEAD. And don't you dare say that's fitting, because a puppet finger is supposed to HOLD, Columbina. It holds a pose, it holds a cup, it holds whatever I command it to hold, for hours, without complaint, better than any living hand ever could. This thing couldn't hold a grudge. Limp is failure. Limp is firewood."
Columbina rose, crossed over, and folded both her hands around Sandrone's, around the broken thing between them, and held on.
"I'll sit with you tomorrow while you fix it. I'll count your minutes. All of them."
"…You'll sit three full paces away and touch nothing."
"Two paces."
"Two and a half, and you're making the tea."
The storm worsened overnight, and by morning frost had claimed the windows entirely. Every workshop in Nod-Krai obeyed one law in winter: the metal woke up crueler than you did. Sandrone sat at her bench with the hand clamped in the vise, breathing on her fingers between adjustments.
"…two hundred and eleven, two hundred and twelve…"
"Why are you counting out loud?"
"You said count your minutes. This is minute four of you fixing the hand."
"Lovely. And the tea you started BEFORE you started counting me? I can smell it from here. It's stewing."
"…Oh no."
"Oh no is right! That pot's been sitting ten minutes! It's not tea anymore, it's ink!"
"I can't count two things at once. That's greedy."
The tea arrived dark and punishing, and Sandrone drank it anyway, glaring over the rim while the tension screw slipped beneath her driver and skated a bright scratch across three days of finish.
"AGH! You see that? You cursed the screw!"
"Screws can't be cursed. They're too small."
"Everything can be cursed if you're annoying enough at it, and you are a walking hex, now come here and put your finger on this pin. No, THAT pin. Yes. Hold it. Don't wiggle it. If you wiggle it I will scream in a register that shatters glass."
Two and a half paces, I said. She's at zero. She's pressed against my shoulder stealing my heat, which I have, plenty of it, measured twice. My hands are the only cold part of me and that's from gripping frozen steel all morning. So this is fine. She's cold, I'm not, the math favors sharing.
Columbina held the pin steady, humming her wandering tune, and the joint seated with a small, satisfying click.
"…There. Fixed. Despite you."
"Because of me. I'm the lucky part."
"You're the licensed disaster part. Fine. FINE. You may wave at it. Once. Gently. With supervision."
Columbina waved. The finger held its curl exactly where Sandrone had set it, and she allowed herself one small, private, deeply smug sip of terrible tea, and if she tipped the cup toward the finger first, barely, half an inch of a toast, that stayed between her and the vise.