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“I can sew, too.”
“Oh, I know you can,” Cherry said, turning without fear towards the foreboding shape of the imposing figure behind her. “I’ve seen you patch things up, and you made me that new hat. But I didn’t know you could cut and sew entire outfits!”
Silar’s voice went taut with tenderness as he replied.
“I can. I’d make you anything you want, Cherry. You need only tell me.”
“This is good information,” she said, remaining practical and business-like while Silar appeared to be on the heartsick brink of collapsing under the weight of his love for her. “There are a few things I could use before I get my supplies when the other girls come.”
Cherry swivelled back to me, impervious to the hungry white throb of her husband’s gaze on the back of her brown-haired head.
“You can definitely make a certain style of human formalwear with this,” she told me, gesturing slender, clawless fingers at the table. “It’s what I’m most familiar with, anyway. It’s called a suit. Pants, shirt, and a jacket. With what you’ve got here, you’d likely be looking at a black suit with a white dress shirt underneath.”
“Will these pants be appropriate?” I asked, standing to display the dark, creased leather of my trousers. I did not think I had enough black fabric to make both a jacket and new bottoms, and there would not be time to order more.
“Um. Sure! Those will be fine,” Cherry replied after a slight hesitation. “Very, er, cowboy chic.”
I didn’t know what that meant but it certainly sounded good! With an eager grin, I sat back down.
We spent the next little while conversing about design. Human dress shirts required a rather dizzying number of buttons and corresponding holes, and the jacket was just as mystifying with its alien appendages called lapels. And then there was something called a tie, which apparently came in multiple styles and shapes. But despite the confusing fripperies of the outfit, by the time the sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon, I had the general shape of the garments marked upon the fabric.
“Take it home to cut and sew it all,” Silar said, apparently noticing that I’d happily settled into my place and would have stayed there well into the night finishing the project if I’d been allowed. It was easy to fall into cheery conversation with Cherry. She was Silar’s opposite in so many ways. Smiley and open. Though her husband likely would have had my head for even thinking it, I’d begun to think of Cherry as a friend. I was immensely grateful for her and her company.
This happiness was a tiny, tantalizing taste of what I hoped to experience with Darcy. Conversation and companionship wrapped up in a pretty human package.
And maybe even…
I jolted to my feet, vigorously snapping my tail ’round its hook as I remembered the images of human mating included near the end of the manual I’d received. Those pages had already become creased and worn with how often I’d found myself turning to them, gripping their edges with tense and trembling hands, white-eyed and hard-cocked. It was rather impressive, I thought to myself, that I had not yet ripped any of them. Or soiled them…
“Thank you for your assistance,” I said to Cherry, gathering all my fabric up. I was getting ahead of myself. I hadn’t even met Darcy yet, let alone married her.
But it wouldn’t be long now.
There was less than one human week until Darcy and Oaken’s bride, Magnolia, arrived. Only three days.
Three days of working. Sewing. Dreaming.
“You’re welcome,” Cherry called as Silar ushered me out the front door and then closed it behind me.
The setting sun had turned the sky a luscious sort of pink.
Cherry had said that Darcy’s hair was pink.
I stared dazedly – and perhaps even rather stupidly – at the sky, contemplating the fact that pink really did seem to be the best sort of colour. I was brought out of my reverie when my hound Sora bounded up to me. Her happy barks and the near-frantic snapping of her tail accompanied me as I strode over to where I’d left my mount, a great black shuldu named Kolt.
“Time to head home, Sora,” I said, settling into my saddle and taking up the reins.
I had work to do. A suit to sew.
And a whole new life to prepare for.
2
DARCY
Breaking one engagement and throwing myself headlong into another in the span of six measly weeks wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned doing the year before I turned thirty. And yet, that was exactly what was happening.
“Ready?” Magnolia asked, giving me an anxious-but-hopeful look from beside me. We were both seated together on a shuttle.
