Orphne

"For you," Thelo said, dropping a bag before her.

Orphne looked up from her notebook of bad poetry. She'd been making another attempt at writing something deep and dark, an occupation at which she'd consistently failed despite the coloration that everyone agreed augured a gothic destiny. She hadn't ever talked with the clan mage... thought he was kind of intimidating, really. And here he was. With... a present?

"For me?" she repeated blankly.

"For you," he said. "You'll like it." And left her with it.

Baffled, Orphne opened the bag and found it full of... parts? Bits of broken machines. Nearly half of a robot... chicken? Bird? What under the sky was all this stuff? And why had Thelo given it to her as if she wanted it? The skydancer sat back on her haunches, completely confused.

At least the things were shiny. She brought out the chicken-half and tried to set it upright. It needed another leg, she thought, and went into the bag again. When she didn't find an exact match, she tried a different piece. At least I can prop it up, she thought, and that did work. But it left her curiously unsatisfied. She wondered what the robot chicken looked like when it was operational. More than that, she wanted to know what it took to make something like it operational.

She went back into the bag again.

The following week, Thelo returned with a new bag of parts. By then, Orphne had set up a little workshop in one of the coves. Glancing up, she grinned at him, crest spreading. "You went back to the Golem Workshop?"

"More parts," he said, setting it down.

Orphne dove for the bag, opened it, started poking around. A chicken leg? No, this looked like a monkey leg. She set it aside. "Thanks," she said cheerily.

"Back next week," he said, but she didn't hear him. She was already pulling her notebook over--now full of schematics rather than bad poetry--and starting to scribble.