Work Text:
Of Darning Socks
There is a hole in his sock.
He has been on the road for some days, hurrying as much as he can to escape the heavy clouds gathering in the mountains behind him. It isn't quite cold enough yet for snow, but even just getting soaked by rain can mean certain death with the current temperatures at night.
So, he is trying to get to the next village. (It's risky.) Being a bit closer to some kind of civilisation can't hurt that much. (He could find you, be careful.)
But he has overestimated the durability of the socks he stole acquired in the last town. Well, he is calling them socks, but they're not the kind that some loving grandmother knitted during the winter; just two pieces of thin fabric sown together that loosely fit over his feet. Maybe that's why the trader at the market had them in the little basket a bit further away from their stall; perfect to grab them, but won't even last a week when worn without pause.
No change of clothes for a beggar, even if he hates the feeling of the weirdly raised seam close to his ankle.
He also hates the feeling of bunched up fabric inside his shoes, his big toe exposed to the naked leather. And he also hates that his shoes are so thin he can feel every stone he steps on, and fears walking into any puddle as it means wet feet for the rest of the day. (Wet feet and a dry cough and death, death, death)
Still, he stops by a fallen tree close to the road, sits down and carefully peels off first his shoe, then his sock, turning it around to inspect the damage.
The hole isn't that big. It is actually just the seam unravelling, something easy to fix, something he knows how to darn and save.
"Fädel den Faden vorsichtig ein. Da einstechen, halt es gut fest. Straff ziehen, und nochmal. Schon fertig!"
The voice in the back of his mind makes him bite back tears.
He has no needle, no thread, and no money to buy it with.
No magic, either. No way to fix this. No way to fix anything.
(Yet.)
Taking a deep breath, he puts the sock back on, then slips into his shoe. Takes a step, and then another.
He will mend his sock, just not today. There will be another time for that.
~
There was a hole in his sock.
Earlier, he had stumbled when he had tried to get the perfect angle for a Firebolt into the face of a gnoll, and stepped into a puddle of something ... rotten. Acidic.
It had eaten right through his shoe. And his sock. But just the left one, for some reason.
Now they were sitting on the handful of beds in the cramped room in the Feed and Mead Tavern, his compatriots and him. Tending to smaller wounds, sharing food and jokes, and Jester for some reason still with too much energy, jumping from bed to bed and making Fjord scold her like a child.
The whole bed shook as Jester finally sat down, pouting (like a child, she was so much like a child), and he could finally focus on the sock in his hand.
The hole was rough, the edges of the wool melted, not torn. Whatever it was that had made that kind of damage, he felt lucky it hadn't reached his skin.
But then, wool and leather could be mended just as easily as flesh if you had a Cleric in your group.
"Oh Cay-leb!!!"
Speaking of which.
"Is that your sock?" Jester draped herself over him like a warm scarf, using her sharpened fingernails to scrape over the item in question. "Is it stinky?"
"It would be a miracle if it weren't, after today," Molly chimed in, lounging on the bed on the other side of the room. "I'm pretty sure if we put all of our socks together, we could create something that would smell even worse than gnoll."
"Eww, I don't even want to imagine that," Beau groaned, putting a pillow over her face. "Caleb, put your sock back on before we all die from stink."
"Nobody can die from smelly socks", he replied, already rummaging in his component bag. "Also, I cannot put it back on. Yet."
"Why?"
"It's all hole-y!" Jester answered for him, one of her talons caught in the fraying cloth and widening the hole a bit.
"Which I know just the perfect remedy for," he said, plucking the sock from Jester's fingers, holding up his sewing kit in his other hand. Well, it was admittedly quite crude, just a thick needle and a spool of rough wool that he had gotten as possible spell components. But it would do just fine.
"Oh, you can sew?" Jester's face lit up, and he already knew what that expression meant. She was curios. About him, about his story.
"I can do many things. Just like you." He smiled, already knowing the perfect distraction for her. He pointedly looked down on his shoe that had suffered the same fate as his sock. "Tell me, do you know the Mending spell?"
Obviously, he already knew the answer, but it still distracted Jester successfully.
"Of course Cay-leb, give me like ... two minutes and you will have a shoe like new! Oh, that rhymed, didn't it?"
He widened his smile, and it almost didn't feel like he was pulling a grimace. He watched her sit down with his shoe, concentrating on the spell, and then he looked back to the sock in his lap, already going through the motions in his head.
Something easy to mend. At least this time.
~
There had been a hole in his sock.
Caleb had discovered it when he went to bed at far too late of an hour, switching into his loose night clothes. The socks had been a present from Veth last Day of Heart and Hearth, bright green with yellow cat designs, and absolutely not his usual style, but they were knitted by Veth herself and he loved them.
He had quite obviously worn a hole into the heel, the material a little thin in that spot anyway. He had inspected it with bleary eyes, trying to discern how long it would take him to mend it, and if he even had a thread that would match the vibrant green tone.
But he had been tired, after a long day of teaching and then a meeting with Astrid, so he had put the sock on top of the dresser in his bedroom, and went to sleep.
The next day, the sock had greeted him when he had gotten up and dressed, but he had to run to class, his body reminding him that he could not survive on less than six hours of sleep anymore. That evening, he had come home, far too late because of another meeting with Astrid, and then Beau who insisted on a glass of wine between them.
The green sock had been there still, a day later, a week later, and then it wasn't.
To be honest, Caleb did not realise it was gone immediately. That week had been even busier than usual, with Essek visiting for a few precious days, although he had a knack for choosing exactly the time when Caleb had to correct a mountain of homework.
Essek had offered to help, which he only accepted reluctantly. Working alongside Essek however had felt like the days when they had travelled into Aeor together, exploring new magic. Although the magic they were reading about in his student’s essays was often more confusing than what they had found in the ruins of the flying city.
And after they had finished grading everything, Caleb and Essek did use Caleb’s bedroom definitely not just for sleep.
So seeing the sock he had absolutely wanted to mend not laying on its previous spot anymore was strange, but not worryingly so. Caleb looked under the dresser, and looked through Gretel’s favourite hiding spots, as his fluffy orange cat had indeed the habit of stealing things that lay on the floor for too long.
But the sock was gone.
He turned most of his house upside down, searching in every nook and cranny. Caleb slowly came to the realisation that Veth might ask him at some point what had become of her socks, and how quickly his truthful answer would change the health status of his shins and other body parts she could reach (or shoot at).
It was not until he looked properly through his living room that he realised that he had had the wrong culprit in mind.
The main area of his house was dominated by an old fireplace, surrounded by a pair of old, but still perfectly usable plush chairs and a broad settee; enough to fit most of the Mighty Nein. He also had a dining table closer to the kitchen corner, but most of the time he spent in “his” chair, on the left side of the fireplace, with a drink in one hand and a book in his lap.
Essek had his own chair, on the other side of the fireplace. The side table next to his held a couple of books in undercommon (fiction, mostly, and one work about the newest advances in dunamancy), and Essek’s knitting basket.
And on top of this basket, but hidden under the light grey shawl Caleb had seen Essek work on while he had been here, was a bright green sock.
It was not exactly hidden, just out of sight enough for him not to notice in the past days, Caleb thought.
He picked up the sock, letting the material glide through his fingers. It was definitely the same sock, the pattern just as gaudy, however:
No hole.
Instead, he could see thin spidersilk threads; a material he knew Essek used because Caleb himself had gifted him an (incredibly expensive) spool of it for their anniversary. The mending was not quite as invisible or expertly as others could have done it, but Caleb saw the gesture as it was meant to be: A gift.
He felt like crying, and that’s what he did.
After a while, once he had managed to shut away the memories of his mother teaching him how to darn socks, and he had cleared his throat twice, he went for his study to get the sending stone, coughing slightly before he activated the sigil.
"Do not think this will be without consequences, Herr Thelyss. Your technique needs improving, but I'm thankful for your work. Do you mend gloves, too?"
The answer took mere seconds, even though Essek’s voice sounded rough from sleep.
"It was a good challenge for my current needle skills. Also, I would have hated to see you gutted by Veth. See you next Yulisen?"
Caleb smiled, putting down the Sending stone again. Essek knew he could not answer, but that’s how they always said it.
Next Yulisen, he would have a basket ready with a few worn socks, his darning needles and maybe a mug of mulled wine to round it off.
It would take a while to teach Essek the right techniques, but they had time for that.
Oh, and how much he was already looking forward to it.