Chapter Text
“What are you doing?”
The shepherd, whose eyesight was objectively terrible but could often rely on exceptionally keen ears, found himself jumping and almost dropping everything he was messing with when a close voice (far, FAR too close for comfort) startled him. What- he didn’t even hear anyone’s steps approaching!
Ignoring the mess of rope and poorly carved pieces of wood sitting now at his feet, Vanille reached for his staff and attempted to locate the person who joined him in the middle of the woods. Nothing there, nothing in that other spot as well- ah! A vaguely blue blur was half hidden behind what was probably a tree. He found his own hands’ grip tightening around the long piece of wood he used both as a navigation tool and for self defense, but the other didn’t seem to move any closer.
Okay, perhaps it was just a lone wanderer who happened to find himself in a remote part of the forest, nothing… dangerous. Vanille could find his jam stream quickly inside his body and the pulsating core that pushed it around moved quickly as he attempted to calm down- this… was probably not a dangerous person. Ah, right, he probably had to…
“It’s called a pulley!”
There. He did his best to sound friendly and, more important than that, absolutely calm. The blue blur didn’t move.
“I heard it from one of the elders, they were discussing building one in my village. They got the plans from the Fount itself! And… since I have a hard time getting sugarhay bales in a high place, I was trying to understand how it works.”
A pause and a silence that only made the vanillite feel uncomfortable. Perhaps his attempt at sounding friendly ended up with him sharing too much? Ah, but all he said was true- he couldn’t see the papers others had, just gather whatever info he could from their talks. Still, the idea of being able to lift heavy hay from the ground and perhaps keep it on a platform so it would stay safe and dry during winter- it popped in his head and refused to leave.
Wait, perhaps the other didn’t really say anything because he didn’t know what a pulley was, of course. His hands closed around the staff once more, after all he was ready to protect himself if needed, but he kept… talking.
“It’s… sorry, it’s… people were having a hard time going down the well and getting out of it every time they needed water-” Him included, it wasn’t easy for a blind person to navigate slippery and wet stairs made of rocks. “So the elders requested the Fount help about it.”
“Pancake Village.”
“Oh, you heard about it?”
“I recently visited the village myself. I know projects for a ‘well’ are already ongoing.”
Well, that made things… easier, didn’t it? And while Vanille still didn’t feel comfortable around the stranger, their voice (his?) didn’t seem hostile, quite the contrary. He never understood what people meant with ‘serene grace’ during their prayers to the Witches, but now it sounded like a strangely fitting descriptive for this unfamiliar person.
Oh- maybe it was one of the importers the elders said they were going to contact to have certain parts made with pure sugarbits so they could be durable. Oh… this was possibly a very rich merchant who got lost in the middle of those woods or perhaps this cookie was merely trying to lay low and not get anyone’s attention while returning home.
Vanille let one hand leave the staff and he brought it to his own chest, pretending not to notice certain things was for the better… right?
“Right. So… as you’ve probably seen part of the pulley is a… focus point. It’s supposed to redistribute the weight of things in a way you have to use far less force to lift any item you want.”
“Mh…”
Right, if they were somewhat involved with building that contraption they saw the projects… right? Vanille felt… silly for attempting to water down the explanation and raised one hand up to try to scratch his own cheeks.
“So… uhm.. I was trying to rebuild it for myself, here to see how it works. It just… the branches I use keep snapping so I must be doing something wrong.”
Silence once more. If the blue blur wasn’t still there in the corner of his eyes he would have assumed the other cookie just left. When that strangely deep voice returned, it had an almost… reverential tone. Almost like finding a silly man messing around with poorly woodchipped wheels and old ropes had been the equivalent of discovering a bottle of the finest mead while searching an abandoned tavern.
“You’re actually trying to understand how it works.”
“Well, yes! I am not really good at this kind of stuff but I don’t exactly have free access to the Spire of Knowledge so I better learn how to make and especially how to repair this kind of thing myself, wouldn’t you agree?”
It was considered almost disrespectful to meddle with direct instructions from the Fount, or so he heard, but a humble farmer couldn’t really hope to get access to certain services- and even if it was said once the Fount Itself took walks between common cookies, those days ended decades before Vanille’s birth. He wasn't even certain the Fount was a cookie, comments about it were so confusing at times, and the humble vanillite didn't think it was his place to think too much about creatures too big for his understanding. It didn’t matter if he was working on his own, though, he considered himself a resourceful cookie despite his limitations and he had plenty of time to experiment with the things he chose to focus on. His lazy days spent moving around his flock of sheep and tending to them were rarely boring, no matter if his only duties while letting them graze were petting his canine friend's back and making sure no threat approached them.
“Mh…”
His companion wasn’t really talkative, was he? Well, yapping about things helped Vanille to feel less tense around a stranger, so he attempted to open his mouth once more just to have his sentence cut off before it could even begin.
“You need more points where the force is broken down for it to work.”
… oh?
“The fixed pulley you’re using is perfect for small loads, like a simple bucket, but for heavier things you need to split the effort on more points. The resulting tool is called a ‘compound pulley’ and its build allows it to lift more using less force. You scaled weights down properly and that’s exactly why it breaks.”
A pause as both seemed to hold their breath.
Oh, dear. Vanille really met someone from the city who was there to work on the project, didn’t he? In part that felt like a stroke of pure luck, being blessed with input from a cookie who knew what they were talking about, but on the other side he suddenly felt incredibly self aware of how little he understood of the whole thing.
His flustered thoughts were interrupted by the stranger’s voice once more.
“You can probably figure out how to do so.”
Even if this wasn’t posed as a question, Vanille could hear the small hidden challenge inside it and it didn’t take him long to connect the dots- if one wheel was what he needed to split the force needed in half, then-
“Two wheels? Or… more, I suppose? Perhaps a larger wheel but that would be difficult for a single cookie to move around and all.”
Not to mention Vanille’s eyes weren’t the best, the cookie didn’t feel comfortable moving around large and heavy items that could fall on him and crumble his body, especially when-
“You live alone.”
Not a question, a statement. Right, he served the other that info on a sugar platter… but while he couldn’t bring himself to lie, Vanille could at least bend his truth a little.
“I’m not all on my own.” He had sheep, he had a hound cake to help him take care of them, that still counted. “But I definitely need to keep an item’s size into consideration when I plan to use it.”
“... weird.”
“I don’t think it’s weird, I-”
“Cookies only drink from the goblet of Knowledge, they don’t actually stop to wonder how its content has been obtained.”
“Well, I’m not most cookies, am I?”
Silence. Again. Vanille wondered if he had been too cocky and confident with his reply, no matter if what he actually meant was a mix of ‘other cookies can do a lot of things I can’t’ and ‘It’s not like I can ask the spire for help’. Be the time he dared to look up again in the direction Blueblur was, he found the spot empty.
“Curious.”
Vanille jumped, the voice was now right beside him. How- WHEN? He didn’t hear a single step, how stealthy could this cookie even be? Still, Blueblur didn’t reach for him, there was no touch, just silent consideration as he stood there… too close for the shepherd’s comfort but still out of reach.
Ah, he was the same shade of a forget-me-not, that much he could tell. Sadly there were no scents actually indicating the cookie’s flavour and helping him understand the other’s nature better. He could at least consider them ‘not hostile’, after all they had all opportunities to sneak on him and no harm came so far, so…
“What is curious, sir?”
“You are…” There were some movements Vanille could almost follow, the other was now staying again at a ‘safe distance’ from them. Wow, they really were moving without producing a single sound. “You’re a novelty.”
That… was rude?
“Pray tell me, cookie.”
“I’m Vanille.”
“Pray tell me, Vanille, if I was here to learn from you, would you be able to teach me?”
He blinked, squinting in the other’s direction and trying to make out.. anything that could tell him more about this strange request. It almost sounded like a veiled challenge of sorts. Vanille was blind, sure, but he was a perceptive cookie- there was a lot more behind this simple request, he could feel it in the way the stranger’s tone slightly shifted as he posed his question, he could tell it by the way the other was completely still awaiting his answer.
Why did that mean anything to Blueblur was hard to understand, perhaps the man was a teacher and struggled explaining this specific topic or there was something else but- but how could discussing levers and pulleys even bring something negative? If the other wanted his coins or more there had been plenty of chances for him to take them so…
“Well… I think I would start with the basics.”
- - -
Vanille didn’t know what to do with his meeting with Blueblur.
The man had been silent for most of their very one sided debate and the few questions or comments that came in seemed to be aimed more into getting the shepherd to think about a specific point a bit more or expand on it, not actually be things Blue couldn’t figure out himself. As soon as he was done figuring out what he needed from materials to how to prepare them, the stranger whispered ‘I have to go now’ in a weird tone Vanille couldn't read and disappeared like that. There was no sound of leaves moving around, there were no footsteps to follow, just silence like he never really existed in the first place.
It didn’t take him long to file everything under ‘just a strange encounter’ and pretend he forgot about it. It didn’t take a long time for life to pretend too much of his attention and efforts as the Jellybean harvest had not been as plentiful. Vanille had his hands full with a sudden rise in demand for sheep products and the fact he was a man living on his own in a farm that once belonged to a whole family of vanillite.
Still, when a large group of cookies dressed in blue came to his farming grounds (Something, something, a training pilgrimage wished by the stars?) asking to stay for the night and ‘repaid the favor’ helping him build the pulley and moving the hay… well, it felt too much to be a coincidence and the shades he could see in the distance couldn’t help but remind him of a very specific tone of blue.
Winter arrived before he got a chance to meet Blueblur once more.