Another storm came, another storm left. As I had grown used to the season, I was used to this routine, comfortable with it. It wasn’t like I wasn’t used to sharing a room, wasn’t like I wasn’t used to looking after kids. Different, but similar, familiar. The same, but better. Easier and simpler.

A quiet weekend, a quiet week. Helped the cook with breakfasts and dinners, slowly learning how she cooked, trusted with more important tasks than just scrubbing and peeling vegetables. She even helped me with my knitting and taught me some basic sewing on the weekend. Played with Sisi, teaching her numbers and shapes, working on her memory, developing motor skills—finally getting to use what I’d been studying before the accident.

Over lunches with Frinnef, she told me she was studying for maybe some kind of government job? Mr Arl’s family seemed quite small and well-educated. I didn’t want to come off like I was gossiping, so I didn’t pry, mostly just listened to her complain about her mum’s expectations for her. “A good job leads to a good marriage partner, and a good partner leads to a good family,” she had said, quoting her mum with an accent like Mr Arl’s.

Mr Arl… oh, he was so sweet. Every time he paid me, he offered to walk me home to make sure nothing happened. The times I saw him with Sisi…. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose a partner, but he loved Sisi so much, there was no telling how much he still hurt when she was around.

There were moments, though, when his wife’s name slipped out his mouth. “El—” and he would stop himself, whatever words he had planned replaced by a long second of silence, like the light left his eyes.

Rare moments, but I couldn’t forget them. I wondered if I would ever love someone so much that losing them would leave me like him. Love… had never felt familiar. At the orphanage, I felt needed, but loved? And I’d heard and read about crushes and love-at-first-sight, but never felt that way. Boys were just kinda silly and, like, carefree, no way I could see them as anything but big kids. Dealing with them felt more like a chore than anything.

I carried those thoughts with me on the way to work on “Thursday”. Dark clouds in the sky, but no rain yet, maybe a day or two until it fell again? The heat had really set in, which I’d learned was the real sign of rain. It would get really hot and muggy, then the cool wind would come in and the rain would fall, half-reminding me of old geography lessons. Anti-cyclones, or just cold air pushing hot air up and cooling it down?

Whatever. I knew I didn’t have to worry about a storm until a cool wind blew.

I settled into a normal enough day. For the morning, Sisi and I worked on a peg doll. My sewing was terrible, but I could close up a bit of fabric stuffed with “wool”, then we added pegs to it for arms and legs, sewing on another blob for the head. It looked horrific, but she liked it and that was all that mattered. My skills not good enough to sew a neat mouth or eyes, we made do with drawing them on in charcoal.

That took up our morning. After lunch, we sat down with our knitting needles. I’d tried a few times to get her interested in it and failed. No point in forcing her to do it if she didn’t want to, but it seemed like a good hobby in this world. Today, I had a good hook, so I hooked her.

“Should we knit some clothes for Lucy?” She called the doll Lou-Si—absolutely melting my heart—but it sounded like Lucy to me.

Anyway, just like that, Sisi wanted to try knitting again.

I was better than when she last tried and so I could teach her better. She was more comfortable with me too, so she sat on my lap, making it easier for me to guide her needles. Loop after loop, joining them together. When I knitted on my own, I often thought about magic, how Hyraj had said that there was a more advanced kind of magic that “knitted” the threads of magic together.

For now, I focused on Sisi. Helping a child discover their talents was a magic all of its own. Her awkward and fumbling movements becoming that much calmer, the needles gradually making a rhythmic clicking sound, falling into the trance.

Outside, a wind started to blow. That added to the atmosphere and another old memory came to me. Hyraj telling me that their word for holiday was literally “knitday” because, on these stormy days, people would stay at home and knit. Well, the women would—no clue what the men did. Hadn’t seen any of them knit.

I only knew how to knit blankets (or scarves or something flat and rectangular), so that was what we knitted. Slow going as it was, with thick yarn and loose loops, we managed to make a big enough sheet in a couple of hours, then I sewed two sides of it together to make a “dress”, adding some yarn straps so it wouldn’t slip down. It didn’t look great and would be quite provocative if worn by a person, but Sisi loved it. That was all that mattered.

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“So pretty,” she whispered, holding up Lucy and staring into the charcoal-splodge eyes. I smiled to myself.

For a while, I left her to play, Lucy being shown around the house. It seemed like good play to me, practice for when she was older and hosting people. Copying the sorts of things her dad said. It was easy to forget just how much children absorbed, repeating something you said off-hand years ago like it had happened yesterday.

Once Lucy had been to every room, I moved on to the next “lesson”. “Should we braid some hair for Lucy?” I asked, holding spare yarn.

Sisi frowned, pout and all. “Okay,” she said, idly tapping her thumb and finger together on her spare hand.

Little by little, we braided the yarn and I tied up the ends with thread, then sewed it onto the doll’s head. I couldn’t tell if it looked any better for it, but at least the braids were neat. Something I could actually teach her to do well.

Thinking it more good play for this world, I guided her into having a tea party with Lucy. Well, not that she needed much guiding: “Would Lucy like some tea?”

And Sisi scurried off, saying, “Yeah!” leaving me to follow her up to her room. By the time I arrived, she had sat Lucy on the floor and was now putting out some scrap pieces of paper we’d drawn on. One of her scribbles was, notably, a lal sandwich. Seemed to be a family favourite for her and her dad.

It was funny, in a way. I was used to the orphanage where there was always someone to play with, so those kids didn’t know how to play alone. Sisi, even without me pushing her, could play for ages by herself.

Smiling, I watched her serve Lucy food, chatting away, a whole conversation going on between her and the doll. I wondered if her mum had often had guests over, or maybe copying Frinnef?

“Look at your hair, it’s so bad, you should just cut it all off. It’s not smooth like papa’s hair at all!”

My blood ran cold, smile frozen onto my lips as I was yanked out of my thoughts to focus on her words. I, well, kids… played through their problems. She wouldn’t be saying something like that unless… someone had said it to her before. Mr Arl wouldn’t. Frinnef, as much as she didn’t seem to like kids, wouldn’t….

I mean, I already knew it was the old nanny. No point thinking about it.

“Really? I like her hair,” I said, reaching over to stroke Lucy’s braids.

Sisi pouted. “You do?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes, giving me a long look before going back to her tea party. “Well, it’s okay, so are you gonna drink the tea?”

I was left in a bit of a state the rest of the time until Mr Arl came home. Even then, I was sort of on automatic, listing off what we’d done today while Sisi clutched his hand, his other hand “nodding” along, before getting to a goodbye. “Then, I shall make leave?”

“One thing,” he said, stopping me before I opened the door. “That is it, an old acquaintance is in town. He is, well, not someone I should bring here. A good heart, but not someone who can watch his mouth,” he said, subtly gesturing at Sisi.

I resisted the urge to nod, instead gesturing with my hand. “Would Mr Arl like me to watch her?”

“Only if it doesn’t burden Miss Louise—there is my niece, after all,” he said.

I smiled. “Really, no burden at all.”

“Great,” he said, tapping his hand against his leg. A nervous tic sort of thing? I hadn’t seen him do it before, had noticed some others…. “He is staying at the inn, so when they can come over in the morning will do fine.”

As always, him using “they” to mean me confused me for a second, but I quickly agreed and headed off.

Walking back, I had a spring in my step. Honestly, I didn’t know if Mr Arl paid me well, but he had a good job and Hyraj hadn’t said he was taking advantage of me. Had a bit of a clue from how much our meals cost. So another few hours of work, well, that was a bit more money I could put towards repaying Hyraj. I didn’t think she’d accept it if I just gave it to her, but a present?

Lost in those thoughts that pushed away the unpleasantness of Sisi’s last nanny, I arrived at the room and knocked, waiting for Hyraj to open the door.

“Pleased you came back,” she said. Soft. Tired after a hard week of work, maybe?

“Pleased to be back.”

I wasn’t there for long, going to help with dinner once I put down my things and popped to the toilet. And of course, we still didn’t talk over dinner, so it was like an hour after I came back that I finally talked with her.

While I didn’t want to gossip about Mr Arl’s family, especially since Hyraj worked with him, I wanted Hyraj to know I wasn’t useless. Told her how we made a doll and clothes today, practising my sewing.

She softly smiled. “You’re starting to sound like a good wife,” she said.

I heard that and laughed, thinking it a joke—and a funny one at that. “Thank you? Oh, and Mr Arl is meeting a friend tomorrow, so he asked me to watch Sisi for the morning.”

“Ah yes, his friend,” Hyraj mumbled.

“You meet him?” I asked.

She sort of waved me off, then touched her nose, an unusual hesitation…. “He looks quite well-to-do. An older gentleman, perhaps an old friend of his father’s or a mentor. From the capital or at least resided there long enough to catch the accent.”

Not sure what to say to that, I just said, “That is it.”

With a sigh, she adjusted her posture like she was finished talking, once again facing her book. “He is a good man. Mr Arl, that is.”

I wasn’t sure why she said that now, but I didn’t disagree, how much he cared for Sisi endearing to me. “He is.”

Nothing more was said.