Simkha and her friends had just about finished planning how to find Tali when they were interrupted by a phone call. Mika pulled out her buzzing phone. She was getting a video call from Hrefna.

“Hey beyb,” said Mika. “I’m here with Simkha and friends, hammering out a plan. Are you almost home?”

Hrefna stood on a fairly busy street that looked a lot like… Little Clarendon. She wore a slightly devilish grin.

“I win,” said Hrefna. “Or at least, I think I win. ‘Cause I think I found your girl. She’s the one from that picture Simkha sent you this morning, right? What’s her name?”

“Uh,” said Mika. “Yeah. Her name is Tali.”

“Great. Let’s go check, then.”

Hrefna kept the video call rolling while she walked up to someone.

“Excuse me,” said Hrefna. “Are you Simkha’s friend, Tali?”

“Euh?” said Tali. “Hmmm, yes! Simkha? Friend Tali, Simkha!”

“Voilà!,” said Hrefna. “Come on now, get in the picture with me.”

Hrefna turned and leaned in so that the call showed Tali standing and looking befuddled next to her. They were on Little Clarendon, on the pavement outside G&D’s Ice Cream Cafe. Tali shifted so that the top of a big paper bag came into view.

Simkha sagged into her seat.

“A-ha! said” Tali. “Simkha hello!”

“H-hi,” said Simkha. She blinked her eyes clear.

“Euh,” said Tali, with a guilty look. “Not happy Simkha?”

“Uh,” said Simkha. She moved her mouth into the shape of a smile, more or less.

“Thank fucking fuck,” said Leg Day.

“Wait,” said Simkha, “you showed the picture I sent you to Hrefna?”

Mika raised her eyebrows.

“We were still in bed, and I’m not trying to hide things from Hrefna.”

Shortly thereafter, Hrefna hung up the call. She swept into the room a minute or two after that. Hrefna moved with large, confident motions. She was dressed in an immaculate outfit that was just a tiny bit too summery for First Oxford at this time of year. She sported high-waisted turquoise chinos and a pale linen top that would have probably been perfect for the climate in Paris or even Valence.

Hrefna greeted the jocks like she already knew them. Of course she knew them, she had once told a drunken Simkha that she had a method and a plan to meet or befriend all five-thousand-ish queer girls living in or attending Uni in First Oxford. She probably would have succeeded at it, if there weren’t a constant turnover among the students.

Hrefna tugged Tali inside by the arm. Tali still wore Simkha’s faded, too-big hoodie and sweats. Tali carried a big paper bag filled with a jumble of something that clanked and looked heavy.

Tali was safe. Only a little less importantly, Tali was right here in the same place as Simkha.

“Euh, hello?” said Tali, wearing a slightly-chastened smile.

“Hello,” said Good-Arms Jock, wearing an ambiguous expression.

“We’re glad you’re okay, Tali,” said Mika. “And I’m glad Simkha suggested calling Hrefna home.”

Simkha couldn’t quite manage to speak, so she tried to mentally project her thankfulness directly into Hrefna and Tali’s minds.

Leg Day looked pleased and relieved. She took a sip of her tea. Simkha wondered when the hell she’d had time to brew it.

“What’s that?” said Leg Day, tipping her chin towards Tali’s paper bag.

“Euh,” said Tali. “Is… food? Is happy? Is food happy, is Simkha happy. Is Simkha happy, is friend-iss Simkha happy?”

Tali set down the paper bag on the table and began to unpack it. She pulled out a couple of posh cheeses, a box of flaky pastries, some artisan jam, and two bottles of medium-cheap wine.

Leg Day started laughing.

“Oh my god,” said Leg Day, “she left to get snacks.”

“Damn,” said Hrefna. “You all were really worried, huh?”

Simkha felt everybody turn to look at her. Her cheeks felt a bit wet. Her vision was a bit blurry.

Mika reached a hand over towards Simkha. She paused for a moment, then gave Simkha’s hand a gentle squeeze. It felt nice.

“Do we need to be worried about how Tali got all this,” asked Hrefna. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but… like. She doesn’t speak English, does she? I wouldn’t have thought she’d be able to manage this.”

“Nah,” said Leg Day. “It’s not hard if you have the right credit card. I once spent a week in Nouqzacq, Salishia without a translator. It was a bit expensive, but not difficult to do.”

“Really,” interjected Mika. "I thought you were, like, twenty years old?”

“Twenty-one,” said Leg Day. “And, uh, rich uncle, y’know?”

“I don’t know, I was born in North Japan, not the South. But it’s interesting to hear about.”

“Do you know where she’s from, Simms?” said Hrefna.

Simkha took a moment to register the question. She managed a small shrug in response.

“Hey, are you all right?” asked Mika.

Simkha noticed Good-Arms Jock was staring at her. Simkha managed to meet Good-Arms Jock’s gaze, and even to hold it for most of a second.

“I think,” said Good-Arms Jock, “Simkha might just be, like, out of spoons at the moment.”

“Spoons?” asked Leg Day.

“Yeah you know, like… the disability metaphor?”

“I don’t see how the metaphor applies here,” said Hrefna. “Perhaps you’d explain that to me?”

“And what the metaphor is,” said Leg Day. “Since I don’t know shit.”

“So it’s a metaphor representing the personal energy it takes to, like, do stuff in the world,” said Good-Arms Jock. “It’s from this author, her name was something like, uh, Mystery-dino?”

“Miserandino,” said Jennfer.

Everybody looked at Jennifer.

“What?” said Jennifer. “I attend lecture. I’m at lecture more often than either of you!”

“Huh?” asked Hrefna.

“We’re somatology students,” said Good-Arms Jock. “So we’ve studied this before. It was in a module about caring for chronic conditions. It’s basically us and a bunch of med students.”

“Oh,” said Hrefna. “I… thought you studied art. I was way off.”

“Eh, you’re not totally off base.” Good-Arms Jock pointed at Leg Day. “She took a lot of drawing and painting modules in our first year. I think we met at a show she was in.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“That makes sense,” said Hrefna. “And I will give your metaphor a fair chance. I may have thought you had just, like, listened to a podcast talk about this, and were techbro-ing about medicine. But if you’ve actually studied, well, that’s different.”

“Right,” said Good-Arms-Jock. “No worries.”

“So. Spoons?” said Leg Day.

“Spoons,” said Mika.

“Spoons!” said Jennifer.

“Euh,” said Tali. “Spoon-iss? Where is spoon-iss?”

“Er,” said Good-Arms Jock.

Jenniffer hopped up and rifled through kitchen drawers until Hrefna showed her where to find a spoon. She handed it to Tali.

“Spoons.”

“Spoon-iss.”

“So,” said Good-Arms Jock. “So this woman wrote this article like 20 years ago. She was something like two months out of uni at the time. She was out at a caff with a friend, gobbling down fries. And she has, like, I want to say it was… lupus? Well the friend wanted to know what it feels like to have lupus. So lupus girl responded by grabbing up all the spoons from their table and the tables around them. And she gave them to her friend and was like ‘this is lupus, you have it now, congrats.’”

Jennifer went back to the spoon drawer and gathered up a dozen spoons, arranging them like they were a bouquet. She got down on one knee in front of Leg Day and gave her the spoon bouquet.

“So apparently, lupus doesn’t stop you from doing any one specific thing, it just, like, makes everything more painful and difficult to do. So lupus girl told the friend that the spoons are tokens, representing how much energy she has to, like, perform tasks and be a person. She tells the friend to narrate all the things the friend has to do each day, and she’ll say when the friend’s spent a spoon’s worth of energy.”

“What am I supposed to do with these,” complained Leg Day, trying to give the spoon bouquet back to Jennifer.

“Look,” said Jennifer. “Maybe some of us don’t speak the language, but are trying to follow along anyway. So maybe it would help if we, like, try to act it out?”

“So the friend’s like ‘I get ready for work,’ but lupus girl is like ‘be more specific.’ So the friend is like “I get out of bed, I get dressed, I make myself breakfast, and lupus girl starts charging her spoons left right and center for most of the task. The friend starts worrying about whether she has enough spoons for later in the day, because she’s already down to like half her spoons before she even gets to work. So she’s, like, cutting out stuff she thought was absolutely essential.”

Leg Day fixed herself a jam and cheese croissant and paid Jennifer a spoon to do it. She got herself a glass of wine and paid Jennifer a spoon to do it. When she started to run out of obvious tasks to do, she moved on to less-relevant actions, like borrowing a guitar from behind the couch to play Gran Vals except she replaced the Nokia ringtone part with the actual notes from the Nokia ringtone.

“And the point is that the friend has to start skipping normal social stuff most people don’t think about. For example she skipped, like, going to lunch with coworkers. Because if she did that, she might not have had the energy to drive herself home after work.”

“That’s, like, just one of two main points though,” interjected Jennifer. “That first one being that, people do a lot of things that normal people—able-bodied people—take for granted. Like, it’s easy for us to get out of bed because our bodies can do that without using much energy. Or it’s easy for us to get dressed in normal clothes because moving like that won’t hurt.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Good-Arms Jock. “That’s basically it.”

“I dunno if this is a helpful way to illustrate it,” said Jennifer, “but I like to think about it as different kinds of actions a player can take in D&D. You only get one standard action per turn but you get as many free actions as your DM will allow. So, like, getting dressed is a free action for most people. But if you get lupus then it turns into a standard action and you have to spend resources for it. Does that make sense.”

“I guess?” said Hrefna. “I’m not really a sword lesbian.”

“You’re letting your people down,” tutted Mika.

“Lesbians?” said Hrefna.

“Theatre kids,” said Mika.

“How dare you.”

“I think it makes sense to call it a free action,” said Good-Arms Jock.

“I’m out of ideas for stuff to pay spoons for,” said Leg Day.

“Hold on,” said Jennifer. “There’s still the second point, which is that you don’t get any new spoons throughout the day. Like, if I run out of energy then I can just take a 15 minute nap and I’ll get my energy back. But if you run out and you have lupus, then you just can’t do things for the rest of the day. Even if you haven’t made it home yet. Even if there’s an emergency. Or, well, some people can borrow against tomorrow’s spoons. But borrowing one spoon today eats up like five of tomorrow’s spoons.”

“Hmm,” said Leg Day. “I don’t get why it’s ‘spoons’ though. Maybe I’m just easily confused. Why not just say that specific disabilities make specific tasks harder. And different disabilities make rest less effective. Like, presumably the reason you get spoons at the beginning of the day was because you rested during sleep.”

“Uhh,” said Good-Arms Jock. “I guess? Like, I see your point. But I think the metaphor… it’s, like, meant to show you how it feels. If you have to hand over a physical token to represent your energy, then that feels more visceral because you’re literally handing over a limited resource. So maybe it’s more of an exercise than a metaphor?”

“I still don’t see why the spoons idea applies to Simkha,” said Hrefna.

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Good-Arms Jock. “Huh, really? None of you? Not even Simkha?”

“Apparently not,” said Hrefna, shrugging like the others.

“Well, ahhh…” said Good-Arms Jock,” Well I’m obviously not a doctor, but… Simkha, is it okay if I speculate about what you’re dealing with?”

Simkha shrugged weakly.

“What does a shrug mean?” asked Jennifer.

“Presumably, that she doesn’t care?” said Hrefna.

“Simkha, are you okay with her speculating about you?” asked Mika.

Simkha nodded “yes” weakly.

“Okay, thanks Simmie. I really hope this might be helpful. Well, it’s just… I think you might have a personality disorder.”

“Kinda harsh,” said Leg Day.

“Hey, hold on,” said Good-Arms Jock, “that wasn’t a criticism. Having a disorder doesn’t make you a bad person. It just means your body or brain doesn’t work in the standard, usual way. In some circumstances, you could do better than average. Or they can be a disability like any other.”

“Hmm,” said Hrefna.

“So for Simkha, well, it seems like talking to people exhausts you a lot more quickly than it exhausts most people, more than most introverts, even. Then earlier today… it seems like you needed a very specific kind of rest to recover when you were overwhelmed. And you seem like you have some sensory issues too. So, personality disorder… which is an invisible disability…which makes spoons the appropriate metaphor.”

“Huh,” said Hrefna. “Does that sound right to you, Simkha?”

Simkha shrugged weakly.

“Different question then, beautiful,” said Mika. “If you can tell, how many spoons do you have right now?”

Mika gathered together all the spoons and pushed them towards Simkha.

Simkha narrowed her eyes for a few seconds. She stared at the spoons. Was the spoons metaphor even accurate to what she felt? She didn’t know. She could barely think. How was she supposed to translate any of this into words.

“Uh,” said Jennifer.

No, this was fine. Simkha could think, even if she was slow about it. She could turn those thoughts into words. She could speak those words. She wanted friends, didn’t she? Well, people talk to their friends. Simkha could talk now. She steeled herself and forced an answer out.

“None.”

Simkha closed her eyes and caught her breath.

“Fair enough," said Leg Day.

“I guess looking for Tali really took it out of you,” said Hrefna.

“I feel vindicated, but also feel bad for feeling vindicated,” said Good-Arms Jock.

“Tali me, I,” said Tali. “Is… euh… is ‘spoon’ is Simkha is good not? Is happy Simkha Spoon… is happy Simkha re-lax-ation?”

“Uh,” said Good-Arms Jock.

“I didn’t understand either,” said Leg Day.

“I don't think any of us did,” said Hrefna.

“Annfann!” said Tali. “ Talk-word… Is, annfann, Spoon Simkha… good not?”

“ D o u b t S i m k h a w o u l d m i n d a s p o o n w i t h h e r , ” muttered Leg Day

Good-Arms Jock flicked Leg Day’s thigh. She mimed spraying Leg Day with a spray bottle.

“Simkha has no spoons,” said Mika, “and that’s not good.”

“Yes-good,” said Tali. “Yes. Hmm. Simkha spoon, not-good? Simkha re-lax-ation, not-good?”

“Uh,” said Mika.

“I mean that’s basically it, right?” said Good-Arms Jock.

“Spoons not good, relaxation not good,” decreed Hrefna. “So Simkha’s relaxation is not good.”

“Not good” agreed Leg day.

Tali made a fierce little expression that made Simkha feel things. Tali came over and squatted in front of Simkha. She held up her pendant and linked it with Simkha’s.

After a moment, Simkha’s HUD received a popup prompt from Tali. Simkha accepted without thinking. Her status bar for relaxation flashed red and emptied out. Tali un-linked the pendants and stood to face the table.

“You Garms-Jok! You Lídia! You here.”

“Uh,” said Good-Arms Jock.

“Sure?” said Leg Day.

Over the next few minutes, Tali bullied Simkha into letting her friends’ help her move over to the couch near the table.

Simkha felt embarrassed and grumpy about accepting assistance at first. Simkha could have moved her own body. She could tell her body had the energy to move to the couch on her own. She was just having trouble remembering how to access and use that energy. She would figure it out soon.

But… Simkha had to admit that she felt better once she was on the couch, leaning over to face her friends. The couch was nice and soft. More importantly, it formed a kind of shield between her and her friends’ ongoing conversation. But it let her stay close enough to interject, if she ever had the energy for that. She was close enough to feel like she was in the same space, hanging out. Simkha felt… safe here.

Tali fixed a plate of cheeses and bread. She came over and perched herself on the couch next to Simkha. She put some cheese on a little piece of croissant and held it up for Simkha to eat. When Simkha reached out to take the bite, Tali batted her hand away. Tali held the food out until Simkha gave up and let Tali feed her directly. Tali just smiled as Simkha blushed furiously.