[PRP] Knitters Anonymous (Rep/Riley)

[Baneful]

Rep's hoard of late was rapidly becoming a liability. If he got caught up in a spot check of the dorms, he would be in a lot of trouble. The pelts he could live with, the stolen mugs and other miscellany from in and around the facility were also a tolerable sacrifice should someone stumble upon the formerly inhabited dormitory room. The only impression they could take away from that particular discovery would be that he was a kleptomaniac with a penchant for murdering small creatures.

The knitting materials however, those were another matter entirely. He wasn't sure he could deal with the blow to his ego that would be anyone other than his nearest and dearest finding out that he was the phantom knitter on Deus of late. Especially if he expanded into fobbing his creations off on other inhabitants of the floating rock he called home. It was for Tracey's sake, of course, an excuse to vent off some of his boundless anger while finding some hobby he could engage in with the fallen angel. It wasn't something he was willing to give up, but it called for a more tactical storage of his extra stock. His kneedles, he could keep around - sharp implements were pretty standard for him to have on him, and fairly expected. The glittery wool and myriad unfinished items - ranging from bobbly socks and hats to one half completed sweater he was incredibly proud of so far - needed moved elsewhere. And urgently, the fact he was almost due for a promotion mission was extra pressing. He had to start being extra wary lest the administration spring something on him and leave him with little time to move his possessions.

He had to act.

It was late at night on the facility when he arrived for the scheduled HH shift, his backpack brimming with contraband and snuck into the portal. The haunted house itself was more foreboding than he remembered it, his stint in the inverse incarnation leaving it's psychological mark on him. He didn't wish to be here any longer than was strictly necessary, brief and efficient. There was no call to spend the entire shift there these days, most of the patrols had been reigned back for the safety of the trainees. Finding a likely and memorable room, not far from the entrance, he stowed his items beneath a dustsheet on one of the ancient tables and turned to leave, nagging fear making him walk just a little more briskly than he might normally have. The whole place felt far too empty.

He didn't even notice Tracey's serrated edge catch the sheet and sweep it clean off the table, leaving his entire stash bare to the world - and any other creatures passing by the haunted house later on.

 

[Nio Love]

The free time that had begun to creep up on Riley was becoming more of a burden than a blessing. She hadn't been taken in for testing ever since Sinclaire had made that dreadful promise. Ever since that day, she'd expected them to come as she slept at night, or while she walked alone in the forest. But eventually, she stopped waiting, and dreading, and expecting. Things simply went back to normal.

Except normal was little more than an illusion for her. She couldn't guess what normal meant, anymore.

Little bits and pieces of her memory came back, every so often. Once, while lying in her bed, she stood and pulled out several things from a drawer without thinking about what she was doing. Mechanically, her hands fell into place, holding the knitting needles and twisting them together in robotic motions. She was thinking about something else, but before she realized what she was doing, she looked down at the thread and needles in her hand, and realized she'd knit a four inch square of fabric. A scarf, her mind told her. It was meant to be a scarf, when complete. Red with golden threads weaving into it.

She knew how to knit.

Recalling the memories that Malodore had given her, she realized that there were a few that included her holding the items in her hands, but she'd never paid attention to it until she found herself knitting that night. Ever since then, she'd clung to the activity, as though knitting could somehow weave together the fabric of her lost life. If she could remember this, if her hands could remember how to expertly put together such intricate designs.. maybe.. somewhere deep in the recesses of her mind..

Maybe she was still in there, somewhere.

Waiting for the boogeymen had worn down her patience. Now, she was finding new ways to get into trouble. The Haunted House was probably the only place on Amity that she knew she shouldn't go to on purpose, in her state. And that was exactly why she found herself in it, that day, searching actively for an enemy, or an answer.

Instead, she found a table filled with half finished knitting projects.

Instantly she wondered if they were an illusion. If not, then perhaps a trap. But she'd been looking for trouble, after all.. so she gathered them all up, in her arms, and left the Haunted House with no fight. Just a whole lot of knit goods.

She never left her room, for the rest of that day. She'd received a text or two, wondering where she was, but she answered them quickly enough and got back to work. Her fingers were swift, and desperate to get back what they'd lost. Each patch of half-finished cloth was equated with a piece of her. Every time she completed the project to her satisfaction, she put it aside, and started again. But there were so many. She didn't even have enough thread to finish them all.

In the end, she carried half of the clothing, now complete, back to the Haunted House. Once more, she stood inside, without an opponent. She laid all of her complete work on the table, folded very carefully, and pinned a little note on top.

If it wasn't a trap, she had to know why.

Why did you leave these here, unfinished?  

[Baneful]

Rep didn't let go of things easily - as was testified to by his hoard of absolute junk in his dormitory - so even though he tried fairly hard to keep himself busy, his mind kept drifting to all the important things left behind in the haunted house where just anyone could steal them. It became an absolute distraction as everything that looked remotely crafted from wool on the island, from Melvin's jumper to a sheep shaped cloud sent his thoughts back along the winding corridors of the house.

After deliberation and a great deal of convincing himself, he decided that night he would go and check on them. Just to check. Yes, just a check up. Well, maybe add a few rows. Just one or two. He could stop when he wanted, it was just make sure they were all right. His stuff was important, even when not under his jurisdiction.

He expected them to be gone when he finally arrived, gone or ruined. He didn't expect them to be neatly folded or complete. He stood and stared incredulously for a long time at the table, a strange sort of wonder to the sight. The entire scene reminded him of a story he'd been told in nursery, half remembered even years later, about elves that came in the night to repair shoes in a shoe maker's shop. It had the same otherworldly feel to it and he just had no idea who could have done it. Had it been the house? Did something living in the house do this? Was it someone from outside? Was it a hunter? It didn't feel like a prank, what function would a prank like this serve anyone? If it was a comrade, they'd demonstrated they knitted too and therefore incriminated themselves if it came to public mockery - inefficient. He wasn't sure what to think and it took him some time simply to work up the courage to move close enough to take a better look.

Unpinning it, he read the note. And then he read it again just to be sure he wasn't somehow dreaming, that it was real. After all it was late at night, and something about the house itself was always dreamlike, like slipping into a world between worlds.



Heartened somewhat by Tracey's presence, and unafraid even if there was a trap involved, he mulled over each piece with care, admiring the skill of the unknown worker's craft. Tracey chimed in now and then with comments on neatness, consistency and design, offering tips for Rep's own work in future. He was impressed.

In all the time it took to do this, no one else came. There was no trap. He was alone. Bundling up the items, Rep brought them back to Deus. Expendable before, they were now too precious to store anywhere else but his room.

That wasn't the end of things though. It couldn't be. Curiosity was a creature that once fed, learned how to hunger. He wanted to know more. Setting some time aside, he got down to business, knitting with newfound passion, killing some of the time during the day normally taken up by sparring. Prepared, he returned to the house. This time he brought two finished items of his own, a red scarf much like the one he wore around his arm officially and a jumper, emblazoned with his only moderately successful attempts at knitting a dragon pattern. He didn't forget to also bring some intentionally unfinished items, still hoping to once again coax in whoever or whatever had showed up before and determined to leave no stone unturned in doing so.

He left his own note behind in his deliberate but stilted handwriting.

I left it cause the others wouldn't understand why I do this stuff. I have to hide it in case they find it, it is important for manly. You knit good whoever you are. I've never seen anything so good since I started. I am still learning how to do fancy things and still struggle with the complicated bits like the necks and arms, there aren't many patterns here. I left you some wool as a present. It has glitter s**t in but we dont have much that doesn't.

It wasn't exactly a literary high point, but it was a beginning. He pinned the note to the bright pink and glittery ball of wool he'd mentioned.
 

[Nio Love]

There was a surprising satisfaction that had come with finishing someone elses work. Her own knitting had been put aside, because she enjoyed working out the exact tightness of this strangers stitches, and trying to emulate them. Otherwise, half of the sweater or socks would come out tighter than the other half, and the clothing would be useless, easily undone. It was more important to make the item useful, or at least.. usable. It was it's own challenge, and she thrived on it.

When she completed a piece of clothing, she held it up, and tried to compare the two sides. Her hand brushed against the side that the unknown knitter had done. Two hands had worked needles into the wool, pulling the threads together in tight stitches, with purpose. He'd answered her question thoroughly in his note back - a messy little thing. She almost wondered if it had been written by a scareling, but she doubted a child would care too much about being manly. It was a sweet, charming little note. It made her want to reach out to the anonymous knitter, and help him as much as she could.

But she was no longer the fountain of resources she once was. She was dead to her culture - and that meant she was, by all rights, completely broke.

So she did what she could. She took a few of her knitting books, and piled them carefully together, tying them up with string. Just a few at a time; there was no sense in burdening the poor thing. Within the books were, for the most part, folded up patterns. Perhaps one too many dresses for his liking, she realized, but that couldn't be helped. There were enough for him to flip through and pick out a few. One book was entirely dedicated to making nothing but plushies - she hadn't touched that one since she'd returned. But the room was filled with plush versions of all of the people that had once called her friend, and she knew she'd had a hand at some of those.

She did not recognize most of those tiny, button eyed faces, now.

After finishing the rest of the first batch of unfinished clothing she'd found, she decided to bundle them up with her other gifts. She only had one ball of wool to spare, and it was black. She didn't know if she'd ever use the ball he'd given, but the gesture was appreciated, and she had to do something in return.

When she sat at her desk to pen a reply, she tried her very hardest to keep her hand from performing the illustrious flows and flourishes that strict upbringing had left her with, out. She wanted to seem approachable. For her, that was a very difficult task.

Thank you for your gift. I've left you some of my own. Use it well. I have apparently been knitting for years. That is what I've been told, at least. I have no memory of the last few years of my life, but my hands seem to know what they're doing, so I believe it. Your work is impressive, as well. Especially with what little you have in the way of adequate wool colors. I wish I could give you more.

She paused there, and her eyes slit very carefully as she regarded the sentence. Explaining why she couldn't offer him any further assistance was.. out of the question. As her new acquaintance might have put it... it was important for manly.

She pulled one particular piece of work out of her pile, and regarded it very carefully. She'd made it precisely for him, as a thank you for the jumper. Riley didn't wear jumpers, but it was not the type of clothing itself that had caught her by surprise. She folded the red scarf she'd made back into the pile, making sure the black dragon head with it's glittering gold eyes was at the top of the fold. All along it's body underneath, very subtle threads of the pink glitter wool had been sewn in, until the vicious dragon, which spanned the entire scarf, looked as though it shimmered.

She finished off the note with a simple explanation at the bottom, and took it to leave at the Haunted House.

P.S. I love dragons.  

[Baneful]

Gifts of any kind were still entirely alien to Rep. All his life he had found time and time again that people only ever gave anything with the expectation of a later return, he hadn't given the wool with an anticipation of something back, it had just been there and felt like the right thing to do - after all, he had no other way of repaying the effort that had gone into finishing his projects.

What was waiting for him at the haunted house was more than he could have anticipated. Books, designs and patterns he could work to, the very thing he'd craved - after all it was difficult for Tracey to explain through sheer mental words the complexities of a garment, graphical representation made it so much simpler. He flicked through them briefly and was delighted to see that there was even patterns for things he hadn't thought to ever make. He fancied trying his hand at the little teddies, some of which had to be minipets. It seemed the mysterious letter writer wasn't human, yet for now, that didn't matter to him. Tracey wasn't human either.



<>



As he investigated the other items he came across the scarf, it commanded his attention completely, exquisitely crafted and even to Rep's often bizarre tastes, very beautiful. He intended to keep it for a special occasion, it deserved nothing less.

Back on the island he spent a while thinking about what he could possibly do next to even begin to match the items and books, all the while eyeing the note he'd been given and trying to imagine what sort of person had written it, where they'd been and what had happened to them to cause them to lose an entire portion of their life. It was a harrowing thought.

Ta for the awesome stuff man, the scarf is really awesome and I will totally use the books to make all the things they are really great! I'm sorry to hear you can't remember s**t, the last year of my life has been the best year and I would be very sad to forget. Maybe one day your hands will remind you. I have a friend and knitting reminds him of the things he cant remember sometimes its why he does it too.

The note this time was longer, his enthusiasm at the gifts prompting him to write more.

I am not so fast at knitting yet so I don't have much that I can give but I have a magazine the quartermaster gave me with the wool maybe it would be interesting I think its old. Tracey says we should make something together like a patchwork quilt or something so I can learn things but I don't know if you would want to. I wish I was a dragon.

He left the note this time with an unfinished blue bobble hat and a dog eared copy of a knitting magazine from the 80s.
 

[Nio Love]

Knitting had become much more important to Riley since she'd found a kindred spirit to share it with. She'd been actively trying to remember things about her past while she knit. It was a clever idea, and when she'd read his note, she felt it held real promise towards her recovery. Unfortunately, the only things she managed to remember were knitting patterns and styles. So she tried something else. After all, he'd said he'd wanted to make a patchwork quilt; and if she couldn't actively force her memories back through knitting, perhaps they would subconsciously reveal themselves within the knitting itself.

So she began to knit patchwork squares.

She did them without thinking. Rather, she sat there and let her mind wander as her fingers worked the needle into the patch, creating whatever her mind thought. She'd change threads often, when the scene required it. Patchwork wasn't as clean as what she was used to, but she wasn't trying for perfection. She was trying to delve further into her mind, where it was muddy and unclear. What came out often ended up the same.

But every so often, there was a patch that made visual sense. A steel box. Crackles of lightning breaking across the patch. A flash of teeth. And then, her hands took over, knitting patch after patch in a row. One started purple. The next had flecks of grey in it. Thin lines of grey flickered across the third. The lines thickened with each patch, like cracks in the purple that seemed to widen with each subsequent square. On the sixth patch, flecks of red began to line the thick cracks of grey. Red seeped into the line-up, thickening around the edges of the grey; but by the tenth patch there was nothing left but grey.

She stopped then, and lined up her patches, one beside the other. The cracks lined up perfectly, and the visual was striking and disturbing. She sewed them together to make the full row, and then flattened it out in front of her.

Following the line with her eyes; Riley could hear something. A memory, perhaps. But she knew she didn't want to remember it. All she could hear was screaming.

She folded the line up, and returned to working on something less morbid.

As her fingers worked the thread, she started to peruse the magazine idly. It was a human magazine. Somehow, that didn't surprise her - she didn't know why she'd just assumed her knitting friend had been from Halloween, but knowing he was human didn't slow her threadwork. It didn't make her shred her patches in rage. It didn't seem to affect her at all. Which was strange, to her, when she thought about it. She hated humans. Loathed them with a passion.

I wish I was a dragon.

It was hard to hate someone you'd never met, who could say something so honest. She could not return the favor, of course - she most definitely did not wish she was human - but, just this once, she sought to make a humans wish come true. In an abstract sort of way.

Hello again. I attempted to use your idea, and knit in an effort to actively remember what I've lost. I don't think it worked, but this row of patches was what I knit from it. I think perhaps my memories do not return to me because a part of me knows I might not like what I see.

I looked through your magazine. It's very interesting, I've never seen something like it before. I left some patches to start a quilt with. You don't have to use the row of purple and grey, I just sent you that to show you what came of my attempt at knitting for memory. But the others, the separate patches, are usable.

There were five of them, and the last of the five was a very fearsome red dragon, rearing up on its hind legs with its claws beared to the world.

The last one is for you. I made you into a dragon. It's the best I could do.

Riley left the patches, and the note, on the table. She looked around the room for a moment, as if half expecting a human to walk out and take her gift the very moment she'd left it. But no one came.

It was just as well. She wanted to keep the illusion of friendship, just a little longer.  

[Baneful]

Things had been hectic on the island as always, between one thing and another it had been difficult to find time to grab haunted house duty that wasn't on the roster. When he did manage to squeeze it in, late at night as always, the first place he went was back to the room where he'd left the knitting before. He hadn't been sure that his correspondent would even agree to the idea of a patchwork quilt, but had brought along some of his own for the sake of it, his attempts at using the limited medium the wool presented to make something worthwhile, the neatest and clearest of these patch attempts being the golden emblem of sun division neatly laid out against red, the others appeared to depict vague hazy human figures and one six black feathered wings.

He read the note carefully this time, always trying to imagine the voice that went with the words, the kind of creature that might find this sort of shared solace in knitting. Maybe they would be a demon like Tracey, maybe like nothing he'd yet encountered.

The patches fascinated him and he sat down in one of the musty old chairs in the room to eye them in detail, the purple gradually engulfed in grey. He wasn't sure why it unsettled him so much to look over them, he was a person who ran almost entirely on instincts, in the moment, immersed in his senses. Something about the grey in the patches reminded him of the haunted house where colours slowly leeched out of the world and left nothing behind. It was a shared threat, he'd almost been lost in that fog himself, he wondered if even the monsters they were set against found it as chilling. He wondered if his acquaintance had been lost in it too.

He'd brought a notepad this time to write his reply out and found himself eyeing the treasured dragon piece of the quilt in admiration between writing lines.

Thank you for the quilt bits they are really ******** pretty man, you are really great at this stuff. The grey ones are sad but I am glad you shared them with me, they remind me of that grey place that is worse than the darkness because at least darkness is something. I love the dragon it is amazing, if I was a dragon I would fly around and be amazing too. There is a dragon where I live but it is grey and noisy.

I could only bring patches this time because I don't have much wool left, we don't have much of anything left and it is a shame. I have been trying some of the patterns you gave me though, they are really awesome though I have to get better to do the hard ones. Next time I will bring something to stitch things together or you can if you like, we can add more to it when we can.

Nio Love

 

[Nio Love]

Riley's notes, her gifts, everything that she'd normally left on the table in the Haunted House every week or so had stopped with no explanation. Two months had gone by with no word. In fact, when she actually found the time to knit again, she wondered if her new friend had given up on her. It was more difficult to knit, when the voices had stopped speaking. She'd learned the craft in the first place as a distraction from the whispers that now only haunted her memory. Now, she needed no more distractions. Her mind was a cold, empty, lonely place - interrupted only by the jarring realization that she was not actually alone within it.

First, that alternate her. And then, that door..

She felt it threatening to open even now. It was this, this fear creeping into her of total obliteration in favor of her, well, she supposed all she could call it was her 'original owner'. This was the fear that had her hands itching with idleness, and had her returning to the craft.

She'd knit an entire sweater before she'd even realized what she was doing with the needles. It was small, so the first had gone to Jericho. After it was done, and she needed a new project, she set herself to knitting an apology.

It came in the form of a pair of thick, black gloves. They were imprinted with three lace threads, intertwining down the top. But more importantly, they were big, and warm, and - she hoped - apologetic enough.

I'm not sure you still check this place, my friend. Her letter began, the tone of her words clearly laced with regret. A lot has happened in my life. The grey that once tormented me is now gone. But it's been difficult, there have been many a hurtle placed in front of me in the last few months. Only now have I had a moment to myself, a chance to catch up. And in these moments, I think of you. I regret that I couldn't have left you some kind of indication that I have not disappeared. I will try not to make that mistake again.

How is the quilt coming? Did you abandon it when I failed to return in time, or have you still been working on it? I look forward to seeing or hearing any progress. I leave with you some left over fabric from a failed clothing experiment that a friend of mine had recently. It seems the subject of the clothes she made had already grown before he'd received them. Feel free to use this red cloth in new quilt patches, or anything you like. I also made you some gloves, think of them as my apology for disappearing for so long.

Would they even get this message? She wished there was a way to help them know she'd returned.

I hope this gets to you safely. I will check once a week, in hopes that one day, your curiosity finds you here. Be well, my friend.

When she left the note, cloth, and gloves on the table, and paused in thought. Then she exited the room, while dragging a chair out. She picked up the chair in her tentacles, aimed..

And threw it as far down the hall as possible, smashing it to bits noisily on the walls as it fell. She did it in hopes someone was around to hear it, and investigate. It was the best she could do. She turned, and ran for the exit as quickly as she could.

Baneful