milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Thirty two week pregnant teen sitting by the fire, looking at a parenting book the bar gave her.
Reading is slow going, and any word longer than seven or eight letters usually means she forgets the first ones before she has worked out the last ones.
She has her feet up and is eating sandwiches as she reads.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She fidgets a little.

"I can't. I don't know how."

"oh."

"That was really dumb of me, wasn't it? I should have..." Medieval society, medieval rules, and that menas girls wouldn't have an education. "I can teach you at least how to do a tally."

She fidgets and nods.

"Yes please."

He asks the Bar for a sheet of paper and a pencil.

Two and two are four, four and four are eight, eight and eight and sixteen

This time he does his best to ignore the music.

"Let's start with the basic. Each line is a day." He draws four lines. "But when you reach five, you draw a line across the other four." He demonstrates.

She watches, then picks up the pencil and looks at it for a moment.

"Where does the ink go?"

"It's not ink. It's pencil lead. It works like ink, but it's dry. Like a crayon?" He writes again. "See?"

She nods, and makes the lines on the paper experimentally. At first she presses much too hard and snaps the lead.

"Sorry, did I break it?"

"No, it's okay. We can fix it." Knox gets a small plastic pencil sharpener. "See, the outside is made of soft wood, and when the lead runs down, you just sharpen it and get some more." A few turns, a fw shavings on the bar, and soon there is a new point.

"See?"

She nods.

"That's clever. I didn't know there were writing things you could peel."

"And they're cheap, too. Or at least they are on Earth. Now, let's take that tally, okay?"

"Okay. When I first came in the bar I was twenty weeks pregnant and now I'm thirty two."

"So, has it been twelve weeks of time for you since you got here? Longer? Shorter?" This is new to Knox, as well.

There is a pause, and finger counting.

"More than ten."

"Then based on what we have here, time is passing and both you and the kid are aging. He or she might be able to grow up here." Which gives Knox something of a smile.

"That's good." she smiles. "But I will still have a lot of thinking to do. If he grows up here, then that will mean we can never go back to Borogravia once he gets too big."

"How much do you want him to go back there? I know it's home, but sometimes you have to leave. My mother's family did that. They didn't really want to come to America, but it was the only way." Though there was no great attachment to the old coutnry, either.

"I don't want him to miss out of the good parts of our cultural heritage. Besides, if time stops in Borogravia when I'm here, then does that mean my world will stop permanently if I don't return?"

"Oh. right. That would be bad. Still getting used to how time works here." The ruge to sing Jim Croce's song about time in a bottle comes, and goes, the spell almost knowing the context is wrong.

"You said he. Could be a she just as easily."

~~Oh bugger, I've been trying so hard not to do that~~

"Did I?" she says in surprise. "That's strange, I haven't done that before."

She puts her hand on the bulge. "I don't mind which it is. It'll still be the most precious thing to me."

"Well, it sounds like where you come from, being a girl has its strengths, and its drawbacks. At least she would have a mother who isn't afraid to take chances, and the way your world - and mine - are, a girl should have that." Knox is no feminist, but as a product of the 60s, he's absorbed a lot.

"If it is a girl I will be more inclined to bring it up here." she says. "I invoke enough social scandel back home as it is, bearing a child out of wedlock. If it is a boy then at least I will have some sort of legal protection when he comes of age."

She shakes her head. "I dislike reliance on men after what happened, but the country isn't going to change overnight."

"If it means anything, where and when I come from, things are a little better. At least under the law.

"And if your strange flat world is really like Earth was in its past, things will change sooner or later. Especially since you and your friends did a bit of men's work. I don;t know too much about history, but I know that things changed fast where I come from after a war where the women stayed home but did men's jobs."

"Maybe." she concedes. "There have already been some changes. But I have already had to fight off attempted abduction once, and that won't cease to be a threat until the place gets burned down in the summer."

He winces at the notion of such a tough place, worse than even home, by far. "The place? What place?" And the music has left him for now, finding little to play.

"The Girls Working School." she says quietly.