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Shephard is a big believer in advance preparation, and Christmas is coming soon in his world. He's gonna be much too busy to get any preparation done at home, so he's started work on his gifts a bit early in Milliways just to get them out of the way.

Hopefully people won't mind the occasional random cuss too much. Piecing together bullsquid leather into a respectable pair of gloves or the like entirely by hand occasionally involves stabbing yourself with an awfully big needle. The demon rabbit pelts gathered and tanned over the course of the year are stacked close at hand, carefully sorted by color; they're next.

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"Prepping for a cold winter?" Jay asks, bringing Shepard over a mug of coffee.

"They're all cold as shit in the mountains," Shephard says. "These're mostly gon' be gifts, though. How you been?"

He plays with the fur. "At least this stuff looks good and warm. You know I've got some curved needles in my kit. They'll help you not perforate your fingers so much."

"Wouldn't say no," Shephard says. "Tell you the truth, most times I'd just ask one of my girls if I could borrow the right needle, but Kanaya ain't here right now'n Nepeta don't sew near as much."

"Back in a sec." Jason dashes down to the garage and comes back carrying a couple of tool rolls and a first aid kit. "Somewhere in here..." He sorts through and pulls out a couple of curved suture needles. "These ones are too blunt to be used for stitching wounds anymore but they should be perfect for sewing your hides. Don't worry, they've been sterilised."

"You got kids?"

"Adopted," says Shephard as he accepts the needles. "Met 'em here. They ain't human, understand, but that don't matter none. You'll know 'em if you see 'em- grey skin, yellow eyes, black hair, yellow horns. Kanaya's the paler of the two."

He shrugs, not judging. "Orphans are orphans wherever you find them. If you can give them a life then good on you for taking them in." He makes himself comfortable, picking up the other glove to stitch while they talk. "I'll keep an eye out for them. It'd be nice to meet a few more people while I'm here."

Shephard nods. "They ain't the only trolls who come here," he says, "but Karkat ain't been in of late and it's been a fuckin' dog's age since I saw Terezi last. They ever show up, I'll introduce you, if you want. Them or anyone else I know."

"You've been coming here a while then? You miss them?"

[ooc: Sorry! I've been doing that all day. Must pay more attention.]

"Been in'n out of here the past couple years," Shephard says as he sets to work with one of the needles. "Met folks here from all kinds of worlds, some of 'em even more fucked up than mine. Some of 'em pretty normal shit, though. You get all sorts, here."

"And yeah, I do, but they got shit they need to do where they're from that don't need me around to handle, so I'm here'n they ain't."

"Yeah, I'm starting to get that feeling with this place. I'd like to think I've always been pretty open-minded but you gotta have your head cracked open to be wide enough for everything here."

Jay's surprisingly good at sewing and makes a pretty good go of the glove he's working on, eyeing his stitching critically. "It's good that they've got you, and you've got them. You gotta have people like that." He wishes desperately he did.

Shephard smiles wryly. "You met any of the computer folk yet?" he says. "There's a couple folks come here with blue or green skin'n weird-as-balls plastic-lookin' hair. They ain't mutants or aliens or nothin'. They're computer programs. Sprites, they call themselves. Used to be we got robots here too, sometimes, but I ain't seen any of those lately 'cept the one my CIC has watchin' her kids. Talkin' horses, too- purple'n yellow'n all kinds of shit like that. It just gits weirder the further you go."

And he hasn't even mentioned Tsu'tey yet. Or the gods.

"Their people're kinda different from ours," he notes as he works. "'Parently trolls hatch out as grubs'n git looked after by huge-ass wild beasts, like some kinda Tarzan shit or somethin'. They call 'em lususes. Critter raises them, they look after the critter long as it lives, all's well. They ain't all that familiar with human families or nothin', but one of 'em got hit with one of the weird-ass magic fuckups that happens 'round here sometimes'n got turned into a grub again. I took care of her 'til that shit wore off'n when she was back to herself, she reckoned I was her second lusus. Nepeta just wanted somethin' like that, so I told her I'd be all right with bein' her human lusus. It ain't exactly the same as takin' a human kid in, but it's as close as."

"I came up from the garage the other day, spotted one of the talking horses. Decided that was more that I could deal with just then and went back down to work on the bike."

He listens as he sews, taking it all in. "GoodSheppardor bring there for them. Sounds like you were the right man at the right time. Good on ya." He ties off his thread and eyes the glove critically before tossing it to Shephard. "What ya think? That do?"

"That should work, yeah," says Shephard. "Fiddly little stitches ain't my area of expertise, truth be told. Looks like you got it about right. Thank you kindly."

"I got lessons from a very young age. Mostly for field first aid but the theory's the same."

[ooc: Sorry! Was not having much luck with my phone this morning. Didn't realise how badly I'd mangled that tag.]

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