“Did you finish Mitsy's kitchen?” Arias’ mother accosts her as soon as she’s in the door.

Aria stares at her for a moment, willing her, internally, to back off. Mitsy was annoying and she’s tired. But her mother likely won’t care about that. Mitsy is her mother’s ‘best friend’ which means they’re bitter rivals who try to show each other up at everything, of course.

Her mother frowns. “You didn’t forget, did you? You were supposed to be there all day today! Where were you if you-”

“I finished.” Aria enunciates. “The Kitchen.”

Frowning even deeper, her mother takes stock of Arias’ non-expression and bad mood. “Don’t take an attitude with me! And stop making that face!”

“Sure mom,” Aria says, rather than argue. Heading directly for her workshop.

“Aria!” her mother shrieks as she slips into her workshop and closes the door behind her. Locking all three locks on said door. Because her mother had figured out how to pick the last two.

‘I’ve been an adult for years now,’ Aria thinks to herself. ‘I could’ve moved into my own house if I didn’t have to stay for Sheldon. Just five more years and he’ll be thirteen. Just five. More. Years.’

The Kitchen she’d had to paint was much larger than their own. Of course, because Mitsy Anoleis is the Districts’ designated cook. Every District has one. The Entertainment District has the highest number, but every district needs at least one or two to make sure that everyone can eat. Even if they don’t know how to cook for themselves.

They run cooking classes, of course. So her kitchen has to be huge, to accommodate students and also in case she ever has to make a LOT of food, like for instance-- at the bonfire. The refreshments table was all her and her apprentices’ doing.

Walking over to her workbench, Aria drops her satchel filled with grass, pressed leaves, pretty rocks and seashells-- gently onto it. Then she carefully extracts each little pocket of ingredients. The Grass wrapped in little napkins, the leaves pressed into a book. The Rocks collected in a small pouch-- depending upon color, they are in different pouches and in different pockets of the satchel.

After the job was done at Mitsy’s, she’d had at least two hours to kill before she was expected home for dinner, so she figured she should get as many ingredients for her work as she can while it’s still fall. In winter, everything is so much harder. And the Grass and Leaves are gone.

Before she gets ready for dinner, she takes out another book and starts pressing the grass, using the napkins to sandwich them and soak up any and all moisture. Rather than just pressing them in with the pages, which would make the pages wet and accomplish nothing.

She learned that the first time she’d tried ‘pressing’ things.

After she’d filled an entire book with napkin’d grass, she laid the leaf book on top of it to press it down and then grabbed two more books-- dictionaries --to further press both of them down. The precarious book-tower would hold just fine, as long as those two books were slightly off-center, pressing down the covers on the right where the books open and want to flop wide.

Sighing to herself, Aria starts looking through the stones for any true gems that could be made into beautiful jewelry. Or something that could be carved into the shape of a specific animal.

(I’d like some fleur-de-lis here,) Mitsy had instructed. (Just the suggestion of flowers, mind you. You’re the artist, I’m sure you know what I mean.)

Aria squeezes the black rock in her hand as she remembers all the little ‘additions’ that Mitsy demanded. And because she was the town cook, Aria had to comply. Sure, she could’ve dragged the job out for days in order to make it easier on herself…but she felt spiteful. She wanted to do it in one day, or at least two, and then someday when she leaves this place behind-- they won’t have an artist. They’ll have to send for one. And they’ll probably take days to do what she did in one or two.

She badly wants them to realize how skilled and disciplined she is, after she’s gone. So that they can feel even a fraction of the dismay that she wants them to. ‘Oh no, our talented artist is gone, everything is going to take forever and be more expensive now!’

Truthfully, she’d like it better if she could just refuse, but when payment is offered and you have no other jobs lined up-- legally, she can’t. Maybe if she were ill or unable to perform, but. Neither of those things are true, so she’s required. Mostly because she refuses to live in the Entertainment or Artisan districts.

There’s restrictions on people living in districts they don’t ‘belong’ in, after all.

‘Breathe,’ she tells herself. Unclenching her jaw consciously and taking deep breaths that she slowly releases as she scrabbles through the new haul of rocks. The activity settles her, as she focuses upon what she can do with each one.

Most of them are Agates, with multiple bands of colorful rock all pressed together. Red, Orange, Purple, Blue… some in combinations that are quite unsightly and others in configurations that are vibrantly beautiful.

“Yes,” she whispers to herself as she lifts one of them and takes a closer look with the help of the sunlight streaming in through the window over her work bench. “Blue and greenish-blue striations surrounded by yellowy-white. None of those colors clash, exactly. That’s at least a mid-tier jewel.”

She enjoys muttering to herself about these things, because when Sheldon is in the room, he’s there to hear it. And he likes to be part of things. She remembers the habit had started because Sheldon was an infant who needed to be taken care of and her mother was…uninterested in playtime. As Aria had been around nineteen or twenty when he was born, she was perfectly capable of taking her mothers’ place in the child rearing process, but… well, it had been maddening to have it all shoved into her lap without warning because her mother had decided to stay in her room sleeping most of the time for the two years after Sheldon was born.

Talking to herself and therefore, to him, had been calming and helped to center her enough that she’d never be short or angry with him just because he was hard to take care of all by herself.

“Oooh,” she breathes and rushes to scrub the dirt off the rock in her hand-- holding it up to the light. “Almost entirely purple and white! That’s a high-tier jewel!”

Actual Jewels were rare because people weren’t allowed to mine for them anymore. Part of the whole ‘no hoarding wealth’ rules that were put into place after the…well. After everything. The flood was just the first in a long list of plagues that beset them. But it was a wake-up call for a lot of people.

“This is big enough…” she says to herself. “I can finally carve something into a flower! And a high tier jewel…no, I’m keeping this one. It’d buy at least four months of food or a new wardrobe, so we should keep it in case we need it…but also I want to wear it.”

A knock at the door has Aria breaking from her habit and her mental calculations for the carving. “Sheldon?”

“Can I come in?” his voice echoes through the door.

Aria hurries over to unlock the door and pull him inside, immediately locking it back afterward. “You all done with your reading, Shell?”

“It was just five chapters,” Sheldon replies. “And they’re all short. Why did they used to write books so short? Everything happens too fast.”

Aria shrugs. “Probably capitalism.”

He nods sagely. “Makes no sense, so I guess it would have to be.”

“What did you need?” she asks as she walks back over to the workbench.

“I wanted some help with my clothes,” he says. “Ma took me shopping but she bought all blues again. Can you do the thing you did before and color them?”

“You want me to dye patterns and different colors again? Sure, just bring me all your clothes that you don’t need for all this week and I’ll do those first. Shouldn’t take more than maybe two weeks to do it all.”

“And I need another thing,” he says. “Mom took the necklace you made for me again, so I need another one.”

“The pearl and shell necklace?” Aria asks, her mouth screwing up in anger. “Did she trade it or is she wearing it?”

“She wore it to a party but I couldn’t find it in her room after,” he says. “I really thought I could just get it after she was done with it…”

Aria sighs and runs her fingers through his floppy golden-brown hair. She really wishes they matched. Hers is a dark bronze with a reddish tinge. His is straight, hers is curly. They’re very different-looking. So different-looking that she thinks maybe they don’t actually have the same father. After all, their current father doesn’t have curly hair and neither does her mother. And yet…

“It’s alright Shell,” she says. “It’s not your fault that mom is a thief.”

“Can I have another shell necklace?” he asks. “But…make it less pretty. So she won’t want it.”

Everyone has to have something that ties them to the sea. Blue clothes, blue accessories-- accessories that are at least in the shape of a fish or a pearl or a seashell. Something that tethers them to the great expanse of water that nearly swallowed their world whole.

“I’ll sew some pearl buttons onto some of your clothes,” she says. “And I’ll just get you a seashell and wrap a leather string around it. That’d be too ‘rustic’ for her tastes. I’d intended for that shell necklace to stay with you till you were thirteen so you could trade it for all new clothes, once we left.”

“I think she got a really luxurious dress to wear for Mitsy's party with it,” he says and looks down, picking at his cuticles. “I liked the pearl necklace.”

Aria kneels down and wraps her arms around him. “I’ll make you an even better one once we leave. Just five more years.”

“Just five more years,” he mumbles back.

“Aria!” her mother pounds on the door. “Mitsy’s daughter is here. She says she’s come to pick up the cheesecloth you agreed to give her.”

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly again, Aria thinks of the purple stone flower she’s going to make and chants, once again. “Just five more years…”

Then she releases Sheldon and finds the cheesecloth.

“Aria!” her mother shouts louder. “Hurry up, she has somewhere to be!”

Just for that, Aria slows to half-speed and starts idly using the blow torch on her work bench to seal the ends of the cheesecloth, to make sure it’s absolutely pristine.

“ARIA!” her mothers’ voice screams.

“We heard you the first time!” Sheldon shouts back. “She’s getting it!”

“Sheldon,” her mother says at a much quieter volume. “You’re supposed to be reading.”

“I finished a long time ago,” he says. “I need another necklace since you took mine, so Arias’ gonna make me one.”

“...what are you talking about? Did you lose your pearl necklace? You can’t blame me just because something went missing!” she says. “Aria what are you telling your brother that he thinks I’m some kind of thief!?”

Aria walks over and opens the door, arms full of cheesecloth. Mitsy's daughter is standing just across the way, looking embarrassed. She and Aria both hate their mothers’ rivalry but the difference is that Mitsy at least is an alright mother. So Kit can’t really understand Aria and her attitude toward her own mother. They’d tried being friends but Kit thought Aria was ‘too disrespectful’. Hah.

“And if I were to ask Mitsy if you were wearing a pearl necklace with a Large snail shell in-between each pearl, the biggest in the center of the necklace,” Aria says as she shoves the cheesecloth into her mothers’ arms. “I’m sure she wouldn’t remember you wearing it to her last party.”

Her mothers’ face goes pale and she opens her mouth, but Aria shuts the door in her face. “You take ONE MORE of Sheldons’ things, and I will never make you anything ever again. I won’t add beads to your dresses, I won’t paint landscapes on tree trunk circles for you to give to all your friends on the holidays, nothing. Zip, nada. And if you already traded that necklace for something, it had better damn well be the last extravagant dress you get because I’m fairly certain if I were to call the Temple to come down and inspect your closet, you’d be over the limit for pretty clothes.”

Aria is fairly good at terrifying her mother by now. Not to the point that she doesn’t still act up and do things that vex her-- but enough to shut her up momentarily, at least. And since Aria did this right in front of Kit, that means that on top of fear, her mother feels embarrassment. Which is a much greater motivator in her case.

“Ohhh,” Sheldon says quietly as they walk away from the re-locked door. “She’ll probably still steal my stuff, though.”

“I thought about that,” Aria says. “How about I give you one of my lockboxes? She can’t even get into my room to begin with and there’s no reason for me to store pinecones and other natural things in a lockbox when she could just go out and grab one herself. So hang on.”

Walking over to her closet, Aria opens the locked door with the key around her neck that also goes to her outer door locks and the window locks. There’s a special trick to it, though. So even if you get hold of the key, you can’t use it unless you know how.

She twists the key off of the peg that it’s fastened to and uses the peg AND the key in the keyhole. The peg at the top to occupy a small circular hole that seems almost like some kind of mistake in its manufacture. And then she turns both of them.

The lock clicks and she immediately screws the key back onto the peg. The door automatically locks once it’s shut again, so she doesn’t need to remember to lock it. She loves that about her doors and windows. That cost a lot of hard work on her part, painting and trading for items that she needed-- making jewelry until the break of dawn. But she needed to make her room safe. Her mother kept stealing her materials and trading them away for half what they’d be worth if she could make a damn masterpiece out of them.

She grabs the lockbox with her pinecones in it and leaves the closet, allowing it to shut and lock. She doesn’t move away from the door until she hears the ‘click’. Then it’s just a matter of finding some sacks, stuffing them with cotton that was plucked around summertime and traded for in bulk with a bunch of her best pieces of jewelry-- and then she can safely ensconce each pine cone into its own little pocket of cotton where it will be cushioned and held apart from the others in the same sack.

The empty lockbox is handed off to Sheldon and he’s given the spare key that she sometimes lends him when she’s going to be away for a week and he needs to get into her room to grab something to trade for candy and books.

“Alright, here you go,” she says as she hands them over. The spare key on a ribbon. “Make sure to hide them in that loose floorboard under your bed. The key, too, hide it well. Make sure to only open it when you absolutely need something. I’ll give you your new necklace soon and you can put it in there with anything else you need to hide.”

“It’s…big,” he says. Frowning. “Will it fit?”

“It will if you pry up two more floorboards,” she says and smirks. “Use the handsaw that you have to cut out a perfect little hollow, glue the cut boards together and make it a hatch. Just make sure you keep the spacing the same. Maybe even fasten a special latch in there so you’re the only one who knows specifically how to open it.”

He nods, listening intently. “I will. I know about this special way to fit wood boards together. You can unlock them, but only if you pull a certain way. If you try to just pull it up, it won’t go.”

She smiles and pats his hair again. “Very good.”