How do you respond to pressure?

Neither of them were in a good mood today. She had all her work spread out in front of her, up on the tapestry loom, piles of bright colors by the wheel, the globe sat by the brick of clay, everything was set up and she sat curled up on her stool and glared balefully at all of it. As though it would spontaneously combust out of her irritation or work itself into something beautiful.

Behind her, he paced. Not bothering to open his mouth because she snapped at him the last time he suggested either resting or working. Pick a damn color at random, do something. But just do it.

A thump rattled the windows and knocked her off her stool in startlement. "What the hell was that?"

Most people would have gone to the windows to check. The Sorcerer gave her a pained look, eyes blank for a moment and then focused again. "You know what."

"Son of a bitch." She stood up and kicked the stool over out of pique, knocking over several cones of yarn and a disgruntled looking mouse. "Remind me again why I don't hibernate all winter?"

"Do you want that alphabetically or categorically by order of magnitude or whatever first comes to mind? You've had your last snit over that for the year the last time you got roundly ignored, grow up. You know how this works, and you know it's not fair."

She turned on her heel and glared at him. "You're in a pissy mood today."

"Today?"

The resultant fight destroyed whatever was left of order in the workshop. Yelling, throwing things, more yelling. It ended with her curled on the floor in a pile of yarn cones and skeins and wool puffs, little bottles of paint and statuettes crushed under her feet. He pulled an arm with a sword out of the arch of her foot, crossed her arms in front of her so she was bundled up the way she was trying not to be, and then pulled her into his arms and held her close.

"I thought you were supposed to grow out of the he doesn't love me anymore woe once you got past adolesence."

"Shut up," she muttered, smiling into his shoulder. "It's been a long week."

"You're telling me? You know we're impossible at taking care of ourselves. Please?"

The thumps had died down sometime during the fight; now there was just silence. He looked down at her, tiny in his arms, tiny shoulders to bear him and tiny hands to take care of him. No, it wasn't fair, but that was the way it was. Grace under pressure, while he usually just exploded.

She sighed. Didn't look up at him, or at him, or any such thing, but she got up and grabbed two, three, four cones of yarn without looking. They were the right colors, they had to be.

"What are you doing?"

She snorted. "Weaving a cloak. Someone's got to keep you dry when you don't have enough sense to come home and in out of the rain."

A few minutes later she looked up and saw him sketching at her painting table. It made her smile a little, until (or even more so) when she saw he was drawing a picture of himself being smooshed by a 50 ton cartoon anvil she was beating him with. She did, at least, wait until he was mostly done to throw the stuffed turtle at his head.

"Brat."

"Bitch."

"... really very nice."

She forced a smile that was more like peeling her lips back from her teeth. Bowed her head in a nod of polite hostility and moved on.

Nice? Really?

It was the death knell of social compliments. It meant she had failed. She was not gorgeous or witty or charming or in any way outstanding. There was nothing that the older woman had remarked about her that was worth complimenting, she was simply 'nice.'

She fumed the whole way back to the coat room, where she collected her things and fumed on out the door. The event itself was over, and this was only the reception. She wasn't required to stay any longer; she'd put in an appearance and that was all she had said she would do.

And as it turned out, they apparently were only asking her to put in an appearance because it would look odd if anyone in the office staff were missing without good reason. Paul had the excuse of having a daughter in law graduate from college across the country. Michael was a new father, but she didn't have an excuse. She could have come up with one but it wouldn't be the kind of thing you could tell to someone at a social event of this caliber.

Nice. It wasn't a compliment at all, it was a brush off. It was a put-down. It was putting her in her place.

Well, she had never been very good at staying in her place.

Nice. Seriously?

It used to be fun.

He walked through the street with his hands in his pockets, collar of his coat turned up against the wind and the rain, hat pulled down low. Steve walks warily down the street. But there were many sounds on this street, there were cars and horns and pedestrians and panhandlers and the buzz of the lights above it all, the wet slap slap of shoe leather in puddles.

It used to be work. Bending their minds, getting them to turn this way and that. Pulling the threads. It used to be more of a challenge.

And now their brains are softened by data flowing faster and faster, in smaller and smaller bursts. Megabytes turned into mega-loads of little bytes, attention spans of 140 characters or less, short bursts of sound and fury. No one takes the time to think and consider anymore. They drive their cars with their little plastic and copper phalluses glued to their ears, the more things it can do the better you are. Chatter to three different people at once, the person you're texting, the person you're phoning, and the person you're yelling at for having the temerity to cut you off. They're on their phone too.

Nobody pays attention to each other anymore, so there's no attention for him to twist. The values shoot up and down, nothing's permanent, everything's deletable. Erase the hard drive and start over. Delete the file, throw out the pair of jeans from last season and buy new. Nothing remains. There's nothing for him to hold onto because they hold onto nothing. A new purse. A new pair of cute shoes to die for. Nothing matters. Not when it's shoved over to make way for the next thing.

He rolls his eyes as he's nearly run down by another driver on another cell phone and moves on. Someday they'll learn. Maybe someday they'll learn enough to bend instead of break, and he can bend them into all kinds of pretty and entertaining knots. Right now they don't put up enough resistance to do much more than shatter.

It started when she was in high school. When her father had just gotten a more lucrative job and she'd changed schools again, and she had to start a new school all over again. In her sophomore year, when everyone's places had been hammered out and clawed to and fought for the previous year. She was an unknown. They didn't know what to do with her.

She was humiliated their second day there by another girl who decided ponytails were too childish for their hallway and gave her a forced makeover, ripping her stockings and destroying the jacket she'd loved.

It took her a year. A year of planning, of careful social maneuvering. Cozying up to the second string of the social scene and making friends with the girls there, and the girls in the last rung. Wouldn't do to leave them out. The loners, the people who sat on the edges of the bleachers or in the benches in out of the way corners and read, and watched, and envied, they would have an interest in the take-down as well. And they had years more experience at being spiteful and plotting than she did.

A year to wait, and watch. And make friends. To surround herself with allies and people who loved her, and flattered her, and would sooth her when the mean girls put her down.

That was the harder part, willfully putting herself in the way of slander and name-calling, pranks, spitefulness. Setting herself up to take hits, body blows to the ego, real falls instead of pratfalls because even the most oblivious of the student body would notice if she was faking that hurt. And she had to keep that anger fresh and alive. In order to use it properly, it needed to be fresh and alive.

Homecoming, for sophomores, still wasn't that big a deal. But for a senior it was everything, it was her last chance for that perfect memory. And she watched as everyone smiled and assured the pretty blonde that she'd make a gorgeous homecoming queen. She even put the perfect dress in the path of the silly bitch, just to see what would happen when her date didn't show up. Because the rumors had gotten too strong for him to ignore, and she had put the idea in his head that it would be easier just to deal with her wrath on a less high-stress night and maybe, free from her influence, he might meet someone nicer and less prone to sleeping around. And by the time the stupid girl arrived at the party she was tired, strained, her eyes were red, her dress was limp around her, and she shrieked and flung insults at anyone who dared approach.

And it was the copper-haired beauty taking the throne, unfailingly acknowledging her blonde rival as the favorite for the title just to shine the spotlight on her and add insult to injury, that everyone would remember that night. She did, after all, owe it all to her. And her fury.

She was sitting over her desk when he came in. Not all the way, but he stood in the doorway and leaned against the door frame and watched her at work on her correspondence. That was what she called it. Her fingers tapped on the keyboard, creating an indistinguishable rattle of noise.

"Aren't you even going to talk to me?"

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"You're a fool, Adrian."

Crystal decanter clinked against crystal tumbler. A scotch that cost more than some people's televisions poured, in generous amounts, into each. The young businessman handed his older companion a glass with an upraised eyebrow that questioned the casual, bland statement.

"Am I?"

"You are." He saluted his friend with his glass, took a sip, set it down. "You think that this will change the world? You won't change anything."

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It started so long ago that she can barely remember the beginning. There was a dream, and dancing, and the kind of lascivious, lethargic peace that comes with being stretched out in the middle of a sunbeam. And yet, he remembers every detail and brings them up when she least expects.

Harmless banter. It's like a dance.

She's not amused. She's rarely amused by his antics, but today she's half asleep and nodding off at her desk and even less amused when he runs through, reminding her about two of the half dozen things she's forgotten and telling her to go to bed earlier tonight. They go hand in hand. Some people think otherwise, but what do they know.

"You don't need more material," he tells her. "You need to refine the stuff you already have. Make it better, fill it out."

"Oh, shut up," she mutters, picking burs out of raw fleece that's no color at all, not yet.

She spins the wheel and makes a fine thread, thin and strong, and her mind slips to one side and becomes blank. The thread becomes her mind. Taut and fine and all of the tiny fibers slipping around each other and knotting in a line, beginning to end. The texture of the fiber varies. Her fingers cramp up and it becomes ragged, thin now and now slubby and full of puffy bits. Her body relaxes and it becomes smooth and fine.

He sits behind her on the old battered stool she uses when at the potter's wheel and rubs her shoulders. It's coming less steadily than it used to, though also more strongly, in some cases. In some ways. Eventually she does abandon the spinning wheel under his silent direction and before she's eligible for an 'I told you so.' She goes back to the landscape she's set out, with its tiny figures. Leans over it.

"I hate this thing."

His hand stays on her back the whole time, rubbing between her shoulders. "You say that all the time."

Silence for a moment while she contemplates this. And then, "I think I hate it less than if you were in it."

It's true, though it stings. He hasn't been around, and there's less of him on her table now than there has been in a few years. Maybe she's learning. Or maybe it was just time to play with something new.

That's all right. She'll come back to him later. She always does.

Almost a year into the zombie apocalypse it wasn't so much a zombie apocalypse and more just of an apocalypse in general.

Somewhere along the line they had realized how hard it would be to actually fend for themselves and, as a collective, started reading up on the skills they would need. Blacksmithing. Gardening. Weaving, spinning, sewing, and the like were taken care of provided they could find some healthy sheep, and the tools were right there. The henhouse had been cleaned out and re-populated. The barns, both of them, had been filled to the brim with hay they had raided from neighboring farms once the immediate danger was past, and somehow they'd managed to pull in the fences again, acquire horses and a few milk cows. Somewhere along the line life had turned from a struggle to survive to an actual life again, even if it wasn't the one they'd had.

It was hard to say who first spoke of it. The idea that they might not be the only ones out there. What happened when they got old, sick, infirm. If one of them was in some sort of debilitating accident. They needed people. They were still human, they didn't, couldn't, live in small groups, or alone.

Well, some of them could, he muttered, but he didn't entirely mean it and they didn't believe him anyways.

The question grew. How far was too far afield? Who should go and who should stay? How long should they be gone, and how long, and what if the person doing the exploring didn't come back. Maybe they should set up a radio signal instead. It was still close enough that a lot of the old technology worked. Maybe they could bring people to them, after all, they had it pretty nice here. And they had a whole mountain to play with.

One question led to another. They brought in their first harvest, celebrated, preserved as much as they could for the winter. Brought in what supplies they could find from the nearby towns to supplement their first crop which had been, well. A first crop. No one spoke of what would have happened if they hadn't had that advantage.

And they still talked about the future of their little colony.

None of them could decide. None of them wanted to decide, putting things off and putting things off until winter was making its way around to spring again and if they wanted to go, now was the time. They set the radio up first, to see if it would persuade or dissuade them. It felt a little like looking for aliens.

And still none of them could decide. It became a sticking point among them, what was best. He was in favor of staying aloof, staying alone, and if they had to set up the radio then they should do it at the general store, away from their home, where they wouldn't be bothered if the last survivors turned out to be hostile. She was in favor of not splitting up the group, not putting them with a distance of by now well-battered road to cover and the risk of being injured, or worse. They argued. Eventually, they argued themselves into silence.

By the time summer came around again, they had reached an uneasy truce, the four of them. Two would go and two would stay, and they would set up a rotation. They would camp at the general store and use the radio to communicate, and they would see what happened.

He still said it was more likely that no one was around for hundreds of miles.

She only pointed out once the efficacy of hope.

Any minute now, she would stop laughing.

"No, really. You can stop laughing any time now."

"And yet," she wheezed. "It's absolutely hysterical..."

He rolled his eyes. To his way of thinking, the descriptions were so vague and subjective as to be meaningless. So, he was a Sheep. (A Ram, the listing said, but she insisted on calling him a sheep.) So what? That didn't mean he needed to take on the attributes listed, not in the way they were conventionally interpreted. He rarely interpreted anything in the way convention of the time or place dictated, and she knew that.

"S'il vous plait, dessin-moi un..."

He stabbed the air with a finger in her direction. "Don't. Start."

She snorted. "You make a good sheep, you know. Give good, workable wool, stand still for the shearing. A productive sheep, for the amount of material that you create, that I can then work into something else. Anything that I might wish, really." And one off-handed gesture at her loom, still with the warp visibly tied under the beam, indicated what she meant. Not that he needed even the gesture. She knew he knew what she meant even if his threads weren't visible there.

"Hrmph." All right, it was something. It was one interpretation. "That doesn't mean I like being called a sheep."

She shrugged. Made a gesture of acquiescence and turned back to her spinning wheel, swearing at it as she tried to make the damn thing all go in the same direction.

"Baa..."

"Oh, shut up."