A Warm, Fuzzy Blanket
Godiva followed the female giant. Sif. She needed to integrate the sounds they used, words for everything. Not that she did not have her own sounds to describe the world, but if she was to understand the strange creatures she needed to communicate with them. Which meant speaking, or at least writing, their language.
Ilana was the female she had found lost in the Away. A strange, small giant, Godiva and her nest had led her back to her nest up in the trees. Her tree house. One shared with two typical giants, Sif and Erlmarr. Ilana had been the one to give her an individual name as well as giving them a group name. Mouseling.
Sif noticed her interest but thought she masked her reaction. Godiva could see the tension in the female's movements, smell the change as emotion lightly tinted the female's scent. The female did hold the door open a moment, long enough for Godiva to slip inside the work room behind the giant.
Godiva was aware of Sif watching her as she explored the work room. The female gathered a pile of white fiber and a stick and disk thing. "Spindle", the giant said.
Godiva saw others, thought they looked simple enough. Erlmarr, the male giant, had shown her how to craft things from clay and heat them until it was hard. As hard as rocks that could be shaped by breaking them at any rate.
Godiva was lost in curiosity examining cylinders in various diameters. All had a point or a curve on one end. Curved ones were always flat or rounded on the other end. Some had a point on both ends, others had a disk, still others had a length that connected them to a matching cylinder with a point on the other end.
"Knitting. Needles," the female informed her.
Godiva dropped into a crouch at the sound of the forgotten presence. She groomed her face in quick, swift movements as she rose to a standing position. Turned to look at Sif before a nod in acknowledgment, a single swift dip and rise of her long nose.
Her attention returned to the contents of the room. Several squares held strands. It took her a moment. She knew fabric, but had never imagined how the giants got the strands to fold over and under each other.
"Loom," Sif said, tapping the square frame. The female sat on a bench by the frame, "Weave," she said as she started the task. A tap, 'shuttle', a panel with a strand wrapped around it was passed through the strands in the frame. A movement of Sif's feet, the strands in the frame shifted, the shuttle was passed through again.
Godiva watched for a time, then brought one of the points in a silent question. Sif studied her for a time, then stopped her task.
The giant did not take the point Godiva had brought. Instead, she found a task that had been partially completed, adding to the long strip already made. One had loops of the strand made from fibers. The other was used to add more loops, one at a time.
Sif added one line, all of the new loops on the second point, the knitting needle. She started over, adding loops, maintaining the pattern.
After a time, Sif set it aside for a different project. A circle, or close to one. "Crochet. Hook," the female said, then started working. The crochet hook was used in a different motion to create loops similar to the knitting needles.
***
Godiva had followed a different path when the female had returned to eat in the middle of the bright time. It had taken a hand of days for her to create the tools she had seen Sif use. Spindle to turn fibers into strands called yarn or thread. A loom, it had seemed easier than the points or hook to use.
The thread she tried to create varied. From barely thick enough to hold together to thick lumps and every thickness between. As chaotic as the Away. Was it away from giants if she was living with them? It was a thought that came to her frequently.
Godiva had examined the looms. She had seen how the strands, the thread, was supposed to wrap up and down. That went well enough. But when she was finished, the threads were all flat. Not forming the triangle between end of the fabric in the process of becoming and the end. Sif discovered her at that point.
The female said nothing before leaving. Not that Godiva could hear more than a word or two in the babble of sound when they spoke normally. More each day, but the learning that was easy when it was a single, clear sound was harder to decipher when it was in actual use.
Erlmarr came to her the next day, giving her two looms. One like the one Sif had used, the second with a strap to go around her and a way to secure the cylinder on the other end. Godiva saw each had a piece she had not grasped the significance of when she had examined the loom. The piece worked differently on each loom, but appeared to have the same effect in the process.
She tried again. This time she got the pattern of threads, one up, one down, repeating across the loom. Wrapped a second thread around the shuttle, passed it through the triangle the way Sif had. The thread followed the shuttle, instead of remaining in place. A bit if trial to discover a method that would secure the thread at the beginning of the task.
It took several days. The second one, Sif asked her to come to the female's workroom. There, she removed a fabric from a loom. Godiva watched her carefully to see how she performed that part of the task before Godiva left the female giant. When it came time, Godiva was able to remove the fabric from the loom.
Godiva examined what she had made. She had intended to make the warm coverings Ilana called a blanket. Instead, the irregular thread had made... this. Godiva sighed. She often failed the first time. She learned. But this? Not a blanket. Not something she wanted at all.
Godiva snuggled into the nest and the warm layer of shredded cotton balls. Warm. Fuzzy. It did not matter that it was not a blanket.