The Dale Decision

Bristle - Companionship

When Bristle woke up the next morning – not long after Tis, surprisingly – she found Wis was sitting in the armchair, happily writing away at something. It took a moment or two to remember the conversation, as Bristle was still waking up, but once she did, she got up and went to join her. Tis and their parents weren't expecting that; they were still in bed, too.

She winced again, annoyed at the slight twinges in her shoulders. This did not pass by their parents unnoticed.

"Are you feeling some kind of pain, Bristle?" said Ma. Whistle broke off from writing to look up in concern at the question.

"A little," said Bis. "It's just... annoying, not painful."

Tis sat up, wincing himself. "I've got that, too. Is... is it the delayed... muscle soreness?"

"From the table tennis, you think?" said Pa.

"It might be. Not as bad as the time we learned to jump rope," said Tis.

Bristle nodded her own acknowledgement as she joined Wis, who placed down her pencil and massaged her shoulder a little bit. Wis had also experienced it from jumping rope, so she knew what it was like, and there were journal entries about it.

Of course it was muscle soreness – they had spent much more time playing table tennis yesterday than any time they'd played it in Eckelby. Those games had been short and not very strenuous, very much unlike yesterday.

If memory served, Tis had been the most perturbed by the muscle soreness, until Pa had explained it to them, and so he understood it as "just another thing that body did" and that it would eventually fade away.

Still, though the pain was bearable, it was probably a good thing they had things other than table tennis to pass the time. She decided to ignore it, and focus on what Wis was doing.

Their parents and Tis had been filled in on what she was doing; she had explained to them before Bristle had woken up in hushed tones, and had even obtained some of Grandma Phyllis' poems from Ma. She had also credited Bristle with the idea when she had explained it. Their recount of these events was how Bristle found out she had woken up not too long after the others.

She scanned what Wis was writing – Wis didn't mind; it was commonplace. She and Tis had read a lot of Wis' writings, at her own request. Though she was rather sleepy, she grasped the theme of adventuring and exploration pretty quickly.

Even though she was tired, she was on the lookout for big fancy words. She liked them for a number of reasons – not only could they condense a complex idea down to a single word, they had a way of catching her eye. It was very much the same way a good drawing or painting or embroidery design caught her eye. Big fancy words stood out from the rest of the ordinary, regular words that filled sentences.

There was one she found already – lamentation. Wis said she happened across this word recently, and it had something to do with an extravagant show of grief or regret – it could involve sobbing and wailing, or even writing a sad song or poem. Despite her tiredness, the pieces fit together in Bristle's mind, and she understood completely why that word would crop up here.

If she had known this word earlier, she would have found plenty of use for it, at least recently. It would have greatly simplified things. She would have to remember it for future reference.

Besides the word lamentation, there was something else that stood out, even though it didn't use unusual words – namely, Wis had described swimming underwater in an endless ocean as a potential adventure... they had talked about that last night, hadn't they? Or at least vaguely touched upon it...