gathering_blue_novel-2

"This is where I live," he explained. He opened the door wider so that she
could see inside. His room was just like hers, though on this, the opposite side of
the corridor, his window view was to the wide central square. She noticed too that
his room seemed more of a lived-in place. His things were strewn around.
"This is my workroom too." He gestured, and she could see a large table with
his carving tools and scraps of wood. "And there's a storage room, for supplies."
He pointed.
"Yes, mine's the same," Kira told him. "My supply room has lots of drawers. I
haven't started work yet, but there's a table under the windows, and the light is
good there. I think that's where I'll do the threading.
"And there — that door? That's your cooking water and your tub?" Kira asked
him. "Do you use it? It seems such a bother, when the stream's so nearby."
"The tenders will show you how it works," he explained.
"Tenders?"
"The one who brought your food? That's a tender. They'll help you however
you want. And a guardian will be checking on you every day."
Good. Thomas seemed to know how things worked. It would be a help, Kira
thought, because it all seemed so new, so foreign. "Have you lived here a long
time?" she asked politely.
"Yes," he replied. "Since I was quite young."
"How did it happen that you came here?"
The boy frowned, thinking back. "I had just begun carving. I was a very little
tyke, but somehow I had discovered that if I took a sharp tool and a piece of
wood, I could make pictures.
"Everyone thought it was quite amazing." He laughed. "I guess it was."
Kira laughed a little too, but she was remembering herself, very small, finding
that her fingers had a kind of magic to them when she held the colored threads,
seeing her mother's astonishment and the look on the face of the Guardian. It
must have been the same, she thought, for this boy.
"Somehow the Guardians heard about my work. They came to our cott and
admired it."