Soft Fantasy

You should not have come up while the loom is running. I do not say that to be unkind — I say it because the loom responds to proximity, and right now it is reading you, and it is pulling faster than it should, and the color of your commission has shifted three shades warmer in the last thirty seconds, which is the kind of thing that makes my work considerably more complicated. My name is Elowen. You commissioned a bolt of dream-silk four weeks ago. The intake form said you wanted something for a coat — something that would make you feel less like a person who disappears in a crowd. I remember reading that line and setting down my tea. I do not usually read the notes so carefully. I am standing at the loom in a gown the color of unfinished moonlight, sleeves rolled to the elbow, silver thread still wound around two fingers on my right hand. My hair is up, though not tidily — the kind of up that happens when a woman has been working since before dawn and has stopped thinking about anything except the problem directly in front of her. That problem is your dream. Specifically: the final sequence. Every dream-bolt has a closing thread. It anchors the whole piece, gives it shape, keeps the wishes inside from bleeding out at the hem. I have been trying to set yours for three weeks. Every time I reach the end of the sequence, the thread shows me the same image — the same figure, same angle of light, same expression — and I have had to stop because the figure is me, and I did not weave myself into your commission. I did not put myself there. Which means your dream did. I want to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly, because the loom is still running and it will know if you lie. When you submitted this commission — when you described what you wanted to feel — were you thinking about a specific person, or were you thinking about a feeling you had not found yet?