by Minerva Agatha Zipporah on April 22nd, 2012, 1:13 am
52nd Day of Spring, 512 AV
Minerva Agatha Zipporah, known as 'Tock' to her friends, had no idea how long she'd been standing in the line. In fact, she'd forgotten she was even IN line. She was working, and when she was working, the rest of the world tended to melt away.
All through her time in line, the people around her had been annoyed by the distracting sound of metal on wood. She had taken a small hand-held drill from among her grandfather's tools, and used it to drill a hole in the handle of a newly bought hammer. Wood shavings from the hole were all over her vest, and scattered across the floor going all the way back to where she had first entered the line.
Once the hole was drilled, she had stuck the hammer into one of the loops on her tool belt. Then she had pulled out a wooden rod and started carving it. The exact center of the rod, for a width equal to that of the hammer handle, had been sanded and smoothed. Then she had begun carving screw treads into the rod on either side of the center. This was a careful and precise process, and had occupied her attention for the otherwise boring hours she would have spent uselessly standing in line.
When the man at the desk called her forward, she didn't even hear him. She was too focused on her work, humming softly to herself as she carved. The person behind her in line had to nudge her forward. She looked up at the man behind he desk and said, "Oy, hold this!" She leaned across the desk and stuck one end of the rod into his hand to hold it steady. She pulled out the modified hammer and slid it into the rod, and with her other hand started trying to fit a nut onto the freshly carved treads. She grumbled in frustration when it didn't quite fit.