#and Dr. Gabaldon is into fibre arts she should know better

[yarnings]

Mellow the moonlight to shine is beginning

There was renewed discussion about the lack of Bree/Roger fics. I may have tripped and fallen, hitting the keyboard on the way down and this popped out.

As my frivolity suggests, this has not been beta’d, edited or even checked against the timeline. Any and all mistakes and places where things don’t make sense should be assumed to be errors that I would appreciate having my attention drawn to so I can fix them.

Roger groaned, tired from trying to keep up with his father-in-law all day, and walked through the cabin door. To his disappointment, the table had no food on it, being covered instead with Bree’s workbook and a bunch of loose sheets full of sketches and notes in Bree’s distinctive hand. As he stood, blinking to help his eyes adjust to the relative dimness inside, he noticed a pile of charcoal- smeared boards discarded beside Bree’s chair, presumably her even-rougher work that she did before consigning designs and calculations to expensive paper. It wasn’t the first time that Bree had managed to carve out some free time from the toil of trying to take care of the house entirely by hand, and spent the afternoon designing. However, and Roger frowned as he noticed that the hearth was cold, normally when she did this there was a pot of stew ready for the evening meal.

Just then Roger heard a noise outside, and turned back, squinting his newly-adjusted eyes against the bright sunlight. Bree was coming back from the big house carrying Jemmy, with a basket over her other arm. He stepped out to meet her and relieve her of her burdens. She handed him the basket with a kiss as Jemmy snuggled himself more securely against her side.

“He’s being a little clingy since I neglectfully abandoned him to be spoiled by Mrs. Bug all afternoon. Apparently he’s worried I’ll leave him to get stuffed full of sweets again.”

Roger wisely didn’t say anything, and peeked instead into the basket, finding a loaf of fresh bread inside.

“They were firing the big oven, and I was offered a loaf of bread so that I wouldn’t have to bother with the dutch oven today. I figured we could have sandwiches for dinner tonight. We have some pickle and I mixed up a bit of mustard to go with the sausage.”

Roger’s mouth watered at the thought. He resolutely pushed memories of sandwiches he’d had in the twentieth century from his mind as he followed Bree inside. He wasn’t about to suggest that mayonnaise would be a nice addition, as he had no desire to find himself assigned to the job of whisking it up himself.

Once inside, Roger washed up and set to slicing the bread while Bree picked up her notes and stuck them on the bed in a haphazard pile for organizing later. Jemmy was bribed with a chunk of hard sausage to sit in his chair. He gnawed on the sausage and banged his horn cup on the table as he watched his parents prepare the meal. In addition to the pickle and mustard, Bree brought out some butter and a small basket of greens that her mother had thinned from the garden that morning. Despite his enthusiasm for the meal, Jem had clearly had a full day of running around with his mother in the morning and exploring the big house in the afternoon, because part way through his eyes closed and he narrowly missed falling asleep in his dinner. Bree coaxed him into enough wakefulness to get ready for bed. When she tucked him into his cot he didn’t even make a token protest, just closed his eyes and went to sleep. Roger watched her from the table, not feeling energetic enough to take advantage of Jem’s early bedtime, but still appreciative of how she moved and the occasional tantalizing glimpses of skin that he got.

Bree looked up and caught Roger’s gaze, giving him a smile that celebrated everything they were to each other. She came back to the table, and they sat together for a while, finishing their meal in silence, enjoying simply being in each other’s presence with no urgent tasks to draw their attention away. Roger broke the silence first.

“What were you working on this afternoon? You seem to have made some progress.”

“I want to make a treadle spinning wheel. You know the kind where you can sit down, and work a foot pedal to spin the machine, rather than needing to walk back and forth like Marsali is always doing?”

Roger was vaguely aware of the fact that spinning was done on the ridge, and had a fuzzy memory of seeing what he persisted in thinking of as “modern” spinning wheels on a school trip to the museum as a child. He nodded anyhow, secure in the knowledge that Bree would give enough detail in her explanation to fill in any gaps in his understanding.

“The thing is that there’s a reason you have to walk back and forth with the wheels now. I could put a treadle on it easily, but it wouldn’t work. The hard part is spinning the yarn. You have to walk back and forth, because it’s done in two stages, so unless I can get it down to a single continuous process there’s no point.”

“Well, can ye?”

“I know it’s possible, that’s the hardest part. I’ve seen one at a historic site before, and while they didn’t go into details, I don’t think it was a very complex thing to make, so we should be able to do it here.”

Roger smiled at Bree’s confidence. She never accepted the idea that there might be something too difficult for her. Of course, that was why there were here.

He gathered what dishes there were, and gave them a wash in cold water while Bree cleared the leftovers into their pantry. By the time he was done, she had retrieved her work and spread it back over the now-clean table. But rather than trying to keep working, she just organized her notes to put away until she had another chance to work on the design.

By unspoken agreement, when she and Roger had both finished and put everything away, they lay together in the growing darkness. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close as they drifted off to sleep.