adventures in yarning

"How do you knit something with paws?" Duskie asks, looking at the total and utter mess of a blanket he somewhat transmuted a whole ball of yarn into. "And with claws?!"

"... I don't even know how to knit with human hands! And I've had those for 22 years! Why did you even think you could just pick up a ball of yarn and some needles and knit a perfectly good blanket you'd probably just eat anyways like the weirdo you are!?"

It's got to be something natural to cats, right!?... Right?

Duskie looks down at his messed up blanket, and a tear sheds from his eye. He runs at and starts attacking the blanket, tearing it to shreds with his claws as he slides on over the floor atop it, leaving a mess of string everywhere.

"Everyone else is making blankets! I don't want to miss out on another festival after, well... that incident! With the Girl Exile Guy!"

Duskie was partying shortly after the Bloom Festival when he got lost and fell into a really deep hole.

THUMP!

"Ow!" Duskie got up off the ground and brushed the dirt off of himself. "Where am I?"

"Welcome to Girl Exile." A large shadowy head popped out from the clouds.

"But I'm a boy!"

"No, you are a girl." The head said. "And any attempt to say otherwise is you enforcing your reality upon me, and I will not stand for that."

"That's bullshit! I'm the only one who gets to say whether or not I'm a boy, girl, neither, both, kinda both, kinda one, some other alien xenogender, some gender thats just bugs, whatever, and I say I'm a boy!"

The head just glared at him. "You are a girl."

"Fuck youuuuuuuuuu!" Duskie skipped away from the big talking head, and stumbled upon an actual girl.

The actual girl was also, surprisingly, a cat. Not a ruptour, a cat, with fur blonder than Duskie's own sandy blond and a white marking that swallowed up her legs, stomach, and the underside of her fluffy tail, alongside a blue hood with white fluff and a bandana with a red heart. Oh, but don't forget the red halo, nor her sad red eyes.

"Hey!" Duskie said. "Let's get out of here!"

"Is there even a way out of here for me?" The cat asked. "Maybe in ten years, maybe I'll die here, maybe-"

"Come on!" Duskie smiled at her. "Let's find a way out together! What kind of sick bastard would let this place exist without a way out of it?"

"The kind of sick bastard that'd design me to suffer 'just right'." The cat sighed. "... But I'll go with you. I don't want to stay here. I don't want to die. Please, find us a way out."

And then he did, of course, and the cat (whose name was Em, short for Emily) ran off, laughing, with tears that appeared to finally be from joy for the first time in a long while, and it was literally two weeks after the Bay Festival and for some reason barely anyone had figurines for sale.

"If I don't collect all the Frost Festival figurines twice over to make up for this, I'm going to cry!"

"... Wasn't this about you being bad at knitting?"

"Oh fuck, you're right!" Duskie runs at the door, bursting it open, and dashes outside, sliding on the icy paths, ears swiveling like, idk, a windmill? (Duskie does not know what satellites are), looking for something to point to.

"Wha- Duskie, what? Duskie- Duskie- Ok, I may have done something like this before to Straybow but that was dif- Duskie-"

Not listening to his older brother's words, Duskie instead keeps sliding until he encountered a flyer saying COMMUNAL WEAVING SESSIONS (we have figurine boxes for some reason.)

"See, Knight!?" Duskie yells out loud, starling a nearby ruptour. "It is related! All of it! And I can't get figurines unless I can weave, and-"

"You want to weave?" A random faian asks. "We have group weaving sessions here, and we're all willing to teach newbies- look, you've got the poster for it right there!"

Duskie looks to and from the random faian.

"... Oh. Yeah. I suppose we could have always asked for help."

"So what's one thing that's interesting about you, Duskie?"

"Yeah! I want to get to know the newbie!"

"I... well..." Duskie looks down at the needles in his paws. "I have two brothers!"

"What about being from a different world?"

THEN THEY'D ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT IT!

"SAYING YOU HAVE AMNESIA?! MENTIONING THE BROTHERS THING SECOND?!"

dont make me ball Duskie thinks loudly to Knight, staring at the yarn ball.

"... ball?"

BALL

"You have brothers?" A faian says. "You're so lucky! I was an only child..."

"Ugh, siblings are a pain whenever you're a kid." Another faian scoffs as she speaks. "Suppose it's fair. I was quite a pain to them all back. Now we're even as adults, isn't that grand?"

"I bet you're the little sibling, aren't you!?"

"Y- Yeah, I- I am!" Duskie puffs up his chest and drops the needles to the floor. "I have two older brothers and sometimes they're a little mean to me but they never mean to make me cry!"

"Do not lump me in with Knight, Duskfall. I never speak to you in that manner."

Really? I can't recall...

"What was your childhood like?"

FUCK. 

I'M GONNA BALL

"DUSKIE DON'T DO IT"

Instead of answering that question, Duskie bats away the ball of yarn nearby him out of a window and jumps out of a different window, wherein he begins to slide on- you guessed it!- ice.

"DUSKIE WHAT ARE YOU DOING"

I'M BALLING

"I DONT KNOW WHAT THAT IS BUT THAT HAS TO INVOLVE MORE THAN ONE BALL-"

Duskie crashes into a rock and the impact makes him fly up into the air and do a spin. 

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

He lands in a thick pile of snow and looks up to see himself face to face with another faian.

"Hey." The other faian says. "It's ok if you don't want to talk about what your childhood was like."

"IT'S NOT THAT!" Duskie yells. "I'm from another world technically- but I have amnesia about it so any questions you ask- I have to get the answers from my brothers that live in my head!"

"Oh!" The faian blinks. "Why didn't you just say this?"

Instead of answering, Duskie collapses.

"Do you still want to weave with us, by the way?"

And then he perks up, ready.

"Yayyyyyyy!" Duskie smiles, looking at his currently tiny blanket. "I can do this now!"

"So do you 'ball' often?"

"No, but a girl I met by the name of Emily said something about 'balling' and I remembered her recently." Duskie looks at his needles. "I wonder how she's doing now?"

"Emily? I've never met anyone with that name. She sounds like an interesting girl."

"She is! Even if Girl Exile hurt her a lot..."

"I can't believe you shrugged that guy off. WE'RE TRANSGENDER. how the FUCK-"

I said what I said! I'm the only one who gets to choose if I'm a boy or a girl and I chose that I'm a boy!

"words like his usually hit different to someone who hears them all the time-"

well unlike you i've never heard them before because everyone in faia knows better than to say 'NUH UH' about your own gender unlike That guy!!

"... 'Girl Exile'? Do I... want to know?"

"No, not really."