'By Golden Threads' by Ellen Grace

Saffie?

Phoibe had red hair and green eyes and freckled cheeks.

Saffie?

Dottie stood off to the side, smirking.

Saffie!

Phoibe stepped closer.

“Saffron!”

Her mother’s voice wasn’t what caught her attention, but the clang of metal on stone. Her tweezers were lying on the floor. Saffron lifted her glasses onto the top of her head and reached down to pick them up. As she rose, she knocked her head on the underside of her work desk.

“Ow.”

Saffron rubbed at the sore spot on the top of her head while her mother righted the jostled equipment.

“Perhaps you should take a break,” her mother said.

Saffron considered protesting, but they both knew she could not work in this state. Whatever this state was.

Saffron went upstairs to her room and lay down on her bed without removing her clockwork foot. On the backs of her eyelids, she saw her: red hair, green eyes, freckled cheeks.

“Go to her.”

Saffron shoved herself up. Dottie was standing at the end of her bed. She had dark hair and olive skin and that smirk on her face.

Saffron groaned and slumped back down onto her bed.

“Go away.”

A thump sounded at Saffron’s window, and she jumped near out of her skin. She scrambled from her bed to look. On the street, with a stone in her hand, was Phoibe. Dottie stood next to her, whispering in her ear.

Saffron unlocked her window and pushed it open. Phoibe threw her stone to the ground. Dottie was nowhere to be seen.

“I cannot work!” she called.

Saffron looked to the uneven brickwork. “Can you climb?”

Phoibe beamed and leaped onto the side of the building, scaled it with ease. Saffron let her in her window and in her arms. Finally, she could concentrate. 

—Inspired by Sappho's “Sweet mother, I cannot weave..."