Troilus and Cressida

It had been, what, seven, eight years? Must have been, on the dot, because Minoth now had in his possession no less and no more than seven fountain pens, one for each day of the week. Oh, sure, he'd had other specimens in the lineup off and on over that same span of time, cheaper varieties of unrefillable implements, but these were the real beauties.

These were the ones that Addam had given him, of course. These were the ones that would have Minoth doubling back to an unfriendly campsite if he saw them misplaced, had him double-tying the pouchstrings to the nearest available fastener both inside and outside the pocket, and even demanded a weekly polishing.

Well, okay. They didn't demand. But their suggestions were sure alluring.

That was Minoth, the self-contained man who did everything at a very high level, and tried only to have to do it once. He'd tell his stories aloud, to others but mostly to himself, and he'd work at the wording until it was just so in his head, incessantly, until it was finally ready to be penned into history.

Consequently, Minoth really didn't use his fancy pens all that often, and certainly not to doodle.

Meanwhile, there was Addam. Addam reveled in the iterative process of creativity, just as he loved to tend to the needs of well-rotated crops. If he slipped up, he probably definitely wouldn't tear out the whole page and make a private show of crumpling it, no matter how thick the stock. No, he'd just have a chuckle and a shake of his head, cross out the erroneous entry, and move on.

This was how he approached his pottery, as well. If the wall slumped and faltered, he'd just draw his hands gently in and begin again, from nothing exactly as he'd originally begun.

Minoth couldn't touch that, couldn't change himself. What he could do, though, was dig up a fresh supply of clay for Addam to render joyfully sculpted, quotidianly.