Bountiful Harvest

“I’ve never done something like this before,” Yared had said, and Tove had to bite his tongue not to say - Yeah, I figured. He wasn’t afraid of being rude — Yared wasn’t someone who would be upset about him being rude, anyway — he just thought that maybe it was a little insensitive, or a little too mean-spirited for his taste. After all, Tove and Yared weren’t close. Tove didn’t feel relaxed enough to tease him easily.

“It’s easy to learn,” he said instead because that was easier to say. “Here, look at this. Step one, you take the shears and cut here, at the stem,” Tove followed up his words with action, “And then there’s no step two because you’re done!”

It was only after the words had left his mouth that he thought — ah hell. What if it came out like he thought Yared was an idiot?

And yet, the brunette didn’t say anything. He just shrugged, took the other shears Tove owned — considerably older, but working nonetheless — and then he got to work. Tove thought about making a quip, probably something along the lines of “Careful that you don’t clip my tail off” or something like that, but then he’d thought better of it because, hell, two slights in two minutes would be just too much. So alright, Yared didn’t seem insulted at all, but Tove wasn’t a mind reader.

And he was judging the other man purely based on the scars marring his face, but it was Yared who had said: “Oh, I got these in a knife fight,” the night before like it wasn’t a big deal before. Like knife fights happened every other day. “Yeah,” he said when Tove hissed out a What?! “Nearly got my eye too. I’m very lucky, aren’t I?”

So, well, there it was. Yared was a guy who knew how to hold a knife. How to hurt someone with a knife, too, and Tove was worried about him, what, not knowing how to use shears? He’d just said he never harvested a pumpkin?

“You’re being lazy about this,” Yared commented somewhere from behind him. Tove hadn’t even realized he’d stopped collecting the pumpkins, nor did he realize that Yared was so far ahead of him. “Is this why you called me? So I’d do everything for you?”

“No!” Tove protested. “I did it for your experience!” A beat, and then: “And to carve the smiling faces in them! You’re— good with knives, and all that.” Oh no. Oh no. Why did he— Did he have to motion at Yared’s face when he said it, too? Oh, this was going to be the end of their new, tentative friendship.

Unless Yared laughed — and Yared had laughed.

“I think you give me way too much credit, Tove,” he said, and then he continued his way down the pumpkin patch. That was a good sign, then. Tove was going to make a pumpkin master out of him soon.