I've always been good with my hands. Or so I like to tell myself.
It's just that...when I get a piece of wood in my hands, it seems to just tell me what it wants done, you know? It needs a bit more smoothing over here...use the plane a bit on the left, jigsaw it right here to get the curve just so...
And I've been working on this piece for awhile. Anya says it's silly to do this when we can just go to the store, but it's something that I've been wanting to do.
It's almost done too. I've been staining it for awhile, getting it so that the grain is almost matching that one crayon color — sepia, I think. Yeah, that dark brown that looks good. The wood's a good strong oak, and I think that this'll last a while, hopefully. I thought about using pine, but you know, pine's so soft...if you touch it, it seems to dent...
When I told the rest of the gang, they sort of all looked at me as if I was crazy, you know? Because Xander Harris would never do a thing like this. Xander Harris always screwed up things, and Willow would always have to remember when we were making our Seventh Grade English dioramas and I decided that "A Christmas Carol" could be done with Star Wars figures and just as I managed to get them all in the proper place, I tripped and bent my wookies.
People say the best revenge is living well, and I guess that's right, because I know that this is probably one of the best things I've done. We're living well, and all the stories about what a screw up I am don't mean anything, because this one thing — it's perfect.
And I wish they could see that. That marrying Anya, that having a family...
That building this cradle.
It's perfect.
This Angel/Buffy the Vampire Slayer story was written by Kate Bolin. If you liked it, there's plenty more at http://www.dymphna.net/fanfic/. And you can feedback her at dymphna@dymphna.net.