“Scissors, fetch me another bolt of whipcord, my knees are locked up again.”

Scissors, Madella’s assistant, pulled himself up off his cozy pallet and timidly made his way across the splintered floor to the heaping rag pile in a corner of the workshop. At this time of night Bobbin the tom would be curled up on top of the cloth mound, sleeping.

Madella, sensing her new apprentice’s fear of her (yes, vicious) feline, grabbed a heavy clog, rocked her chair as far forward as she could and beaned the nasty creature right upside it’s head. “Scram Bobbin!”

After receiving the dark heavy cloth from Scissors, she told him to fetch himself dry bread and a chunk of hard cheese, a snack she’d prepared, wrapped in brown paper.

Once quiet and threadbare, Madella’s shop saw more business than it ever had. And she made only one thing, eye patches.

The strange beings came from out of the high air, their vision severely impaired. They complained of some disease on her planet. Madella didn’t care, they arrived uninvited.