The movement stopped sometimes, and then went on. Fianlly it stopped and didn't start again. The linen rustled in anticipation. Would the hands take it out now? No. The sack was thrown into a dark corner, and there it lay.
They waited.
Strange sounds and smells surrounded them. Animals rustled and snuffled nearby. In the middle of the darkest darkness, there were frightening cries and groans. The cloth huddled, and waited.
Then -- it was happening! Hands opened the sack and drew out the cloth. But these were not the hands they knew! These were large hands, rough and hairy. Lina shivered fearfully.
That louder, deeper voice, the one they had heard before, said, "Is this it?"
And there was the voice they knew! "Yes."
Their beloved hands took them then, and unfolded them and smoothed them. Lina had never seen a look on the face like the look she saw now. It shimmered with such a love that she felt she would be happy to be even an old brown sack, if it made that face glow like that.
The hands spread the fine linen gently on a surface that rustled and poked. Then they laid something on the cloth. All the threads felt a shiver of excitement. It was a person! A tiny, red, wrinkled person who moved and kicked and made funny little sounds. The hands wrapped the cloth around and around the tiny body. Lina forgot all her worries and all her past. Suddenly nothing seemed more important, more exciting, no purpose could be greater than the one she now recognized. She and all the other fibers, working together, had been created for this one thing - to keep that soft, downy baby skin from touching the rough, scratchy hay. Lina snuggled close between the hands and the baby.
She was content.
The End
Repairing the Breach,
Debbonnaire
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