He learned quickly that fabric lied in different ways than copper. Pipes either held or leaked; satin pretended to behave and then shifted under his fingers at the last second, puckering along a curve he’d measured three times. On the third ruined bodice, he realized his hands were shaking—not from fatigue, but from the terror of destroying the last thing Ellen had worn as a promise. Amara’s first visit steadied him. She traced his chalk lines with a fingertip, correcting nothing at first, only nodding as if to say: this is hard, not impossible. When she finally spoke, her instructions were precise and merciless in the way only kindness can afford to be. “You’re fighting it,” she said. “You don’t bend fabric. You ask it.” He laughed once, roughly, but he listened. Night after night, his calloused fingers learned to coax instead of force, to rip out crooked seams without swearing, to start again when the blue flowers came out wrong, again and aga… Continues…