A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)

by Becky Chambers

welcome comfort, for without it, you cannot stay strong.

If you’re focused on moving from sign to sign, there’s no opportunity for happy accidents.

But as they tried to connect to what had once been so captivating, they felt nothing but yawning absence. A void where they’d once been filled. Dex reached up and held on to the bear pendant hanging around their neck. They’d spent too much time around tired folks to not recognize the same condition in themself. They were running up against a wall, and it didn’t matter whether they understood where the wall had come from, or what it was made of. The only way to get through it was to stop trying, for a while. So, they would not make tea in Stump. They would not make tea anywhere unless they really, truly felt like it.

“I’m here to meet humanity, and these people you’ve described are just as much a part of it as you are. I wouldn’t be doing a very good job of pursuing my quest if I only welcomed the parts that were fun.”

“I’ve never noticed it before,” they said, and this bothered them. They’d grown up around there. They’d ridden this road dozens of times. The pattern of the trees was spectacularly obvious, now that they were observing it, but it had always been the backdrop to Dex. The wallpaper. They’d never been looking for it. Now they couldn’t see anything else.

It was always a strange thing, coming home. Coming home meant that you had, at one point, left it and, in doing so, irreversibly changed. How odd, then, to be able to return to a place that would always be anchored in your notion of the past. How could this place still be there, if the you that once lived there no longer existed? Yet at the same time, in complete contradiction, seeing that said place had changed in your absence was nothing if not surreal. Dex felt this as they approached the road leading to their family’s farm, just as they felt every time they made the trip. The road was the same, but the fence had been mended. The field was the same, but the greyberry bushes had been cut down to the root. The farm was a place where Dex knew they would always be welcome but never in the same way as before they left; a place they knew intimately and no longer knew at all.

“When was the last time you really enjoyed tea service, Sibling Dex?” The sun had sunk to a bare sliver above the horizon, and Dex stared at it as closely as they dared. “When you made it for me,” they said quietly. “At the hermitage. It made me feel … like I wanted to make other people feel. It felt like the reason I wanted to do this in the first place.” They clasped their hands together between their knees and focused on them. “Do you remember what you said when we were there, about how nothing needs a purpose? How all living things are allowed to just exist, and we don’t have to do more than that?” Mosscap nodded. “I do, yes.” Dex pressed their lips together. “That’s the heart of my faith, Mosscap. That is what I am saying to everyone who comes to my table. I say it out loud, all the fucking time. You don’t have to have a reason to be tired. You don’t have to earn rest or comfort. You’re allowed to just be. I say that wherever I go.” They threw a hand toward their wagon, its wooden sides emblazoned with the summer bear. “It’s painted on the side of my home! But I don’t feel like it’s true, for me. I feel like it’s true for everyone else but not me. I feel like I have to do more than that. Like I have a responsibility to do more than that.” “Why?” Mosscap said. “Because I’m good at something,” Dex said. “I’m good at something that helps other people. I worked really hard to be able to do it, and I benefited from the labor and love of others while I did so. I’m able to d...