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

by Becky Chambers

But then again, perhaps it was a good thing for someone to appreciate the craftsmanship of a backroads highway or a quick-printed road sign. The creation of such objects took just as much work and thought as anything else, yet garnered little praise from those who saw them every day. Maybe giving such things credit where credit was due was the perfect job for someone who wasn’t a person at all.

The water pressure was nothing more than decent, and the temperature was only as hot as the wagon’s solar coating could coax from deep-forest sunlight, but even so, it felt to Dex like the finest luxury in the world.

“But that’s the point of a shrine, or an idol, or a festival. The gods don’t care. Those things remind us to stop getting lost in everyday bullshit. We have to take a sec to tap into the bigger picture. That’s easier said than done for a lot of folks—you’ll see.”

Such service had made Dex feel electrified, peaceful, close to their god and to their people and the world they all shared. Nothing was preventing Dex from doing that again. They knew how. It wasn’t that they didn’t care or didn’t want to. They wanted. They still loved performing tea service—or at least, they loved what it had been. 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.

“Nobody should be barred from necessities or comforts just because they don’t have the right number next to their name.”

Dex threw Mosscap a look and lowered their voice as far as it would go. “What kind of books does Ms. Amelia collect?” “Oh, entirely pornography,” Mosscap said. “It was very educational.”

“Well, that’s the nice thing about trees.” Mosscap put its hands on its hips as it looked around. “They’re not going anywhere. You can take all the time you need to get to know them.”

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?

The cohesion of everyone focusing on the new arrivals did not take long to disintegrate, as Dex knew would be the case. A timer went off in the kitchen, one kid took another’s toy, the dropped argument was remembered, the dogs started biting one another’s faces, and so on, and so forth. One by one, folks splintered off to attend to whatever preparations had occupied them before, leaving only those who weren’t as concerned by things left undone: the kids.

The kids were silent, at first, until one of them summoned some bravery. “Can you fly?” he asked. “No,” Mosscap said. “Can you fight a bear?” asked another. “I haven’t tried,” Mosscap said. “Why would I want to?” “Does anything eat robots?” said one. “No,” Mosscap said. “Could we eat a robot?” laughed one who thought herself hilarious. Mosscap’s eyes shifted with mild concern. “… What?”

The spot Dex knew had no name. The road leading to it was unmarked and in poor repair, barely extant the farther they went along. It was the sort of place you went when you were a teenager in possession of a bottle of wine you shouldn’t have and a few friends who would all share your regret about varied decisions by morning.

“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 do what I do because everybody else built a world in which I could do it. If I just say ‘Thanks for all of that, but I’m running off to the woods now,’ how is that fair? That doesn’t sit right with me, not at all. I’d just be a leech if I did that.”