He woke amidst the clamour of the camp in predawn feeling at least vaguely seduced. The women and daughter, who'd slept together on a cot on the other side of a cloth partition from him, were no longer in the tent when he arose.
He suited himself up sliding his suspenders over his shoulders and fixing his buckle with one hand. Everything took more time, more care, more attention. Nothing was just at hand anymore. But the tinkerer had built him new logics into every stitch and seam. Everything was thought of, or could be thought of. All this just to put on his pants.
He emerged from the tent as the first light etching the clouds on the horizon. There was ceaseless bustle around the camp. Having only seen it heretofore in darkness he drank in the many tents and carts. It was a collection of peasant life from seemingly all eras. The camp was a motley collage of canvas tents from a lonely military lean-to to roman imperial.
She caught him out of his revelry. Coming back toward the tent with a bucket and bowl of something steaming.
They had morning pleasantries as he ate. Her daughter was off fetching water for the camp along with the other children.
-Everyone pitches is with what they can do. You're bound to be able to do something we have a use for. We have use for most everything.
He was too much interested in taking in the world he found himself in now to worry much. He threw himself into the work that one of her mates purposed to him. Carts needed mending and he was something of a veritable tool himself.
With the work the tinkerer had put into him, he fancied himself somewhat mechanically inclined as well. A bit of a tinkerer, it not totally prepared to take on such a title.
