There are not many shops in Wyatt. There is no Hawker's Alley, and I could not find a general Merchant and Mender on my map. If we need to do our own repairs we need to find dark matter. We need to look farther for harvesting.

I went back to the "thrift shop" where Husband bought my overcoat. Husband says everything in there is used, like in the "pawn shop". But the pawn shop was mostly jewelry and I think tools, while the thrift shop was more cloth.

Everything in the thrift shop was different. There were not two of anything. All the clothing was different sizes and shapes and colors and ornaments. It would take a lot of recipes to make them all. Perhaps different makers have different recipes.

There was a rack with some jewelry, some pendants with chains, some rings. They were also different, though there was a group of cross-shaped pendants that looked similar. I do not understand why they would be different. If I make fifty of a ring, those fifty rings look the same, though some might be higher quality than others. Perhaps the makers of these were not very skilled.

There were some pillows in a pile. I thought maybe pillows would help with sleeping in the tent, but they were small and we could not afford many of them with our pretzel money. I asked the merchant if he knew what was inside them.

"Well, let's see...this one's feathers. You can tell by the pointy bits, see? And this one's foam rubber."

"What is foam rubber?"

"Uh, well, it's...you know...foam rubber."

"What about this blanket? What is inside of it?"

"The quilt? Those are usually filled with rag."

"Rag?"

"...Leftover pieces of cloth?"

I bought the "foam rubber" pillow and took it back to the Hartman house. I tried desynthesizing it and got cotton cloth and a wind shard, but no "foam rubber". I could perhaps get foam rubber if I desynthesized enough pillows, but we do not have a lot of money for pillows.

I did go back and bought one more. I asked where I could find more pillows and quilts.

"Well, May might have some at her store, but you'll do better hitting the wall mart in Stillwater."

"Wall mart?"

"Big store. Really big store."

I did not desynthesize the second pillow. I cut it open with a dagger. Inside was a soft lump, like sandwich bread but it did not stay squeezed. When I looked closely at it it looked as if it was made of many little bubbles. That must be the "foam".

I had never seen this sort of thing before and did not know how to make it. I thought Husband was at the library so I called his linkpearl. "Husband?"

Yes, my love.

"How do you make foam rubber?"

Uh...you make rubber with bubbles in it. What kind of foam rubber?

"There are different kinds?"

Yeah, there's the stiff stuff you use for, like, floor mats, and the softer stuff you make pillows with.

"The softer stuff."

'Kay, lemme check wikipedia...Think that'll be latex. And something you mix in to make the bubbles...they call it a "foaming agent". Either it makes bubbles from heat, or it gives them off chemically. They list sulpher...you probably don't want to mess with that...and, hm. Baking powder.

"What is baking powder?"

People use it in bread and stuff. Probably some in the kitchen. You're going to try to make foam rubber?

"Yes."

Okay, try rubber and a wind shard, or maybe latex and a wind and fire shard. Maybe add the baking powder if nothing else works.

"I will try."

I'll be home in an hour or so. We can work on it then. Love you.

"Love you too."

We say that so easily sometimes.

A recipe with rubber and a wind shard made a sheet of something that was softer than rubber by itself, but not as soft as a pillow.

The recipes with the latex were more complicated. Not using a fire shard made a sticky mess that was much bigger than what I started with. Using too many fire shards made something that was hard and stiff on the outside. The first time I added baking powder it made things explode and I had to clean the kitchen.

I do not know why I could write a recipe that did not work. Or it did work, and now I have a recipe for exploding latex.

I did not get a pillow made before Husband got back. He looked over my results, including the hard on the outside one. "I did this to a potato once. Three hours in a campfire."

"I have not made foam rubber."

"Wait, what's this?" He picked up the rubber sheet and squeezed it in places.

"That was rubber and a wind shard. It is not good for a pillow."

"No, but it's great for rubber mats. Floor mats, exercise mats, yoga mats, stadium cushions..."

"What about in the tent?"

"...Oh, hell yeah. We put down a few of these in the tent and we'll be a lot less sore in the morning."

"We should try it."

"Absolutely."

"Tonight."

"...Okay. Anywhere you had in mind?"

"How about Stillwater?"