The crate was crudely constructed and almost as dirty inside as it was on its mud-caked exterior. The heavy smell of machine oil clung to the rough slats of wood. Inside was every object Meera had ever brought into the house, all piled recklessly. Acorns that used to sit in the windowsill, seashells from last year’s trip to the seaside, a mound of silk scarves and larger cloths that used to hang from the corner of the bed, school uniforms and a couple damp towels, broken dresser drawers, even the bedroom trashcan had been tossed inside, leaving its former contents spilling into the pile of clothing. 

Meera flailed her one good arm helplessly, clad only in the too-loose bathrobe and the purple cast jutting out, and the cool fog blew past her, the morning sun not yet able to burn it away. She shivered. In different circumstance, the cool air on bare skin might feel good, but out of her control it felt only painful.

She reached in and dug for a moment, trying to reach any clothing that might go together. Dick stopped her gently. 

“Here. Let me bring it inside. I think I can manage it.”

She stood helplessly by, watching Dick painstakingly wiggle the crate toward the cottage alone. She wasn’t used to standing by and letting herself be helped. He finally managed to get it through the door and close out the blowing fog. The crate looked even more wrong indoors.

“Shall we tip it out? I don’t think we can make it any more jumbled.”

Meera nodded.

Dick tipped the box, and the contents spilled out like a silken rainbow had crashed into a department store and someone had carelessly scooped up the pieces.

The smell of machine oil was more intense now, and the deeper recesses of the crate held what looked like damp sawdust. The clothing that had been tossed in first was saturated in it, now looking permanently wet, and a great brown stain spread aross parts of it. Loose papers, covered in Meera’s hasty scrawl of notes from school showed the stain even more clearly, a rusty splotch and green-brown oily smear permeating all of it.

Meera had never intended for her first night spent alone with a boy she decided she cared rather a lot for would start with a broken arm and end with every posession being transplanted as carelessly as possible into a heap in that same boy’s living room. She wasn’t much for romantic ideas and didn’t have grand plans, but a waking nightmare with excellent company wasn’t among the plans she’d made, either.

Dick quickly picked the oiliest parts away from the rest, the loose sawdust from the bottom of the box doing its part to contain the mess, too, absorbing the worst of the oil from the flood.