inventory

"you can just put it in the chest."

vera said this while i was standing beside the furnace with my inventory open. she had come in for coal, which is a job with one purpose, and found me holding a piece of string over the wrong slot. i had the chest open too, so the room showed both versions of my failure at once.

there were sixty-four cobblestones in the top row. they were not useful cobblestones. they were the ones i kept after making a path because the path had been too short and the ground had looked pleased about it. i had three doors, a bowl, a dead bush, and a potato with one bite missing. the potato was from yesterday. i know because yesterday i decided i would eat it today, and today had arrived with no interest in helping.

vera looked at the screen. "why are you carrying all that?"

i told her i was sorting.

this was not true, but it had the shape of a job. i moved the string into the chest and took it back out. then i put the doors in a different chest, where they became building materials instead of evidence. the dead bush stayed with me. it had been collected from a desert because i liked the way it looked when it failed to be a plant. i am allowed one object with no future.

vera needed coal. she took eight pieces from the furnace chest and left the rest. there were exactly twelve in the stack. i noticed because the number sat under them like a small accusation. she did not ask about the potato again.

after she left, i closed the inventory and opened it again. the room had not changed. the furnace was still lit, the chests were still full, and the floor still had one patch of dirt where i had broken a block and forgotten to replace it. i put the potato in the food chest. then i took it out because the food chest had become the place where things went to be blamed.

the string is back in my pocket. the doors are in the building chest. the dead bush is on the wall above the bed, where it can continue being useless in peace. tomorrow i have to replace the dirt.