The lathe hummed beneath Jim's hands with a frequency his body recognized before his mind could catch up. Afternoon sunlight filtered through sawdust-clouded air, catching on the curves of the crib spindle taking shape beneath his borrowed expertise. The wood spoke to him in Sam's voice – here's where the grain wants to flow, here's where you need to ease up, here's where you can push deeper.
He'd been fighting these moments of muscle memory at first, but in the workshop, surrounded by tools that felt like old friends, it seemed pointless to resist. His hands knew things his brain had never learned – the perfect pressure to apply to the chisel, the exact angle for the smoothest cut, the way wood could be coaxed rather than forced into beauty.
The spindle finished with a flourish that was
