Kitchen Curtains

Singed

Eve tried to cook breakfast for the both of them before Maran woke up.
It would have worked, too, except for one tiny detail: she cannot cook.
Maran wakes up to the scent of what can only be described as hot garbage spiced with a heaping portion of mint.
When he sneaks up behind her, not even he can identify the substance in the pan.
"Good morning!" Maran yells in her ear, lifting her from around the waist.
Eve shrieks and flails, "Maran, no! The food!" to no avail, as he wrestles her out of the kitchen and on his couch. "It's almost done!"
Maran laughs in her face. "The food's been done for a few damn years!"
"Hardly, the eggs needs two more--"
"Holy shit on toast, those are eggs?! They smell like a sewer!"
Eve scowls mightly.
Maran persists, "Eve. Eve, I love you, but we've talked about this - I'm the cook! You're shit at it!"
Maran scowls back, but it drops as the anxiety creeps in. "Shit. I'm so--!" He prepares for the shoe to drop. A year and a day, not including the outbound season: what will change now that her strategy has worked? Since she knows that he is hers, if only for a short while?
Eve's scowl drops at the same time, as she acquiesces with a self-conscious laugh, unaware of his aborted apology, “Yeah, sorry. Mama and the Siren's spoiled me.”
“Let me spoil you, too,” Maran stutters, reeling from the shot of anxiety induced adrenaline rush. He is enthralled, but... Nothing has changed?
“Only if you let me spoil you back.”
“You won't spoil me with food, I can tell you that much already."
"Bah!" Eve blows a raspberry at him.
"... Unless you mean what comes out my other end afterwards.”
He winces again, but she laughs.
Then the fire alarm goes off, far too late.
By the time the fire is out, Maran is left with a stinky house, a burned out pan, and a curtain which miraculously had only singed the bottom off.
"You know," Maran drawls. "Eggs aren't--"
"No," Eve groans, head down on the kitchen table in shame. "Don't."
Maran pats her head and says, instead of I told you so, "How about we eat out today?"

Loved

Maran keeps saying that he’ll replace the window curtain.
He never does.
She even catches him caressing it, weeks later, as if deep in thought.
“Don’t burn your eggs while you’re spacing out like that, you dork.”
Maran jumps, and then laughs, and then whips her with a kitchen towel.

Kept

When it comes time to actually change the curtains, Eve secretly squirrels it away and asks Oz to ground it, or to save it from decay.
Oz almost doesn’t (a burned curtain, seriously?), but she obeys when Eve retorts, “And? Mama, your quilts are dumpster diving scraps!”
Eve folds it and places it in her trunk, for safe keeping.

Type

Decor

Rarity

Extremely common household item turned into a one-of-a-kind keepsake

Condition

Poor, yet enduring

Material

Threadbare, singed cotton

Appearance

Light blue, small curtain. It used to have wavy white wave lines and a small cartoonish sailboat at the bottom, but nowadays all but the very top of the boat's sails are burned away

Context

Maran is discovering that his relationship with Eve is different (in a good way), but he's still playing out of the same handbook he's learned to survive. The morning Eve burned his curtains is the morning he finally starts to believe that things are good.