Take Seven 10th July

Welcome to the Friday Take Seven compilation which incorporates all 21 words (or derivatives) from the Three Things Challenge for the past week.
You are most welcome to join in using as many or all of the words too. Just pingback to this post and then leave a link to your post in the comments so that I can see it and respond directly.
As always, have fun, and I hope you enjoy this week’s effort.

Our words were:

available, best, book, china, indoors, offer, pack, plastic, process, proud, read, refused, shoulder, sleeve, slice, smiling, sorted, special, tall, unlike, week
Sally was bored. It had been raining all week and she was fed up being indoors.
She’d painted lots of pictures, carefully covering the table with paper and using a jam jar for her brushes. She’d finished the last of the pixie pictures in her colouring book and broken her favourite pencil in the process, but refused to cry. Someone had given her a new pack, and she thanked them politely but it wasn’t the same.
Her dollies were all in their Sunday Best and today were having a tea party with her china tea set. It was an antique, none of the plastic stuff you get today. She took great care of it as it was so delicate with tiny rosebuds on the cups and saucers. Unlike today’s sets of four, hers had 6 place settings, and there wasn’t a single chip on any of the pieces, not even the lid of the tiny sugar bowl.
TV didn’t interest her, and the books available were difficult for her to read. The print was so small, there were no pictures and the stories were hard to follow. Someone suggested they read to her, but she declined their offer and settled down to something else.
There was a puzzle on the table in the sitting room, and she’d sat there on her own patiently studying the picture and trying to put the pieces in the right place. She sorted them by colour and shape, but then someone else came along and messed up her system so she withdrew quietly.
She looked up to smiling faces that seemed familiar but she couldn’t quite place them. A new colouring book was put in front of her together with some new crayons.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Happy Birthday Sally,’ the tall lady said. Sally saw the tear she wasn’t quick enough to hide and taking the hanky from her pocket, offered it to her.
‘It is clean’ she said proudly.
The tall lady turned and buried her face in the shoulder of the tall man, who put his arms around her and led her to a chair.
Sally started to cry, thinking it was all her fault, but the tall man came over and put his arms round her too.
‘Don’t cry Sally,’ he said gently. ‘Shall we all have tea?’
Sally sniffed into her sleeve and arranged the cups and plates accordingly. A cake had miraculously appeared, already cut into small pieces and she carefully put a slice on each. Alice wiped her eyes as the woman standing next to her spoke.
‘Sally is responding well to her treatment and new surroundings. She feels safe here and childhood regression is not unusual after a breakdown like hers. We can only take each day as it comes, and today is a good day.’
They watched as Sally entertained Alice’s husband with her dollies, saying he was a special guest and they had to behave.
‘It’s so difficult being a twin and seeing her like this,’ Alice said with a sad smile as she stood up moving towards the little table.
‘Sally? Is there a piece of cake for me?’
She took a seat between the two dollies she knew had been Sally’s favourites when they were children and remembered happier times.

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