The Spoon
 

The first time I saw her trying to eat peas with a knife it opened the sluices--I was swamped by love & pity. Our people have been eating peas that way for centuries. But she'd only been here a few months. In her homeland people still eat with their hands. She was struggling to adapt, & her maladroitness touched me. When my brothers & I were replete, she was still frustrated, still famished. I made a silent vow that night to nourish her.  The next day I invented the spoon for her.
 

Six months later:

Peas in her hair, in her clothes & shoes. Peas underfoot and in all the nooks of our tent. She sat bent over the tray trying to line them up on the blade & bring it to her lips without spilling. She practiced for hours with a spirit level strapped to her wrist, rehearsing the fluid movement my people perform automatically. She scorned the prototype spoon which I'd forged for her in tin. Hid it in a drawer. In her eyes it was a badge of shame, a malefic talisman.
         I'd finish dinner and on a good night she'd have got maybe 6 peas into her mouth.  She refused to admit defeat.  I admired her persistence, but I'd slip out to go drinking with my brothers rather than have to listen to her cursing herself for her lack of coordination, & excoriating the peas for their tendency to roll.
 

Three years later :

For the hundredth time I rolled home at dawn to find her weeping silently above her empty plate, peas scattered about her, the knife in her listless hand. She was starving, wasting away. Something in me snapped. I grabbed her by the hair, whipped the spoon from the drawer and plunged it into her heart!

Six years later:

She'd put on weight and shaved her head. I was teetotal. We laughed about the past. The spoon had saved her life. Not that she was using it to eat with. She'd finally mastered the traditional technique. "But if that had been a knife, it would have gone in & you'd be a murderer."