Pushed away: Alfalfa

It functions without a working signal for its own need, so the request never gets made, not out of pride but because the information arrives long after the moment it would have been useful. A childhood spent being self-sustaining and non-requiring, often while running some part of the household, meant the internal instrument that registers depletion was never calibrated, and an uncalibrated instrument reads nothing rather than reading wrong. What it asks for is to check the reading at a fixed hour rather than waiting for it to announce itself.

By the time I notice I needed something, it's usually a fortnight too late.

It echoes the crane wife at the loom, working through the night behind a door nobody was allowed to open, taking the material out of her own body and saying nothing about the cost. The form implies a task: to open the door before the weaving is finished.