Review of “Tideline” (2007)
Elizabeth Bear (writer).
Read in 2021.
A battered military robot befriends a small human, likely a child, and learns how to make prettier necklaces.
A lot of the emotion recalls Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō (1994). Bear could have used the higher technology of that gentle setting instead of this more typical anthropomorphism, where Chalcedony is awkwardly both very human and a fairly simple machine.
References here: WALL·E (2008).