Timestamping: Mid-Fall, 513 AV
Continued From: Manipulations of Love
Perhaps being emotional wasn’t helping, but reconstructing her face to look like Akela’s then simply talking to her sister while staring at herself in the mirror like she was sitting in front of Akela was… somehow wrong. Kavala knew crazy when she saw it, and that was definitely crazy. It was easy practice for a morpher though… and shaping one’s face into someone else’s face that looks very similar was not as time consuming as one might think. But it was also cathartic and the Konti knew she needed that cry, one she hadn’t ever had, since Akela had departed for parts unknown and places far and foreign. But from now on she’d promised herself she would stick to safer things.
And safer equated to feathers.
At first, thinking herself all that, Kavala had tried to form a feather springing proudly from her pointer finger on her left hand. Closing her eyes, the Konti cleared her mind which quieted surprisingly fast, and had let the power within her swirl, sending a delicate tendril to the point of her finger where a feather slowly started to grow. When Kavala felt it was ‘done’ she opened her eyes and peered at the feather springing from her finger. Now she’d seen hundreds of feathers and knew their structure intimately, but this feather had no form, very little mass, and waved from the end of her finger limply. Kavala frowned, drew it closer, and seemed to realize the representation simply sucked. There was no proper structure, and everything about it looked ‘off’. Kavala quickly closed her eyes again, seeking the quiet inside, and poured more djed into her finger to try and offset the feather on its tip. She burned precious djed but managed to morph her finger back to normal.
Feather morphing required models. Of that, Kavala had no doubt. Just producing a feather from memory had completely and utterly been cut off as a viable avenue. So instead, Kavala decided to get a bunch of featehrs and learn them intimately before trying again. For this, she turned to her nephew for the undertaking of gathering her some feathers. He didn’t’ seem to mind.
Larik was molting heavily and complaining about it so the timing was great. But Kavala hadn’t minded listening to him itch, scratch, preen and grumble. She’d gathered up several of his feathers, much to his annoyance, and decided that would be her morphing model study project today. The Healer was bored waiting for the baby, and the arcane practice did seem to make things easier in term of weathering the wait. So, going back to her basic anatomy lessons, Kavala was brushing up on Feather Anatomy. She had one of Larik’s huge eagle primaries in her hand and was studying it intently. In her mind, she was labeling parts as well, and reciting what they were used for so when she plied her own magic to her body, she could perhaps produce feathers.
Kavala got ready to sketch then, moving the book to a blank page where she could diagram the feather and label it carefully as well as make notes on the various parts. Then once the structure was demystified to her she was going to study the different types of feathers and then finally attempt morphing them . Picking up Larik’s primary, she got busy sketching. She was careful with her detail, making the feather far smaller on her picture diagram than it was in life. She noted the scale off to the side and kept going. Once the feather was sketched carefully, the Konti taking her time to lengthen the shaft and fill out the rachis and barbs, she sat back and drew arrows to the various parts and labeled them with quick explanations.
The feather had three main parts… the Calamus, the Shaft and the Rachis. The Calamus was the part of the shaft at the tip where the feather had been grown from the follicle it originated from in the skin. People often called them quills because that was the part that was used to write with. It seemed like it was held tight into the feather follicle until the bird was ready to preen and shed its feathers to grow new ones. This calamus was opened which told Kavala it had been a shed feather rather than one forcefully plucked. The wear on the feather itself backed up that thought. The shaft ran from the Calamus to the tip of the feather at its most outward end. It was a hollow tube of main vane that held the secondary branching vanes called barbs. The secondary vanes were important because they held the pennaceous barbs, sometimes called hamulus') which connected to each other and to the vanes by hooks on the ends of the barbules that sprouted from the vanes. It was those barbules that interlocked and provided the surface area which allowed feathers to do all sorts of miraculous things.
Kavala didn’t hesitate to label the Rachis too. It was basically the rest of the shaft after the calamus. Rachis’ could be firm but flexible, baby soft or ridged. The more rigid a rachis, the closer to a flight feather it was. Those that were completely inflexible had to be located on the wing in the flight feather lineup.
Continued From: Manipulations of Love
Perhaps being emotional wasn’t helping, but reconstructing her face to look like Akela’s then simply talking to her sister while staring at herself in the mirror like she was sitting in front of Akela was… somehow wrong. Kavala knew crazy when she saw it, and that was definitely crazy. It was easy practice for a morpher though… and shaping one’s face into someone else’s face that looks very similar was not as time consuming as one might think. But it was also cathartic and the Konti knew she needed that cry, one she hadn’t ever had, since Akela had departed for parts unknown and places far and foreign. But from now on she’d promised herself she would stick to safer things.
And safer equated to feathers.
At first, thinking herself all that, Kavala had tried to form a feather springing proudly from her pointer finger on her left hand. Closing her eyes, the Konti cleared her mind which quieted surprisingly fast, and had let the power within her swirl, sending a delicate tendril to the point of her finger where a feather slowly started to grow. When Kavala felt it was ‘done’ she opened her eyes and peered at the feather springing from her finger. Now she’d seen hundreds of feathers and knew their structure intimately, but this feather had no form, very little mass, and waved from the end of her finger limply. Kavala frowned, drew it closer, and seemed to realize the representation simply sucked. There was no proper structure, and everything about it looked ‘off’. Kavala quickly closed her eyes again, seeking the quiet inside, and poured more djed into her finger to try and offset the feather on its tip. She burned precious djed but managed to morph her finger back to normal.
Feather morphing required models. Of that, Kavala had no doubt. Just producing a feather from memory had completely and utterly been cut off as a viable avenue. So instead, Kavala decided to get a bunch of featehrs and learn them intimately before trying again. For this, she turned to her nephew for the undertaking of gathering her some feathers. He didn’t’ seem to mind.
Larik was molting heavily and complaining about it so the timing was great. But Kavala hadn’t minded listening to him itch, scratch, preen and grumble. She’d gathered up several of his feathers, much to his annoyance, and decided that would be her morphing model study project today. The Healer was bored waiting for the baby, and the arcane practice did seem to make things easier in term of weathering the wait. So, going back to her basic anatomy lessons, Kavala was brushing up on Feather Anatomy. She had one of Larik’s huge eagle primaries in her hand and was studying it intently. In her mind, she was labeling parts as well, and reciting what they were used for so when she plied her own magic to her body, she could perhaps produce feathers.
At this stage, I can’t tell you how tedious it seems to me for a morpher to grow feathers on their whole body. Feathers are not easy structures to either understand or duplicate. They are far more than most people realize. And while making a feathered wing the size of my body actually isn’t that many feathers when viewed in that context. But making myself into a bird with feathers at regular intervals all over my body scares the spirit right out of me. So what I’m going to do is approach it like any sane woman would. I’m going to morph and morph and morph feathers over and over again until they are part of my inherent memory and as easy to produce as breathing is without thinking.
I do not know how long this will take me, but it is important. If I ever want to join my nephew in the skies I will need to learn how to do this. And I very much dream of being able to soar with Larik. I think that would bring both of us closer and fill us with a joy that is unexplainable. I know it’s a feeling I get riding with Vanator or casting stone with reimancy. Such things are magical. I need more of them in my life. So I will start with one of Larik’s primaries and break it down into its parts, study that, then be able to reproduce it. I have also collected other feathers.. so I can grow them as well and understand their differences.
Kavala got ready to sketch then, moving the book to a blank page where she could diagram the feather and label it carefully as well as make notes on the various parts. Then once the structure was demystified to her she was going to study the different types of feathers and then finally attempt morphing them . Picking up Larik’s primary, she got busy sketching. She was careful with her detail, making the feather far smaller on her picture diagram than it was in life. She noted the scale off to the side and kept going. Once the feather was sketched carefully, the Konti taking her time to lengthen the shaft and fill out the rachis and barbs, she sat back and drew arrows to the various parts and labeled them with quick explanations.
The feather had three main parts… the Calamus, the Shaft and the Rachis. The Calamus was the part of the shaft at the tip where the feather had been grown from the follicle it originated from in the skin. People often called them quills because that was the part that was used to write with. It seemed like it was held tight into the feather follicle until the bird was ready to preen and shed its feathers to grow new ones. This calamus was opened which told Kavala it had been a shed feather rather than one forcefully plucked. The wear on the feather itself backed up that thought. The shaft ran from the Calamus to the tip of the feather at its most outward end. It was a hollow tube of main vane that held the secondary branching vanes called barbs. The secondary vanes were important because they held the pennaceous barbs, sometimes called hamulus') which connected to each other and to the vanes by hooks on the ends of the barbules that sprouted from the vanes. It was those barbules that interlocked and provided the surface area which allowed feathers to do all sorts of miraculous things.
Kavala didn’t hesitate to label the Rachis too. It was basically the rest of the shaft after the calamus. Rachis’ could be firm but flexible, baby soft or ridged. The more rigid a rachis, the closer to a flight feather it was. Those that were completely inflexible had to be located on the wing in the flight feather lineup.