[Job Thread] Fashioning for New Weather

Character sheet · by **Lenz** on March 14th, 2014, 4:44 pm

4th of Spring, 514 AV
The Seaside Market

She had already emerged from the crowd of gathering people. It was a chilly morning, yet not entirely unexpected given that it was only a few days after the first of spring.

Lenz was bustling by the other busybodies of Sunberth, going about with her daily tasks, only today she felt more lighthearted than usual. She felt clarity overcome her senses. She understood more, she saw more, she could hear more and even smell more as a rank man passed her by.

Holding her nose to escape the pungent odor of stale bread, goat feces and rotten eggs all mixed together, she traipsed over to the stand that stood out to her like a sore thumb.

Eida was already busy about working to organize everything that posed no satisfactory. She was a very immaculate woman whether she accepts the fact or not. This was something Lenz often admired about her. She was laconic, and held structure in everything she accomplished. She only wished her knowledge could rub off on her.

“Now you show up,” the elder lady announced, a hand pronounced on her hip. Lenz shrugged, the smile on her face never faltering.

She loved her job. It brought back the good memories, ripping them away from the bad. The edges between the two, like deciphering what is right and wrong, was challenging to her. They were blurred, meshed together to such an extent that they made Lenz feel very indignant.

Eida seemed very placid at the moment, unlike her usual self. When another season comes around the corner, everyone is relatively rushed, hasty and busy until their limbs fall off, but not for her.

Her grey hair was messy, but not ratty. Her eyes were warmer this morning, instead of the hard and icy cold orbs they were normally. It wasn’t startling, just merely surprising to the woman. She had only known her employer to be stoic and quick to judge.

I guess I have made some headway, she thought, recalling the past few days she worked. They hadn’t started off on the same foot, the two girls. There was conflict, each other grating on one another’s nerves, but they worked it out, or so Lenz hoped.

“Sorry,” she apologized, feigning wiping sweat from her brow. “I had to do some house work.”

Eida chuckled sarcastically saying, “At your tent?”

The word tent left her lips in a way that would have caused an exorable dispute between any normal people, but Lenz simply brushed it off. Nothing was going to fail her jubilant mood today.

“What do you have for me this morning?” she asked, smiling slightly, beams of light radiated off her cheeks and nose.

Her hair was as crimson as ever, shining in the rays of the morning sun. Her eyes twinkled with elation and contentment, her nose crinkling up, her eyes squinting to block out the harsh light.

Lenz was a beautiful woman, often admired by many. She had been compliment before, sometimes even by the child she took watch over. It made her feel embarrassed, humiliated even, something she wished didn’t cause her to turn cherry red.

“Well,” said Eida. “There was a lady who stopped by only a few moments ago. She needed a pair of pants stitched up. A gaping hole, I tell you. These people don’t know how to take care of their clothes.”

The woman giggled, brushing her red curls behind one ear. She swept the palm of her hand over her bangs, smoothing them over the top of her head. Her eyes dulled at the thought of countless bells of work, but she was still anticipatory.

She threw down her hands so that they hit the sides of her pants. “Alright,” she said loudly, walking behind the stand that held a multitude supply of sewing equipment and supplies.

“I’ll get to it right away.”

Character sheet · by **Lenz** on March 14th, 2014, 5:19 pm

It was instinctual, walking behind her employer and sitting down on the chair that was purposefully sitting behind the counter. It was calling her name, because for some reason, her feet ached horridly.

She sat in the chair, almost falling backwards when she realised it wasn’t as stable on its legs that she had initially thought it was. After balancing herself, she sat up straighter and leant over the counter to retrieve the main things of vital importance.

She needed her seamstress tape, the pair of sheers, her sewing needle and a spool of thread, preferably black, the most common colour used. She had white off to the side in case someone was picking and needed the thread invisible.

She made sure everything was out in front of her. She adjusted the sheers so that the sharp point was facing away from her. Then, she made sure to position the sewing needle so that it was organized at a ninety degree angle away from the spool of black thread. She held onto the seamstress tape, wrapping it around her neck.

Straining her back muscles to peer over her shoulder, she sought out the pants that she had been told need stitching.

“Here they are,” Eida said, startling Lenz into throwing her off balance. She teetered on her chair until it gave way and fell backwards.

“Ack,” she cried out, trying to break her fall but failing. Her head banged against the ground. She felt pins pricking the corners of her eyes and blackness started to smother her peripheral vision.

She shook her head from side to side before helping herself up again. Once she was standing, the chair sitting upright, she turned to glare at her boss.

“Don’t scare me so,” she demanded.

“You’re a little on edge today,” Edia replied, scanning her employee for any signs of inaccuracy. She tried to bore holes into her conscience, looking for anything that could give away any clues as to not being able to work.

“It’s nothing.”

With wary eyes, the elder left her alone, holding little faith in whether or not she could do her job. Lenz did what she had been taught, ignoring her susceptible ability to become frightened easily.

She could already see the images playing in her head like an instrumentalist plucking the strings on a banjo or violin. She saw the claws, the wings, the evil stare from yellow or red eyes. She saw the teeth, the gory, bloody torment they bestowed upon their slaves.

She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, sending herself into a realm of nightmares and foreign memories. She had tried for seasons to reject those images, but they wouldn’t leave her alone. She kept seeing them, when she slept, when she ate, when she took a normal stroll out on the town.

She saw the blood, the scars, the petrified looks festering on everyone’s faces. She heard the ear piercing screams and the strange noises the creatures made. If she were to even see one of those horrendous monsters again, she would grab the closest weapon and strike it through its heart.

She would scream and thrash around, desecrating any and all evidence of such a creature, a monstrosity. She would let out a maniacal laugh and back away, skipping off in the distance, her soul freed, yet her conscience condemned by what she had done.

With no matter how much courage or strength she was capable of mustering, she couldn’t do the deed of killing someone, no matter how terrible they could have been to others. She wasn’t that type of girl.

She held in all her emotions, bottled them up inside until the glass broke and the substance, her essence, flowed out in thick streams of troubled darkness. Malevolent spirits solicited inside her, and she couldn’t break herself away from them. They haunted her with scenes that toyed with her brain cells.

She cried at night sometimes, wishing she could erase everything she had seen, wishing she could go back in time and start over.

Things would have been different, much better than they were now. She would still have her mother, she would have her lover with her, helping her raise their child, the child she had lost while spending her time as a slave in Xy.

Things would be different and not like they are now, but no one can undo what has already been done. No one but the gods and goddesses themselves and even she was skeptical of their powers.

“What are you doing?” came a high pitched voice from her left.

Lenz was no longer startled. She reached out and snatched the pair of pants that taunted her from the distance. She threw them onto her legs, having no recollection of sitting down again.

“Nothing,” she muttered and proceeded to do her duty.

Character sheet · by **Lenz** on April 10th, 2014, 7:36 pm

She began by observing for the whole Eida had mentioned. Her voice throbbed in her head, replacing the images of terror with the images of the old and greying woman. She tried to smile, depleting the frown that had surfaced for who knows how long.

She took the sewing needle off the counter and attempted to block out the commotion of the mobs of people jogging by their stand. She looked for the hole, flipping the pants over until it was found.

She scoffed at the realisation. It was very large, something that would indeed need to be fixed, but not by itself. She would have to use something to patch over it, something that resembled the same kind of fabric and colour that trousers were currently.

She sighed and leant back in her chair only so far as to not provoke the attack on her balance. She would really have to fix this chair sometime, she thought before settling her line of sight on a piece of material.

It caught her eye for one moment but her attention was gone the next. It didn’t match the same shade as the pants. There was nothing in their inventory that could easily compare to the pants that were in aid to be sewn.

She rolled her eyes and ran a hand through her wispy curls of untamable redness. It wasn’t until she looked up to the sky, desiring for ideas to strike, when something caught her eye. Out of the corner, through her eyelashes was a small roll of leather.

It was black, charred in terms of reaching a fathomable colour. She snatched it on instinct, unrolling it to observe the quality. It didn’t match the pants by miles. It wasn’t even close, the fabric, the material, the colour, everything was off, but that didn’t deter her. Who knew? The woman might actually approve of her inspiration.

She grabbed her sheers with both hands, setting the leather down as she did. She then estimated a decent portion of which she would cut before running the sheers through the fabric, the sound of slicing washing across her eardrums.

She smiled, throwing the excess leather to the ground before turning on her rear so that she was facing the table again. She then picked up the pants, which from what she could tell were made out of some sort of canvas material. She could be wrong, though. She was no expert when it came to detecting what kind of material things where made out of.

She took her seamstress tape off from around her neck and started to measure the hole vertically and horizontally. She was trying to find a relative number for how large a patch she should make. The numbers came out fairly small, all of which she had anticipated.

She lodged them into her memory before taking the sheers and measuring those exact numbers on the piece of leather. Once she had them out, she measured them again, marking them with her fingernail, bruising the material so that it was noticeable.

Taking the sheers, she cut out a square with soft corners. She tossed the excess material to the side and proceeded to display the pants so that it held no wrinkles anywhere on its surface.

She gazed at the relevance of what she was doing. Logic was everywhere, inspiration hinting at the thoughts of knowledgeable sense. She was improving, and that much she knew she certain.

She didn’t mind that Eida left in the middle of the day, or the moment Lenz arrived for her work day. She didn’t mind that she wasn’t taught much. She simply assumed it was all in the way the elderly woman taught her. If you were able to teach yourself, you would learn more. You would become greater at what you did, rather than have been taught. Something about that made sense. Some logic, some elaborate philosophy penetrated her hard headedness, projecting herself to accept it. And here she was, doing things by herself, experimenting and growing as a seamstress.

With the sheers, she snipped off a large amount of sewing thread and pierced the end piece through the eye of the needle before setting the patch of leather so that it was leveled and accurately placed on all edges of the hole.

Then, she stuck the tip of the needle through the leather, puncturing through the other side of the original fabric. She felt the canvas, or whatever material it was made of, and sent the needle through. She had started and nothing was going to stop her until that feeling of accomplishment had been met.

Character sheet · by **Lenz** on April 10th, 2014, 7:49 pm

She continued, for she had found herself in the zone of concentration. It boiled inside her, prohibiting any outside distractions to enter the realm of attention. She was seeking to finish something that meant something to her. Nothing would prevent her from accomplishing something today.

She had thrived under that term. Wanting to succeed in the eyes of someone, even herself for that matter, forced to her strive for what she needed to become. It wasn’t just for those around her, who saw her as what she was. It was for herself.

All her life she had thought herself as weak, worthless and even to this day those words still infiltrate her solemn mind. She needed reassurance from herself, calming comments that could give her hope and pressure her on in life.

Tailoring gave her these feelings, these thoughts that honoured her skill set. A giggle tried to escape, but she forced it down. No memories would contradict her aspiring taste for natural forgiveness. She needed something to take her mind off of the pain, and here she had been awarded such a thing.

She stuck the needle through again, making sure to measure out a centimeter or two.

She didn’t want the spaces between each hole to be too close together for reasons of discomfort and unneeded overuse of valuable thread, but she also didn’t want to make the spaces in between too far apart. It was more susceptible to tearing out that way. As well did it collect rubbish and store it inside the pants and that could be uncomfortable for the wearer as well.

She was satisfied with the distance and carried on, thrusting the tip of the needle through another portion of the leather, poking through the other side of the canvas until she had made it all the way around.

She sealed off her work with a knot large enough to prevent unraveling, but small enough so that it didn’t appear obvious. She looped it around her thumb and tied it so that a small ball was formed over both parts of the end strings.

She leant back and took a few moments to observe what she had just finished. It was a success, and she knew right away that she was getting better.

Something as simple as fixing up a patch was becoming somewhat easier to her. Sure, she needed to learn much more on the arts, but it didn’t deprive her of large amounts of time any longer. But that simple thought brought her back to the learnings from Eida.

Who needed her? She barely showed up, let alone stuck around to see how her employee did. Wouldn’t it put a bad label on her stand if Lenz trampled through her work without a care in the world? The woman shook her head, dispelling any doubts until her mind was cleared.

She wasn’t finished yet. She still had ideas, alternatives to attempt. She had a brain full of inspiration that needed to be spilled out in the form of creative professionalism. That leather piece might look out of place and sloppy, but she knew just what to do in order for it not to look that way any longer.

She smiled. Time to enhance her imagination and prove herself of her worth!

Character sheet · by **Lenz** on April 10th, 2014, 8:09 pm

She picked up the excess leather material and placed it on the table so that it was directly in front of her. She then proceeded to take her seamstress tape and measured the leather. Suddenly she stopped, wishing she could smack herself in the forehead without causing a public display of idiocy.

How could she measure something without knowing what the measurements were of which she would put it on? She settled to kicking the back of her calf instead. She needed to measure the pants before trying out numbers for anything else.

And that is exactly what she did.

She took the pants and laid them over top the leather and began to measure the hems on the bottom of the pants legs. The cuffs were large, as if they were flared at the end instead of thin and skinny like she would have assumed a woman to wear. Nonetheless, she had numbers to work with. She kept them in her mind before taking the trousers off and reverting back to the excess leather.

She measured what she had come up with from the cuffs on the pants, making sure to double check. She was always that way. She wanted things to be perfect and tended to overdo things so that she had a higher chance of succeeding in the end. It was bizarre, but it made character more easily portrayed on her person.

This she liked, yet sometimes despised. Manipulation was a big fear in her everyday life, and she was dubious of everyone that looked at her in a funny manner. Paranoia could be a relative term for it, but she protested to any labelling on her part.

Once she had marked them with the tip of her fingernail, the indintatoin clearly made, she began to cut them with the sheers. She was making headway, for she only knew she had so little time before the lady would return and demand her clothing.

Once she was finished cutting off the pieces of fabric, she threw the excess leather to the side and slide the original trousers closer to her.

She took the sewing needle and grasped a long strand of thread inbetween her index and middle fingers. She cut the excess thread, leaving her with much to work with. She then threaded the tip into the eye of the sewing needle and stared intently at the pants.

She started to work on the bottom, thrusting the needle through the upper portion of the cuffs, a few inches above the hem. She made sure it slithered into the leather part, having the two connect to one another in an intimate way. She did this all the way around the cuff of the pants, adding a flourish with the cock of her hand in the end.

She smirked malevolently. Take that! she sneered inwardly at the pair of trousers. There was nothing messing with her today and unless someone were willing to wager an opposition, that would remain a steeled fact, branded into the ground with fire.

She tied a knot to the end of her work on that pant leg and went over to do the exact same thing to the other pant leg, making sure to not mess up as she did. Finally, when she was accepting of her work, she sat back and observed, taking a moment to inhale. She hadn’t realised she had been holding her breath until a few chimes ago.

She took in each flaw, visualized how she could do it better. There was a stray loop, one that shouldn’t have been there underneath the canvas portion of the pants, but she dismissed the option to change it. It was fine and wasn’t noticeable unless someone was searching for it.

Besides, she didn’t have time to make alternative doings, for the woman whom she assumed owned the pair of pants had emerged from the crowd, a hand full of currency jingling between her fingers.

She outstretched her arm and Lenz obligingly motioned her arm out to greet it. The woman dropped the money into Lenz’s waiting palm. There were no words exchanged; the woman simply picked up her pants and left.

Lenz didn’t even know what she thought of her work. That didn’t betray her already optimistic feelings, though. She knew she had done an excellent job and that was all that mattered to her at that moment in time.

Suddenly Eida showed up behind her, her high pitched voice sending shivers down Lenz’s spine.

“Did’ja get it done, girly?” she asked without making eye contact with her employee.

Lenz nodded.

“What was that?”

“Yes ma’am,” she said loudly. Why was the woman so cruel sometimes?

“Why don’t you go home to your… tent, and spend time with your little girl. I’ll take it from here.”

Or perhaps she wasn’t all Lenz took her for. She couldn’t help but smile as she replayed the elderly woman’s words in her head over and over again. She was appreciative of her actions sometimes, but all the time would be overdramatically stated.

“Thank you,” she said as she stood up and rounded the corner of the front table. She turned on her heel and started to leave without even hearing the lady’s voice say, “I’m sure you are.”

by **Zandelia** on May 15th, 2014, 9:22 pm

Lenz :

Notes :

Any problems with my grade? Please me at any time. Keep Writing!

Solo [Job Thread] Fashioning for New Weather