Solo Remember the Fallen

[Seirei Dawnwhisper]

Timestamp: 63rd Day of Winter, 515 AV


It was an honor. It was an honor beyond measure. Seirei had no words to describe what she felt about the task that now lay before her. All she could do was nod gravely at the elder before her.

"Yes. Of course I will carve the memorial for the funeral honoring those who have fallen in the pirate raids. You are doing me a great honor by asking this of me."

Seirei's voice was quiet, and subdued, but filled with pride and determination. Her words, signs, and posture all indicated that she would give everything she had into carving the memorial. The elder seemed to be satisfied by her response, because he promised her that the supplies she would need to carve the memorial would be delivered to the Dawnwhisper pavilion within the bell. Then he took his leave, presumably to make the necessary arrangements.

Seirei's mind whirled with the scope of the honor being given to her. She was a former captive, and had only been a true Drykas for not quite two full seasons. But the elders had heard of her carving skill, and they were entrusting the task of carving the memorial to her. It was possibly the most important thing she would ever carve. And she was determined to do the very best that she could. Even if her pride as a carver wasn't at stake, her friends Teisaia, Rytira were two of the people who her memorial was going to honor. This was personal.

The first step was in deciding what she wanted to carve. She only had two days to work on the memorial, so she couldn't make it too complex. If she did, she would never finish in time for the funeral. But at the same time, she didn't want to produce anything too basic, either. That would be an insult to those the memorial was supposed to honor. Size was also a factor. The memorial would have to be moved constantly as the city moved along the Run. If it were too big, or heavy, that would be difficult.

A sleepy protest startled Seirei out of her thoughts, and alerted her to yet another problem. The twins. This was a project that was going to demand every bit of her attention once she got to the actual carving of it. But there was no guarantee that Lukar and Lira would cooperate.

The answer came in the form of a cleared throat. Seirei looked up to see Terrin standing behind her.

"I heard about the news. Our ankal is one of the elders that were responsible for deciding who would carve the memorial. He liked what he's heard about you through us, and he told me that they were going to ask you."

Us. That meant Teisaia, and Rytira as well as Terrin. A fresh wave of grief struck Seirei as she realized how proud her friends would be if they knew of the honor she had been given...and knew that they would never know.

"I miss them too." Terrin said softly, realizing what Seirei was feeling.

"Don't worry about the twins. I'll watch them while you work, so they won't interrupt you."

Seirei gave her friend a grateful smile as she thanked him. If her eyes were wide, and watery, both of them knew the reason why. Seirei retreated into the tent along with Terrin long enough to grab her sketch book, charcoal sticks, and carving tools. Then it was time to get to work.

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[Seirei Dawnwhisper]

The memorial was important. It had to be an image that would mean something to those who saw it. Seirei thought hard about what she knew of the Drykas, and their ways. Horses were of utmost importance to them. Specifically striders. If one thing could be said to represent the Drykas people as a symbol, it was a strider. So that was the start of what she needed.

But how should the strider be portrayed? That was important, too. A memorial was a symbol, and Seirei needed to be certain that her symbol conveyed the right meaning. So. This memorial was to be presented during a funeral to honor those that had fallen during the pirate raids. It was also a memorial to those who were lost to the uncertain fate that awaited those who had been captured. But it also had to speak of triumph, and the fierce, unwavering pride of the people who had driven the pirates back when they had returned in a second raid.

"Where do you want this?"

Seirei jumped slightly at the unfamiliar male voice. Her train of thought was shattered as she turned to see who had spoken. Three men were standing off to one side, holding a large piece of wood. It was more than big enough that Seirei could carve a life sized strider out of it if she wanted to do so. Two other men were holding a curved piece of wood that looked as though it might have come from the bow of a ship. Still others were holding a variety of planks. Seirei's eyes widened at what she was seeing. Had some of the wood she was being given to work with come from the ship that had been destroyed in the second raid?

"Is that...?" she asked softly, wanting...needing to be certain.

"Yeah. Some of this wood comes from the pirate ship. It seemed fitting somehow. Besides, it gave us more wood for you to work with."

Seirei nodded. Fitting indeed. There was...potential in using the wood of the actual pirate ship to carve a memorial that would both celebrate the triumph over said pirates, and honor those lost to them.

"Set the wood over there, please." she said, gesturing towards an empty spot not far from where her tools lay waiting.

The men did as she asked. Most of them left once there task was complete. But one, the one who had spoken earlier remained behind.

"Have you made any progress yet? Not with the actual carving, of course. You couldn't start on that until you got the wood you need. But have you decided what you're going to carve yet? The elders are going to ask me for a report when I return."

"I have the beginnings of an idea of what I want to carve. But it still needs fleshing out, and I haven't begun to draw my sketch yet."

The man thanked her, and left. Seirei watched him leave. Then she turned her thoughts back to the task at hand.

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[Seirei Dawnwhisper]

Seirei eyed the wood that had come from the salvaged pirate ship thoughtfully. There was definitely something fitting in using the wood from the conquered ship in the memorial that symbolized the triumph over said ship and the pirates who had sailed it. The curved piece looked especially promising. As Seirei looked at it, an image of a wave formed in her mind. A wave with a ship riding the top of it. That could symbolize the pirates. And if she carved a strider rearing up over the ship as if in challenge...that would convey a powerful meaning. Especially if the strider was much larger than the ship, dwarfing it in size. Such an image would tell those who viewed it that the Drykas would triumph over all who would think to destroy them.

The strider would be life sized. And if she could manage it, she would carve a Drykas riding it. A member of the Watch, armed, and looking out for possible invaders. But she wasn't certain she would have enough wood for that. And she didn't know if she would be able to ask for more. So she would have to make two sketches. One with a rider, and one without. The assorted planks could be made into a base for the memorial to stand on.

Seirei was filled with excitement and determination as she grabbed her sketchbook, and charcoal sticks. When she found a good spot that offered plenty of light, she took the time to make herself comfortable. Then she began working on her first sketch. She had drawn horses before, so she decided to start with that. To give herself some more practice, she drew parts of a strider. The ears; triangle shaped, but angled so that they appeared to be perked forward, or flattened against the strider's head. The curves needed for the strider's nose, and arched neck. The thin, wispy lines she would need for the mane and tail. The shape, and position of the eyes.

Once she was confident that she could draw the different features of a strider well enough, she began to put them together. Her hand was hesitant as she drew, because she knew the importance of what she was doing. In order to carve the very best memorial she could, she needed to have a good design sketch to work from. The necessity of such a sketch for complex carving work was the reason why she had not tried to carve any kind of figurines in the past. She simply wasn't confident enough in her drawing skills to rely on them. Now, she had no choice. They would have to be good enough.

It took several attempts at drawing a strider before Seirei finally managed one she thought she could work from. But she was proud of the result when she finally succeeded. It was a basic drawing. There was no real shading to speak of, because she wasn't good enough to pull that off. But the features of the strider were in good proportion to each other. And she liked the way the pose, that of a rearing strider, had come out.

When she was finished with the first sketch, it was time to start working on the second. This one would be the harder of the two since she needed to include a rider. As before, Seirei started with the basics. She was already confident in her ability to draw a strider, so she worked on practicing drawing a Drykas. She took it in steps, filling pages in her sketch book with hands, eyes, hair, faces, feet, and other body parts for a few bells before she felt confident to try putting them all together.

Seirei turned to a fresh page in her sketch book, and started again. She began by drawing Drykas in a standing position. By doing this, she got some practice in getting everything in proper perspective without having to draw what her model was sitting on. She didn't think that her skills were up to the challenge of drawing someone in the sitting position when they weren't actually sitting on anything.

As she slowly gained confidence in that, she began drawing something that was vaguely shaped like the back of a strider for her Drykas to sit on. This gave her practice in drawing a Drykas in the proper position for her memorial. More bells passed. Slowly, but surely, she gained confidence in her drawing skills. And as she did so, her hand steadied as she drew, making it easier for her to draw her lines without wobbling.

When she was finally satisfied that she could draw a Drykas well enough to suit her purposes, Seirei began drawing her second design sketch. The process took her longer than she would have liked, but when she was done, she was confident that she had a sketch she could work from.

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[Seirei Dawnwhisper]

The next thing she had to do was practice drawing a ship riding a wave. That would be the hardest part for her to draw. The wave was easy enough. It was a basic shape. But the ship itself...that was another matter.

Like many others, Seirei had the image of that black ship burned painfully into her mind. It was something that she would never forget. But she hadn't seen many ships, so the shape of one would be less familiar to her. And as such, it would be harder for her to draw. Drawing from memory was always more difficult than drawing something she could see. Drawing something she had only seen a few times in her life from memory would be harder still. Especially if she wanted something realistic rather than the monsterous image that was burned into her nightmares.

Once again, Seirei turned to a fresh page in her sketch book before starting. For several chimes, she simply stared at the blank page, trying to conjure up the image she wanted in her head. As the image began to form, her hand moved along the page as if without conscious thought. She allowed it to do so, hoping that memory would guide her better than conscious decision.

The resulting image, while far from anything that could be considered "good" by anyone's standards, was visibly recognizable as a ship like the ones that had attacked the Drykas. Perhaps more importantly, the dark, thick lines gave the image a dark, threatening look that Seirei might not have been able to convey had she been relying only on techniques that she didn't truly understand.

Seirei began again, this time using her first drawing as a model. She wanted to be able to recreate, and perhaps even improve upon the effect she had unconsciously achieved. That frightening aspect was even more important than technical exactness in her opinion. After all, she wanted to depict the Drykas triumphing over this terrifying threat in her memorial. It would serve as a memorial to those who were lost, but also as a sign of the Drykas's strength, and a promise of what awaited those that would try to harm the Drykas in the future.

After several more attempts, Seirei was satisfied with the ship she had drawn. She had managed to keep the emotions she had wanted to convey with the image while improving the quality of the picture itself somewhat through repeated practice. Her hand was starting to ache from all of the drawing she had done, so she set her charcoal stick aside, and shook her hand out vigorously. To give herself a brief rest, she flipped through the pages she had drawn today, examining the pictures to see if she was still satisfied with them. She was, and the few chimes it took to do so renewed her. So she picked up a fresh charcoal stick, and got back to work.

The final step was to draw a complete design sketch, including everything she had just practiced into a single drawing. So she turned to a fresh page in her sketch book once more. Combining everything into a single design was harder than Seirei thought it should be. It wasn't like trying to draw something she was looking at. Small flaws that wouldn't matter in a drawing that was drawn with no other purpose in mind than to be a drawing mattered now because they might show in in her carving. Everything had to be drawn as precisely as possible. Each part of the sketch had to be kept in proper perspective, with everything spaced properly and drawn to the right size. Mistakes in size and position within the sketch could translate into a mistake in the memorial just as easily as flaws in the shape of the drawing. And Seirei wasn't prepared to allow mistakes in something this important.

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[Seirei Dawnwhisper]

Once Seirei was finally satisfied with her design sketch, she turned to look at the wood she had been given to work with. With a careful eye, she judged that she had just enough wood to carve the memorial she wanted to, including the addition of the rider. That came as a relief to her, because it meant that she wouldn't have to draw a second design sketch without a rider. But she only had just barely enough. There was no room for mistakes. And if any of the wood was unusable for any reason, she would run into trouble.

Seirei's eyes narrowed at that thought. She had failed to consider that possibility. What if some of the wood was flawed? If it was a small enough flaw, she could work around it without losing too much of the good wood. Or, she might be able to turn the flaw into an asset by including it into the memorial as a design. But if it ran too deep, the entire piece would be lost. Rather than start carving, and realizing that she would have to start over, or finding out that she didn't have enough wood to finish after working around a flaw, Seirei decided to examine her supply of wood now. That way, if she had to replace some of the wood with her own supply, or ask for more, she could.

She began with the biggest piece, the one that would become the strider, and the Drykas riding it. There were no knots, or cracks in the surface of the wood. No water damage, or warping that she could see. It was possible that there were flaws beneath the surface, but she wouldn't know that until she began working with it. Still, seeing no surface flaws was a very good sign. The planks were likewise undamaged.

The wood that had come from the black pirate ship was a different story. The curved piece that would become the wave and the ship riding on it had no knots in it like she might have found in a source of wood that had not been used for something else previously. But it did have several small, spidery looking cracks running through the surface of the wood. Seirei assumed that they had been caused when the ship had been broken apart for usable wood. That, or they had formed in a previous raid, but one recent enough that they had not had the chance to widen or form leaks. After careful thought, Seirei decided that the wood was still usable. The cracks appeared to be small, and shallow. She might even be able to smooth them out, or cut them out as she shaped the wood.

With her examination done, Seirei decided that she wanted to do a practice run. She only had enough wood to make one attempt at carving the memorial. So she wanted to make certain it was as perfect as she could make it on her first attempt. But she had never really made any figurines before. And the memorial would be a larger, more important version of a figurine. Seirei knew how to carve one in theory, but knowing the technique of how to carve something, and actually being able to carve it were two very different things.

Seirei headed into her tent to choose a piece of wood to practice on. Terrin and the twins were playing happily. Her friend smiled, and signed a quick question as to how she was progressing. Seirei responded absently, with a work goes well, need practice while she examined the wood she had to work with. The twins never even noticed her presence. Once she had made her selection, Seirei left them to their game, and went back outside.

The piece of wood she chose to work with was a segment of a branch that was as thick as her forearm, and roughly half as long. She began by carefully stripping the bark off of the branch with her knife. Once that was done, she used her smoothing cloth to smooth the wood out so it would be easier to carve. She took one of her charcoal sticks, and began drawing a rough image of the strider and rider she wanted to carve. It was far from perfect, but it gave her an idea of where the head would be, where to start carving the leg of the rider, and so on.

When she was ready, she started at the top. Using her chisel, she cut angles in the wood where she wanted the strider's nose to be in the side of the wood. She then shaped the nose by carefully scraping away bits of wood with the chisel until the nose began to take form. From there, she moved up, carving out the head, and ears in a rough form. The arch of the neck followed. When she reached the back, she left a section of wood for the rider to be carved out of.

Once that was done, she flipped the piece of wood over, and began carving out the hind legs. It was tricky, because they had to be thin enough to be recognizable as the strider's legs, but thick enough that they wouldn't break too easily. Since the strider was to be in a rearing position, she left the forelegs for later. After the hind legs were shaped, she moved up along what would be the belly of the horse, and further up to where the forelegs would be. They were even more difficult to carve than the hind legs had been because they needed to be curved while being the same thickness, and giving the impression that if they were straight, they would be the same length as the hind legs.

With that done, she turned the carving once more, and began work on the hind end of the strider, creating the tail. Then once she had a rough carving of the strider, she began work on its rider. Using her chisel, she whittled away at the front of the rider until she had given the impression that he was leaning forward. The legs were carefully carved out of the strider's sides, and were bent slightly, as if the rider was pressing his legs into the strider's sides to guide it.

When that was done, she paused. The rough shape of the figurine was done, but that was the easy part. It was the details that would make a good figurine...or ruin it. Things like the position of the eyes on both strider, and rider, the expression of the rider, and the details of the mane and tail were what made the difference between a good carving, and a great one. Seirei wanted hers to be a great one.

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[Seirei Dawnwhisper]

Using the chisel once more, Seirei turned her attention to the strider's face. Once she decided exactly where she wanted the eyes to be, she used her chisel to make indentations in the wood. Then using those, she chipped away until the outer lines of the eyes were deep enough to give them a good shape. Even more careful shaping rounded the eyes in their sockets, making them more realistic looking.

Once Seirei was finished with the strider's eyes, she moved on to its nostrils, and then it's mane and tail. Carving the nostrils was a somewhat similar task to working on the eyes. Both required careful chipping with the chisel to make certain that they were the same size, and that she didn't accidentally strip away too much wood. But the mane and tail were a lot harder to deal with. She wanted to create the illusion that a wind was blowing the pirate ship in to shore, and that that wind was blowing through the strider's mane. And since she wasn't quite certain how to create that effect, she needed to work it out on her smaller, practice version.

She was able to use her chisel for some of the work. It was good for cutting into the wood she had left for the mane, and creating individual wind blown strands. But the finest work had to be etched in with her pick. After she was satisfied with the way the mane had turned out, Seirei switched back to her chisel to carve out the tail. As with the mane, the chisel worked well for most of the task, but the fine details required the pick.

After the strider was finished, it was time to work on the rider. The facial detail was the most difficult part. She wasn't trying to depict any one person. So she didn't have an exact model to work with. But at the same time, she needed to be very precise, or she ran the risk of getting the shape or position of the facial features wrong. It took her well over a bell to get a result she was satisfied with, but the time was well spent. Working on the rider's eyes was very much like working on the strider's eyes. Enough so that Seirei realized that she had managed to teach herself the technique of carving eyes. The exact size and shape would vary from one carving to the next, depending on the creature she was carving, and the size of the figurine she was making. But the technique itself remained the same.

Seirei examined her work. She was happy with the progress she had made, so it was time to start on the final level of detail work. Using a combination of chisel, pick, and gouge, she carved the yvas, and the clothes that her rider was wearing. In this case, it was of a type she had seen members of the Watch wearing. She also included a beaded hair tie that ended in a feather tassel. The tiny detail work on the beads, and feather was done with her smallest pick.

Upon a final examination, Seirei realized that she had forgotten to carve the strider's hooves. Feeling more than a little silly, she turned her figurine over, and carefully chipped away at the strider's legs until the hooves took form. When she was done, she used her smoothing cloth to smooth the roughness caused by her carving efforts away.

I think that will work.[I] she thought, pleased by her efforts.

[I]Now I just have to recreate that in a life sized version.

Seirei set the figurine aside, and got a second piece of wood from her own supply. This time, she began to practice carving the pirate ship, and the wave it would ride on. The steps were the same as before; carve out a rough shape of what she wanted, then fine tune it in stages as she created the details. But her unfamiliarity with the subject she was carving made it more difficult. She had seen many striders, and horses. The same could not be said for ships.

She started at the bottom, working on the wave first, because it was easier. With deft strokes of her chisel, she was able to create the curved shape of the wave. It was actually harder for her to carve in her practice run than she thought it would be when she worked on the memorial itself, because the curved shape of the wood she had to use for the project would naturally lend itself into becoming a wave. The ship was a lot harder for Seirei to carve because of the level of detail that was required. She managed to carve out the shape of the bottom of the ship on her first try. But the wooden poles coming up out of the floor of the ship were harder. The sails were harder still. It took a lot of slow, painstaking work with her smallest chisel to shape the sails to look the way she remembered the ones on the pirate ship had. And she had to start over from scratch twice when she accidentally snapped one of the wooden poles the sails were attached to.

Finally, she decided that she had done as best she could on the ship. It looked a lot like the fearsome form she had in her mind, but she was less confidant that someone who knew ships well would think it was realistic looking. Still, it was the best she could manage. If she spent any more time practicing, she wouldn't have enough time to carve the memorial itself before the deadline. It was time to stop practicing, and start her real work.


Word Count4654 words

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[Jasmine Stormblood]

Here are your grades! Let me know if I missed any lore you were looking for.

 

Seirei Dawnwhisper

XP

• Planning: 4 XP
• Drawing: 3 XP
• Socialization: 2 XP
• Carving: 2 XP
• Investigation: 1 XP

Lores

• Carving: reuse materials
• Planning: every detail matters
• Drawing: practice, practice, practice
• Carving: always check your wood first
• Seirei: asked to carve the Raids memorial
• Carving: hair is the most difficult part