Closed Offcuts On An Off Day

[Allassanachassanya]

1st Autumn 517 AV
"Speech"
"Others"

Aurea was well-known amongst the patrons of the Wolf's Cave, and by extension Ssanya had come to hear some of the things people spoke about him. The man was a Kelvic, although that wasn't unusual in itself. Ssanya tried to avoid the majority of Kelvics through in-built racism towards the inferior species, but it was impossible to avoid Aurea. He was, firstly, a massive drunkard. He spent much of his time in the bar drinking, whether that was to drown his sorrows or forget about someone nobody could figure out. Secondly, he ate like a pig, though in fact he was a lion. Thirdly, he was messy and brash and loud. It was this third point of interest that Ssanya was busy exploiting.

She had watched the fleshy cow being delivered to the lion, and now she greedily searched the discarded remains for bone. The patron of the place was undoubtedly irked that the lion Kelvic had just dumped his waste on the street outside the building, but Ssanya had almost grinned with delight. She liked cast offs, for no greater reason that they were more expendable and less likely to be noticed. However, she noted with annoyance that Aurea had crunched many of the more delicate bones into unusable fragments, but she kept searching. There was an awful smell of steadily decaying meat, the parts that Aurea had rejected for whatever reason. Ssanya was in her human seeming, and so she couldn't truly sense the more delicious scents hidden beneath the brash layer of grease and mulch.

But then she didn't particularly care about the smell. Her eyes had spotted a large leg bone, cleanly sliced by a butcher's knife, and beside it the tip of a horn and even better a hoof. The hoof was not sheared clean of meat or other tissue, but Ssanya seized all three of the items and tucked them into the makeshift pouch of her cloak. She hurried back into the building, and tried to avoid eyes or notice. It was difficult, when her room was close to the bar, but she managed to cut a curved line through the people without relinquishing her hold of the bundle. Maybe she looked suspicious, but it didn't matter now.

Inside the relative comfort of her room, she swept the junk off her desk and plonked the three pieces of bone onto the worktop with a deep sigh of contentment. For too long, she had been inactive with her magic. Malediction frequently called to her, but increasingly Ssanya found herself distracted by the superficial wonders of the city she lived in. Her life was no longer the ordinary she had grown accustomed to in Eyktol, and she doubted whether it would ever be ordinary again. There was some deep, buried part of her that wondered about her true reasoning for abandoning her practice, but she would tackle that later. For now, she had work to do, and the old excitement simmered.

[Allassanachassanya]

"Speech"
"Others"

First up was the hoof, as it was in the worst condition. She rummaged around for a knife and began to scrape the flaps and fragments of skin, flesh, and sticky off-white gunk that clung to the hoof. Her mind worked over and over as she spent time on the inane task, aiming to think of what her magic could draw from the hoof. It would need cleaning, and polishing at least a little, though she didn't have quite the right tools with her. Money would be needed, eventually, for her to perfect the craft, but time would tell when that money would appear. For now, she grimaced as flecks of grimy, old meat landed into a pile on the desk, filling her room with an off smell.

After a while, Ssanya's hands and wrists were slick and oily from grease, but the hoof was clean. She rinsed the lump of bone and took a spare rag to it roughly in an attempt to bring the surface to some kind of finish. She didn't succeed on the front, but she was satisfied enough, and eager enough to continue, that it didn't matter. There was a selection of tools that lay on her desk, and she picked the etching tool gingerly as she gazed at the surface of the hoof, thinking hard.

Cows were relatively uncommon in Alvadas, though some existed more especially for the milk they produced than their meat. Aurea must have got this particular one after it had died, or because it had some problem, she reasoned. She looked closer at the hoof, but nothing seemed to be wrong with it. It would be helpful to know what exactly had brought about the death of the cow, but she didn't have the time or patience to find out and she doubted with exasperation that the overbearing lion Kelvic would have a clue.

Nevertheless, she felt she knew enough, and she had an inkling of what to carve into the surface. She fingered the etching tool carefully, and closed her eyes in concentration for a moment. The magic was bubbling behind her fingers and her hands, almost straining to be released, but it wasn't quite time yet. The pattern and shape that needed to reveal itself through her fingers and through the rough furrows in the hoof needed to come first.

Ssanya scratched the initial design, ever so gently, across the surface as she pondered the meaning behind it. Cows were life-giving and life-sustaining animals, both slow and almost content to be prey. However, she had one of its feet, a tool for the animal to stand upon and walk with. Cows were not runners, she assumed, and so the hoof's purpose in the animal's life was to support it.

The initial circle she etched was small but grew bigger in concentric circles that overlapped each other. She concentrated further and imagined the cow, standing on evergreen grass, filling its stomach on a sunny day. She daydreamed of the life the cow had, and the unthinking support of its legs. Cows were large beasts, and the burden the hoof must have borne would have been huge. Even so, it was not crushed not damaged as far as she could see, and she laced criss-crossing lines that made a lattice of points and triangles- lines of strength that made a basket to cup around the circles.

Finally, she dug the tool in deeper, making a larger, simple circle around the outside of the design. She gazed at the pattern, not with excitement for the glory of it, as maledicting a cow wouldn't exactly bring about the most savage or mind-blowing of curses or indeed boons to the malediction circle, but with satisfaction. She rested the tool on the surface, and picked a clean knife. She gazed into the silvery shimmer of the blade, and summoned the delicious shudder of malediction magic that lay in her body. Concentrating hard, she shuddered as the blade dug into her palm, and as the blood dripped from her hand and down into the furrows of the malediction circle, she let out a long breath and set the multitudinous thoughts and intentions flowing from her blood into the dead remains of the cow, drawing the energy still residing inside it into the design. With a barely distinguishable throb, the malediction of the hoof was completed, and Ssanya sat back in her chair with an exhalation that sounded something like bliss.

[Allassanachassanya]

"Speech"
"Others"

She was tingling, all over. The hoof lay on the desk, her own life's blood still laying quite richly in the design left behind by her etching. She grinned with exultation, and swept back her hair from her temple, gently pressing her fingertips to the mild headache swelling there. But there was more to come, and Ssanya felt an uncontrollable urge to continue. She had the horn tip and the leg bone left to work with, and although the horn was incomplete she felt drawn to this piece next.

The inside of the horn was not how she imagined from her knowledge of drinking vessels and horns that were blown as instruments. Instead of empty space, the horn was filled with a solid, whiteish material that she could only assume was bone marrow or something similar. It seemed likely that this would decay with time, but Ssanya wasn't so much making a particular piece, but practising her art, so she didn't care if the item would cease to work in a few seasons. In the here and now, she got to work washing and wiping the grime from the surface, and scraping away as much wet stuff from the inside as she could.

It took less time to prepare the horn than the hoof had taken, and she was glad as she was growing more and more impatient and restless. She didn't know why she felt so, only that she felt as if a dam had broken inside of her and the magic that she knew wished only to come out of her in one way or another. Ssanya didn't know of many if any other magical disciplines, but there was something inside her that unknowingly ached to find out. It was a powerful and terrifying part of her that was allied closely with her Dhani nature. She didn't recognise it yet, but she knew there was something that dwelt beneath the surface, and she couldn't face it yet. That time would come.

For now, she picked up the etching tool once more and got to work. She paused for a moment, dreaming up the meaning and reason to a cow horn. To her dismay, it was harder to imagine the meanings she could draw from the horn. Was it merely a decoration for the animal, to attract mates? Or was it a form of defence? She had never seen a cow fight, but she assumed the weaponlike sharpness of the horn could be used as a defence against an attacker. In the end, as she gazed at the horn from every angle she could, she decided that the horn was both defence mechanism and useless object both.

The etching tool was in her hand once more, and she began to carve into the surface. There were a few mistakes as her hand slipped on the more difficult material, but though her stomach clenched with dread at the potential disaster, she worked hard to incorporate the stray scratches into the design. The circle was flighty and almost breathy in shape, she thought. She worked strong, parallel lines into the surface to mimic the matching horn and the potential power they held as a weapon of defence for the animal. It was doubtful that a cow had much thought of the prettiness of its horns, but she felt them to be beautiful in their own way, and she worked wavy lines symbolising attraction and allure, in case the cow used the horns as a way of attracting mates. The ensuing circle was basic and plain. She visually took a step back and looked at the bigger picture of the horn, and felt a very strong sense that it wasn't quite right yet.

Ssanya let out a muted groan of dismay, and gazed at it further. What was the problem, and where? The horn stood up by itself on its widest end. She would display it on the desk once it was done, or attempt to leave it somewhere for someone to find, though that was a risky strategy. However, in its current stage, there was no way she would do anything with it as it was a failure, clear as mud.

She traced the lines of the etched shapes, digging her nail into the gaps so as to feel the bone to her core. It wasn't malediction as such, but simply her listening to her instincts. She travelled slowly, draining all other thoughts as she used the feeling of the smoothing of her nail against the line to draw out the basic, most simplest meaning behind the horn. She breathed in a steady rhythm, in and out, in and out, concentrating whilst not, somehow, at the same time.

Finally, she got an idea of what she should do. The horn was a cast off, in that it was cut away and not useful in terms of the reason the cow existed in the first place, as food. No-one could easily eat or use the horn for food, and so she opened her eyes and drew the etching tool across and through the circle, cutting a deeper line that almost looked as if she'd crossed out her own work. Now, though it was messy, and ugly, it was complete.

Ssanya's hand was beginning to scab over, so she grabbed the knife with a peculiar relish and pressed the point of it into her finger until the sharpness of it drew blood. This time, her magic virtually exploded from her, and she struggled to pour all she wished into it. She was restless and her head pounded in a sudden surge as she worked hard, letting the red, red blood fall into the centre of the circle and leech into the scratches she'd left in the surface, reaching into the centre with her blood as the line between her and the essence of the animal that still remained in the horn to draw out what she wanted.

[Allassanachassanya]

"Speech"
"Others"

Finally, after a chime or two of silent breathing and slow, torturous blinking, Ssanya opened her eyes and cleared her head of the lingering clouds of headache. Her head still pounded more insistently than before, but now she was focused instead of drowning in confusing, swirling nothing-and-everything. She had to continue now, not later. That was something she was sure about, as sure as her hands as they swept the etching tool into her possession once more. There was a particular certainty about the leg bone, after all it was the one she was most sure about as she began the third and final malediction in the flurry of her day.

The leg, like the hoof, was one part of the whole, and acted as support and the method of movement for the animal. The leg was a means for the cow to move about. Without the muscles that shifted around the thick bone, and without the ghost tendrils of meat that packed around the support structure, the cow would be unable to move at all. Ssanya shuddered to think of what she would do if she could not move, and that same terror and panic would easily engulf a fragile-minded cow. The leg was the powerhouse, as far as she was concerned, one of the most important parts of the animal. Ssanya began to cut a large circle into the centre of the bone, working the tool with difficulty as each material was different from the next. The bone was what she was most used to though, so the etching was easier than the others simply for that reason.

The circle was one of strength, then solidity, then balance and working together. The circles were simple and stacked in amongst each other. She rejected words and letters in her malediction, simply because there was no language she would choose and also slightly because she found it vastly difficult to get the letters looking neat and orderly enough for her to be happy with it. Instead, she began to cut little, fragmented lines around the outside in a haze of a circle. It was simple, but then walking and existing was simple. There was no thought in a leg, no calculation, no dreaming, simply following whatever basic thought directed the cow to wherever it wished to go. But sometimes, as was the theme for the day, there didn't need to be flashy shows of power through the art of malediction. She wasn't someone who revelled in that, truly, despite absorbing some of Alvadas' extravagance.

She carved diligently and slowly, so that over the course of the day she had managed to spend several bells on the etching and malediction of the remnants of the cow. The leg circle was coming to its logical conclusion gradually, and Ssanya was growing more weary and more full of a pounding headache as she bent over the desk. Her back was growing sore too, but she ignored all the aches and pains as best she could as she flexed her hand to get some feeling back into her fingers. Yet, despite it, she was happy. Her room was dark and smelled of nothing but butchery, but the two completed totems lay innocuously on her desk and she was glad to be finishing the third.

Her mindset was almost as the cow now. She thought of little else except its movements, its way of thinking, its existence. As she came to finish the malediction circle, she let a breath escape her nostrils with a soft sigh. Completion, almost. Her headache surged, almost feeling like it was tearing at her eyeballs, and she winced and gritted her teeth through the pain. Her body was telling her to stop, but she wouldn't, not yet. Just this last, little one...

Her hand was red from the two previous cuts, but she drew the knife once more and almost bit her tongue at the throbbing excitement that accompanied the thrumming in her head. Her hands shook as she conjured the power she wanted to draw from her own life blood, and she cut herself with a soft cry as the dull throb of the cut joined the other pains in her body. She pressed her hand to the circle and let the blood mingle with the bone as she felt her way forcefully down the invisible line connecting her with the bone. She pulled, hard, straining her brain as she shut her eyes and tugged at the strength and solidity of the cow's leg. It was just a cut of the leg and wasn't as strong or powerful as the complete joint, but she connected and felt her hand shudder as the malediction became true.

___

She rested, thinking of nothing but blackness, as she rested her head on the cool surface of the desk. The three portions of the cow lay in a neat line of the table top, but she didn't look at them as the storm raged in her brain. She had pushed herself too far, and she although she was strangely proud of what she had achieved, she also knew that her exploits may not even have worked as she'd hoped. Did she dare test them herself? There were many risks from that, but she was almost tempted to. Otherwise, the remains would simply go to rot. She felt an empty kind of shame at that thought, but what else could she do? To anyone that knew the magic, the malediction would be obvious, and she was loathe to get caught, especially if it turned out her circles had gone wrong, somehow. So she sat, and let herself drift in and out of sleep, clutching her bloody, scabby hand, and smiling without realising it.

[Allassanachassanya]

.
.

.

Grade Rewardsss

.
.

Ssanya

Skills

Scavenging: +1
Observation: +2
Stealth: +1
Cleaning: +2
Carving: +3
Malediction: +3
Meditation: +1
Lores

Aurea: Messy, drunk lion Kelvic of the Wolf's Cave
Malediction: Cleaning and preparing bone
Malediction: Cow hoof (untested)
Malediction: Cow horn fragment (untested)
Malediction: Cow leg portion (untested)
Overgiving: Pulsing headache
Malediction: Understandinf the animal first
Meditation: Concentrating whilst not simultaneously
Malediction: Risky to test own creations
Notes

Overgiving: Repetitive headaches for the next few days.

This was a self-grade.

Carving using engraving tools despite frequently calling it 'etching', this is just for metal and so can't be awarded!

.

.

.
.