Willow Bark II

[Lani Stranger]

13th of Winter, 518AV

The next day was much of the same for Lani. In the morning before dawn, as she was used to doing by now, she had gone up to the Sanika’s gates to pursue her practice of the Talon Sword in her little hollow, but the heavy patter of rain had discouraged her from the act. Instead she had headed to the Enclave early, knowing that she had a hefty day’s work ahead of her. She had spent her entire work hours yesterday copying scroll after scroll, but she had started with a book. Today she intended to bind that book, as it was requested by an Avora to be done.

”Good morning Kavisan,” She greeted the head librarian, stepping past him and to her usual desk placement. The Avora merely nodded at her, and Lani smiled. She liked days like today when she had enough work that it stacked up to multiple days’ worth of work. It didn’t require her to be assigned to any particular thing, and while there were a few things she had to ask help with or more information on, she could mostly handle herself. Like today, she would be binding books for nearly her entire shift. The idea of it, which seemed to bore most people, actually made Lani a little excited. It would be the first book she could bind on her own, and she was confident enough in her skill to at least complete it. The mixed blood was an addict to tangible results for her work, and bookbinding was an excellent way to get that high.

Heading straight to the back room she picked up the manuscript of the journal she had copied from where she had stored it. The tattered original copy of the medicinal journal rested on top of it, and Lani carefully slid the springy parchment out from underneath it, letting it rest in the shelf. She would put her complete work there when it was done to be delivered to the Avora who had requested the copy. Setting the manuscript on the corner of the workroom table she began to gather her materials. In her head she counted out the things she would need. An awl, needle and thread, sawing knife, sanding stone, thick twine, leather, thin oak wood boards, waxed paper, extra parchment paper, resin… The list was fairly large in her head, and within a few ticks she was whirling around the room selecting the items she needed, remembering more as she gathered her materials. Binding vice, stitching jig, cloth, clasps, ribbon, boning knife, ruler…

By the time Lani had all the things she needed, her workspace took up half the table. The workroom in the back usually only had about two or three people working in it at once, as far as employment went he Enclave was fairly small. Not every job in the Enclave used the workroom as well, so she usually did not have to fight for space. Deciding that if another Inarta wanted her to move she would use the excuse that she was there first. It was a childish excuse, and it wouldn’t stand up to an Avora, but Lani didn’t care.

[Lani Stranger]

As Lani began focusing on her work for the day, she started with the first task to bookbinding, which was by far the most painstaking and tedious one: sewing. She had not even folded her parchment yet, although she had measured the margins of the paper so that when she did fold it, the text would line up without looking off balance. Still, she had to use the ruler to measure out where she would place the holes to begin binding the quires together. Snagging the bone knife, Lani began with folding the parchment. The paper was thick and resisted her force, but the bone knife helped her flatten the seam and make sure that it was folded evenly so that nothing stuck out. Once she was done folding everything, Lani took a think piece of charcoal and the straight ruler and began measuring the length of the center fold of the quire, measuring out six evenly spaced dots in the center fold. Lani did this so that she could place four cords down and still have space to tie the spine off.

Once she had marked out where she would make the holes in each quire, Lani took the awl and slipped it from its leather protective covering. With nimble hands she took the first quire of paper, and began puncturing the awl through the center fold of the quire, creating a clear path for her sewing to take place. It took her a few chimes, and, as with everything, Lani had to work a little slower than she would have liked in order to make sure every detail was perfect. Hirro had claimed her good enough to bind her own books, but the unskilled Chiet still had to work a bit harder in order to create a working book bind, let alone a nice one. She recalled the material she had read, and thought such a rare and interesting book deserved the most care she could give to it, regardless of how skilled she was.

Learning from her mistakes last time, Lani made sure that each stitch connected the chord to the quire and that each stitch also connected to itself, which would ensure her bind was tighter and straighter. There were a few times that Lani had to undo a few layers of work and go back because she noticed that she had missed stitching two quires together or that she hadn’t fastened the chords to the quire’s tight enough, forcing her to retrace her steps and go back to the problem area so that she could re-stitch it. As she expected the work was painstakingly slow and detailed, and since she was not used to sewing previous to the odd angles of binding a book, it took her longer than it probably should have. But soon enough, the scribe had finished the tedious task of building the book block. Carefully she unhooked the block from the jig and examined her work.

It was better than she had done last time, in that it was straighter, but it would have to be tightened with the resin because it was still more loose than the mixed blood would have liked. Pressing two flat palms on either side of the naked book she wiggled them together until the bind formed a semblance of a curve that the spine would appear as once she finished binding it.

[Lani Stranger]

Once all of the sewing was complete, Lani selecting a yard of cotton that she had pulled out of storage for her bookbinding. The cotton was cut into in odd places, and she could see the skeletons of past bindings being cut from the cloth. Placing her book block bind down on the cloth she cut off a strip to secure the spine as well. Eyeballing the cotton she ran the razor down each side of the book quickly to cut a rough length of the spine. Once it was detached from the larger piece of cotton she put the chopped up yard away and set to straightening the piece she had cut out so that it fit better on the spine of the book. One Lani had finished cutting the cloth to size, she took the pressing vice and fitting the book block between it.

The scribe turned to retrieve a small size blazer, setting a small wad of tinder into the pull out tray and then running her flint across her steel a few times until the sparks caught on the tinder. Lani quickly blew on it to give the fire some life and then set some kindling on top of it. She did not need the fire to burn long, just long enough to help melt the resin so that she could apply it to the base of the book. Lani took her boning knife and cracked a piece of the resin off of the block and set it into a metal crucible that was normally used for melting wax. Lani let the resin sit on the brazier and heat up while she retrieved the pressing vice and the cloth. Carefully she positioned it so that once the resin had melted she could easily pour it onto the spine and apply the cloth. While Lani waited she fiddled with the rag, and straightened the pressing vice, which was now on its side so that the spine of the book block faced up. Once Lani saw the last of the solid resin melt into dark burgundy liquid, she lifted the crucible from the brazier, and carefully dribbled it over the spine of the book. Working quickly before the resin dried, Lani laid the cotton down on the resin-coated spine and then used the bone knife to press it up against the quire’s and chords so that it would fit on the binding and not show bumps once the leather was applied.

Once that was complete, Lani used the rag to wipe of any extra resin to make sure it did not leave marks in other places, and then opened the brazier to let it burn out and clean it up for the next person’s use of it. Knowing that the resin would need approximately half a bell to dry, Lani straightened up the materials she would need afterward and put away any materials she had already used and didn’t need anymore. It would be clear to anyone coming it that there was a project currently being worked on and drying, but now instead of half of the table she merely took up a fourth. Although no other workers had joined her yet, she didn’t like hogging all the space in the workroom, especially now that she had to let her project sit for half a bell.

[Lani Stranger]

Curious to see how close to the lunch bell it was, Lani wandered out of the work room and into the main room, checking the large clock that rested above the door to tell all of the Enclave workers of the time. It was about forty chimes after noon which meant she had twenty chimes before food would be available to her and she could take a break to do it. Trying to find something to do to fill her time, Lani’s eyes landed on the shelves of books and it occurred to her she had little idea of the organization of the place. Lani was so used to showing up and there already being work prepared for her to do, that she wondered who picked out the things for her to do and delegated the work. Her mind flew to Kavisan and Kirna who were the only two librarians. It was not that the library part of the Enclave was particularly large, but it was still a lot of work to fall on two people. She wasn’t entirely sure what the job entailed, but she was sure it was work to keep things running smoothly in an underappreciated profession within the city that focused on survival.

Lani valued knowledge and understood that the preservation of it was hard. The mixed blood wasn’t sure if there was ever a time that it had been easy, but couldn’t they strive to make it more known? To preserve knowledge in their books and writing and save them for future generations that could build off of it? To Lani it seemed like a far goal, after all she had only just gotten into the world of words, having spent most of her life just trying to make it. Even now she could not wholly devote herself to the studious arts because her work was needed in other places just as much if not more than the Enclave. Her mind began to wonder if there was a deity responsible for this aspect of the world, and if that deity had suffered in the Valterrian or the Djed Storm like Aquiras and Zintila had. The thought occurred to her that she didn’t know if there was a God or Goddess or writing and knowledge, and that she wanted to find out.

For a mere tick her brain suggested that she go and find Kavisan, who she had always leaned heavily on for information, despite the fact that he seemed not to like her very much. But Lani didn’t think he would like to be bothered with this, and now that she could read Nari better it was possible she could find it herself. Carefully stepping toward the library part of the Enclave, she dove into the forest of books with vigor. She could hear the whistling tune of Nari being spoken in the Storyteller’s Well, but it faded as she got into the shelves.

Lani remembered having seen small wooden signs with etched Nari in them that she hadn’t understood when she first got to the Enclave, but now that her grasp on the language was better, she looked at the small signs with a new light. As she skimmed the shelves she realized they were subjects being listed. Art, History, Skill, Religion… Lani paused at the section. It wasn’t as if the sections were particularly large. The enclave was nowhere near the size of the Bhanari Library, and yet for not being in the common language, it was still more sizable than she would have imagined. If she had to guess, Lani would have though there were nearly seven hundred books, an overwhelming amount to even a traveled scribe like herself.

[Lani Stranger]

While studying the section Lani realized that the books were intermingled with scrolls and each was aligned in alphabetical order. Of course she could not read the title by way of the spines, so she carefully slipped each scroll and book out, examining the titles before slipping them carefully back in place. She found that most of them were prayer and ritual books dedicated to the most common of the Gods. Caiyha, the seasonal deities, good and evil, war…. Lani noticed that there were no prayer books dedicated to Morwen, which may have been a result of the massacres of three years ago, perhaps her books had been burned as well. The thought saddened Lani slightly, and again her mind wandered back to what had happened to the Goddess of Winter, and why she had abandoned the people of Mizahar.

Deciding not to dwell on it, Lani kept searching until she came across a name she did not recognize. Cheva. The mixed blood pulled the book all the way out, tilting the one next to it to leave a clear gap where she was to replace it, and flipped the prayer book open. It was a list of wedding vows that had taken place in Wind Reach. As she read she realized that she had not yet seen or heard of a wedding in this city, and began to wonder if it was a result of the promiscuous nature of the Inarta. The term ‘relationship’ was loosely defined for the bird people, a lesson that Lani had learned the hard way. Her chest began to ache for the bearded Endal that she engaged with sometimes. She knew she meant little to him, and that he should mean little to her, but she couldn’t help her heart but hope. Lani flipped through the pages some more until she found one vow that explained the God. Cheva was the goddess of love, marriage, and passion. It seemed the person who wrote these wedding vows did so with great reverence for Cheva, praising the Goddess through the odd polyamorous relationships of the Inarta. It confused the mixed blood slightly and she closed the book, replacing it where it should go and continued flipping through.

Within her twenty chimes of looking, Lani found nothing. She had learned the names of merely four more deities that she had not known, but now did. Eywaat was the God of birds and Ingenuity, supposedly a patron to the Chaktawe in her blood as well as the Inarta she lived with. Viratas was the god of blood and heritage that was not necessarily worshiped by the Inarta, in face may look down on the utter lack of blood connections in the city, but was worshiped fervently by the Symenestra. She had heard of the cave-dwelling race in passing but did not know anything about them, but this was now more information to add to her minimal knowledge of the race. Xyna, Goddess of trade and money, who the Endals sometimes paid tribute to on their travels so that their trade would be sound and with luck. And then there was Kelwyn, the twin God and Goddess of Lost Causes and chance. She had never heard of these deities before, but they intrigued her greatly, as it was not a domain she would have considered belonging to any deity, let alone two. The short prayer scroll that mentioned them did not go into detail about their religion though, and so Lani was left wondering, the odd merged name stuck in her brain. Kelwyn.

Before Lani was done meticulously looking through each scroll and book within the Religion section, struggle to identify the Nari words and understand the material enough to learn something from them, her stomach began loudly complaining of the time. She was so used to the Inartan schedule by now that when she listened to her groaning abdomen and looked at the time, she was not surprised to find it was tow chimes until one bell after. Lunch would be served for the Chiet soon, and she ought to get down there and grab a portion while it was available to her. Lani carefully rolled up the scroll she was looking into and poked it back into place on the shelf, straightening her Vinati and heading out the front of the Enclave. All the other Chiets who worked there were doing the same, determined to get some of the seemingly scarce food while it was still available. Lani was not about to miss out on a meal, as Winter was beginning to look bad in terms of rations.

[Lani Stranger]

By the time she made her way back to the Enclave, she was sue her resin had set by now. Lani desperately wanted to pretend like it had not, and to continue her pursuit of knowledge on the Gods and if she could find something on the God or Goddess of writing, if there even was one. But Lani knew better than to stray too far from her job, which was to provide for the city, specifically to provide a neat copy of a medicinal journal for the Infirmary. So with longing eyes the mixed blood strode directly past the library section of the Enclave and into the workrooms in the back so that she could return to her book binding, determined to finish it by the end of the day so that the last layer of resin could dry by nightfall. When Lani reached the backroom, she saw that Dani had set up on the other side. There was plenty of space between them, and it seemed Dani was working on papermaking of some sort.

”Hello Dani,” Lani whistled a greeting and returned to her pressing vice that held her book block.

”Hey Lani, what are you making?” The other Chiet asked, Lani looked up at her, a little confused by the odd chitchat, but decided to roll with it.

”A Avora in Infirmary ask me to make book.” She said in curt and rough Nari, remembering that Dani was one of the first kind souls she had met, who had tried to communicate with her through charades and motions when she didn’t understand a lick of the language. Dani nodded, not correcting her bad Nari now and returning to her work. It seemed to be the end of the conversation. Perhaps it was simply distant politeness and not really a friendship. Still, it was better than nothing.

Lani tested her finger on the cloth covering of the binding of the book, finding the resin to be hardened once again, perfectly red for her to continue the book. Lani thought towards the next few steps that she would need and realized she could have spent the time waiting for the binding to dry to make the board for the hard cover of the book. She had a good excuse to go to lunch while she waited, but now the book block would sit for longer until she had the wood boards prepared. Lani noted this for future book binding so that she may save time, and set to work finding the carpentry tools she would need to complete the hard covers.

Sighing Lani knew that it would be a little longer but that she would have to do it anyway, so she set to work, picking up the thick square of hardwood set aside for this purpose. It had already been cut into for books, so Lani was able to make quick work of measuring out the proper lengths for the hardcover and sawing them off of the board. Once she had separated the two pieces she needed, she put the large board back where in belonged, tucked between shelves in the wall closet of supplies. She returned to her side of the table and picked up the sanding stone, going at the edges until they were smooth and even and would not cut at the leather or the chords that she was about to attach to them.

[Lani Stranger]

Remembering what Hirro had taught her Lani pulled the angle measuring device and an awl, making small diagonal holes in one of the long sides of the wood. She had four chords to the book, so Lani set to drilling in four holes with the awl. It was painstaking and hard work, making her forearms a little sore by the time she had finished all eight holes. They were just wide enough to stuff the chord through, but small enough so that it would catch and not slip out, allowing her to finish her work.

Again Lani picked up the sanding stone and smoothed out the angles of the holes so that when she got the chords through she could tear at their ends and lay them flat on the board to disappear. She had thought Hirro was brilliant when he showed her this so the strategy stuck in her brain as she prepared to do it again. Once she had finished sanding them all, she lined the holes up with the chords, and then one by one began poking them through. She had made them pretty tight so she had to use the awl to poke a few chords through, and twice had to widen the holes. Eventually though, all the chords were secured into the wood hard covers, and Lani could begin the next step.

Using the sharp end of the awl to break up the ends of the chords, Lani carefully frayed the thread until it was separated enough that she could brush it flat against the wood covering, making it disappear inside the diagonal holes. Again Lani took the brazier and lit some tinder inside of it, chipping off another small chunk of resin and placing it into the metal crucible to melt. While she waited, Lani worked on straightening up her work space, getting rid of the awl and the sanding stone and other materials that she knew she would not need any more. Lani checked on the brazier occasionally, and found the fire was about to go out when her resin was nearly completely melted. Wanting to not waste anything, Lani prepared a brush and brought the crucible closer to the book so that she could drip some resin over the chords that rested in the curve of the hole. She began brushing in the direction of the frayed twine so that the resin plastered it to the wooden cover and ultimately made it disappear. She could see the twine now, the grain standing out against the wood, but she knew that once she put the leaves of the book in, it would be utterly unseen by the reader.

While waiting for the resin to dry again, Lani moved to straighten up the things again. She would need the brazier again at the end to attach the leather, but the current crucible was too small, so Lani set to cleaning it. She dripped the last of the melted resin back onto the large block of solid resin so that it could harden again with the rest, and then went to the washing bucket to clean the crucible off so that she could replace it.

[Lani Stranger]

Once Lani had washed the things she needed to washed and tidied her work space further, she tested the resin with her ring finger, feeling the tackiness of it and judging that she would need to give it another twenty chimes still.

Eagerness flitted in her chest as she thought about returning to the book section of the Enclave in order to search for the missing diety that she didn’t even know existing. Light on her bare feet, Lani skipped out to the enclave, and down the isle of books until she reached the religion section once again. Her memory failed to provide her with the exact placement of the scroll she had last looked at, about Kelwyn, so Lani scanned the shelf until she landed where she thought she had left off, and plucked the next book from the shelf.

The front of the book seemed quite find, with ridges where a mysterious symbol was embossed. The book had no title, so Lani opened it up to see what it said on the inside. The first page merely said “An Account of the Offense to Qalaya”, or at least that is what she thought it said, as it was in Nari. Curiously, Lani flipped the pages further, not recognizing the deities name. As far as she could skim the book described a rough overview of the Valterrian. It was a history she had known about, but no details, and so it intrigued her. The account kept referring to a Goddess Qalaya, and within a few paragraphs Lani realized this was the Goddess she had been looking for. Qalaya was the goddess of writing and memory, and had first gifted civilization with the written word. She took the Valterrian personally and has since become scarce, her domain being heavily damaged by the forgotten times. Lani’s heart ached for the Gods. Their stories were always interesting and full of adventure and power, but the ones that the scholarly nomad had passion for always seemed to suffer in some way. Of course, their domains were rare and dangerous and not frequented a likely result of their suffering, or perhaps a cause of it? Aquiras had lost his heart, and Lani believed that is why Travel is so dangerous and hard. Qalaya’s domain was attacked by the forgotten times, and so she hovers away from civilization, not wanting her gifts to be wasted any more, which is why scribes such as herself were so rare and were not as celebrated as hunters and more survival-centered skills.

Still, Lani was grateful that she had found the name of the Goddess whose domain she now occupied and wanted to worship. Lani had always been a very religious woman, but her tendency to follow Deities that did not care or could not care left her woefully unrecognized for her efforts. Still, Lani did not worship with the intent of being recognized, but she worshiped out of thankfulness and sincerity. She lived so thoroughly in the domains of the Gods that she worshiped, that it only seemed natural for her to pay the highest tribute to them that she could. Now that she knew about Qalaya and some of her stories, Lani was eager to pay tribute to the Goddess of writing as much as she could.

[Lani Stranger]

By the time Lani had come to this realization and knowledge, she knew it was likely time to return to her work. The small expeditions of research kept her mind active, but her duty was to create the book, which she knew would honor Qalaya just as much as leaning against this bookshelf and reading about her in a foreign tongue. Swiftly returning to the workroom, the first thing Lani did was test the tackiness of the resin again, finding that it had pretty much hardened by now. Again she realized she could have prepared the next steps while waiting, but her eagerness to uncover the Goddess had distracted her from planning ahead. So instead of engaging with the book immediately, Lani found herself unfolding the supple high quality leather used for book binding and selecting a piece of charcoal and hard ruler to measure and mark it with.

Once Lani had gotten the measurements marked on the inside of the leather and she had checked them to make sure they were right, she began cutting the leather with her razor, using long steady cuts instead of short and fast ones, because she didn’t want to feather the leather. Once she had cut her piece out, she folded the leather back up and set it on the side of the table to be put back once she was done with this step.

Lani then grabbed the book block from where it rested. She had two sheets of waxed paper prepared for when she was ready to press the leather onto the book. In the meantime, Lani got the brazier running again, placing a larger meta crucible on the flame and chipping off many small chunks of resin to drop into the crucible and let melt. Knowing it would take a few chimes, Lani used the time to begin folding the leather around the hard covers of her new book, adjusting it as needed and making sure it was ready for the resin once it was melted. While Lani waited she glanced up at Dani to see the other Chiet was deeply engrossed in what she was doing. Squinting to the other side of the table, Lani realized she was boiling some sort of pulp and mixing some mineral in with it. Unsure of how to describe the strange craft, Lani decided to turn back to her own work and concentrate on that. Lani took a pair of vices and clamped the pages of the book together so that they stood up and away from the hard covers of the blooming book, so that she would have more space to work the leather around it.

After a few chimes of tinkering with things and waiting, the half-Chaktawe’s resin was ready, and the mixed blood carefully picked it up, using a rag on the hot handle and carefully drizzling it along the length of the inside of the leather. As soon as she had used up most of the resin, she sized up the book and pressed it into the leather. From there she had to work quickly before the resin got too tacky and she would have to reapply it. Lani took the bone knife and flipped the book, pressing the inside of one cover with her hand and using the bone knife to smooth the leather out on the other side. She merely had to make sure all the bubbles were out across the wide areas of the cover, but with the spine she had to poke and pressed the bone into each ridge to make sure the resin underneath caught where it needed to and plastered the leather properly to the wood and cloth beneath. Once she was sure she got that right, she moved onto the next part.

She had seen Hirro do both at once, but since Lani was significantly less skilled than he, she took her time, separating the attaching of the leather into manageable parts rather than trying to rush through the whole thing and mess it up like she had the first time. First Lani used some of the last of the resin to line a light drizzle across the bottom rim of the leather, tucking it up and over the wood covering. She took the bone knife and carefully folded the leather into the spine so that it covered the cloth and was underneath the bottom lip of the joined quire’s, neatly tucking in and hiding her uneven work beneath. Once it was pressed in nicely with the bone knife, she did the same on the top side.

By the time Lani got around to the sides, she had run out of resin and had to chip a few small pieces off and let them melt before she could start again. Once they were melted, Lani drizzled it onto one side, pressing it down with the bone knife, and letting the corners fold up so that she could cut the excess leather free with her razor quickly before moving onto the other side.

Finally Lani was mostly done with the book. For the day, at least, she was done. The book would have to press and set overnight before she could be sure the resin was dry underneath, since it could not breathe like the times she had used it earlier. Lani slipped a piece of waxed paper in between the front cover and the first page, and then in between the back cover and the last page before she closed the book and fitted it into the vice press. She made sure the vices were screwed down tight, but not too tight to damage the leather, before she set the book and jig aside and begun to clean her work area. All she would need to leave out would be the pressing jig, and the rest she would put away. Tomorrow she would etch the title, add the leaves, and secure a clamp onto it. But today she was done. Lani carefully made sure everything she had used was clean and put away in order to be respectful of those who would use the equipment and supplies after her.

[Ssezzkero]

Socialization +2, Planning +2, Organization +5, Bookbinding +5, Mathematics +4, Sewing +2, Philtering +2, Logic +1, History +3, Research +4, Carpentry +2, Leatherworking +1, Bookbinding: A long process, Socialization: Being kind to those who do not like you, Self: Becoming more independent with work, Organization: Gathering supplies, Bookbinding by yourself, Bookbinding: Knowing the steps, Bookbinding: How to stitch a spine, Bookbinding: Resin can tighten the spine, Philtering: Heating resin, Organization: Cleaning as you go, Organization: Where things belong in the Enclave workroom, Layout: Enclave, Wind Reach: Survival is more important than preserving knowledge, Self: Values the preservation of knowledge, Work Ethic: Not asking Kavisan and doing it yourself, The Enclave: Organization of books and scrolls, The Enclave: Storyteller’s Well, Morwen: Goddess of winter, Caiyha: Goddess of the wilds, Cheva: Goddess of love and relationships, Eywaat: God of birds and Ingenuity, Eywaat: Worshiped by Inarta and Chaktawe, Viratas: God of blood and heritage, Viratas: Worshiped by Symenestra, Race: Symenestra, Xyna: Goddess of trade and money, Xyna: Worshipped sometimes by Endal, Kel and Wyn: Twin Gods, Kelwyn: God and Goddess of hapchance, Socialization: Small talk in Nari, Dani: Trying to become Hirro’s apprentice, Qalaya’s Symbol, Qalaya: Goddess of memory and knowledge, Qalaya: Scarce after the Valterrian, Qalaya: Gifted mortals with writing, Religion: Qalaya, Bookbinding: Forgetting to plan ahead makes extra work, Leatherworking: How to cut leather, Leatherworking: Using resin to attach leather to wood, Leatherworking: Using bone knife to smooth out bumps, Bookbinding: Once leather is applied it needs to sit overnight