Solo The First Wind

[Kamilla]

50th of Fall, 519AV

Kamilla found herself sat in her cave, confronted with a table covered in a roll of recently purchased white Isuas cloth, her sewing kit, some writing utensils and a handful of small brown buttons that she'd bought on a whim. People hadn't been requesting to have any garments made, at all, she wondered if it was because her type of delicate clothing wasn't what was needed in the tropical settlement. It seemed a likely reason, her simple shirts and pants wouldn't last one trip into the jungle before they fell apart, but she did not know of anything else she could make.

It had to have been a bell since she'd taken a seat with the intention of designing and creating something new but nothing came to mind, save for a subtly bubbling frustration. While she had the knowledge and skill of a seamstress, Kamilla certainly didn't consider herself one, not since childhood when her image of her beautiful seamstress mother had been shattered, revealing the woman for what she truly was, flaws and all.

Despite how she often thought badly of the woman that birthed her, for Kamilla hadn't spoken a word about her family since fleeing Sunberth, she did not harbor any negative feelings towards her. The truth was, her mother had taught her to sew, a skill that had kept her fed and alive for several years, even though she'd been forced to suddenly survive alone. She acknowledged that her mother's sorry state of being, of being walked over by many, had just been a sacrifice willingly made in order to raise a child. She let out a loud sigh, the sound of the breath heavy, much like the unwanted feeling in her heart.

It had been years since she'd been fled to brave the world alone and yet Kamilla had never allowed herself to linger too long on the memories of the life she once lead. Memories came with unnecessary pain. Pain she'd rather was forgotten, but things were seldom that simple.

"I've never seen your face do that before…"

The androgynous sound of Roo's voice cut through the unpleasant memories, returning her consciousness to the body it originally occupied. She wiped at a single tear that had yet to fall, getting to her feet. "Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?" The talkative plant did not respond, not to her comment at least. She sighed, both grateful and surprised by the uncharacteristic silence.

By now Kamilla had given up on creating some new and stylish garment, it seemed neither inspiration nor creativity were willing to lend her a hand and she was forced to instead wander her cave aimlessly until she found herself drawn to her Scrying Orb with memories of her mother still lurking within her mind.

She neared it, peering curiously into its crystal depths, pondering the idea of catching a glimpse of her long deceased mother once more, a mere flash of the existence that had brought about her own. A webbed hand reached carefully forwards until it was mere inches from making contact of the magical sphere, then pulled away. There was an off feeling in her chest, a heavy one. The feeling longed for her to see her mother's face in the orb while it promised more pain as payment. She decided not to give in to the temptation, the nostalgia was unwelcome.

582

[Kamilla]

With a breath as heavy as the current sensation in her heart, Kamilla forced herself back to the table, casting one last glance toward the Scrying Orb that sat temptingly on the counter. There was no point in looking back, she'd always believed that the past was unreachable and the future was still to come, logic dictated that time spent on something something she could not affect was time wasted. She needed to look forward and deal with whatever it was that the present required of her.

Right now, that was sewing…

The Konti groaned, pushing a lock of her annoyingly straight blonde hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear. "I've got to at least try and accomplish something for the day… though I suppose I could probably survive without money for a short while if it really comes to it." She chuckled to herself, amused by the lengths her mind would go to avoid working. There were worse things than sewing… she supposed.

"Pants!"

While it wasn't quite the epiphany she'd been hoping for, Kamilla figured it was at least something to go on, and so she began to mark out the lines she would need to cut along for each segment of the miraculous pants. She chose to go for something simple, not deviating far from the usual template, but this time she gave the frame slightly more leg room than usual so that the pants wouldn't sit too tight around the legs. One thing she learned snout Syka, was that tight clothes were not advisable, clothing needed to be able to catch every passing breeze just yo stay comfortable.

Without double checking her measurements, Kamilla decided to jump right in their creation. The Konti grabbed her trusty scissors and began cutting out the silhouette of what would eventually be a pair of, hopefully stylish, pants. The heavy metal scissors cut through the Isuas with ease, the same way they had for years and years. Reminiscing, Kamilla recalled being younger and wanting nothing more than to use the large pair of scissors to cut up any loose material she could find.

She'd never forget the look on her gran's face the day she'd returned to their small home to find that she'd gotten a hold of the scissors and effectively halved the length of their only curtain that hung across the dingy lone front window of their little cottage. Her gran had been furious but her mother had managed to calm the old hag down and instead of reprimanding Kamilla, had simply redirected her desire to use the scissors into the beginning of how she'd become a seamstress.

In the silence of her cave home Kamilla sighed, it seemed memories of her mother's deeds were determined to permeate her day. She wondered if, perhaps, it was the woman's birthday, but she couldn't even remember the season her mother had been born in. How could she have been such an ungrateful daughter. Thinking back to how her mother had handled the moment, both protecting and encouraging her at the same time, Kamilla couldn't help but feel a hint of gratitude spark within her, completely eclipsed by the fact that it was far too little far too late.

552

[Kamilla]

With the cloth cut and a few unwelcome memories at the forefront of her mind, Kamilla set to clearing the bolt of Isuas from her working space, leaving only the necessary segments of material needed for the pants. Reaching into her trusty sewing kit, the Konti seamstress gathered up the needle, thread and thimble, placing them on the wooden tabletop in a very particular order.

Kamilla exhaled, the sight of the well arranged utensils bringing forth yet another inevitable recollection.

It hadn't been long after she'd begun to help her mother with her work, which only consisted of cutting material by carefully following the drawn dotted lines, not that it had mattered, Kamilla remembered feeling extremely proud of herself for helping, that her responsibilities as a seamstresses' apprentice had grown. The first realm lesson she'd learned had been one that her mother constantly stressed the importance of, that of maintaining an organised working space. It was something that wasn't exclusive to her work either, even their small ramshackle home had been arranged and cleaned meticulously to the point where everything contained within its hodge podge stone walls had a place of its own.

She supposed that lesson, much like her skill as a seamstress itself, had bot been things that she'd carried along with her even after her mother's death. Despite her proclivity for experiencing moments on hyperfocus on certain tasks while forgetting about the world around her, Kamilla had managed to always keep a satisfactorily clean and neat home and working space. She wondered if her meticulous cleanliness had stemmed from that lesson as well. Regardless, Kamilla was happy to have recognised yet another of the seemingly minuscule but ultimately important lessons she'd inherited from her mother.

"What's up with that look on your face? Do you need the bathroom?"

Kamilla was uncertain of exactly what expression she'd been wearing for Roo to make such an inaccurate conclusion, but she could only assume that it hadn't been a relaxed one. The pesky plant had a habit of prying into her thoughts whenever she speared to not be present. If she hadn't picked the talking purple flower with her own hand, Kamilla might have assumed that it had ulterior motives for subtly interrogating her all the time.

"No Roo, I don't need to go… I was just thinking about my mother… for the first time in a very long time." She turned her gaze on the magical plant, patiently awaiting it's response.

"Mother? I've never heard that word."

Kamilla frowned, although the plant was capable of speaking, it wasn't often that she had to teach it the meaning of a new word. Somehow she found it hard to believe that the word 'mother' had never been uttered in Roo's presence, though she supposed it wasn't a stretch to say that she'd never mentioned her family in all the time she'd had Roo.

"A mother is the person responsible for you being born. A woman, specifically. Mine is the reason I'm alive and a seamstress."

"So she was your family? Tell me more…"

She felt slightly taken aback by Roo's eagerness to hear about her past, skeptical about his intentions too. "Roo, are you just trying to keep me talking to you?" It was not a stretch, the flower had long since learned that the best way to get attention from its owner was to keep a conversation going.

"What!? I would never do such a thing Kam… Kamilla watched in amusement as Roo crossed it's two leafs, imitating the behaviour and tone it had observed her using when upset. "If this 'mother' is what made you be here, then I want to know about it."

"SHE… and her name was Minerva… Minerva Gordon."

646

[Kamilla]

"Minerva… you've never mentioned HER before… What did she look like?"

Kamilla winced, completely unsurprised by the inevitability of the talking flower's follow up questions, though she hadn't expected questions about her mother's appearance, not at all. Roo's growing intelligence often caught her off guard, it seemed as if, even after a year of owning and watching the flower develop, that it would not slow down anytime soon. Plant sentience aside, Kamilla found herself struggling to answer Roo's question, or rather struggling to recall her mother's face or appearance. It scared her, instead of what she was certain had once been a flawless mental image of her mother's face, there was simple a general approximation of her features.

"She… uh, looked like me…" The words came first, a rough image of her own face, with a different complexion, forming in her mind. "... but with much fairer skin and hair…"[b] Kamilla frowned in annoyance, just feeling the imaginary eyebrow raise the flower was currently giving her. [b]"As in the real me, not this very fair body I have right now… obviously." Out of habit, she caught her own reflection in the mirror across the cave, the familiarly unfamiliar pale hair and skin still there.

Roo wanted more, she knew that, though clear memories of her childhood were hard to come by, hidden and forgotten somewhere in the deepest recesses of her mind. Unable to form a proper sentence on the matter, Kamila set to sewing the the segments of the pants together. She set them on atop the other, pinned the sides and slowly performed an x pattern stitch starting from the top to bottom.

It was during this very familiar action that Kamilla felt her childhood memories came to her more easily, the very act of stitching serving as a link between her childhood and current self.

This time, the memory was of her first time having sewn together a dress successfully without any help. She'd been perhaps seven or eight years old was very aware that her mother was both stressed and struggling to make ends meet by herself. Kamilla had heard the hushed conversations between her gran and mother while they thought she was asleep, had noticed the shrinking portions of food on their plates every night. She'd known all about it but never chosen to say anything.

When Kamilla had presented the completed dress to her mother, insisting that she could help out with her mom's job and make things easier for them, her mother had been filled with astonishment and pride for her daughter's acomolishemt, another moment that she would need forget… in hindsight, Kamilla recalled that her 'first dress' had been an abomination. Threads that had not been propel tied off hung from several places while a few pinks were strategically placed to prevent the brown garment from falling part… and yet her mother had chosen to celebrate it as an acomolishemt instead of the failure that it truly was. The memory came with the standard cocktail of gratitude, nostalgia and pain she'd come to expect for the evening.

"My mother was… not like me… or maybe I'm more like her than I think. She was a seamstress, a hard working one and she was capable of performing magic with her tools and a bolt of material. Her dresses were far more beautiful than anything I've ever creates." It was true, there was a reason the middle Gordon woman was such a popular seamstress in Sunberth. She had a knack for taking old damaged garments, cutting them up and combining them to make something beautiful and new.

With the simple pair of isuas pants now complete, Kamilla found herself wishing she had an example of her mother's talent to show Roo, her mind ran toward het storage room and the precious item hidden deep within her travel chest.

Standing up from the table, Kamilla padded her way across the main cave and towards the storage room, bare webbed feet enjoying the cool sensation provided by the stone floor. Stepping through the doorway, the Konti was immediately aware of the two rodents scuttling around the small dark room, a problem she'd been having for the past few days. The creatures had already nibbled away on her collection of materials for work, now it seemed they were something else to destroy. She would not have it.

Reaching into her chest, Kamilla pulled out two items, a well wrapped rectangle of plain white cloth with a string neatly tied around it and a vermin trap she'd found in a crate during her previous season's escapade into the sunken found nearby Syka. She hadn't wanted to use the trap at first, hoping that the rodents would find her home to be a fruitless endeavour and leave, but now it had escalated to the point where she had no choice.

With the trap placed in the storage room Kamilla made her way over to her bed and placed the wrapped package on the soft surface.

"What's that?" She heard Roo ask, Kamilla noticing that even Yennefer seemed intrigued by the mysterious item. She pulled at the string, unraveling the bow with ease and opening the package to reveal a clump of material which she unfolded until it's true form which was that of a very excessive and yet beautiful white dress along with a rough sketch of a very exotic looking fish that Kamilla had still never seen.

"It's a dress… one my mother made for me… she intended for me to wear it at my wedding… though I never ended up as a bride." Her lack of marriage did not bother her, but the sensations brought on by the dress sentimental value of the dress did.

A tick later, Kamilla found herself standing in front of the mirror, wearing the beautiful white dress, long veil like layers drifting in every direction, a few tears welling in her eyes but never falling. The pain of loss was ever present when memories of her family unearthed themselves, but it was not all bad, despite the unpleasantness, Kamilla couldn't help but find some warmth in the fact that she had such happy memories. The nostalgia came with the undeniable realisation that her skill as a seamstress had been a gift that had seen her through thick and thin, even assisting her in getting an apprenticeship on Sahova. The skill and the one who had passed it on to her, were like a wind, one that continued to push her forward in life.

Finally, the tears fell, Kamilla doing her best to wipe them away before they reached the flawless dress she currently found herself trapped in. It may have taken her entirely too long to realise it, but she had been very lucky, or rather she still was.

1 163

[Madeira Dusk]

Grades Awarded!

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Kamilla

Skills

• Socialization: 4xp
• Planning: 1xp
• Sewing: 2xp
• Organization: 1xp
• Teaching: 2xp
• Trapping: 1xp

Lores

• Lore of the dangers of nostalgia
• Sewing: taking environmental factors into design
• Syka: tight clothing is not ideal
• Teaching: vocabulary
• Trapping: laying traps to catch mice

Awards & Retribution


Notes
Alright, bring it on. I'm ready for the emotional rollercoaster I know the next parts are going to slam me with. (ง'̀-'́)ง