Completed Scratching the surface

[Ari'Ellin]

20th Fall, 520AV

Her hands ran over the second bone. She’d bought it much earlier in the month but she hadn’t found anything to do with it yet. She hadn’t even tested the first bone she’d carved and maledicted to see if it would work. She wasn’t fond of the idea of testing them on herself, especially when she didn’t know what it would really do if it did work.

Sighing, she looked at it realised how poorly she’d managed with her attempt at cleaning the bone and a frown spread across her face. She grabbed her cloth and filled her pot with water. Carefully she dipped her bone into the water and swirled it through the water, before pulling the dripping wet bone from the water and beginning to rub the bone with the cloth, trying to pull some more of the tendons and ligaments from the bones and leave it as just the bone.

She was disappointed though, the bone wasn’t white like many other bones she’d seen. Instead it was more of a yellowish beige colour and Ari’Ellin made a point of deciding that she would go to the library and see if she could find a book on how to prepare bones properly and get them to the pretty white bones she’d seen her father carving when she was younger.

But for now she just wanted to clean the pigs rib bone and attempt to Maledict it into another talisman, hopefully one that would be carved in a different way to the previous one.

Sighing again, she rinsed the bone in the water again, pulling it out and rubbing the cloth over it. She repeated the process a number of times before looking over the bone closer. It looked much cleaner than it had done before, with the bone seeming to be somewhat smooth compared to earlier.

Nodding, she rinsed the bone off one last time and shook it dry afterwards. Humming softly she tried to think of what she could do with the bone. It took a few moments before she stood up and made her way to her desk, flipping her book open and found what she’d written earlier in the season, a series of words describing what the bone could represent, some of the words based from the fact that it was a pig bone, others based from the fact that it was specifically a rib bone.

Nodding slowly she found her eyes landing on the word ‘protection’. The previous talisman she’d made had used both the pig and rib representations but now she wanted to focus on the rib aspect, and looking over the word protection she felt as though that might be the best option to take.

Humming softly, she turned the page in her book and retrieved her ink pot and quill. She was certain that ink and a quill wasn’t the best thing to use to try to draw out a Malediction circle in preparation, but it was all she had for now.

Word Count501 Words

[Ari'Ellin]

It took a few moments before she started imagining what to draw, and soon she found herself looking through her runestones, her hands finally grabbing one and looking over it.

This rune looked almost like a ‘Y’ but with the middle line extending through the fork and reaching to the top of the rune. If she remembered correctly it was the Elk stone. Humming she turned it in her hands, remembering the meaning of it that her mother had taught her. She’d always told her that it meant Elks, shields, and protection.

Nodding, she decided that she’d use this rune in her circle and hurriedly she picked up her quill again, dipping it into the pot of ink and beginning to draw an uneven, messy circle in her book. She couldn’t help but grimace at the sight of it before she shook her head and continued.

She drew a line from the centre of the circle reaching diagonally upwards until it stopped just shy of touching the circle. Then she copied it on the other side of the circle, so that the lines met in the centre. Then carefully she drew a vertical line straight through the centre of of the circle.

Humming to herself she compared her drawing to the rune on the stone and she exhaled slowly. The runes lines were much straighter, while Ari’Ellin’s drawing was messy and scratchy, the lines looking nowhere near as clean as she had hoped. And she couldn’t help but shake her head.

Her design looked too plain. It had the circle and the rune that she thought would work well. She didn’t have the artistic talent to add any drawings or pictures to the malediction circle, and she doubted she’d be able to fit any words into the circle. Maybe if the bone was bigger and could fit a bigger circle onto it and fit an actual word into the circle.

Looking at it again, she decided to settle with what she had and she stood up, grabbing her book and the bone, then opening her chest to grab the engraving tools her father had given her. Then she moved to sit cross legged on the floor setting the book on the floor in front of her so she could look at her plan for the circle.

Then she placed the bone on the floor, using one hand to hold it in place as she picked up the smallest engraving tool and adjusted her grip on it.

Then carefully she started the carving. First she worked at slowly scratching away the surface of the bone in the outline of a circle. She took her time, scratching around an eight of an inch at a time before stopping to check how it looked as a whole. She kept the scratches light, just deep enough to see them but not deep enough to be clearly visible. She wanted to keep everything light and shallow while she laid it out, and then later she’d go over them with a thicker tool to deepen the lines.

Word Count511 Words

[Ari'Ellin]

Once the circle had been lightly scratched into the bone, she worked on the vertical line, repeating the process and carving the bone away to leave a shallow groove, stopping often to make sure everything looked okay. Luckily for Ari, the vertical line didn’t take too long to complete, and then she was left with just the two diagonal lines to complete.

Sighing she put the tool down and shook her hand, trying to relieve some of the tension that was building up in her hand. She hadn’t realised exactly how hard she was squeezing the tool and how tense she had been while carving away the lines.

The process was borderline tedious with how often she stopped and how little progress she seemed to be making. She was certain that if her drawing and carving were better, she would find her task much less tedious, but unfortunately her skills weren’t anywhere near that yet.

“I should practice more...” she mumbled to herself in Kontinese, making a note in her mind to maybe try to practice those skills outside of her malediction attempts, maybe attempt to take some lessons to improve herself and make everything easier on her.

Sighing again, she picked the tool up again and pushed it against the bones, continuing her pattern of scratching into the bone, pausing, and then inspecting her work often, until the two diagonal lines had been completed. Happily she pulled the tool away from the bone and set it down, before picking up the bone and looking at the malediction circle and smiling slightly.

Sure it wasn’t perfect, the lines were awkwardly and wobbly and clearly carved into the bone by an amateur, but it was clear enough what it was, at least to anyone that read rune stones. She hoped that it would be clear enough for her malediction to work at least in some form. Nodding again, she grabbed her book and closed it, tossing it haphazardly onto her bed before she stood up and made her way to her desk again, grabbing one of the larger engraving tools as she did so.

Humming softly she sat down at her chair and put the bone on her desk. She stretched her arms out, grumbling slightly as she did so before using one hand to hold the bone in place as she used the other to start going over the lines, applying slightly more pressure to make a wider, deeper mark that would be more visible.

With her ‘guide’ lines already in place she found it easier to work quicker, needing to stop slightly less often as long as she just followed the thin, shallow grooves already made in the bones. It was the straight lines she had to stop the most often for, not wanting to get over confident in fear of pushing the lines past the line that made the circle. She needed everything to remain within the circle if she wanted to stand any chance of success in her creation.

Word Count502 Words

[Ari'Ellin]

It wasn't long before she started to hum a tune to herself as she carefully scratched the bone away, stopping every so often to check just how deep she was carving. She tried her best to keep it level and consistent, not carving too deep or too shallow. She wanted to make sure that it both fulfilled its purposed, and looked at least somewhat well done! She didn't want to look like too much of an amateur after all the work that she had put into the piece.

She stopped humming, sending her home into silence, only the sound of a gentle breeze flowing through the cracks around the door and the occasional sound of her tool scraping against the yellowish bone broke the silence, but failed to break her focus.

The silence was almost reassuring to her. It reminded her of the house she had cold home in Mura, of how many afternoons she spent working on various different things whilst her mother worked on something else, both contented to be silent together. Ari'Ellin found herself thinking of those days with a sense of longing and sentimentality, along with the feeling of missing her mother. It had been years, and she only ever received short, infrequent messages from her mother. She wanted to try to send a gift back to her, and looking at the half carved bone, she felt that this one would be the best option. Her mother had taught her all of the runes and symbols, she would know exactly what the enchanted bone would be useful for.

Smiling softly to herself, Ari'Ellin finished the final like and hurriedly she placed the tool down and brought the bone closer, inspecting it and seeking for any major issues that even she would be able to see, though she wasn't able to see any issues for now.

Her smile widened more from happiness and hurriedly she went to get her dagger, ready to pierce the flesh of her finger and draw out the droplet of blood that she would need.

She kneeled in front of the bone and looked over the blade, before pushing it into the tip of her finger, just enough for it to break the skin and cause her to wince in pain. Carefully, she moved her finger over the centre of the circle she'd made, and she waited for a few moments, waiting to see if the blood would drip on its own.

After no indications of the blood being about to drip, Ari'Ellin sighed and shook her head, beginning to gently squeeze the pad of her finger, coaxing the bead of blood out from her finger and holding her finger as steady as she could until the delicate bead of crimson blood dripped from her finger and landed in the centre of the circle, the blood spreading slightly through the carved line running vertically through the centre of the circle.

For a few moments she just watched the blood, hoping that her work would not have been in vain and that her attempt at Malediction would have some effect. The worst outcome would be something that did nothing!

Word Count525 Words

[Ari'Ellin]

Shrugging, she still wasn't certain as to whether the fetish would do anything, but even if it did nothing she wanted to at least make something of it. Nodding to herself, she stood up and made her way to her chest, leaning in to grab some of the yarn that she had bought.

She compared the yarn to her wrist, wrapped it around her wrist six times before slicing through it with her dagger. Happy with the length of yarn that she had chosen, Ari placed the rest of the yarn back into the chest and made her way back to the floor.

She brought the two ends of the yarn together and straightened the yarn out, finding the middle of the length of yarn and holding a finger over it as she picked up the bone. She placed the bone over it carefully, making sure that the end of the bone was lying on top of the bone and that the carving was facing downwards. Then carefully she began to wrap the string around the bone.

She crossed the two ends of the thread over the bone and tied them together, making sure that her knot tightened the yarn against the bone. Then she crossed the ends around the front of the bone, then back around to the back, tying a knot to tighten everything around the bone. She repeated the process, wrapping the yarn around the bone and then tying it at the back. She repeated it five times and then used the rest of the yarn to hold it up, checking to see that it seemed to be holding the bone in place.

She shook it a couple of times and grinned as she saw that the bone didn't seem to loosening from the yarn and that the yarn was holding it securely.

Finally she took the two ends of the yarn and held them together. Using both ends, she bent them into one loop, then passed the ends through it, pulling it tight to knot them together. She repeated the attempt at a knot again and although the result wasn't the neatest, it looked as though it was secure and tight.

Testing it, she pulled the two lower halves in opposite directions and watched both the knots at the ends and the knots holding the bone in place. She was happy with her attempt, and holding the yarn up should that it looked as though it was a poorly made necklass. One that she was ready to test.

She wanted to test it now, but she also didn't quite want to test it alone, and preferably she'd want someone else to test it so that she could try to use her Auristics to watch what happened with it to try to work out exactly what was happening. Sighing, she stood up and placed the necklace on her desk, glancing around as she wondered if there was somewhere better to put it. She thought for a moment, chewing the inside of her cheek before she turned to her chest, opening it and gently laying the makeshift bone necklace at the bottom of it, towards the side and away from everything else in the chest.

Word Count537 Words

[Oralie]

grade award!

...

Ari'Ellin

Skills

• Cleaning: 1
• Drawing: 1
• Engraving: 2
• Malediction: 2

Lores

• Malediction: Designing a basic malediction circle
• Malediction: Using runes in circle designs
• Malediction: Turning a bone into a necklace with yarn

...

Please PM me if you have any questions or concerns and don't forget to edit your grade request!