Somebody's Got No Glass [Hadrian|Montaine]

[Montaine]

Somebody's Got No Glass Summer 74 512 AV Montaine was happy. He was rarely unhappy, but when he had a full work day ahead it wasn’t all that common for him to be anything more than tolerably content either. But today he was positively joyous. There were no urgent shipments, no outstanding orders, no dire shortages of windows or glasses or any of the many mundane objects he so often was called to make, and as such he had the freedom of the workshop for the day. He could make what he liked, and he knew just what he would like to make. When he was free to work on his own pieces, without the restrictions of Calbert’s instruction, he gravitated naturally towards one area: figurines. Figurines had little use. They had no functionality, no purpose beyond simply existing. People used them as decoration, or paperweights, or for whatever use one might have for what was, in truth, essentially a glorified hunk of glass. And while Monty generally deplored the useless, those who did not work or sought to live the easy life, living on the labours of others, his opinion of useless glass was rather different. When he made a window, the purpose of that act, that act of creation, was to make an object to fulfil the purpose of permitting light yet not air through a cavity in a wall. When he made a vase, the purpose of that act was to make an object to fulfil the purpose of holding a liquid or pourable material. It was not about the glass, but the end result. When Monty made a figurine, that act of creation was the purpose. To create something beautiful, to create something useless, with no purpose beyond its own existence, beyond its own creation, that was glasswork in its purest form. The purpose of a figurine was to display the beauty of glass, the beauty of glasswork. Banden held the hatch open on the batch oven as Monty slipped his pipe into the burning heart of the furnace. Fogle had been finding it more and more difficult to persuade his parents to permit him to leave the relative safety of their family home and enter the city proper, what with the rumours of disease spreading like wildfire. Mory and Banden had disregarded such gossip as simply being a part of Zeltiva’s standard famine cycle, but the curmudgeonly, old Mory had been sniffing an awful lot of late and hadn’t turned up to work at all that day. Monty closed an eye and watched for the reflection of the pipe on the molten glass. When he spotted it he carefully gathered a small amount and pulled the tool out, allowing Banden to close the hatch. The dollop of vibrant, scarlet material was roughly the size of his balled fist and was beginning to droop downwards towards the workshop floor. Monty spun the pipe in his hand, to allow the tendril that had formed to rejoin the rest of the glass and pressed his lips to the end, and blew. The ball extended outwards, growing, and paling as it did so. He reached out a hand to find his jacks on the old stone marver and used them to manipulate the glass into a longer, more tubular shape. When he was satisfied with the length he slid his hand along the pipe and brought the blistering piece closer. With one hand holding the pipe steady and the other clutching his jacks, he gripped the tube some two thirds of the way along and ran the jacks slowly down, towards the pipe, squeezing softly. He repeated this movement, causing the glass to taper very gently along its length, bulging outwards at far end. Next, Monty returned his jacks to the marver and picked up his shears, grasping the far end and teasing it, tugging out two little ears. He moved down the piece and tugged out four little tendrils that would become legs and then picked up his jacks once more. The labour was delicate, but due to the nature of the material he was working with he had to move quickly. If the glass cooled too swiftly, the entire piece could be ruined. He used the jacks to smooth the shape of the glass near the protrusions he had formed and subtly shaped the ends of them into little feet, running the points of the tool down the very tips to define the toes. He then returned once more to his shears and broke the little figurine off of the pipe and placed it down on the marver, handing the pipe over to Banden in one movement. As the glass hit the coolness of the stone it rapidly lost some of its lustre, he had to be fast. He used his shears to grip the back end of the piece and pulled out a long tail, curling it round so that it stood proud and curved above the main body. He smoothed the glass down where it had been weakened by the process, near the base of the tail, and set to work on the smaller details. The face was always the trickiest. To make such fine detail with such clunky tools in such resistant materials in such a short amount of time, these things required a great amount of practice and experience to pull off well. Fortunately he had both in spades. Holding just one of the two pointed ends of his jacks between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, and balancing the tool with his left, he began to carve out the figurine’s feline features. The task required a steady hand and steadier mind. If he panicked and made a mistake there would not be time to remedy it before the glass became too cool and risked cracking. He was lucky, and skilled, enough to make the face without error, and, using the jacks, lifted the piece up off the marver and placed it into the annealer to cool. Monty sighed with relief and sat down on the little wooden chair propped up the by the oven. Yes, figurines were so much more interesting than windows.

OOCSorry it's so long, and so long coming. I had no inspiration, as after a while you tend to exhaust all of the ways to making glassworking descriptions interesting. Nevertheless, I gave it a shot and it sort of went to roughly a thousand words. Enjoy, I guess.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian had business with the artisan he had met at that party not so very long ago. But between his students and his orphans and his business deals both clandestine and open, he hadn't even had time to reclaim his birthright, the bequest of his ancestor, Victor Zekvan, his underground laboratory. It was sheer luck that he had the time now to make a personal visit. He could have sent one of his assistants to do it; certainly he paid them more than their work deserved. But he had always loved to walk in order to free up his thoughts from the ruts they found themselves in, just as one day he hoped to fly on morphed wings for a new perspective. But he found the shop, knocked, and let himself in. He knew little of glassworking save what he had read, but already there were ideas teeming in his mind. That he might alchemize glass with a tiny seed diamond to make them nigh impenetrable, that he might magecraft powerful shields into them. He took his stewardship of the orphans quite seriously, and if he did not allow himself to feel much tenderness, at least he was looking after their best interests while the rest of the staff saw to their need for affection. His own father had been rather aloof, and Hadrian had turned out all right... "Hello?" he called, eyes swinging toward Montaine, following the vibrations of his aura as his eyes grew accustomed to the interior dim.

[Montaine]

The glassworker was relaxing in his chair with his eyes closed, listening to the gentle roar of the furnaces. The fires weren’t particularly hot today, and work was casual, so the oft deafening sound of the ovens in use was muted. He heard someone speak but paid it little heed. Banden was around, after all, and could almost certainly handle most things. The man had been around the glassworks longer than he had, though his skills were limited and lay in the rather simple task of batch orders. He really found his feet making multiple instances of single items, a set of identical glasses for instance, or a couple of vases. That wasn’t to say he was unskilled, it took a fiercely well trained eye to be able to duplicate properly. Each piece was made separately, and was therefore unique, a facet that was one of glasswork’s most prized for many but a deplorable flaw for those who wanted sets. But Banden could replicate an item to such a fine degree that even his colleagues struggled to tell them apart. Yes, Banden could deal with whoever it was. Monty’s colleague popped out of the shadow of the batch oven and into Hadrian’s path, ‘Hello, sir, can I help you? You lookin’ for somethin’ in partic’lar? It’s jus’ me an’ my colleague ‘ere today, but we’re still open an’ up ‘n’ runnin’, you jus’ say the word aye?’ Montaine shifted in his chair, so that he could peer over his shoulder at the exchange, but upon seeing who it was almost fell from his precarious perch at the edge of his seat and jumped up. He jogged over to Hadrian with a broad smile. ‘Ah! Mister Aelius! Welcome to the glassworks,’ he said, slipping himself between Banden and their customer and holding out a hand, ‘What a pleasant surprise!’

[Hadrian]

The man who appeared was not the one Hadrian had come seeking, but his polite social mask did not falter. He gathered himself and forged ahead. "Hello, I'm-" But then Montaine showed himself, much to Hadrian's relief. "Oh, hello, Master Redsun. So good to see you again." He managed a sincere smile. "I hope I'm not catching you at a bad time." But there was a delicate piece in his satchel, and they had work to discuss for the orphanage, the which would likely keep Montaine busy for a good while, and keep the orphanage from being impossible to heat over the winter. The coldest season with its bonesnappers was always on the horizon, after all.

[Montaine]

‘Not at all! Not at all!’ Monty said, beaming and shaking his hand. Montaine did not have a particularly strong handshake, but there was a sincere effort in the meagre attempt. The last time he had seen the man standing before him he had been at a rather tedious dinner party held by some up and coming couple amongst the social elite who wanted to be seen to be in the company of the exciting and the unconventional. The glassworker feared that Mister Aelius was the exciting. The man had, on their previous meeting, revealed to him extraordinary wonders from beyond the stars, or at least that was how Monty remembered it. He had never seen such incredible magical skill and was pleasantly surprised at his own grasp of the theory behind it, not that he ever saw himself going into the djed sciences. Leave that to the professionals. In return, the scholar had hinted that he might require the services of a glassworker. Blowing glass wasn’t quite as visually impressive as the feats of magic Hadrian was capable of, but it was something that Montaine could do, and could do well. ‘So, tell me, what can we do for you?’

[Hadrian]

Hadrian's hands were stronger than he looked, but his handshake was gentle. He didn't want to bruise an artisan's livelihood, and perhaps working with children was making him more aware, too. "Well," he began, "I have to put in an order for windowpanes for the Farsun Home." He took a folded piece of paper out of his jerkin and handed it to the man. Inside was a list of dimensions needed, as well as numbers, and the like. Boring business, but it would keep Montaine and his colleagues in their food and lodging. "I've asked the exchequer to send you word that payment will be received from the Home's coffers. They haven't yet put those under my direct control." There was more, of course, but he wanted to give Montaine time to look over the order and ask any questions he might need. The panes required were more delicate than most in Zeltiva, where bonesnappers and other rough winds often broke the less hardy things, but he had plans to Shield them in addition to the protections he would lay to ward away danger from his charges. That, and he wanted as much sunlight to come into the place as possible. Light, he had noticed, made the children happier.