Solo Rushing Hands

[Inia Skyglow]

OOCI have Valkyrie's permission to post a Winter work thread a bit late because I was out of town and such. 74th of Winter, 512 Pierce, pull back, skip, pierce... Rhythm was Inia's escape. Working with leather was her passion, certainly, but there were moments, especially over the past ten days or so, where it just caught up with her. It seemed like there was just more and more work to be done, lately. Her first twenty, thirty days were so exploratory. Yes, she had work to do, entire wardrobes to craft, even. But these were completed in a day's time, leaving her with entire days free to work on skills, to let her hands waste time twiddling leather and thread. She'd learned more than expected from those sessions of freedom, though perhaps it had contributed to her current inefficiency. This next few days were likely going to be hectic. She had two full orders to complete; entire outfits constructed to exact specifications, and a large stack of garments to repair. In addition, stock on most basic items was running very low. Cloaks in particular had sold well of late, and there were perhaps two fur cloaks remaining on the store's shelves. Inia groaned as she set aside a fur cloak, folding it gently. Her agenda for the day was lengthier than she'd anticipated. She retrieved some leather from the workroom's shelves, laying the pieces on the table. Working industriously, she marked and cut leather for a jerkin, adjusting the pattern for a man of stockier build. “Honestly, how many people need new clothing in Avanthal? It's not like leather wears out that often, and there certainly aren't enough children around to justify it all as first-time purchasing, nor are most of these small enough for little ones to wear,” she complained aloud as she tooled the leather. Her hands fell into contented rhythm again as she took up a needle and waxed thread. The backstitch was second nature to Inia, and as the girl relaxed, her hands continued working, practically of their own accord. Inia smiled. Even when it was rushed, even when it was for work and not for pleasure, the movement of her hands along leather brought cheer to Inia's heart and plastered a stupid grin on her face. Perhaps a bell had passed before Inia had completed the stitching, her hands aching pleasantly as she took a chisel to the jerkin, making decorative 'carvings' in the thick leather surface. She sighed, irritated, as she carved spiral grooves into the leather. Inia disliked spirals, largely because of the painstaking effort required to construct them. Another bell or so later, and the jerkin was complete and set aside. Inia moved on to a pair of trousers, constructed for the same customer. Thankfully, no more than stitches were required. Occasionally, customers requested minor decorations on trousers. Inia thought this ridiculous. Who would wear decorated trousers, anyway? She had thought, chuckling to herself. The trousers didn't take more than a bell to complete. Inia's delighted, if perhaps hurried, hands turned to boots. Construction and decoration passed quickly. Time seemed irrelevant when Inia's hands were at work. When she'd completed the outfit in its entirety, the sun had set. She yawned, setting the completed work under the shop's main counter, and left for the day. Tomorrow is going to be equally busy for me, she thought, equal parts dreading and excited over the prospect.

[Inia Skyglow]

75th of Winter, 512 Inia woke quickly. Mornings weren't typically slow for Inia. The girl was gifted with the constitution of a lifelong drunk. She grinned to herself. Long days of leatherworking always excited her. Even a day like today, when she expected to be busy all day and exhausted by the day's end, didn't seem to phase her. She ate a quick morning meal before wrapping herself up and heading out into the snow. It was snowing, though only lightly. She strolled confidently across the familiar path to Laria's Furs, her mind wandering freely as she walked. It seemed as if mere seconds passed before she was stamping her feet outside the store, and then removing her heavier clothing before getting to work in earnest. She ran her eyes over her long agenda for the next few weeks and groaned, trying to ignore the feeling that she'd lain an insurmountable course. She took immediately to measuring fur for a cloak, serving the dual purpose of distracting her from her significant workload and completing a portion of it. Finally, after chimes of measurements and knifework and punching, her hands fell into the comfortable pattern of stitching. She hummed lightly as she worked at a furious pace, partially to finish quickly and partially from feverish passion. She sighed, satisfied, as the cloak came together, and tossed it around her mannequin's shoulders, more out of habit than anything. Cloaks were very hard to ruin, unless you missed stitches and completely mutilated the fur itself. Inia, thankfully, had advanced beyond such a mistake. Without even looking at her list, she went for a stack of leather. After measuring and preparing the hides, she stitched them into a jerkin, her hands moving passionately. She kept at her pace, carving and pressing little notches into the jerkin before setting it aside in satisfaction. Barely pausing for breath, her hands dove into sewing together a pair of fur-lined trousers, and then a pair of boots, and a matching leather cloak. Noon approached quickly, but Inia's hands refused to cease their dance. She finished the outfit, the second of three to be completed in the days to follow, shortly before the third bell of the afternoon. She let her hands fall into the pattern of making more fur cloaks, unwilling to stop. By the time she left Laria's that evening, she'd completed a stack of three cloaks. Including the one she'd made hastily that morning, she'd completed four cloaks and an entire special outfit in a single day. Inia's eyes turned a dark violet-blue as she walked home, her arms and shoulders burning with a satisfying ache. She slumped onto her bed, too tired to undress or even properly fall asleep. She stayed there, closing her eyes. She may have fallen asleep, or may have simply laid there until morning.

[Inia Skyglow]

76th of Winter, 512 Inia bolted out of her door. She wasn't late, but she didn't want to be. Earliness would be her friend today. She wasn't behind schedule, but she could be. She ran, her lungs expanding and contracting in rhythm with her haphazard, careless steps. She hadn't ever been much of a runner. For one thing, she wasn't gifted with a runner's chest, nor did she have particularly powerful lungs. That hadn't stopped her from being extremely energetic, though. She didn't have much trouble running, when she needed to, but she wasn't a star athlete, either. She kept running, her chest rising and falling quickly with her fast and shallow breath. She panted as she slowed, barely a few metres from Laria's. Grinning slightly, she opened the door and slipped inside. She slumped against a wall, breathing slowly. It had taken her around ten chimes, perhaps a quarter-bell, to reach the workplace. That was less than half the time she spent on the trip on an ordinary day. She was quite satisfied. Groaning, she stood up, her hands on her knees. Her breaths were still shallow, but they came regularly. She grinned mischievously, going straight to work. She wanted to complete the last of the three specified sets of leather garments before the day's end. Inia couldn't help but wonder about this particular customer. It wasn't proper of her to assume the man was odd, but the assumption was made nonetheless. Ordering three nearly-identical outfits for such cold weather was probably for an odd purpose, in Inia's opinion. “Or a wedding,” she muttered absently. “I mean, I imagine that some Vantha weddings incorporate finer leather garments like these. Maybe not for the groom,” she mused, gesturing with her needle as if the air was an audience. “But perhaps some attendants or something. Whatever the groom's associates are called.” She set a completed pair of leather trousers aside and went to work on the jerkin. As her hands fell into needlework, her brain wandered freely. First, she thought of knots. Complicated, knotted patterns, intricately woven in thread or drawn on something, made their way through Inia's mind. What if they were in me? she thought, the grotesque concept amusing her. She didn't notice how painful it sounded. The hypothetical resounded in empty space for a moment, before her brain answered. No, I don't imagine that's a good idea. It'd look funny. Her mind shifted, from elaborate knots to art on the body. She'd seen tattoos on foreigners, of course, on occasion. When she was younger, she'd mistaken them for the gnosis marks of other deities. She absently looked at her own mark, Morwen's mark. Mistaking tattoos for gnosis had led to some interesting conversations in marketplaces. Inia, as a child, had been far more awkward than she was presently. She hadn't understood the concept of unfamiliar persons. Consequently, Inia had often asked awkward questions of people, whom her parents had needed to quickly steer her away from, less from a lack of plausible trust and more from worry that their verbally precocious daughter would construct herself an undeserved reputation. Inia set the jerkin aside, her hands falling quickly into work on a cloak and then on boots. Her brain wandered to the topic of aquatic life. She'd always thought aquatic mammals were odd. “Imagine, things that live in water but breathe air?” she said, chuckling. “Especially the sort with fur. They're adorable, certainly, but let's be honest, they are quite odd.” She kept giggling to herself as she set aside the completed boots and took up her chisel, working the patterns into the jerkin and the edges of the boots. Spirals seemed the motif for whatever occurrence or individual these were intended for. Over the past season or so, Inia had found herself with tiny insights, windows into the lives of complete strangers; she saw tiny glimpses of who each of her customers was. She'd heard the expression before, that clothes define their wearer as much as the person determines the appearance of his attire, and she could neither offer her agreement or dissent. By the time an ordinary person would've left for a midday meal, Inia had completed the outfit, having worked at a breakneck pace for several bells. She ate a small snack she'd brought with her, paying no attention to what she was actually eating. The girl had a habit for eating smaller portions of food throughout a day rather than three solid meals; her father thought this related to her uncanny level of energy. She often went without a proper breakfast and only on occasions where she had no choice did she consume dinner at noontime, preferring to only eat a complete meal in the evenings. She returned to work within a short span, taking to restocking generic garments. Her hands relaxed into the frantic comfort of stitching cloaks. “What if you made clothes out of something like that, huh?” she said, addressing the mannequin, which stood inanimate across the room. “Aquatic mammals, I mean. Like, if you kept the face on, would that look odd? Having some walrus's face on your back? Maybe I'll do that some day. I'd love to have a walrus vest.” She set a cloak aside, taking up the leather for another. “D'you think you can even do that?” she asked the mannequin, smiling. “Skin an animal, face and all? It'd probably be pretty horrible for the animal.” She stared at the mannequin, imagining a response of disdain or shock. Inia's rhetorical conversations frequently featured inanimate objects as partners of argument, though she rarely imagined their objections verbally. She focused on the emotional reactions an onlooker might have toward her odd statements, though she misjudged them, often wildly so. She set aside another cloak, taking to a third. “Oh, what if a walrus wore a vest?” The mannequin was speechless. “Wouldn't it look spiffy? A vest, paired with a walrus's noble features and fine moustache?” She grinned, picturing a fancily dressed walrus. “It could carry a monocle, speak in the most refined of verbiage, every word a poem in its own right. The fanciest of walruses, if I do say so myself,” she said, with the air of one describing a work of art. She added the third cloak to her pile of completed garments, picking up the pieces of a fourth. Her hands worked frantically, she gave attention to this cloak, losing herself in the pleasure of her work, the feel of the leather moving under her fingertips. Chimes passed quickly. Her hands felt as if they were running a marathon all to themselves, and Inia revelled in the passion of her effort. By the time she'd completed the next two cloaks, dusk had fallen. She stood up, stretching and yawning. It seemed only a few short bells ago that she'd began her long list of work. Inia had been expecting it to take at least the whole of six or seven days, but she had only spent three and had completed nearly the entirety of her list. Certainly everything that was outside the realm of a normal day's work was done; all that remained were a few garments for the stock of typical items, which she could complete in two bells or fewer the next day. She left Laria's with a satisfied smile plastered over her face, looking for all the world as if she'd just found true love, rather than simply doing a good three days work.

[Noblesse]

Inia Skyglow :

Experience:

• Leatherworking +3
  
• Sewing +1
  
• Running +1

Lores:

• Decorations on Trousers are Ridiculous
  
• Daydreaming at Work
  
• Running Saves More Time than Walking
  
• Satisfaction after Days of Hard Work

Notes:
This is another nice job thread from you! I felt I have gotten to know Inia’s personality more in this, and I must say I like what I’m currently seeing. It’s really funny when she suddenly starts talking all to herself. And the line about the mannequin being speechless honestly made me laugh. I love puns.

On another note, I know Inia is brimming with energy, and you already know how much I like her, but do play within your current skill level. Twenty-eight points in leatherworking will help finish the workload faster than when you are just starting out, but six to seven days’ worth of work cannot all be accomplished within just three days by someone who had just become competent at said skill. I’m actually thinking of four to five days to finish all of that here. I’m just saying be careful of how you’re portraying her proficiency at work in your following threads.

With that aside, I hope to see more threads from Inia in the future!

True nobility lies in being superior to your former self

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, please send me a PM and we can figure it out. Heehee.