Flashback Warp and Woof

[Aramenta]

Spring, 504 AV
Stonewhistling Pavilion, Endrykas
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"Looser, Ara, looser!"

Ara frowned irritably, "I am loose!"

Her mother turned to her and frowned darkly, and said nothing, raising her eyebrow, just slightly. Mother was a great, muscular woman, spare of flesh and hard of face. When Ara was frightened of someone else, this was comforting - mothers arms were strong, and safe, mother's face was filled with a fierce protective love. When Ara lived beneath her mother's expectations? Then those arms eyes had a certain fear in Ara's mind.

In the manner of a child, she did not closely examine this fear or its origins, or what, precisely, she was afraid the arms would do. It was not a physical fear. Ara's mother had not spared her the occasional switching, but in general, she was not a physical woman. Her switchings did not bear her anger, only the quiet practicality of a mother taught the means of redirecting a child by long tradition. No child wished for a whipping, of course. But Ara did not, per se, dread them.

It was rather, perhaps, the honesty of her mother's gaze that she was frightened of, if she were to look closely enough to analyze the fear. For when mother looked on one, one knew just what she thought - her face spoke with the same clarity as her hands an lips. She had fought in the Guard for many years, there was no virtue in dissembling, and great potential harm. She was not afraid of her enemies, and thus had no emotions worth hiding. And in the moments when Ara failed to fulfill her duties - small as they were at her age - Mother's face spoke of disappointment. Ara was her first child, her only child so far. She had the universal mother's concern, of whether her child would be great. Only for her, she expected Ara to be great. And when Ara was not great, it disappointed her, a fierce, dark disappointment, that pressed one to run faster, to fulfill.

Ara thus looked down at the clumsily thrumming drop spindle, whirling, whirling, in slow perambulations. And she loosened the fingers of her right hand, letting the diffuse wool thread through her fingers with a greater rush. Her thumb was sore and damp with wool-grease and sweat, and she had to force it to keep at the subtle rubbing that smoother and directed the wool, her wrist was tired and frustrated, she had to coax it into going round, round, round again. She was a little girl. Such decisions, to contradict the body, were very difficult. But, she made them, and she looked up at mother with sorrowful eyes, "Sorry, mama."

The spindle fell lower, lower, lower, and she whirled harder. IT was growing thick and heavy with yarn - coarse, poorly spun yarn, she knew that. She watched her mother's thumb, her mother was not even a weaver, but a warrior, and yet, her thumb moved with the grace of a sparrow, and her yarn was fine and smooth and yellow-grey, like the hair of an old Endal's wife. It would dye, beautiful, and be woven into, perhaps, woolen stockings for the winter.

"Mama, my yarn isn't pretty like yours."

"No. It isn't. But it is prettier than yesterday, hmm?"

"Yes, mama."

"Never, child, strive to be better than someone today. Strive to be better than yourself yesterday. Life, Ara-dear, is full of battles. You need not make them where they do not already exist, eh?"

She nodded, though in her heart, she could not see that her yarn really WAS any better than yesterday's.

"What will we do with my yarn, mama?"

"We shall felt it, I think. To make a watch-coat for you. Would you like that?"

She blushed.

"No, perhaps?" Mama laughed quiet and grim, "Yes, I think not. My girl is a brave girl, but perhaps not that sort of brave, to be a Watch-keeper, is she? Well, then I tell you what. We shall spin it, and we shall felt it into a watch-coat for me. Mine has grown tatters with age."

"You would wear… my yarn?"

"It is rough wool. You will see. I would wear it and maybe the smell of my little girl's new-calloused thumb would still be in it. And when I rode the forward rounds in early winter, when the snow melts and brings the wet-wool scent from my coat, I would have my little girl wrapped round me, Hmm?"

Ara smiled back, and didn't say anything. She looked down at the quickly whirling yarn. PErhaps, she thought, if she moved her elbow as she worked out the knots, the twining would be more regular.

x

[Aramenta]

IT was three months before there was enough yarn to make the cloth for mama's watch-coat; even then, she thought in her heart that mama had perhaps throw a few skeins of her own in. Mama had bought a great bundle of wode-blossom, and cooked it down into a deep, dark blue in the kettle over the fire. They had dyed the yarn together. When they pulled it out, Ara was embarrassed, for the deep color sucked into the knots and snarls like little black curls of extra color. Mama had laughed and comforted her when she cried over it, and told her it would give the coat more depth, and make her harder to see in the night. They'd pulled the yarn into thin piles to dry in the sun - for now, it was full summer. IT had taken two days, and left in the thick grass streaming trails of deep wode blue, that made the leaves look queer, like grass in night-shadow.

When it was dry her mother made her set up the heddle loom, while she watched. Ara was clumsy, and slow. She was too small for this work, the great heddle loom, when it stood full, was a powerful thing, weaving fabric a yard wide They set the warping threads together, for they had to be taut and strong, and the yarn was, after all, not the best. They chose some of her later spools - and she suspected, some of her mother's - for this part, and worked slowly, and carefully. It would do no good to make a a weak weave to her mother's coat.

When it was done, the long rows of cast, dark yarn, burned at Ara's eyes with a sort of virile force. There is in a newly set weaving, the force of the manmade, the powerful interplay of order enforced upon a disorderly world. It calls for this things that make man unique - for completion, for mastery, for understanding, for interpretation. Or, in the mind of a young girl, it simply looked as if it wanted to be started. It was late in the day, when got that far, and Mama, Ara knew, had much to do. But Ara could not resist that call and looked up to her mother with a quiet pleading.

Mama smiled down at Ara, "You want to start it, hmm?"

"Please? Just a few rows."

Mama laughed, "I understand. When I was little, do you know what I thought? I thought that when it was new like this, that the yarn looked lonely. until it started weaving. Come on. we'll start.x

[Aramenta]

The weaving, to Ara, was easier, but duller. Pull, set, shuttle, push. Pull, set, shuttle, push. Pull, set, shuttle push. The novelty of the first day wore off quickly, descending instead into the irritable regularity of rhythm. There was a song to spinning, a rolling, drone, like a piper's cry, or a flock of hungry pigeons. Weaving's song was scratch-thump-clatter-hiss. Scratch-thump-clatter-hiss. Scratch-thump-clatter-hiss. It felt more like a song that she imposed rather than one that she pulled gently from the yarn where it was trapped.

But she wove. Each day she wove, and wove, feeling at last as if she had a role in the family, something more substantive then simply doing the little errands in the horse yard that her father made up for her, plaiting manes, sweeping spills. Here, she made something. But, again, it wasn't very good. The fabric was coarse, and irregular, the shuttle could press only so much order into the clabber-clotted yarn. The fabric was not beautiful.

"Mama, my cloth is ugly."

"A little bit. But you will learn."

"I don't want to learn, I want to already know. You can't wear this it will look stupid."

"A garment, Ara, should tell a story. This coat, it well tell the story of Ara Stonewhistling, struggling with an old heddle, fighting with coarse mutton-wool, fighting something out of nothing, for the first time." She came behind her daughter now, and squeezed her tight shoulders gently, "It will tell the story of raw hands, and taut muscles, and aches, and tired eyes, and frustration, and a little girl growing, very slowly, to be a woman. It will tell the story of a child, Drykas-born, becoming useful - and to be useful, that is what makes the Strider's choose you. The Windmark, my little one, does not say, 'I have a horse', as an outsider might think. It says, instead, 'my ancestors look on me, remember their own tales, and trust me, my little skills, to tell the next lay of them. Perhaps, my beloved, you shall be the weaver in that next chapter, hmm?"

Ara frowned, and looked at the cloth. She had been through the weaver's markets, she had seen their cloth. This? Was garbage in comparison. She was not stupid, she knew this. She kept weaving, with a sigh, pushing the shuttle up against the threads hopelessly. Scratch-thump-clatter-hiss. Scratch-thump-clatter-hiss.x

[Aramenta]

She was only halfway through the heap of yarn she had spun, when one of the warping threads broke. She had pushed the shuttle in, worming it back and forth to press in as far as she could, for the left side had two threads with fats clots of poorly spun yarn on them, that she was hoping to flatten with the weaving. The napping thread had made surprisingly loud sound, a bang of release tension that made Ara jump back and scream, thinking she had broken a heddle.

"Mama! Mama!"

Mama had not heard. She was out riding Watch, for Ara, now, could be trusted to sit alone and weave. And she did, sighing softly at the quiet of the pavilion, filled only with the snuffling blind work of the oldest of her relations. Even her half-mother, now, was spinning, and took the spinning out into the sun to do. Ara was, for all intents and purposes, alone all day, and felt a sort of race-memory in that, the memory of wives and daughters left alone for a hundred years or more, to weave canvas, to cure cheeses, to smoke meats, to do the things that must be done so that the real work of the Drykas could be completed. She fleet small, and forgotten and insignificant.

Until, of course, the thread snapped. Then, suddenly, and sickly, she felt a terrible, terrible presence, a sense of the immediacy of her work. What could she do now?

"Wait… wait, I just have to wait for Mama to come home."

She said the words even as she thought them, and was sick to realize there was a certain comfort to them, a feeling that said 'It is not my fault. I haven't been taught this. I can go play now! I shouldn't fuss with things I don't understand.' It was a strong, lonely call. To say that it was her better nature that prevented her from such a cowardly step would be inaccurate, it had more to do with foresight. She was young, indeed, but smart enough to think through the ramifications of a strategic decision. And she did. If she went to play, the though of that broken string, of mama coming home and seeing the loom disheveled and abandoned, those things would gnaw at her. Yes, she would just run the faster, play the harder to try to press through them. But she was the daughter of a Stonewhistling, and of her Mama. She knew the guilt that would come when she finally returned home, knew her mother wouldn't say a thing, just repair the loom, and leave it for the next day. And she knew, in her heart, how terrible that would be.

So, Ara took up the two ends of the string and tried to figure how to splice them. She took the two broken end, and whorled them together, trying to make her fingers act like the spindle had acted. The two formed loosely into a single thread, but just engaging the loom, they fell limply apart again. She tried mashing them together, and twirling all the broken frayed ends together, - she had to pull the strings so tightly, she could not manage this. Finally, simply pulled the two ends as tightly as she could, and tied the smallest knot she could in them. This held. she pushed the shuttle - it caught on the knot, for it was very close to the weave point that it had broken. She pushed the shuttle up, working it over the knot - the line she was pressing warped. She adjusted it, pushed again, it finally set. She engaged the loom - it clattered, and she started again. It caught again. She wormed it over the knot. She was going, she realized, perhaps a tenth of her normal speed. She felt a sinking despair in her heart, and looked down. The thread really was close to the weave point at the knot, she tried to remind herself, she had, perhaps, 15 lines like this to fight through before she swallowed the knot inside the weave of the fabric itself.

As the lines went on, they grew more difficult, for the shuttle caught on the knot so close to the weave that she could press over it. And she had underestimated. Only after 25 lines had the weave grown so close to the knot that she had to abandon the shuttle altogether, sliding the threads up with her own fingers, trying to pull them as taut as she could with her thing child-arms, pushing the individual warps in with a sharp cornered pebble. These lines were a test of will. Each thread took her at least a quarter bell to get right, and even when they were done, she worried she could still see the difference. But she pressed on, and eight lines later, with a noisy clank of wood, the loom sucked the knot back behind the weaving line. Ara shouted so loudly one of the old ones looked up angrily at her from where she worked pounding out a skin for tanning on the opposite side. She made only two or three shuttles before mother came in. Mother dropped the belt carrying her axe, her shield, broad brimmed hat. She looked tired. Ara looked up at her proudly, mother came over and frowned.

"You have not made it so far, Ara. And your lines look sloppier here toward the end. Have you been playing?"

Ara's heart sunk, and she almost grew angry. What did mama know of difficult? She looked up at her mother, with a defiance in her eyes, and met that hard gaze. And in that moment, Ara realized something profound about the world - that effort was not a goal, but a tool, that it did not matter how hard one worked, except insofar as one's work produced a palpable good. She had worked hard, after all, at what? At correcting her own mistakes from the spinning process, for if the yarn had been strong and true like her mother's spinning, it would never have snapped.

Ara frowned, then, and her resentment melted a little bit. The point of arguing disappeared from her. She spoke in the quiet lisp of subservience.

"Mama… I'm sorry. I will keep working on it."

Mama frowned at this, but it was the frown of a mother, unsure of what a thing means, no anger inside of it. That confusion at her child growing was almost, in its way, as delicious to Ara as a smile would have been.

She stayed up late, the shuttle pressing, the loom falling and rising, the clatter and clack and hiss and snap echoing softly underneath the noisy clatter of dinner. Her father came over to her, told her to stop - him, this request, she looked up defiantly at, not even stopping the movement of her shuttle. Mama looked to Father then from where she pulled some wild onions from a bowl, shaking her head softly. Father, Ara noted, was as frightened of mother's disappointment as she was. He retreated. dinner kept on, a funny story she could only half hear from her corner straining, pricking, tempting at her ears. She sent the shuttle home with a fierce determination. Her mother, without a word, brought a plate to her, gathered seed cakes, a bit of bird's-flesh, stewed onions, water. She snatched bites of it between journeys of the shuttle. She worked and worked, the clatter and snap becoming a sort of defiant cry in her ears. The fabric was not beautiful - it was rougher, she knew, more variable as her arms began to ache with the effort of it, as her fingertips went numb.

Livvy came to her and sat under the loom, patiently, waiting, took her plate and tumbler when she'd finished, came back. Stayed silent. The night began to waft into the sky, and Livvy crawled up behind ARa, started to undo her braids, to brush her long hair out, to untangle sweat of her plaits. Still Ara worked. The children settled into their cots, and the adults changed into their nightclothes, the quiet, homey flirtations of the just-before-bed wafting through the air of the main chamber, unfamiliar to the girl's small ears. Finally, her mother came, and looked at her, watched her silently for several lines. Ara did not look up, kept pressing the shuttle, pressing the shuttle, hiss, bang, clatter, hiss, bang, clatter. She looked at the fabric, it was rough and ungainly, and the edge wavered slightly. Her eyes burned with unshed tears, and she pressed another line, hiss, bang, clatter.

And then, she felt a hand on her own, a hard, narrow hand, calloused to an axe grip and a shuttle. It held her own hand, soft but firm, stopping the shuttle from pressing again.

"IT isn't done mama! I haven't one it yet!"

A lesser woman, perhaps would have taken the girl up at that point, hugged her, told her she was a heroine. Mama said nothing, did not even smile, only looked quietly at Ara with her warm grey, hard eyes. She wore a white nightdress know, with lacing in the back, her rich hair pulled into a single long plait. Ara's own was just now being bound up the same way, Livvy's clumsy little hands tying a ribbon of hemp at the bottom. Ara looked up, and it was comforting, those matching plaits, those matching grey eyes.

"Ara, child. go to bed, now. There is tomorrow, then."

Ara took a deep breath, pulling at her tears clawing them back with her mind, drawing them into the little reservoirs just underneath her wide eyes.

"Yes, mama."

"Sleep, now. You cannot serve your people if you cannot stand. I love you, Ara."

"I love you, Mama."x

[Limey]

Skill and Lore Rewards Skills Lore Weaving 4 A Child's Fear Of A Parent's Disappointment Observation 3 Strive To Be Better Than Yesterday Dyeing 1 Lore: Wode-Blossom Dye A Garment Tells A Story So Much On Such Young Shoulders... Additional Notes : This. Was. Stunning! Seriously, this interaction between daughter and mother was one of the best I have ever read. It was nuanced and poignant and so damn authentic! The fear of disappointing ones parent, the struggle between doing your duty as a daughter and most of all, the LACK of a glowing, mommy-loves-you-so-so-much happy ending. It was real. You stayed true to the personality of your characters. Very impressive, love. No critique necessary, either for your dialogue, narrative or the methods of weaving and dyeing you used. You clearly know what you're talking about. You're improving by leaps and bounds, love. Keep it coming! Any questions or queries, please PM me.