Closed Of Knives and a Woman

[Allassanachassanya]

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90th Winter 516
"Speech"

The drapes of the tent stall shimmered in an illusionary breeze as Ssanya lounged outside on a wicker chair, her eyes trying not to run over the woman who stood in an attractive pose in front of her. She was tall and elegant, like a waterfall, wearing an understated lilac dress that gave her pale skin vibrancy and ended just at her feet. Her eyes were a sparkling hazel set under shaped, black brows. Her lips were tinted with some kind of makeup, and were smiling as the woman settled into the pose. And best of all, she was Ssanya's model for the day. Something she wasn't going to complain about.

Yet it had been an unusual request when this woman, "Aquiana", had come to the stall that morning. Ssanya had often seen Vera the stall keeper working on statues for people, sometimes of animals, sometimes of people, sometimes of neither but something more abstract. Her style was not something the maledictor appreciated much, but they always seemed to sell well. Yet she had never had the opportunity herself to work on a statue... except now, of course. It had been an unusual request because it was not often the client brought the wood they wanted to be carved in to the shop. It was even more unusual for the client to pay up-front, which was just what the dark-haired Aquiana had done. Ssanya still had the gold-rimmed mizas lying twinkling in the illusionary bright day of the Bizarre Bazaar.

Set in front of her was a large chunk of dark, honey-scented wood, with the beginnings of Aquiana's figure sketched roughly with charcoal. The wood was finely grained and well-shaped, no gnarls or snags where stray branches could have sprouted. It would be a challenge, of that she was sure. In fact, she had no idea why she had been given this job. Perhaps it was the way the elder lady had grimaced at the client, as if viewing an object too flouncy and extravagant for her quirky, simple stall. It could have been because of the way Aquiana had smiled favourably at the small woman carving yet another knife handle at the entrance. Either way, Ssanya was glad of the company. Glad to be away from her sour, strange employer.

"Ssso, Aquiana, what do you do for a job?" The black-haired woman stood with her chin angled attractively, and her hair draped over one shoulder. She contemplated the question as Ssanya began to smooth away fragments of wood to create the curves of her body in wooden form, her knife flicking gently to remove the wood as delicately as possible. Finally she answered, a smile alighting on her features. "I'm a dress-maker. I made this in fact- do you like it?"

She felt herself flush somewhat as the woman turned full-circle, the skirt of her dress flaring out. Yet it was clear, once she'd dragged her attention away from admiring the way the sunlight shimmered in her hair and managed to bring herself back to focus, that the dress was indeed well-made, and so she smiled enthusiastically as she inspected it. "Yessss, it'ss aah, very good." Very good weren't really the words she was looking for, but they would do. "Do you want me to put you in thiss dresss?"

"Yes, please. It's why I wore it specifically, it's my latest creation. The fabric is fresh from Kenash, you can almost feel the decadence. The colour is attractive too, is it not? I have a dye-maker friend who lives in the Patchwork Port who created this shade. I love it so much I'm tempted to keep it myself, but well, I'd never get anything sold that way!" Aquiana laughed melodiously, and Ssanya smiled in agreement, glad that she knew now to capture the attributes of the garment before she had started properly, not afterwards.

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655	655

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[Allassanachassanya]

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"Speech"

Briefly she mused on Aquiana's mention of the colour, and decided to clarify what it was exactly that she wanted from her. After all, it would not do to come to the end of the crafting and find that she had made something unwanted. Somewhere inside her she held back the acknowledgement that she didn't want to appear foolish or stupid to this very beautiful, somewhat intimidating woman.

"Aquiana, what exactly do you want? Do you wish for painted ssss... ssculpture, or no? Exact likenesss or sssomewhat.. absstract?" Silently she observed the yet-to-be statue in front of her. There was a form there that she could already sense, the woman's body almost ready to show itself in the pattern of the honey wood. Ssanya placed her hands gently where her knife had been just moments before, and nodded to herself. "I can ssee the mossst of it. But if you would like thiss colour, I am afraid I have little ssskill with that." She shrugged somewhat apologetically, but Aquiana merely raised her eyebrows and smiled.

"Paint or no paint, whichever comes naturally. That's a very unusual accent you have, miss...?" Ssanya was startled, but not much. She knew first-hand that her accent was noticeable, first in the various cities she had stopped off at along the way, and more recently Madeira's comments on her sibilant speech. It wasn't helped by the heavy serving of Ahnatep that overlaid it either, that virtually screamed Dhani at anyone that had any inclination of the desert city. The Dhani woman, for that was indeed what she was, angled her carving knife to the statue's feet and began to carve the hem of the long dress that hid her feet from view.

"I am called Ssanya, from Ahnatep. I have... something wrong with my tongue, from birth." It wasn't a very good lie, but she stopped herself from evaluating and spreading the lie as clear as diamond across her face. Instead, she brought her focus away from the distraction in front of her and pulled a file to her fingers.

The base was as good a place as any to start. Well, that was not entirely a true statement. It was, in this instance, the best place to start. It was where the dress spiralled up in the pretty way that it did and it was the deepest and thickest part of the wood. She began to file a neat edge around, making a circle... but then stopped. She stood and walked towards Aquiana, her merely stood in the exact pose she had before and had the good grace to look puzzled. The tiny maledictor circled the black-haired woman, and gazed intently at the hem of her dress.

No, it wasn't circular at all, but strangely dipped and scalloped like a sea shell's edge. Ssanya frowned, acutely aware she had almost made a grave mistake. No, she thought as she sat once more, the base should not be circular because this dress (and this woman) is not usual and not regular.

She began to mimic the cascading lilac dress with her file and her sandpaper, letting the roughness keep her fingers and her mind awake to the form of Aquiana as it, she, sought to escape from her wooden bonds.

Thread	Total
549	1204

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[Allassanachassanya]

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"Speech"

Wood carving was a delicate balancing act between tools. Ssanya worked quietly and with focus as she first used the knife to scrape away wood, then smoothed parts with a scrap of sandpaper, then juggled with the knife again to get the right shapes. Aquiana was quiet for a while too, daydreaming and looking around the market place, and the two women became engrossed in their respective tasks. The snake woman fiddled with cutting the dips of the dress at the base. It was far easier to work on the surface wood - getting down deeper into the structure of the wood meant cutting at awkward angles and working in the shadows that formed. A stronger light would be nice, she grumbled to herself, but there wasn't much she could do about that except light a candle and even then she didn't think that would do much good.

"Ssanya, I don't suppose I could rest for a while, could I? It's rather strenuous." Startled, she looked up and saw that the woman did indeed look rather uncomfortable. She began to nod, then put her finger up.
"Sssorry, Miss Aquiana. One moment, then you can sstop." She darted to her feet and rummaged about in her pack before drawing out a rough piece of parchment and her pen and ink. Deftly she unscrewed the lid and dropped it onto the table. A few splatters of black ink dropped onto the parchment, but Ssanya ignored the mess as she took the pen into her hand and dipped it into the pot. She gazed up at the woman, felt her cheeks heat slightly as she admired her, then dipped back down to begin her sketch of the pose.

Ssanya's pen scratched across the paper. She left a few smudges and ink blots because she wasn't trying to be careful or make a decent image for someone else, but only to aid her own imagination. First she started with the bottom of the dress, as she had with the wood carving. She swept long, curved lines upwards, having to orientate the parchment in the right direction beforehand. She struggled with the lines of the dress, finding it peculiarly more difficult to make a good representation of the natural folds of fabric that she'd have thought, but it was good enough with the few lighter lines she made. She redipped, then began sketching up, up, up to draw the woman's neat waist.

The dress was lilac, but she would have a reference for the colour before her. It was the shape of the pose she needed to represent. The woman was standing delicately, with one arm gently extended in front of her with the hand outstretched as if she was inviting her into a dance. The other had was simply relaxed by her waist where it naturally fell to rest. Her head was tilted slightly so that her lovely hair fell partly down her back and partly over her chest. Her neck was exposed... Ssanya blinked, and looked back down at the drawing. Concentrate.

It would be the arm that gestured that would be the hardest to draw. She looked at it, and then at the way the light fell, and the way the sleeve of the dress robed her. The sleeves were long but left the wrists exposed, and the cuff was large so that it fell in a small drape that waved slightly in the shimmering, illusionary wind. Ssanya sighed, and with an almost inkless nib began to fashion the arm in front of the image of the woman. There were a few, faded lines that went wrong, but finally she settled on drawing the arm a small way away from the torso so it was clear that it was extended outwards rather than just weirdly placed.

Now she moved up to the head, and her glimmering hair. Ssanya smiled at the other woman, and said, "Not long now." Her gaze took in the sweep of her hair, and she found that the pen easily followed the lines. The shape of her neck was harder to replicate, but apart from making it slightly too long she thought it looked okay. She'd finished. Ssanya drew her eyes away from the paper to look at it in full, and then nodded to Aquiana who relaxed with a gust of a sigh. She had her sketch. It wasn't artistic, but it was perfect for what she wanted. In her scribbly handwriting, she quickly noted down a few ideas she'd had when drawing. Dress swirling upwards like waterfall. Bodice follows hips. Hair in wind.

Aquiana settled down into a chair and took out a leather-bound notebook of some kind. "I'll be here if you need me to pose again Ssanya. Otherwise, I'll get working on my own projects!"

Thread	Total
800	2004

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[Allassanachassanya]

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"Speech"

She put the sketch to the right of the chunk of wood. There was a light breeze, so she trapped one corner underneath the ink pot, and wondered why the city would bother to replicate a breeze on the inside of the Bizarre. It was exactly that - bizarre. Nevertheless, the woman took up her knife once more and continued working upon the bottom of the dress. She was happy with the base for the moment. Further work would have to come later, the indepth, detail work. But now she needed to tease Aquiana out of the lump of dead wood, as if she was drawing out her power in the same way she did from the bones of the dead.

Almost in a meditative state, she zoned out of the image she'd sketched, and zoned out of the too-deep analysis of the yet to be formed statue. Instead, her eyes traced the grains of the wood. They were thin and tight, but not too hard so that the wood was not a nightmare to carve. She picked it up with both hands, and ran her left up the front of the piece. When she reached the section she hadn't yet worked on, her eyes flickered over to the drawing and then back and forth over Aquiana's dress whilst she sat neatly drawing in her sketchbook. She looked at her own drawing, and drifted her fingers over a swell in the wood. Hmm. Then she continued upwards, finding a thinner section and a pleasingly textured arrangement of the grains.

Ssanya drew her attention back to the day. Overhead, numerous flags of uncountable colours fluttered and amongst them hung unlit lanterns that clanked softly. The stall that she worked at was dark, she was in the light, and a little to their right the regular footfall of the market traversed without taking a single peek at the two women sitting in wicker chairs outside the tent. It was a quiet, relaxed day. Ssanya was content, too. She would struggle over the statue, of that she was absolutely certain, but there was also something enjoyable about the challenge and the similarity that the statue carving had with her malediction. She brushed a few stray woodchips from the table, and picked up her knife. The exact shape of the dress would come later. For now, she needed to craft the body.

There were a few lumps and strange angles to navigate on this particular stretch on the wood. Ssanya began shaving away slivers of woody matter, letting them flake to the floor and the table and her lap as she worked. Sometimes her fingers slipped, or she dug her knife in too deeply and had to smooth it over with care. But for the most part, the smoothness of the woman's waist was easy to carve. She'd stopped thinking of her beauty now too. Of course she was gorgeous, and Ssanya couldn't help but appreciate that... But once she'd stopped stopped talking and Ssanya had knuckled down into her work, she found that she merely thought of the woman as a piece of art. To be admired and perhaps replicated, but not approachable and certainly not as a person that Ssanya could get to know.

She left enough wood to work with later, enough that the sculpture looked a little odd, but she could see enough of the shape of the emerging statue not to get distracted by the oddness. It had been a bell of work in silence by the time Aquiana spoke up again, and Ssanya put down her blade to pay attention to the subject of her work.
"I'm going to go for a little walk, Ssanya, go and speak to a client for a while. Unless you need me here, I will come back in about a two bells. I'm excited to see what you can come up with!"

Ssanya nodded her assent, although truthfully she wouldn't have said no either way, as she was the one who was paying for the work. Besides, Ssanya felt comfortable enough with the sketch and the work she had so far. The image of the woman's pose was still pretty clear in her head too, so she simply said, "Yess, that iss fine." She stood up, and winced as a bone clicked somewhere in her body. Aquiana waved with a delicate wiggle of her fingers and then left the small workspace. The Dhani was alone with her work.

She sat down again, slowly, and settled back into place. The statue stood quite well, but the top was blocky still and looked amusingly bad. She stared at it, and rummaged in her bag for a waterskin, before necking back a decent swig of the slightly warm water inside with a grimace. Back to work.

Post	Total
800	2804

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[Allassanachassanya]

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"Speech"

Aquiana came back a few bells later, as she had said she would. Now her hair was caught up in a bun, and a brooch-pinned blue scarf was tied around her neck. She walked slowly, her feet making barely a sound on the paving stones. Ssanya didn't notice her for a moment. She had been working hard, barely thinking of anything but the emerging statue that she held in front of her. Dust was caught in every fold of her own, drab clothing, and she had a few cuts that hadn't been there before. This work was exciting. Much, much more engaging than the knife handles she'd been stuck on the past few days. The Dhani had carved the statue into a rough state. The base was the thickest, and then tapered up gently to reach the head and the hair. The arms were going to be the trickest feature, and indeed she hadn't worked on them until now simply because she knew they would be difficult.

When the woman coughed slightly, Ssanya almost dropped the knife out of surprise, and then laughed at her own stupidity under her breath. She looked up... And then did a double take. Aquiana had sat back down into the seat she'd vacated and was not looking at her. There were a two bright spots of colour on her cheeks, as if she'd been running, but she looked pristine. Too pristine. There was something off about her that she couldn't place, but she cleared her own throat and spoke up.
"Hello again, Miss Aquiana." The woman turned towards her, and laughed.
"I didn't want to disturb you... It's looking good, so far. May I see?"

Ssanya relaxed. The reply seemed normal, and despite the flushed cheeks the other woman seemed normal. That momentary flicker of strangeness had disappeared, and so she swivelled the statue around to let her look at it.
"It iss not finished, nowhere near yet. I am working on your armsss next. Might need you to posse again. Pleassse."
Aquiana walked closer, and picked up her work. Suddenly, she felt oddly self-concious, as if the beautiful woman was looking at her in a vulnerable state. She couldn't explain it, but she felt the strong desire to tug the statue back and continue. Only she didn't, and let the woman look. She studied her face, and was glad at least to see her smiling a little.

"I can't say that it looks as good as I'd like yet, but I can see it's obviously not finished yet. I'll get into the pose again though, if that would help. Not for long, really I only came back to see how things were progressing, and I'll have to come back when it's finished. When is that likely to be, hmm?"
Ssanya pondered for a moment, and then told her it would be finished in two days time. That should be right. Even if it took her less time, it would mean she had enough chance to check things over and it wasn't a bad idea to overestimate how long it would take.

The lady handed the statue back, and walked over to where she had stood before, getting into the pose. Ssanya got her knife, and began cutting upwards. The hand was extended, but she had to make a separate arm entirely, otherwise it would just look strange. This was the most delicate part, where the part of the arm she was crafting would have to be thin enough to look like the woman she was trying to portray, but strong enough so that it wouldn't snap unless a significant force was put on it.

She left a chunk of wood for the hand, and cut upwards. She had to shave off layer after layer. There was no way of cutting away a large section. If she tried, she knew all she'd do would be to cut a mistake into the product of her day's toil, and that would be frustrating and disappointing to both her and the woman for whom she was making the sculpture. Instead, she took her time, working slowly as she peeled away careful layer after another, until she had reached the waist. Her eyes flicked backwards and forwards between the woman and her statue, analysing the shape of her elbow, the slight curve of her arm and the angle of that tilted hand. There were lumps of wood that still were not smooth, and there were cut lines and scratches, but the overall shape was finished.

She looked down at it, and then back up to Aquiana.
"Thankss, Aquiana."
She stepped down, and stretched cat-like.
"Right, I'll be going now. I will come back, and pay you then for your work. You've got the colour of this dress right, yes? Good. See you later, Ssanya."

She blushed as the woman moved closer and wrapped an arm around her in a loose hug of thanks. The statue stood, partially done, on the desk. Ssanya stood still and breathed in her perfume, then tried to cool her face as she stepped away.
"Sssee you later."

Post	Total
854	3658

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[Allassanachassanya]

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Grade Rewardsss

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Ssanya

Skills

Socialisation: +2
Carving: +5
Observation: +2
Drawing: +1

Lores

Aquiana: Beautiful dressmaker of Alvadas
Ssanya: Distracted by great beauty
Carving: Simple wooden feminine statue
Carving: Using a file for detail work
Carving: The delicate nature of the human form
Carving: Removing layer by layer for greater accuracy
Drawing: Making sketches as an aide-memoire
Drawing: Using ink and pen

Notes

This was a self-grade. Please PM me if you think I've graded this incorrectly, and I'll be glad to change it.

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