Completed The Way I Work My Weave Pt. III

[Naadiya]

The Way I Work My Weave Pt. III 15th of Spring, 522 AV Secret : Please let me know if there are chronological issues as there were many timestamp changes due to plots and misunderstandings. Changes were made after many threads were already started/finished/even graded. Originally dated for the 5th of Spring. What was this curse that had fallen upon her and why had it chosen Naadiya?! It had been several days since she had started experiencing the gender shifts now, but she didn’t feel much closer to finding the cause of it. She had already debunked ideas about the shifts coming with the moon or emotional distress and couldn’t imagine how it could have been something she’d eaten, although Naadiya had noticed that before she would shift, Naadiya got uncomfortable stomach pains that grew until they’d abruptly stop, at which point, she was already a man. Why did it always feel odd, that when something so jaw dropping happened to oneself, the world did not seem to stop and wait for the issue to be solved? So far her issue was consuming more time and brain space than Naadiya would have preferred. It had been eating away at her weaving time and took a deep cut out of any time she’d spent with Artik. Now she was in a constant state of fear of when the shift would occur. She thought of Mortiz and Oralie, the two Kelvics she had met since arriving in Syka and wondered if they ever felt any such stomach cramps when shifting into their animal forms. Probably not… she thought. Her loom was staring at her saying ‘uhh hellooo… I would weave everything myself if I could but I can’t so get your ass up.’ She obeyed the silent command. Using contrasting warp yarns was Naadiya latest obsession when it came to weaving. She had seen a rope at the Mercantile that had made her realize that she could easily use the same technique in her own work, and had even already tried it out. It had worked great, and she’d already been accumulating a stack of towels long and wide enough to lay down on at the beach, or wrap around one’s body. Each one had cream as one of the warp colors and then a different contrast color. A couple had navy, there was an olive green, a terracotta one too, she tried a white one but the contrast was minimal and when the fringes were twisted and tied you could hardly see the difference. It still made for a nice towel, just didn’t meet her standards. Though, she would not offer it herself, if Dawn wanted to pay less for the towel, she would probably accept the lower bid. On the stool by the loom, now sat a nice, plump cushion. It had been Naadiya’s gift to her own butt. And, it had been much appreciated. Weaving the towels had been taking longer than the placemats and it was starting to worry Naadiya, thinking she might not be as productive this season as she had been in the last. But it would also not be healthy to always try to meet or exceed Dawn’s expectations. Expectations that would doubtlessly rise with every passing season of growth. She continued to weave the towel that had been set up on the loom. Cream and teal, one of her preferred combinations. Naadiya was considering keeping this one for herself but she knew that in the end if it turned out very nice she’d end up forking it over to Dawn. It was against every Benshira instinct inside her but the merchant’s blood that flowed in her veins was sometimes stronger. What was one towel when she could always make another? For this one, she had decided to do horizontal stripes again, to see how the ends would look with her new style of fringe. The stripes moved much faster now, her hands getting more and more used to the motions now that she was weaving on an almost daily basis. 625

[Naadiya]

While these stripes still took much longer to complete than the ones on her placemats, they were much simpler than the vertical stripes she had already attempted on a few of the finished towels. Naadiya proceeded with patience. Humming a song as she wove, Naadiya reached over to the nightstand she had dragged over to be right next to her loom for convenience. Grabbing a grape from the bowl she'd taken from the kitchen, she popped it in her mouth and continued humming and weaving. Several more stripes and several more grapes and soon she was almost finished with this towel. When she had finally gotten to the fringes, Naadiya decided to to a traditional braid, instead of the twisted rope-like braid she had been practicing. Instead of two major strands she used three, each ‘strand’ being made of several warp yarns and each braid consisting of only one color. As she moved along the fringe from left to right, there would be cream and teal braids, each one always next to the contrasting color. Naadiya finished the other fringed side of the towel in the same way and started thinking… Would there be enough business in Syka, with the tourism that would come in the warmer seasons, for me to sell directly to customers? If I skip the middle man, I could potentially increase my earning if I can actually retain customers… One more folded towel added to the pile. She set up her warp yarns again, and again, she decided to do something a little different. Every time Naadiya tried something different, she made a note in the journal she was keeping of her experiments, trials and accounts. A record she could always look back to that would have a very rough drawing of what the end result would look like, and directions on how to achieve it. She had done this for each of her placemats and for every towel design as well. If the only difference between one towel and the next was color substations, Naadiya waived adding a new entry in her book to keep the pages from filling too quickly but she could tell that if she would start selling directly to customers, or arranging her own overseas trade deals, she would need a separate book to keep track of each order, and of whatever stock she had on hand. In that book, Naadiya would have to include everything even the color combinations. The prospect of such a career move seemed so far in the future, yet she couldn’t help but dream of it. It took a little longer to set up her loom this time, as she arranged each group of warp yarns that would eventually be braided together, in a bunch of different colors. Looking at the loom, with all the vertical warp yarns already in place, but no weft yarns woven through yet, it looked like a rainbow thrown out of order and with extra shades added in. For her weft yarns, Naadiya choose a simple greige yarn, that had not been dyed but had been brushed at its production, making the yarn softer and slightly fluffier. She wove a simple weave so that the design that stuck out was the many colors that peaked out from underneath the ivory hue and bled out at each of the fringed ends. 560

[Naadiya]

Sending the shuttle back and forth so often without stopping should have been making her arms tired, but Naadiya’s muscles were starting to getting a little toned from the constant use. All the same, Naadiya took a break from weaving as soon as she finished the last towel. She had gone to the kitchen quickly to grab something to eat and found a curly haired stranger cooking up a storm. She introduced herself to the woman, who seemed either confused or annoyed at the fact that Naadiya didn’t already know her. Uh okay… is she famous or something…? Well look how far your fame got you Ms. Celebrity Chef, cooking at an inn off in the middle of the jungle! Naadiya took a bite of the sandwich as she walked back to her room with a plate and rolled her eyes. Of course it was delicious. When she’d gotten back to the room, Naadiya noticed two little birds perched on the rail of her window. Their coloring made Naadiya think of mangoes, readying to ripen. Green bodies, with red heads and a splatter of yellow on their chests. The two seemed to be nuzzling one another and gave made an audible ‘awwww’ as soon as she laid eyes on them. “Excuse me. Mind your business. Mind your business.” Stunned Naadiya stared at the talking bird. “I’m sorry what?” “Mind your business”, it repeated. Naadiya had heard of the talkative birds of the settlement, but she had yet to encounter one. Thankfully, living with Bree, a sentient, talking reptilian mount, made the the verbose flyers easier to swallow. “Excuse you, this is my room. Get your own,” was the only reply that came to Naadiya’s lips. “Hungry! Feed! Feed!” It hopped towards the bowl of grapes on her table and Naadiya asked why it hadn’t gotten its own food, there seemed to be plenty everywhere she turned in Syka. “I am Lazy! I am! I am lazy!” Appreciating the honest answer, Naadiya broke off a few grapes and used her nails to tear into the flesh, leaving them where the birds could reach without going far, after all they were very lazy. “So you like grapes huh?” “Better than flesh of innocent! Innocent!” With an awkward pause, Naadiya finished the bite she had already taken of her chicken sandwich and put the sandwich back down in its plate which had then uncomfortably been set on the nightstand that still stood by the bed. Not all birds were vegetarians but it seemed this variety was. “What is your favorite thing to eat?” Naadiya asked, realizing she was making conversation with a pair of birds as she looked through her yarns, deciding what to do next. “Mango! Mango best!” Naadiya wondered if their visual similarity to mangoes was some sort of camouflage from predators and asked as much. “So smart! Smart!” Staring at the parrot, Naadiya tried to decided if she could somehow detect a tone of irony in its voice. Are parrots capable of irony? The second lovebird, who had been quiet until now, made a noise accompanying by shaking motion that made Naadiya think it was laughing. She was being mocked by birds. There we go, she thought as she grabbed just the right green and then quickly found the perfect red right below it. Now for a yellow…. Not that one…. Too orange… that one’s good! Naadiya set up the loom with a series of wide, vertical, warp stripes. Green on the outsides, yellow further in, then red in a single strip in the center. Before moving on to weaving in the weft yarns, Naadiya went back to her notebook and wrote down her plans, making sure to count the amount of warp yarns she used in each stripe. She realized the center stripe was two yarns wider than the rest and while no one would likely notice, or know it was unintentional, Naadiya knew and it bothered her. It wouldn’t affect the final product so she did not adjust what was already on the loom, but in her journal she made clear notes for the next time. 688

[Naadiya]

Naadiya would occasionally glance over at the two birds as she placed a few hanks of yarn onto the swift and turned the crank with practiced speed. She was going to make this towel with wide vertical stripes in the same colors as the warps and rolled up a few balls of yarn to last for most, if not all of the towel. She gathered up the balls on the table near her loom and soon enough the more active of the two birds was already jumping onto the colorful spheres. “Plagiarist!” Eyes widening, Naadiya did not paused her weaving. “Big word for a bird…” “Smart bird! Smart! Very smart!” “Mhmmm… But the smartest birds, keep their words to themselves lest the end up in someone’s sandwich…” she said, peeking over at the loquacious little mango through the corner of her eye, her voice reaching a near venomous tone. “Okay! Okay! Sensitive human! Party of one.” “Okay, yeah that’s enough!” She waved the birds away, taking the bowl of grape and tossing its contents out the window, careful the it landed further than the deck. “Go get your food you lazy cluckers, and leave me to my weaving!” Green wings fluttered off as she swatted her arms in the air, trying to scare more than actually make contact. Again, she sat down at her loom. Well at least they gave me color inspiration… Back to work. Going by color so that she would have to spend less time changing the yarn in the shuttles, Naadiya did green first, then yellow but when she reached the red center, She wished she had just worked from one direction to the other. Naadiya could see small differences in the tension of the yarn at the ‘seam’, differences that she had not noticed when only splitting the color-block down the middle of the towel. This had to be something that she would work out with time and practice because in theory there shouldn’t be a difference in where she starts the stripes. Regardless, Naadiya made a note for her future self, should she ever try to replicate this design. Her hand was a getting a little sore from holding the shuttle too tightly for the sake of speed, but now Naadiya thought break was in order. She focused on her journal and tried some different color combinations, switching the placement of the stripes and then playing around with the different widths. She hadn’t yet tried to do something that had wide and narrow stripes alternating or creating their own pattern but envisioning it in her head, Naadiya liked the idea. On a new page of her book she sketched out the shapes of four towels. They all had a combination of wide and narrow stripes but their patterns differed. One had very narrow horizontal stripes at either end and as you moved towards the center the stripes got wider. Another had the same concept but the the stripes concentrated in the center and petering out well before they reached the ends. The third was designed to look like the stripes’ widths had been randomly chosen, no two stripes having the same width. The last one she was going to do with vertical stripes but then the idea occurred to her that she could translate almost any horizontal stripe combination into a vertical one. 560

[Naadiya]

With that in mind, Naadiya left the fourth rectangle empty. Instead, she flipped the page and drew another four rectangles so that when her journal was held open, she would eventually be looking at four designs with horizontal stripes, two on each page, then flipping the page, she would see the vertical renditions of the same designs. For now she used only the red, green and yellow of the lovebirds, later on she would add different color combinations once she had decided the next few designs she’d tackle. There was still an empty spot for one more towel design for both the horizontal and vertical layouts. Her long, pointed nailed beat on the page trying to will inspiration to visit again. Feeling stuck, she went back to her sandwich and had a couple of bites. Did love birds taste like chicken? she wondered. They had always seemed to adorable to spit and roast, but the birds in Syka often spoke their minds and some, it turns out, are less polite than others. I wonder if they taste like mango.. Mango chutney chicken. Yum. She took a sip of water to wash down the sandwich and stared at the pages of her journal. She felt stuck. It was annoying to say the least. With an irritated strike of the coal stick, Naadiya drew an angry angled slash across the rectangle. Chewing another bite slowly, Naadiya sighed. Her back was in desperate need of a massage. She was fairly sure, it would take some very strong or heavy to beat or stomp on her back a few times in a violent dance that would leave either entirely rejuvenated or like a piece of meat at the butcher shop. When would Syka get to boast of a masseur? She drank some more water and felt a little gas bubbling in her stomach. The plate, she left on the table before going to the bathroom. Naadiya knocked on the door, now the inn was at full capacity and she wouldn’t want to walk in on someone doing what she was about to do. Silence met her and she assumed it was safe to open the door. The room was empty and quickly she ran to sit down and relieve herself. While her attempts were not entirely fruitless, it didn’t seem like that had been the cause of her cramping up so suddenly. She cleaned herself up and washed her hands in the basin, splashing some water on her face when she’d finished and taking the opportunity to wash off any grime or facial oils that had accumulated during the day. With her head bent over the water filled basin, she used her fingers to gently remove any residue at the corners of her eyes and cleaned out her ears. The hair around her face had gotten wet, she was usually more careful but her mind wandered. Pulling back the wet hair from her face, she looked up to the mirror. The face that looked back at her was not her own, and for a moment Naadiya almost screamed. Her mouth opened, her eyes widened, but no sound came out. Naadiya realized the eyes that were staring back at her were just as horrorstricken as she felt. Then, she saw that they were her eyes. Her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her face. And yet, not her face. Her features were a little rougher. The jaw a little stronger, the neck a little thicker, the already shapely eyebrow even more overgrown. This again?! This was a dream. It couldn’t be happening again. She had gone the whole day without incident, why now? With a building frustration, she splashed more water on her face, hoping the cool wetness would wake her from this nightmare. It didn’t. She went back to her bedroom, not bothering to clean anything up behind her. This was a dream and if only she could go to bed, she would wake up and all would be fine. Sleep did not come easy that night, but eventually it came. Dreams filled her sleeping mind. Dreams of herself morphing not only into a man, but into other people, people she knew, people she didn’t know, maybe people she would end up meeting. The dreams were many, but with time, they too dispersed. Images of birds flying, perched on branches or nuzzling up to one another were the last things she remembered dreaming of before deep sleep claimed her. 744

[Alric Lysane]

Your Grades

Naadiya

Skills

Design – 2
Drawing – 2
Intimidation – 1
Logic – 1
Observation – 4
Socialization – 2
Weaving – 4
Writing – 3


Lores

Dawn: Expectations Per Season
Sykan Birds: Talkative Creatures
The Curse: Gender Shift
The Curse: Stomach Cramps Signal
The Curse: Not The Moon Or Emotion
Weaving: Contrasting Warp Yarns
Weaving: Patterned Towels