Solo Hidden Treasures in Priceless Lace

[Aramenta]

Spring 80, 512 AV
Sweetwind Pavilion, Endrykas
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"Aramenta Stonewhistling, you wicked girl, I was at my wit's end!" Nula's hands communicated panic, anger, upset, but then underneath them playful, winking sarcasm, reflected in the twinkle of her eyes.

Aramenta smiled and signed back an apology, coming forward even as Nula approached to embrace her affectionately. Aramenta traded a kiss on the cheek with the cheerful matron, and whispered in her ear, "Yes, the web outvoted the speed of your trousseau work. Did you run out?"

"Barely kept in stock!" Mourning, fear, still sarcasm. Theatrical and playful.

Ara giggled. The weirdness of her silent giggling breath so close, she knew, bothered Nula, not in any malevolent way, just the simple cringing way that certain habits tickle one, but it slipped out before she could stop. She backed, up and laughed, picking her bag back up. Nula shivered, smiled, slightly, gave a 'what can you do?' and an apology subtly with her hands. Ara shrugged a 'its nothing' in return.

Livvy huffed alongside her, with Clompfoot's saddlebags thrown over her strong back, stuffed to the buckles with shining white skeins of cotton-thread, wrapped carefully in undyed muslin scraps to keep them clean. She brought them up to Nula and set them down, as gently as she could - no need to stir up dust onto them, panting and straining a bit at the weight.

Ara smiled at Livvy, and leaned in to whisper, "Take a minute, catch your breath, Livvy Clompfoot." She winked.

Livvy, panting laughed, and punched Ara playfully in the arm, still bent over and leaning on her knees. Ara looked to Nula, and smiling, gestured, perhaps with a bit of pride at the pile of thread. Nula looked at it, and laughed, "Well, this should last a while, Ara. Good Semele! You must have a spinner's callous thicker than my tongue by now!"

Ara smiled, and almost laughed, but didn't, not quite. Livvy looked at her from where she crouched, still in her own sweat, and frowned. Ara didn't meet the slave's eyes, though she knew the look asked her to do so. She rubbed, absently, the smooth-bored flesh where the fiber had ground her thumb flesh smooth, and the smooth gait of Canter echoed through her thighs. It shook her, and she hated that it shook her. Since her dark night on the Sea, it shook her, called to her. The spinning was not unpleasant. On the contrary, the smooth, seductive hum of it was worse than unpleasant, it was enticing, and confusing, whispering to her about things she didn't understand. Telling her to think, when she wanted nothing more than to never, ever, ever think again.

She stopped herself, and quiver went across her skin, just barely perceptible - but then the two people available to perceive it were Nula, with her quick gossip's eyes, and Livvy, who watched her with the cautious closeness of a mother. She blushed slightly, the blush of someone frightened of losing track of a secret, and forced her smile back to break the moment. She leaned to Livvy, "Tell her that I am glad to make more, if she needs it, or to do other work, on other things?"

Livvy nodded, and offered, "Missy Ara wants t'know if you got any other work for her, ma'am."

Nula clucked her tongue, training her eyes on Ara for a moment, but says nothing. Finally she simply says, "Well, I can't order anymore materials, I think, I have none to turn them to their next stage at this point. If you knew how to make lace out of this, I'd have no --"

Livvy interrupted her, "She can do it, ma'am."

Ara looked over at Livvy, her eyes wide, and stunned. She'd never held a crochet hook in her life, and certainly hadn't any idea what to do with one. She moved to contradict her, but Nula, who was smiling with a bemused canniness, interrupted.

"Do you think so, Ara? Hmm. It happens, you know, that lacemakers are hard to come by these days... Have you met my Aunt Batavia? She could… likely sit and teach you, if you really are interested. If you are really determined." She laughs, "I tried it when I was younger, but I hadn't the brain for it, or the patience."

Ara was struck dumb by this. Spinning, this was common work - yes, there were those better at it and worse, but it was, after all, something one expected young girls to do. But lacemaking! The complex traceries of knot work motifs, the thin, carefully arranged fillets, this was the work of real artists, work that even foreigners understood and appreciated for its complexity and beauty! It frightened her a little. The spinning… it was simple, it was muscle memory, and none thought about it, unless you did a truly awful job. Lacemaking… she was frightened of the idea. Lacemaking spoke. Spinning only gave a voice for others to speak.

"Tell her no, Livvy! I can't do that, I'm not smart enough."

Livvy peered at her, and turned back to Nula, "She says she be glad to, Ma'am. She says thank you real much, and she gone work real hard at it, she 'sures you."

Nula was not stupid - and after all, the violent signs of 'No, frightened, angry at you' that Ara had flashed at Livvy were far from subtle. But she was also canny. The girl had good hands, and at this point? She wouldn't do anything technical, or creative. Outline fillets laid by a master, more than likely, that's all.

"Ara, I'm so glad. You're going to be a natural at it. You have no idea what a favor you're doing me, what a service you're doing me. You're sure?"

Livvy frowned at her, but kept her mouth shut. Ara stared at the floor. Yes. She had to say yes.

The cotton was done, not because Ara had suddenly grown exponentially faster. It was that she had clung to it. It gave her a purpose. It gave her something to serve. The image of Nula, the heaviness of obligation to do what Ara had been ordered to do… these had been her only comfort in the dark final days, after the strange encounter on the plains, the strange… no! No, she would not think of it now. She had spun, and spun and spun, spun every moment she did not sleep or web, practically, had gobbled her meals alone, and too fast to return to it, had not untangled the skein even from her fingers when she had to relieve herself. The webbing master had noticed the intensity of her work, had left her to it. It was a loose ship, the party. Someone else would take her slack.

And she needed it. She needed to feel she was still this thing, the daughter of the Drykas, with a full faith in the value of her servitude to her people. The obliteration of self, in favor of the comforting slavery of obligations. Nula was the voice of the business of sewing, weaving, spinning in her life. She was afraid to simply negotiate with her. It was easier, now, to simply serve. To be the pliant child. Easier to agree and have to face the lacemaking, than to disagree and have to face the idea of her own will, her own opinions, her own misgivings about her place. She would serve. Lacemaking was a good craft. A man would take her soon, and she would be ready, would have the beginnings of a useful craft to bring honor to her husband.

The reality of that struck her now, with a sudden, nauseating vividity. She smashed the images from her mind. Serve, Ara. Serve. Obey.

She nodded quietly, and signed a grateful acceptance.

"This afternoon, Ara. That'll give you time to go get hold of a hook, and needle. Auntie will be glad, I'm sure."x

[Aramenta]

When Livvy returned, Ara was lying on the floor of the Pavilion, alone in the coming heat of summer - the others were outside, weaving, spinning, tacking in the last spring winds. Ara lay heavily, sweat soaking her, trying to be as still as she could. The spinning was done. The spinning was done. She had asked, had begged her stepmother for more to do. She had been given none. The Lacemaker's thread would be valuable, would bring in a good income to the pavilion. She was given a break. Her mother in law had none too subtly suggested she go, perhaps, down to where men of the city might see her. The city was growing heavy with the concept of marriage, almost desperate, almost mad for it.

Ara couldn't. She lay still, looking at the ceiling, and her mind tortured her cruelly. She had seen a naked man, of course - it was difficult not to, they all lived so close. She'd even overheard the conjugations that a husband and wife performed, and seen perhaps a silhouette of it here and there, heard her share of ribald talk of it. But never felt it, never simulated it herself, nothing. She found herself, sick with horror and sick with herself, imagining the Denusk man. His attractiveness, her harmless crush on him, that was all gone now - he was the same, but she had changed too much in the past few weeks. She thought of him, and could imagine fury and sickness in his face, could imagine his knees pinning her, his hands holding her wrists, the heavy, angry sweat of him. An angry, violent laugh, devoid of joy. She felt her gorge rise, felt her body cringe, but her mind kept beating her with the image, beating her, beating her.

"Missy Ara, you need to get up." the haughty, angry defiance she'd sensed burbling proudly under the surface of Livvy's voice as she had escorted Ara home was gone now. Livvy had been crying. That was enough. If there was noone else to serve, she would take care of Livvy.

She rose, and realized how cold her face was even as the rest of her was sweat swollen in the sultry sea-breeze humidity. Livvy held the slender wooden crochet needle, and a precious, shining yarn needle in one hand. The other held a long, flexible birch rod.

Ara frowned, looking at the rod, and made a querying-sign, mixed with worry.

"You gonna hide me with it, Missy Ara. Don' you go protesting, if you won' do it, I gonna tell your father 'bout it. You know I done wrong. I ain't gonna live guilty."

Ara's eyes widened,and she shook her head, leaning in to whisper, "No, Livvy! No, I am not going to! You were right, you were..."

Livvy pushed her away angrily, "Petch it, Ama! I ain't gone live like this no more, I ain't your mama, I ain't your sister, I ain't your friend. I'm your petchy-damned slave, and this halfway pretend shyke, I ain't gonna have it no more!"

Ara stood in shock a moment, and looked at Livvy. She hardly had since she'd gotten home, not really, though she'd been omnipresently aware that the girl was worried, frightened for her. She knew Livvy knew something was wrong. Livvy had seen the marks she kept under her clothes, still healing, had been awake when Ara had gasped out of sleep in a panicked dream, more than once. Had laid beside her to get her back to sleep. And, Ara had simply accepted it. Had needed it to just... magically be okay, to be normal. To have it be expected and safe, having her slave prompt her along, bully her out of bed in the morning, take her spool away to force her to eat meals, to force her to stop and ride Canter, to stop even and lie alone in the fields. To come and wake her afterwards from her strange, vivid web-visions. She had needed to Livvy to be something else for her - a mother? A friend? A sister? A little of those things, yes, and something more.

And none of those things a slave. And she looked at Livvy and saw how it hurt her, and for the first time, she really understood, that knot of anger that come out in Livvy sometime. For a moment, Ara was alive to the idea of Livvy, as a real person, not simply as the comfortable other-self she used her as.

She went pale, and nodded, and took the rod. Livvy looked at her grimly, and nodded back. It was, in that moment, as if they colluded, like old lover's who pretend to be comfortable spouses for a party even as they struggle with an argument. Livvy put her hands on a stool, and bent over. Ara stared at her that way, and the thought entered her mind: under all the kind chatter, and the private jokes, and the songs, and the old memories - this is what their relationship was. This is what Livvy's feeling for her were - the apprehension of a girl bent over, waiting for a switch to welt her thighs. The knowledge that, always, even if it was by proxy, it was Ara's tiny hands that would swing the switch.

Ara raised the switch, and then pulled her arm hard, laying it against the girl's legs, through her trousers, with a loud, fleshy smack. Then, she turned, her body lurching violently, fell to her hands and knees, and vomited, vomited harder, more deeply and completely than she'd ever thrown up in her life.
x

[Aramenta]

The dusky light filtered down through the canvas and cloud cover overhead, leaving the diffusion of the sunbeams, to pick at the pricking motes of dust and dry straw dancing through the tent's thick air. Nula, Ara thought, would introduce her, but her mouth had been full of pins, as she fluttered around a girl being fit for a new dress for her wedding.

Ara had been so hypnotized by that vision, she'd nearly turned back. The girl was her own age - Ara recognized her in fact, another Amethyst girl, child of a pavilion who counted her own as friendly rivals: Kinleha Patterhoof. She was a chubby girl, with great square shoulders, and a face round and girlish, the whole of her body giving their of great youth. She wasn't even wind marked yet, her hair still in the straight single braid of a simple woman. And perhaps she was just tired, perhaps just overwhelmed, but when Ara entered, she did not even move, her arms stuck out akimbo, and her eyes unblinking, her mouth slack. Her body spoke of emptiness, and Nula chattered away to her with no need for a response, pulling at wrinkles, tugging at fittings, pinning, stitching, prattling on about little nothings. And Ara recognized the way of talking, at last - it was like talking to a doll, or to a beloved pet. And Kinleha said nothing, her head leaning just slightly to one side, her empty, exhausted face staring a fixed point on the pavilion wall, sweating in the promise of a hot summer.

Nula had waved, and told Ara, her auntie was expecting her, smiled encouragingly if ignorantly at the displayed crochet hook and needle, politely ignored the slightly ginger way that Livvy walked behind her mistress. Ara had stumbled, and stopped, until Livvy had looked at her, pleadingly, exhaustedly.

//I have duties. I have duties. I am a daughter of Endrykas. This is my work, chosen for me, to beautify my people. Livvy needs me to be able to walk past this. Kinleha is tired… just tired...//

She nodded politely to her clanswoman. The girl did not react at all, her eyes drooping. Drowsy, that was all, Ara had thought, just drowsy in the stifling air.

In the inner chamber now, her doubts gnawed at her. She hurried forward, desperate to give hands and mind and heart something to do, something to focus on.

She recognized Aunt Batavia. She had seen her before, had seen her work as well - when she was little, her mother had had a lace parasol from the days of her courting. It had been, in its day, Ara realized in retrospect, an entirely impractical, somewhat poorly chosen gift, the delicate shade a woman with a fine-handwork job might carry to keep her eyes arranged for fine work. Mother had let her and Livvy use it as a plaything as little girls, alternating between opening it and petting the fine, soft fabric patterns, or taking it out stealthily down the hill, and flapping it open and shut with loud 'Chook-chook-chooks!' from their throat to startle the titmice and bobolinks up into the sky, leaving them rolling around in laughter at the wild circling and desperate chirping. In retrospect, and having seen other work since, she was almost sure it was Batavia's work, the tracery of her motifs as individual as a well inked wind mark. The Sweetwind pavilion was knotted in those fine, delicate patterns in places, when she went into the web, and when she was just learning the way of webbing, Ara had sometimes drifted under the fine-work of it, to let the imagined shadows of the imagined sun trace through the knotting, casting fine grey lacework patterns across the luminous web-flesh of her skin.

And, so, as she entered now, she recognized Aunt Batavia, an enormously, tremendously old woman, with the same keen, clever eyes as Ara's now grandmother, but behind a curtain of fine blue cataracts, as delicate as her lace. Her hands were slender traceries of liver spot and bone strung between thick, heavy joints.

"Aramenta Stonewhistling. Come in, come in."

Aramenta nodded, and gestured her thanks, but honestly assumed the old woman likely couldn't even see her. She wondered if those cloudy eyes could see the very lace they worked themselves across.

"And another guest? You have brought me a second student?"

Livvy spoke up quietly, "Olivia, wise-woman, I's jus' a slave-hand. I's jus' here to help Missy Ara a' speaking and what."

"Ah… yes. Aramenta. Come, sit. This thread you have spun for me to work, it is not so fine as I would hope, but perhaps better than was to be a expected from a Stonewhistling girl."

Livvy sniffed, and lowered her brow, but Ara did not. Ara sighed, involuntarily, relief washing over her face. Here was a woman who would simply tell her what to do, and who would require her total attention while she did. She came forward, and bowed a little, then leaned in to the old woman, whispering, "You are very k--"

"Eh? Lean in, child. My ears are not young."

Ara leaned closer, so close her lips almost contacted the woman's ear flesh, her nose thick in the odor of the woman's coarse, thinning, dusty hair, "You are very kind to offer to teach me."

"Kindness hasn't a thing to do with it. Nula was the only girl in my own pavilion I would have trusted to learn it, and she was such a damned flibbertigibbet I couldn't get her to sit long enough to learn it. You smell tense, Aramenta Stonewhistling."

She leaned forward again, "A little."

"Hmm?"

"A little."

"A little. You are not too tense to sit still? This isn't the work for a flighty girl."

"No, ma'am."

"Yes… yes, you have spun enough of this thread in a short season, perhaps you can. It's why I agreed to take you when my useless niece suggested you."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Sit down, child."

She sat on the proffered stool, and stuck her needle into the hem of her blouse, where she saw the old woman's winking.

"Trousers? No. That won't do. You need a skirt for lacemaking."

Livvy almost spoke, but kept her mouth closed. Ara simply leaned forward, and whispered again, "Should I go change?"

"I have no time for that, today. You shall have to carry a blanket over your leg. When you make lace, wear a dark skirt, no frills, no gathers. Flat and plain, and goo coarse fabric that will take the occasional needle prick."

She signed humility and assent. It felt so wonderful she signed it twice. Listen. Obey, apologize. Humility and assent.

"Now, you have any idea what to do with that hook?"

She shook her head.

"Very well, watch. Do not do yet. Watch."

And so she did. The woman's hands moved with a quickness Ara found fascinating, almost hypnotic. The hook wrapped around the slender strands of thread, so small it was almost impossible to see, wrapped again, hooked the thread, knotted, all this in the speed it took Ara to flick her eyes. Again, again, again, a long string of beautiful, balanced little knots crawled up a strangd of weblike filleting between two motifs of the fair white lace. Ara frowned. The woman looked at her, sighed, irritably. Knotted it slower.

The old woman set her needle aside then then took the girls hands in her own. Ara felt awkward a moment, but then relaxed - the feeling had a certain divine release. She had no will left, she was only the servant of the gnarled old hands. She pulled a corner of the lace - a broad shawl, she now recognized, and very beautiful - into her lap, and took up the thread. The feeling was awkward of it in her hands, but the strong, bony fingers that gripped her guided her hands, she tried to follow them. In a way, it was like her style of riding - sensing what the horse beneath her needed, learning the rhythms of movement, to follow them before being forced. She tied a knot.

"Ugly. But at least a knot. Pull gently, unravel it. We try again."

She did. The knot popped out with a satisfying tick of movement. She felt the ands on her own again, set the needle and closed her eyes, focusing on the woman's hands. She tried again.

"Better. Again."x

[Aramenta]

Her hands, after an hour, were sore and tired, but a certain aspect of the rhythm was familiar now. She had gathered the idea of the simple knot. She had a black wool blanket over her lap, and beneath it, her legs were sticky with thick sweat, the smell of her strong around her, comfortingly tired. She had, perhaps, grown too good at spinning. IT was not exhausting enough anymore, it left here, when bedtime came, still filled with nervous energy. The sore ache of her eyes, her shoulders, her back, were comforting, the little nagging pain in her wrists each time she pulled a knot taut gave her that sense of exhaustion that spoke of coming heavy, dreamless sleep, sleep that would be heavy with long lines of filleting.

"You smell ripe, Aramenta Stonewhistling."

Ara looked up, and blushed, leaned forward. Livvy, to the side, was respooling a skein of thread, to make it easier for the two other women to crochet it. She frowned and scurried over to translate - the leaning forward to the old woman was difficult with both of their laps full. of lace. Ara leaned down to her.

"Tell her I apologize, and will wear a skirt next time."

"Missy Ara say she just hot from the blanket. Will wear a skirt next time."

The old woman snorted, "Oh, I don't mean that. A Drykas woman who complains about body-scent is a fool or likely never to be wind marked. That's simply life. I mean, you smell like you are ready to stop dithering and get married. Ready for sex."

Ara went pale, said nothing. Livvy frowned, and ran a hand to squeeze her mistress's thigh gently.

The old woman, shrugged, not pausing in her work, "You're a woman, and a Drykas. I'm not saying this to make you titter, girl. You need to get on with the business of making children. Our people need them, eh?"

Ara took a deep swallow, felt lightheaded, her hands shaking on the lace. She nodded, slowly, quietly.

"Its nothing to embarrassed about. You don't have a mother, no? And the gossip would be your stepmother and you aren't the finest friends, you are needing a woman to tell you about it, maybe?"

She said nothing. Livvy blushed a shade that did not seem natural on a human face.

"Its easy. You lie there, and more or less, your body takes over. You just make sure he's all the way in before he finishes, that's the difference to making a child. No different than the kine, really. Or the horses. Its nothing for being embarrassed after." she paused. "C'mon, keep working. We've a lot of this piecework to finish this season, Aramenta Stonewhistling."

Ara, numb now, nodded absently, and threw her mind back into the needle.

"You are looking for a man, still, maybe? Your queerness about your voice makes it complicated, perhaps. You needn't be shy. I think my man might have been happier had I not had my voice." she chuckled, a rolling, grating chuckle.

Crochet, pull, crochet, pull, crochet, pull. Think of nothing else. Crochet, pull. Crochet, pull.

"I imagine you'll find a man comes for you, soon. The men have a lot of pressure on them, now, with the pox and the storm. You won't have to wait long. Don't play coy about it, and don't make a damned deal out of it, like some of these girls. Put on a good dress, and hand-fast, that's all there is to it. There's nothing magic or secret about it. It's like signing a contract for a brood mare. Only you're the mare. You ask your father if the mate is a good one, you say yes, you shake on it, the thing is done. Then, you have children, as many as you can manage. You're young, you'll have plenty."

Ara shivered slightly., and stared at her lap. Crochet, pull, crochet, pull, minuscule, tidy knots, slowly, slowly creeping. She reach the intersection of two fillets. Wrapped a rosette around it, so tiny it was almost invisible. Crochet, pull. Crochet, pull.

"Missy Ara scared of havin' babies."

Livvy spoke up in a blurt, and turned red again. Ara took her words, swallowed them. They were true, since she was little, she'd had dreams about dying in childbirth. But they weren't in her head. But scared - scared was. And it wasn't… even entirely scared of sex. Though there was that. There was that. She closed her eyes, and fought of the image that sat there behind her lids, her body struggling to escape, her bare skin handled by a rough, hateful hand. But underneath, it was the feeling of wrongness, the hint of something wrong, something incomprehensible and… she could not understand it - not she could. If she would. But she would not understand it. Could not bear to understand it.

"Scared, sure. Scared is fine. But scared, and acting on it, that's for winter-night stories, and for babes at their papa's knee. Scared is something you feel and you put it away. You are young, selfish, you want things to be happy. Life isn't about happy. You have responsibilities. To your family, to your people, to the Sea of Grass, to those who came before."

Ara swallowed hard. The vision came back, and she put herself into it, the struggling, nude form. And with a great force of will, she stilled it. Felt bruises, felt blood, felt hate and sweat and pressing, pressing, and lay very, very still. Duty. Serve. Obey. Obey and submit.

She nodded quietly. The old woman looked at her quietly a moment, her eyes sharp behind their cloudiness. Ara kept her eyes on her work. Knot and pull, knot and pull. Knot and pull.x

[Jackalope]

Ara

Award

Skill	XP Earned	Lore Earned
Observation	+3	Fear of Childbirth..but Why?
Lacemaking	+3	Unable to Spare the Rod
		Proper Clothing for Lacemaking
		How to Hold Needles
		Lacemaking: Making a Simple Knot

Witty Remark Here

Nice thread, Ara. Covered quite a bit. A difficult topic, delving into a slave/master relationship, and I think it was done tastefully. Keep it up.If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, please send me a PM and we can figure it out.