Flashback Fletching.

[Manx]

505 AV, Autumn 5th 3 Bells after mid-day "Manx, come and look at this - this will help you some-day" Manx heard his father say from across the room. The room was lit in the middle but around the edges the light was much more faint, that was where he had been sat. He looked across to his father bathed in light and could see nothing but him, he thought that he would have liked to paint it - if he had the ability to paint, or in-fact any interest in painting at all. After being distracted by nothing at-all for a while, Manx made his way across the room - his feet were bare, even though there were dangerous object lining the volcanic rock floor. The walls and floor were dark stone with lines carved into them through accident and wear, not decoration. Though the stones looked cold - this room was closer to the centre of the volcano where most of the crafting went on and so it was heated by the volcano itself. Reaching his father's side, Manx peered down at the items he had assembled on the table, he asked "What's this?" as a sort of broad statement - but had already begun to analyse what lined the table top. Some very thin, almost straight sticks of wood, strings of animal tendon a pot of animal tendons that had melted down and been brought to boil - some large murky looking feathers and the final piece to the puzzle - steel arrow heads, there were different types of points there but the most numerous were sharp and triangular with two notches that were almost perfectly equal in depth, width and positioning on the two longest sides of the isosceles arrow-head. "So we're making arrows?" Manx looked up at his father with a smile as he spoke, almost expecting to be praised for noticing such an obvious thing. "Yes, arrows are incredibly important for our survival - hunting and defence" He replied, looking down at Manx. The light danced over and through his father's messy, almost blood-red hair and shone through to Manx's eyes a different colour. Stepping around behind Manx, their frames matched up - a pair of Inarta large and small stood next to the workbench and looked down at the pieces there - though Manx's father always spared an occasional glance at his son's shining head in the fire-light. Expecting Manx to be watching, the older man took a hold of one of the arrow-shafts and held it in his hands, he span it a few times and looked down either end of it, turning it so that the tips faced his eye to better examine the shaft. Upon seeing a bend in it - he would place the heel of his hand onto the shaft and bend it back into place, flexing the wood gently - not simply bending it to how he wanted it. Manx wondered why he didn't just straighten it out in one go and as if he was reading his mind, his father answered "Make sure you only move the shaft gently and keep the hand with the heel against the wood still, Manx" His voice was warm but level and teacher-like, as if the tone would help Manx remember. Manx simply nodded his head - watching the arrow shaft in fascination. Placing the shaft into a vice that Manx had only just noticed, he wound the vice shut on the shaft - but did not tighten it very much, Manx guessed this was to not dent the wood. Taking a knife, Manx's father slowly began to cut the very tip of the arrow shaft - he held the thin piece of wood steady with his other hand and slowly cut down into the wood, the grain of the wood was split at a right angle by the notch that was soon cut into the shaft's end. His father turned around the pre-arrow and did the same process again on the opposite side of the shaft, making sure to once again to not cut with the grain, making an almost identical notch this side of the arrow as well.

[Manx]

The next step that Manx observed was the addition of the arrow-heads. His father took one of the arrow-heads off of the table and sat it into the groove he had just cut on one end of the arrow shaft. Adjusting the arrow-head until he thought it sat dead centre, he carefully undid the vice and placed the arrow tip, whilst still attached to the shaft, onto the table between his hands. He span the arrow on it's very tip, satisfied when it span smoothly, he turned to Manx. "If the arrow-head wasn't dead centre, then it would not spin properly and the tip would be knocked out of the notch." The older Inarta said very matter-of-factly to Manx. Taking the arrow into his thumb and index finger, the Inarta placed it back into the vice that was attached to the table and wound it shut. Then reaching to the side of the table into a bowl, he plucked a string of white material from the waters and let the excess drip off into the bowl. Moving one end of the sinew to where the arrow shaft met the metal tip, he began winding the sinew around the arrow tip and shaft, he move it around the shaft once and then into the notch on the right of the tip. He coiled it around the shaft once more and then ran it through the left side of the tip - continuing with this figure of eight way of tying the tip to the shaft: making sure to pull it tightly every time, stretching the wet sinew. finishing tying the sinew down, the old Inarta took the end and threaded it under the coils that were wrapped around the shaft - taking a hold of the tip once more as it appeared and pulling it taught. Taking the knife from before, he sliced easily through the wet animal tendon, removing the excess. Adding the fletching next, the man took the feathers from the table and took another strand of sinew from the bowl to his right, placing the feathers one after another onto the shaft of the bow, he wound the sinew around the stem of the feather, pulling the back of the arrows tightly to the shaft and then tucking then sinew under itself and cutting off the excess. The older Inarta lifted the feather and regarded the fletching on it, pushing with his finger-tips to move the feathers very slightly around the arrow shaft. Manx observed that on one half there were no feathers besides the slight over-hang of the two feathers either side of this space. Another piece of sinew was lifted from the bowl by the Inarta once more and he returned his attention to the feathers already held in place on the arrow shaft. Taking one of the feathers in his hand, the man stretched them out and pushed them against the arrow shaft, then placed the sinew under his thumb to keep both the feather stretched and the sinew in place. Carefully stretching the next feather out against the arrow shaft, he guided the sinew round the tiny cylinder to over-lap this feathers' stem as well, holding it in with the tension of the sinew rather than his hand this time: continuing the trend, the man did the same with the third feather and then proceeded to wrap the sinew around the feather stems and the arrow shaft until only a small amount of it remained loose. He then fed the end of this small length of sinew under the wrapped mass of the rest of it's length and pulled it through at the other side so that it held tightly to the wooden shaft. Taking the knife up in his right hand again, he held the excess sinew taught and removed it with a smooth cut. The stems of the feathers were also cut where they're length exceeded the sinew wrap, "these would serve no use in flight and could only ever get in the way" Manx's father schooled. Turning to the child that had been admiring his work, Manx, the seasoned Inarta said "You have a go." and removed the arrow from the vice, leaving it there on the work-space as a model creation Manx suspected.