Flashback Make it With Blood, Flesh, and Brains

Tinnok makes it back from a strenuous journey and does something with her prize.

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Make it With Blood, Flesh, and Brains

Postby Tinnok on June 25th, 2014, 3:45 pm

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Make it With Blood, Flesh, and Brains
55th of Summer, 512 A.V.


Tinnok half limped, half walked back into Tempered Steel lands, a large Dhani arm held under one arm, the rest of her weapons save bow and daggers stowed away in her pack to aid with carrying the large appendage. It had taken so long to recover enough for travel, but Tinnok had known the Shorn Skulls were eager to be rid of her, despite the help she had offered their clan where it concerned the Dhani abomination that had been murdering rampantly.

She saw looks of concern thrown her way, and realized news of her exploits had traveled from Shorn Skulls to here, as a few people paused what they were doing to ask how she was doing. In response she would simply nod and give a few words of reply, letting them go back to their work.

Her mother was most likely in the city, same with Kohl, and most of her siblings who were always engaged in the military. Tinnok, however, was looking not for them, but a very specific individual. She had been pondering what to do witch this Dhani appendage her whole journey home, and now she knew precisely what it was she planned to do.

She found Retni scraping off a flawless Okapi hide when she approached the tanner. It was strung taut, the skinning flawless so that she had captured the distinct bands on the Okapi’s legs. Now she was pulling downward neatly on the flesh with a dull knife, pulling some solution off of the flesh, and rubbing it on the edge of a pail every so often before returning to her work.

Tinnok stood quietly, patiently, not wanting to interrupt the woman in her process, and it was she who jumped when Retni spoke up. “I heard that you helped the Shorn Skulls slay some horrid Dhani monster. Be careful, skurak, you might be making Myrians respect you.” Her tone was dead serious, but Tinnok smiled, always having enjoyed the tanner’s dead pan humor and sarcastic manner of speaking.

“I’ll try to keep their respect at bay.” She answered slowly. Retni did not respond, only kept scraping as if Tinnok had disappeared. After a moment Tinnok cleared her throat.

“I was wondering if you might help me, Retni. I have this…” She glanced down at the Dhani leg. “I have a bit of that monster Dhani, given to me, I suppose in thanks….” She trailed off then began again. “I wanted to skin and tan the leather so that I could make it into a journal….”

There was another long pause, and after a chime or so, Retni put down her knife, cleaning it off once more and beginning to unfasten the Okapi skin from the ties keeping it taut. Tinnok followed her, watching as she brought it to a large trough of water where she dunked the skin and rinsed any remnants of the solution she had been using to remove the fur. She then took it out, brought it back to the ties and strung it up again to dry and set.

“There wasn’t a question in there, and no you don’t want to skin and tan the hide to prepare it for a journal, you want me to do it.” She stared Tinnok down with dark eyes, daring her to say that this wasn’t the case.

“You have a lot of work ahead of you, binding and making a journal. You’ll need paper, twine, sap, needles or knives in order to bind it all together. Do you know anything about binding or tanning?” Her tone was serious, harsh, and Tinnok felt like a small child all over again.

“N-Nothing. I don’t know…anything.” Retni’s gaze studied Tinnok intensely, then she drew back, uttering a short bark of laughter.

“Well grab a stool and sit at the table there, the first thing you need to do is skin that thing, should have done that right off, hope it hasn’t got too much build up, it doesn’t look…fresh.”

Tinnok placed the arm on the table, realizing the scent of its decay had seeped into her very skin and she shook her head. “Sorry, had nowhere better to keep it.”

Retni sighed then passed Tinnok a flat knife whose blade was flexible to the touch. “It just means you’ll have to cut away some of the flesh, should be more than enough leather for your purpose anyway.”

She bent over Tinnok, laying the arm flat and straight on the table. “I wouldn’t bother with the fingers.” She said slicing a horizontal line around the Dhani wrist, a clean cut all the way around. She then gave the knife back to Tinnok. “Now cut vertically down the forearm to the elbow and up towards where its shoulder would have been. It might be a little sticky, the muscles starting to decay and fasten to the skin, don’t be afraid of rips, we can sew and cut the skin to the appropriate shape when you’re done. Just stick that under any problem areas and try to peel the flesh off as well as you can, and when you’re down, scrape off excess with this.” She dropped a flat rock on the table, and without another word went back to her work.

Tinnok was suddenly aware that this was the most Retni had ever spoken to her, by a long shot, and was tempted to ask her why she was being so helpful, but decided against it. Instead she took the knife and cut just as she had instructed, a long relatively straight line down the arm. Once she had the cut complete, with more than a little trepidation she began pulling at the skin, removing it from the muscles and bone. A stench like no other arrived in her nostrils, the smell of decay, and rot, and she gagged, but kept pulling. She used the knife to pick up parts of the flesh and better separate the skin from the rest.

More than one rip was present in the Dhani skin when she laid the misshapen rectangle on the table. Picking up the arm by the fingers, she dropped it into the pail Retni had been using before and turned back towards the flesh, grabbing the flat stone and beginning the tedious job of scraping off bits of muscle, blood, and other fleshy bits from the underside of the skin, wondering precisely what she had just gotten herself into.

Word Count1,074


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Tinnok
A Witch of the Wilds
 
Posts: 888
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Joined roleplay: February 3rd, 2013, 5:27 pm
Race: Mixed blood
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Medals: 2
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Make it With Blood, Flesh, and Brains

Postby Tinnok on June 25th, 2014, 4:21 pm

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It took her half a bell before she was satisfied with the strip of discolored flesh, but she still saw tendons and things that clung to the skin. Retni chose this time to come over, peering at the leather scrap and shrugging.

“I’ve seen better, seen worse. Okay rinse it in the trough, then dump it, the water will be too dirty after that piece of filth’s been in it.”Tinnok took the flesh over to the basin in which Retni had rinsed off the Okapi hide, dunking the skin into it and scraping with her hands, rubbing it along the edges of the basin until she was satisfied. It was almost perfectly clean now, but she wasn’t quite sure where that left her. She dumped over the trough, the water pooling in rivulets, picking up dirt and leaves and sinking into the earth, leaving dark splotches to show where it had been not long before.

“Hang it on a rack, now you’re going to have to hunting.” Tinnok glanced up incredulously at Retni, rising with a creaking of her limbs that reminded her of how serious her injuries had been not so long before. She was nearly on the mend, however, a hunt would do her more good than harm. “You’ll need to get an animal, small one. We’ll use its brain to bate your hide, make sure it hardens up and becomes usable as leather and not just Dhani skin. A small bird, or Agouti would do. A animal’s brain is always large enough to provide enough solution to soak its hide in, so you’ll have to be the judge of what’s about the size of your Dhani arm.”

Tinnok nodded, leaving her pack on the table and checking her quiver and the two daggers at her belt, making sure to take her water skin. Brain seemed something a bit too odd to need to soak skin in to make leather, but Retni was the expert not her, so she shoulder her bow and took a measured pace into the forest, into the heart of clan lands once more.

She wasn’t going to start looking for track immediately, so uncommon was it for creatures to stray close to longhouses, yet a handful of crushed seeds drew her attention, the yellow meal drawing her focus from the green.

She knelt into the soft earth, glancing back towards the storage spaces where meal and grains were often kept. A scavenger? She set off at a quick jog back to the grounds to notify someone of the incursion, then set back on her trail, finding small paw prints in the earth and smiling to herself. If this creature, most likely an Agouti, had found free meals, it meant they probably wouldn’t stray far. She could get her brain and catch some scavengers diving into Tempered Steel food stores in one fell swoop.

To this note Tinnok proceeded quietly, knees bent, eyes scanning the foliage warily. Agouti were too small and light to leave normal signs of passage like bent foliage and snapped branches, she had to keep an eye out for those tiny paw marks.

She found another set barely twenty feet away, and encouraged continued forward. Her luck ran out there, however, when all trace of the little rodent disappeared, and she had to continue her search by circling in ever widening rotations around the second pair of tracks. This was when she found a small brook, burbling happily, and saw a few strands of the yellow meal dashed upon an exposed rock in the brook, luck restored.

With one nimble step she dashed over the stream and continued on. That was when she heard the first twitching of the foliage and bent down low, stopping her movements entirely and drawing in a low long breath, exhaling just as slowly, and then leaning ever so slightly forward to peer through the leaves.

She heard the scratching again, the sounds of forepaws or hind legs scratching through the leaf litter in source of nutrients, a piece of rotted fruit, nuts, or some seedling looking to grow in the nutritious rotting leaves. There she spotted her little brown furred culprit, tiny round ears swiveling to and fro, black eyes focused intently on the ground as it scratched again.

Tinnok leaned back so as to draw her bow unmolested by foliage, notching a single normal arrow and pulling back, the distance between her and her mark not long enough that she need to draw the bow fully, an advantage since the noise would have been too loud anyway.

She leaned forward, watching it scratch and tear at the earth, took in another deep breath as she lined up the sight of her arrow with the little body, lips moving in a silent prayer to Myri to guide her arrow true and not cause the creature any undue suffering, then it shot out through the leaves. She saw the Agouti snap up into a standing position, but that was what she had been counting on, and the arrow struck the little rodent square in the chest, sending it flying across the ground and into the root of a tree.

Tinnok dashed after her arrow, worried that she hadn’t killed the creature in one shot, but this fear was misplaced, as the limp body of the Agouti was lifted by her hands. She cradled its head for a moment, whispering a thank you, then removed her arrow from its chest and headed back toward the longhouses: Time to wash her Dhani skin in Agouti brain.

Word Count930


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Tinnok
A Witch of the Wilds
 
Posts: 888
Words: 878542
Joined roleplay: February 3rd, 2013, 5:27 pm
Race: Mixed blood
Character sheet
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Medals: 2
Featured Thread (1) 2013 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

Make it With Blood, Flesh, and Brains

Postby Tinnok on June 25th, 2014, 5:07 pm

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When she returned Retni nodded at the Agouti.

“String him up here, I’ll show you a trick.” Tying the Agouti’s hind legs with a little twine, Retni hung him up like that and beckoned Tinnok over. “Take any of your knives, yup that one’s good, now do this.” Retni traced her fingers along the top of one leg, pulling it down, tracing around the Agouti’s anus, then back up the other leg. “Do that with the knife.”

Tinnok dug the tip delicately into the flesh of the Agouti’s leg and dragged it down, following the invisible line she had made therein, around the creatures rear, and back up the other leg, pressing firmly, but not too deeply into the flesh. When she was complete Retni pulled at the thin skin of the Agouti’s leg, and to Tinnok’s surprise it peeled off quite easily.

“Take each leg and then pull down hard and fast.” Tinnok did as she was instructed, pulling a bit of the skin off of the other leg of the agouti, then once she had a grip, yanked downward. There was a wet sucking and tearing sound as in one smooth motion the flesh of the Agouti slid off of its body creating a tubular inside out sheaf of its flesh. Retni took the skin and set it to the side, untying the Agouti. In Tinnok’s absence she had filled a large bucket with liquid. Grabbing the skinless Agouti she threw it on the table and with one powerful stroke from a cleaver, shore its head from its body.

“Bring this to the cooks, an addition for tonight’s meal.” Tinnok was almost about to protest, but decided against it once again. She was learning so much, to risk jeopardizing it and relinquishing Retni’s help would be terrible now. So she sprinted over to where a few males were preparing food for the night’s meal, practically throwing the headless and skinned Agouti in their faces before dashing back to find that Retni had already spread the Agouti’s head open and was stirring its brain into the bucket of water, the slimy pinkish substance disintegrating in the liquid.

“Now soak your hide in here, make sure it is lathered and covered in the solution, and when you are done, attach it to a rack to be stretched. You will need to come back every half bell and tighten the restraints so that it is continuously stretching.” Tinnok nodded, and then Retni was off to Goddess knew where, and Tinnok was left alone, her Dhani flesh sitting in the vat of Agouti brain and water.

At first the half breed thought she might be repulsed by the idea of this whole process, but in essence it was actually somewhat refreshing. Seeing Retni worked she realized that each bit of the animal was utilized, and it felt somehow right, a completion of the cycle of killing and utilizing a creature’s every part in the making of leather. The water was also cool in comparison to the sweltering day, so it was very refreshing as she lathered and soaked her leather in the mixture.

After about half a bell of this, since Retni hadn’t told her how long she needed to do it, she brought the rectangular strip of flesh to a stretching rack, the racks made from fibrous and springy branches able to tighten and loosen the things attached to them with the twisting of wooden pegs that would tighten the twin and tendons that kept everything in place.

Attaching clips to each corner of her skin, Tinnok tightened them two turns each initially, then returned to her family’s longhouse to grab a whet stone and a small wooden stool to sit upon while she waited.

First she cleaned and sharpened her daggers, keeping track of Syna’s ascent above her as guidance when to tighten the skin a bit more. When she was done with the daggers she washed the arrow head and wooden shaft of the arrow that had been used to take down the agouti, and seeing as it had minimal damage set the weapon aside to dry.

After that she began her plans for the rest of the journal. She knew she could find thick papyrus or dried leaves in Taloba that would allow her to have the pages for her journal, but Retni mentioned needles and twine to hold the pages together. Glue as well would help. She knew Retni probably had glue on hand, what was made from water and the leftover pieces of leather cut up and let to sit for long periods of time, disintegrating into a strange gel like substance that was used for all sorts of purposes around the clan longhouses.

That left the twine, paper, and some way of punching holes in the paper and fitting thread or something within them. She wondered if Retni could be relied on this as well, since she knew of pointy tools used to punch holes or designs in leather. If she didn’t have them, perhaps some other leather worker in Taloba would now. These thoughts made her drift into a stupor, nearly forgetting about her leather and she leapt up and tightened the wooden pieces again, only half twists this time, as it was getting hard and harder to pull the leather tight. She ran a hand over the flesh, it felt cool and damp still.

“It isn’t done until it’s dry.” Said Retni, pacing over with a few fine looking hides over her shoulder. “You may be at it for the rest of the night.” Tinnok only nodded. She was prepared to do all of the work in this endeavor, and she needn’t be babied. Retni heaved something that could have been an Ixam pelt onto the table and began drawing on it with charcoal, clearly planning to cut some design out of it.

“Thank you.” Tinnok said simply, pulling her bench over to watch Retni work. She decided not to ask why, not to worry about the kindness this day was showing her through the hard working tanner’s eyes, simply take the gift and leave it. In response Retni simply grunted and continued her work, lighting a torch as Syna had begun to drop in the sky.

Bells later Tinnok sat by her skin, musing over a bit of her Agouti meat and a few last pieces of fruit from supper, staring up at it in the relative darkness. She stood up, touching the leather and realized that it was relatively warm, as if taking on the humid heat of the night…and as she ran the back of her hand along the leather, also realized it was quite dry. With a small whoop of triumph the half breed downed the rest of her meal, drowning it with a long swig of water and sat beneath the rack long enough to stretch her weary muscles before turning in for the night.

Word Count1,157


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Tinnok
A Witch of the Wilds
 
Posts: 888
Words: 878542
Joined roleplay: February 3rd, 2013, 5:27 pm
Race: Mixed blood
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Medals: 2
Featured Thread (1) 2013 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

Make it With Blood, Flesh, and Brains

Postby Tinnok on June 25th, 2014, 6:11 pm

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She was woken abruptly, when it was still dark by a foot violently slamming into the wooden base of her cot and knocking her completely out of it, spilling onto the floor in a heap of recovering muscles.

“Oy! What the petch is your problem, I-“ That was when Tinnok glanced up to see it was Retni. Despite the violence of the gesture she didn’t look angry or upset, simply impatient.

“You’re not done yet, half breed, not by a long shot, come on.”

Tinnok was still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes when she stumbled from the longhouse back over to Retni’s work area, her Dhani hide lying on the table. The edges were ripped and messy, but the leather was supple beneath her fingers, and Tinnok couldn’t help but feel a pang of pride deep in her gut, eliminated in one fell stroke when Retni ripped the leather from her hands and dangled it in front of her face.

“This is useless to you until it’s been smoked, so it will retain its texture under duress and time.” She gestured over to a few holes in the ground. “Get some coals and start a fire, but no flames, you just want smoking coals and kindling that will create more smoke. You’ll need to put your leather in a bag, the open end over the fire, and hold it above so that the smoke seeps into the leather.” She folded the rectangle in half and already had a rough sewn bag, Tinnok slipping the leather within.

Tinnok found that one of the pits already have smoldering embers, so she simply fanned these, adding bits of damp leaves and kindling, until a thick stream of dark grey smoke began out of the fire. She realized she’d need to provide a constant stream of damp material in order to keep what she had just started from lighting a flame, and if that happened? She glanced worriedly at her bag. It would take very little time for the bag to light a fire and her leather within, nullifying all of her work. The half breed left her little smoking pile, searching around for sticks. She found five and tied them at the top with twin creating a small array for her leather sit in at the top. Retni watched her curiously as she removed the leather from the bag, placing the end of the sticks all around the edges of the fire pit, placing her leather upon the nodes at the top, and then putting the bag over the leather and sticks to catch the bits of smoke still filtering upwards. With a small pail of water beside her just in case she had to douse a fire, and a pile of damp leaves and other kindling, Tinnok poked the embers with a stick and added just enough dry material to keep the embers warm without lighting them up.

Retni said nothing, and left the half breed for a while, not know how long was long enough for the leather to be thoroughly saturated with smoke. After a bell, Retni had Tinnok remove the bag, showing her the leather had turned dark in reaction to the smoke, She then folded the flesh so that it was the other way around and returned it back over the small pit, watching as the smoke escaped through the bag into the sky.

The second time around took longer than the first, as twice Tinnok lit her kindling alight and in a panic doused all of the embers to make sure the bag, and thus her leather didn’t catch alight. Each time she had to start anew building the fire, the second time her frustration was tantamount, and she suspected Retni was enjoying her own suffering a bit too much for her liking.

It was well past the twelfth bell when Retni barked at Tinnok to put out the coals for good and bring her leather over to the table. The sickly green had turned a darker shade, and was warm to the touch. Retni flipped it over on one side, then the other, examining it carefully.

“Novice work, but it will do for your purposes. Now you’ll want to find your paper and figure out how large of an area you’ll need the leather to cover before you begin cutting it. I’ll keep this strip in the hut until you’re ready.”

Tinnok looked longingly at the piece of leather she had made, wishing that this could be the end of it, but she had a few more steps to complete. She nodded to Retni then prepared her things for a journey to Taloba.

Precisely a day later, Tinnok was preparing her supplies on the table alongside her leather. She had two spools of Sisal thread, thin fibrous plant material that would be hardy enough for holding her parchment pages together, of which she had bought many, a pricey commodity indeed. Clutched in her teeth to make sure she didn’t lose it was a sew needle as well. She had bought 50 pages of parchment, and now was trying to figure out what to do with them. First she tried folding them in half all together so that she could simply fit them into the leather, but this was too many pages to do such a thing with, and she ceased her attempts immediately. Sitting back, not wanting to ask Retni for help, she took about five pages, folded these in half, then grabbed five more, folded these in half and placed them on top of her first five, realizing that if she did this she could fit them together more easily.

Tinnok did not know much of sewing, but she did realize how she would need to keep her pages together. She grouped the pages in bundles of ten pages folded over, small, but it would also give her more pages in the long run, and she had no issue with writing small in order to conserve space. First she strung her needle with the Sisal thread and would take the cluster of ten pages and sew together the fold she had made, dipping the sewing needle and punching it through often with a few taps of her dagger handle through the paper, making sure those pages would stick together. This took her a couple bells to complete with the thickness of the parchment, but then she had 5 clusters of ten pages bent in half so that they were more like 20 pages. Next she cut long strips of the Sisal thread off, already one spool down and using the needle threaded it through the bindings she had made on each cluster of pages, loosely connecting the spines of each folded set of ten and tying off little strips, joining them at the top middle and bottom of their spines. She was sure there was a better way to do this, perhaps poking her needles through all five clusters of pages to better attach them via the string, but she had neither the patience nor the skill to line up holes in 100 some odd pages of parchment and have the journal turn out even relatively alright.

Instead she continuously wound her thread threw so that her pages all hung loosely together. Then she grabbed up her leather and lay it down underside up and lined up her paper upon it. Her rectangular strip was just wide enough to hold the paper upright, and far too long. Dragging her pages to the edge of the leather, giving her a few extra inches to work witch, Tinnok folded the leather over her paper to see she had a couple extra feet of material. Part of her decided extra was good, if she could fully wrap the paper up in the leather, there was less chance of it getting damp and ruined by rain or other wetness. Using half a piece of charcoal left by Retni, Tinnok mark a line where it seemed best for the back folded, and sewn portion of her pages to be attached to the leather.

She then removed her paper and lay the leather completely flat, using one of her sharpened daggers and trimming up the rough edges a bit. On the top she was especially careful to keep her dragging line straight so that when she was finished cutting she actually had a usable strip of leather that she could use to tie and bind her journal. This was when she went to Retni for help. The tanner provided her with a small flask of rawhide glue, which she painted onto the inside of the leather over her charcoal mark, and onto the folded back of each sheaf of ten pages folded up and sewed. She then pressed the two together and held them, realizing with a sudden pang of self awareness that Retni was behind her, watching her progress.

“Sloppy, but cleverly done keeping them together like that. You’ll want to also sew the pages to the leather in addition to the glue, it may not last long in the heat.” Tinnok glanced up, unsure what Retni meant, but the female showed her by grabbing her needle and after waiting a few chimes to let the glue set in, she flipped the journal open, flipping to the separation between one clutch of ten pgaes and another. There she wiggled her pinky into the loose space between the sheafs and gestured to the visible thread there. “Sew around those, further attaching them to the leather. If and when the glue fails it will only be holding it loosely on, but better than it falling out. And you can keep the glue, re-applying it every so often might be necessary for you.”

Tinnok opened her mouth to say another word of thanks, but Retni waved her off and stalked away. Tinnok turned back to her journal. The extra leather that would be used to wrap it looked a bit sloppy, and she took her dagger, carving a triangle off of it so that the shape slowly receded as it would pass around the journal, continuing to hold her parchment upright until she was sure the glue had really dried.

After half a bell of this, she proceeded to follow Retni’s advice, weaving her thread through the leather spine and back again, making sure to loop and wrap it around the horizontal strands that connected her sheafs to one another. The effort of pressing her needle through the leather made her fingers sore and red, but the half breed only took brief breaks to shake her fingers out a bit before continuing on, now that the end was in site she was hard pressed to stop now.

Word Count1,796

Ledger50 pages of parchment = 10 GM/3 bikka
2 spools of Sisal Thread = 5 CM

- 3 Bikka, 5 CM


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Tinnok
A Witch of the Wilds
 
Posts: 888
Words: 878542
Joined roleplay: February 3rd, 2013, 5:27 pm
Race: Mixed blood
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Medals: 2
Featured Thread (1) 2013 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

Make it With Blood, Flesh, and Brains

Postby Tinnok on June 25th, 2014, 6:32 pm

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By the time she was finished, Tinnok was sweating profusely, Syna beating down on her hunched shoulders over the haphazardly put together leather bound journal before her.

Painstakingly she had managed to sew a small rectangular ring around the spine of the leather where it met the paper, crisscrossing this with x’s of the Sisal thread where she then looped the thread through the pieces that attached each sheaf to its neighbor. If the glue did fade away she suspected that the paper’s attachment to the leather would be loose at best, but as it was when she shook the journal, holding each end of the leather, the paper barely moved from its position where it had been glued and sewed, showing her she had at least done a couple things right.

She cut off much of the extra leather, but kept two flaps she could fold over the top and bottom of what would otherwise be the exposed parchment papers, and the long tapering section of leather that could wrap once fully around the journal to further keep it from water damage. In order to keep this in place Tinnok cut a little slit in the leather, fitting the strip she had cut off from the hide earlier into it, she then sewed the edge of the strip to the inside of the slit, and cut off a bit of the triangle she had shaved from the leather earlier, gluing it on and then sewing this down as well for reinforcement.

By this time her thumb and forefinger were raw, and she had a new found respect for tailors. Her palms and parts of her fingers were calloused from using weapons, but her tips did not know how to handle such punishment. She doused them in one of Retni’s pails for a moment, sighing softly at the cool soothing water there, before drying them on her loose cotton pants and unfurling her journal to peer at the first page within it.

Cutting the tip of her unmolested finger tip with her dagger, Tinnok at first made to press it into the bottom corner of her journal as some sort of identification, but instead found herself drawing a Triskelion in the top middle of it. It was sloppy since the wound did not ooze evenly as ink might, but the design was there, and she drew a relatively round circle around the Triskelion, blowing on the blood to help it dry.

“You’re an odd one half breed.” Retni appeared over her shoulder, dark eyes glancing down at the cover that Tinnok was tempted to slam closed like a petulant child in the tanner’s presence. The woman chuckled and backed up. “Better than I thought it’d look, though to be fair it looks like it came from the Dhani monster’s asshole.”

Tinnok glanced shamefaced at her journal, carefully closing it and tying off the leather chord so the whole thing wouldn’t come undone. “Well, it wasn’t going to be pretty, coming from a Dhani, anyway.” She shrugged, but still felt a sense of accomplishment from the journal in her hands. Retni shrugged as a hunter heaving a small deer over their shoulder came towards her.

“Well glad I could help, skurak, now off with you, I don’t want to speak to you for another year at least.” Tinnok glanced up startled at the remark, and saw a twinkle behind the tanner’s eyes. In that instant she felt like a child again, watching Retni carve up tigers, pluck emu, or tan Agouti hides to make water skins or bracers. The woman had always seemed so cold and aloof, yet in these past couple of days she had been so willing without a single thing in return to show Tinnok all of these things. In fact, saying thank you seemed as if it might ruin the whole moment the tanner and she were having. The half breed smirked and grabbed the journal, heading off to stow it away with her things in the longhouse and find something to help the others with before supper came around again, her stomach burbling as she realized she had skipped a couple meals in the process. Perhaps another hunt was on the horizon…

Word Count706


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Tinnok
A Witch of the Wilds
 
Posts: 888
Words: 878542
Joined roleplay: February 3rd, 2013, 5:27 pm
Race: Mixed blood
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Medals: 2
Featured Thread (1) 2013 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

Make it With Blood, Flesh, and Brains

Postby Voodoo on July 15th, 2014, 5:04 am

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Your Powers Grow

Tinnok
Experience :
Endurance: +1
Skinning: +2
Tanning: +3
Socialization: +5
Tracking: +1
Hunting: +1
Planning: +2
Sewing: +3

Lore :
Retni: A Cold but Respected Teacher
Argouti Brains are used in Soaking
Weaponsmithing: Keeping a Blade Sharp
Smoking Leather does not Involve Fire
A Little at a Time is Better than a Lot

Loot :
- Deduction of 3 Bikka for the paper
- Deduction of 5 CM for the thread
- Addition of a Hand-Crafted Dhani Journal (~100 pages)
- Addition of Rawhide Glue for Maintenance of Journal

Comments :
This was so much fun to read, especially when you discussed the skinning of the animal. It was well detailed and researched. I gave you Planning/Sewing instead of Crafting for putting the journal together. It seemed to make more sense. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, shoot me a PM.
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Voodoo
I'm known for ma graveside manner...
 
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