Solo [Narvaen Stables] Didn't Quite Hit the Straw Hat on the Head

Talya practices her survival skills on the brink between the wilderness and civilization.

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Center of scholarly knowledge and shipwrighting, Zeltiva is a port city unlike any other in Mizahar. [Lore]

[Narvaen Stables] Didn't Quite Hit the Straw Hat on the Head

Postby Talya on September 4th, 2015, 12:03 am

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Timestamp: Fall 23, 515 AV

Talya wasn't quite sure where she found herself now; she knew she hadn't been there before- she could tell by the way of the buildings present, as well as the landscape that surrounded her. It was more even here, and the sun, she saw, could stretch unhindered over its expanse, its pale golden light kissing every inch of land, and helping to keep it warm, now that the temperatures were beginning to drop more and more, as the world continued to ease all the more deeply into the autumnal season. There was grass here, but the openness collided into structure- slate grey; stone. There were a series of buildings, or perhaps it was only one or two, but the shape gave the illusion of more, the Ethaefal wasn't entirely sure as she moved around them, and then finally made her way inside one of them. The instant she entered, she was assaulted with the scent of dung, and of sweat. She also picked up on something a little musty, something she didn't recognize at first when she entered. It was the scent of hay, both new and old. Some of it downtrodden, as it had been stamped upon by several feet- both human and that of beasts. Some of it caked with mud, and whatever those in question had drawn inside from the outside world.

Talya stepped further into the depths of the stables, and began to take a look a around. Some horses stomped and shook their tails, batting away flies as she moved through the area. Others nickered or neighed at her, as they tried to get her attention. But she ignored them for now, as she knew nothing of horses and how to approach them. In fact, she knew very little of animals in general, and thought it best not to approach them, especially when she didn't see anyone else around, who could show her the way, or whom she could at least inquire as to whether or not it was appropriate for her to be around. It was then that her heart sank, and she began to worry about whether or not what she was doing would be considered trespassing, and as to whether or not she would get into trouble for it. But as no one seemed to be around, save for the horses, (and perhaps a few ponies and foals, she wasn't much sure of the difference between them all), the fear began to subside, although at times it seemed to ebb and flow, and wind its way around her heart, so she decided to proceed a little more cautiously. Taking more care to lift her feet off the ground and then set them down far more slowly, so that there was a much fainter rustling of the hay that rested outside the stalls, and a fainter clicking of her heels against the wooden floors, caked with dirt.

Talya continued on through the stables, taking the turns now and again, until she arrived in what she could only assume was the storage area for that specific stable, as it was filled with a number of supplies. There were saddles, and there was tack, and riding blankets. There were changes of horseshoes, and stirrups, as well as a few whips and crops. There were brushes, and other grooming supplies, a few pails. Just as there remained an area that held food- there were bags of things that looked like it could be some sort of grain, and piles of hay bales, some of which towered over her head. Tucked next to this was a wheelbarrow- it was metallic, and a shovel rested next to that. She supposed this was what was used to muck things out. Talya smiled, she was beginning to feel more and more secure, and more and more as though she could be free to explore. Thus, she crept forward, across the stables toward the piles of hay. She closed the distance that had once rested between herself and then, and reached their side within a matter of seconds. Her eyes surveyed the pale yellow strands that made out the bales- several sticking out from the sides, and several more lying loosely upon the floor. She reached out to touch them tentatively with her right hand as her eyes grazed over them. The pieces of hay felt dry and rough under her hands, and they bent more easily than she thought they would. It was then that she began to wonder what she could do with the hay.
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Talya
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[Narvaen Stables] Didn't Quite Hit the Straw Hat on the Head

Postby Talya on September 4th, 2015, 12:24 am

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With so much of it lying upon the floor, the Ethaefal figured at least some would go to waste. Some, she figured, would be fed to the horses, or used as a sort of bedding, to make their separate stalls more comfortable, but the rest was something that could be utilized. She rubbed her chin with her fingers as she pulled them away from the hay, and thought. And then thought some more, and a little bit more after that. Then it came to her- hay could be rather useful. For it could be braided, like a rope. In fact, wasn't hay what hemp rope made out of? Wasn't hemp a synonym for the word hay? She wasn't entirely certain, but the two items in question were of a similar shade, and that had to count for something she supposed. She smiled as memories of the ropes which tied the boats back up at the docks floated through her mind; unbidden. Yes, everything seemed right to her, so she decided to test things out, and try braiding the rope. Then she could feed it to one of the horses- she had no intention of keeping it. She just wanted to see if she was right, and things would work out for her. So she pulled a hay bale off one of the shorter stacks, and set it down on the floor in front of her. Then she sat down beside it, took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth, and dry washed her hands, before setting off to work.

Talya decided she would begin simply- by weaving two small strands of hay together, and then building off of that. Thus, she picked up two pieces of hay at random, off of the stable floor- one for each hand. Her eyes passed from one to the other for a few minutes as she thought on how to combine them, her head rocking lightly from side to side. Finally, it came to her, and she began winding one piece of hay around the other. A simple circling, as though it were a snake coiling around a tree. Whens she got to the end of the hay that was wrapping around the other, she realized she had only made it halfway down the stable piece of hay, and that furthermore, the winding piece had become crimped and jagged on its way down. It didn't want to maintain its shape, and was slowly unraveling. Talya watched it idly, until the piece of hay fell onto the floor of the stable. She sighed, taking a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth, before deciding that she would try again, this time, taking a bit of a different approach. She began by binding the two pieces of hay together. She tied them in a knot at the top, and then, began to wind one of the pieces around the other again, in a motion that swept it around the side and to the left. It formed a crimped, winding staircase.

Again, the little piece of hay that did the winding stretched a similar distance. Forming peaks as it bent awkwardly around the unmoved piece of hay. Talya glared at it, as though that would change anything, as though that would make it perfect. Her nostrils flared, as finished moving the strip of hay around the next bend. She held it taught with her fingers a moment, and then, let go, allowing the whole thing to slowly unravel again. Clearly, she realized, this wasn't working, and that if she wanted to stand a chance, she would have to use more hay. After all, as her brow furrowed and she thought about it for a moment, hemp rope didn't seem quite as narrow as what she was working with now, (more often than not). In fact, it seemed to often be as thick as her pinky finger, or at least, half of that. Thus, she surmised that she would have to add quite the number of strands in order to stabilize things, and not make it seem quite so crimped and sloppy. Yet, she didn't really know what she was doing, and want to overwhelm herself, any more than she wanted to wind up making nothing greater than a big nasty knot, so the Ethaefal decided that she would add more strands, but perhaps, not as many as she thought would be needed to make a more traditional, stable rope. Instead, she would aim to make a stable, narrower one.
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Talya
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[Narvaen Stables] Didn't Quite Hit the Straw Hat on the Head

Postby Talya on September 4th, 2015, 12:41 am

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Talya let the now bent up, and even more beaten looking pieces of hay fall to the floor of the stables beside her. She sighed as she took a deep breath in through her nose, and out through her mouth, before reaching for more hay from the floor. She picked up five pieces in all, and then tied them in a knot the same as before. When she was done she set everything onto her lap, and stared at the hay for a bit. She really didn't know what to do with it, and did her best to picture what she hempen rope looked like, from all sides. She remembered the sides looking like they wove around- kind of like a circular or winding staircase. She vaguely remembered that from the top, she could see the several smaller pieces that made up the whole. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't quite remember how many pieces that was exactly. More than two certainly, even more than three, but other than that, her memory was of absolutely no further use to her. Especially because she couldn't quite remember if the ends were knotted or not. She could have sworn she had seen some rope bound together with a knot in some cases, and in others not- as though they had been stuck into place with some sort of sticky substance, a sort of glue.

Again, Talya sighed as she kept on thinking about what to do, before realizing that her best bet, was likely some sort of braiding technique, or variation thereof. She began by working with a more traditional braid. She used the first three strands on the right first- she moved the strand of hay on the far right over to the left side of the two strands, then wrapped it around. From there, she moved onto the next strand in line, and allowed it to follow the trail of the first. Then she did it again with the next strand, until she was back of the beginning and forced to do it all over again. When she got a little farther down, she realized that the strands were crimping again- their bodies peaking and becoming jagged in several different areas. Her brow furrowed, she frowned, and then realized that she definitely wasn't doing something right- and that was because she was basically doing the same thing as before, but on a larger scale. With a sigh, she chastised herself for being so stupid, and allowed everything to unravel. When it had, she straightened out all of the hay strands; the sound of nickering horses filling her ears, as she pulled everything back into place, and then tried to straighten them out further with soft ministrations of her hands, and fingers, which only seemed to help a little.

Again, Talya began, this time, separating the hay into two groups. The two strands on the far left into one, the other three strands into their own group. This time, she decided to make the only other move she could- instead of moving the strand on the right all the way over and around to the strand of hay on the left of the group of three- Talya moved it in-between the other two strands. Then, she pulled the strand on the right through, and moved the one that had been all the way on the left along, so that it moved into the braid with the other two. She braided all the way to the end, within the next few minutes, and then set the end under her foot so it wouldn't unravel as she dealt with the other two strands. As there seemed nothing else to do- she wound the piece of hay on the right around the one on the left, and then moved the one on the left around the one on the right, so that at the end, she wound up with a crimped, short strand. She then looked at what she had to work with, and with a shrug, wound the shorter bit of "rope," she had made around the larger bit, as she untucked the piece from beneath her foot. But all she wound up with at the end, was an uneven bit of rope that curled and and twisted around itself, bunching up until it was impossible to work with. She sighed, and let everything unravel. Helping the process along by pulling things apart with her fingers, and then trying to straighten and flatten them out again at the end with her fingers.
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Talya
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[Narvaen Stables] Didn't Quite Hit the Straw Hat on the Head

Postby Talya on September 4th, 2015, 12:58 am

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Talya sighed, what she had been doing, was still, clearly not working any better. The addition of the three strands had seemed to help a bit, but everything was still a mess, and she would have to adjust. She began to ponder all of the things that she could be doing wrong- from weaving and winding things the wrong way, to not using enough strands, or for perhaps, using an odd number as opposed to even, for a single entity could always throw things off and mess things up, but that didn't seem entirely right to her. At least, not in this particular instance. Thus, with a sigh, she kept on thinking, and then realized that perhaps, the rope was supposed to come out that way- it was supposed to be crimped and jagged and uneven. Well, not exactly, not at the end of things, but during the process. That at the end of all things, the person making the rope would further twist and pat things into place, so that it all lay down, and the braided appearance of the rope became all the more apparent. Her eyes glimmered, she smiled, that was definitely a possibility, and one she most certainly wanted to try out, this very instant, because making a rope seemed the most important thing in the world right now.

Seeing as she didn't want the hay to fold up again, as it had done on her previous trial, Talya picked up the hay bale, and slipped the end of the hay chords beneath it, so that the hay sat on the knotted end, helping to keep it in place. From there, she decided that since the hay was still a little bent and beat up from her previous trials, she would try to flatten it further and accomodate. She set her hands about six inches apart, and from the middle, began to twist the strands clockwise, which served to tighten the bundle. As the strands began to bunch together, she moved her hands a little closer, and continued the process. She made a few rotations, and then stopped as the rope began to bunch at the top. She looked at it, and then held the other end taut. Then she went in and tried to straighten things with her fingers, pushing the strands closer to her, others farther back. It didn't seem to help much, if at all, but she felt a bit better for doing it, and then resumed her work. As she continued, the kink in the hay began to rotate on its own- it moved in a counter clockwise fashion. She kept doing this for a little bit, and then stopped, as things got tight. For she felt as though it were putting to much strain on the rope.

Thus, Talya back tracked a little, and allowed a small portion of her work to unravel. Now, perhaps only a quarter or even a fifth of the hay had been dealt with. She looked at the rope again, and then decided she couldn't go down the same path she had before, it wouldn't work, so she began to try something new. Using her fingers, she twisted the bits of hay, each of her hands moving to work with it, applying their own furl in turn, moving things to the east, until another twist was added to the ply. She moved that which had developed on the right over that of the left, and continued moving in this way for a short distance. The left hand twisted the first section clockwise, the right the same with the other small sector of hay. Meanwhile, as this was occurring, the Ethaefal guided the sector within her right hand over, and then a little bit behind her thumb. She held it in place with her free fingers. From there, she alternated hands, as she realized now, with how things moved that it would be easier. So she moved the stand that her right had been holding into her left appendage, and the one with the left into the right appendage. She gripped tightly, practically choking the hay, and adding more strain and tension to it, than there had been mere moments beforehand.
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Talya
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[Narvaen Stables] Didn't Quite Hit the Straw Hat on the Head

Postby Talya on September 4th, 2015, 1:21 am

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Talya kept her eyes trained on the edge of her fingers, by her nails, while the rest roved over their work- the movement of the hay she had been forcing into various shapes and positions all along. She continued with the same process over and over again, until she had come to the end of the line. She hadn't even realized how far she had gotten as she wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her right hand, as she held the hay with her left. She looked at everything, and realized that she would not be able to bind the rope, or add onto it, if she kept things as they were now, so she let a bit of the rope unravel, and then tied a knot at the other end. What she wound up with was messy- with all of the work she had done, she had begun to chip away at the hay's foundation. It was already dry, so little bits of it frayed and moved away from the larger strands. Some of it bent and crimped, while the rest just looked wrinkled and messy, but it seemed stronger than before all the same. Tal smiled as she went back over it, scratching at the strands with her nails in an attempt to straighten things out. It really didn't work, and only tightened the rope in some areas and loosened it with others. In the end, she had been left with about a foot of the stuff.

But this wasn't enough for her to do anything with. So about an hour after she had first begun, the Ethaefal began working with another section of hay. The same amount as before. The same amount she had started with. She began to manipulate the strands in the same fashion as she had done so on her final trial. Knowing now more of what to do, things went far faster, but it looked as though she didn't brace things well enough, as the rope squished together, and became too tight for it to be useful. So she let it unravel and began again. She got it right the second time, (or at least better), and moved onto a third strand, and then a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth. When she was done with everything, about two hours later, she sat in a messy pile of hay, with small, largely one foot or so pieces of rope by her side. She breathed deeply in through her nose and out through her mouth. The air in the stables was denser than outside, and a little sticky. She wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. When she was done, as she was not certain of how else to do it, Talya picked up the strands of rope she had made, and then began tying them together. She wound up with a roughly eight and a half foot long rope when things were done.

It was knotted, and curved around to the side, but for her purposes, the Ethaefal felt as though it would do. When she was done, she got up, and rubbed her legs, and her arms. She rubbed the back of her neck, massaging her sore muscles, and working to send some of it away. When that was done, she picked little pieces of straw off her dress, and flicked them onto the floor. From there, she decided to test the durability of her rope. She picked it up off the floor of the stable, and then moved over to the hay. She nudged it upward with her toes, and then slipped one end of the rope under, then she moved around to the other side of the bale, lifted it, and forced the rope under and around, until it met with the other side. From there, she tied the two pieces together. When this was done, she gave the rope a light tug, to make sure the knot would keep. It seemed alright, so with a smile, she walked away, and let the rope slip through her fingers to the end. Then, she held on tight, wrapping the rope around her hand once. From there, she walked forward, tugging the bale of hay along with her. She could feel the rope tighten, its body digging against her flesh, making it redden. She grit her teeth, as it hurt, but she kept on moving along. She kept on slowly dragging it forward across the stable, until the rope snapped in two, and she stumbled forward.

With a groan, she realized that this whole process would take some work. For the first time in awhile, the Ethaefal listened to the neighing of the horses. They seemed to be laughing at her misfortune, but she ignored them as she undid her work, over the next half hour. Unwinding the rope pieces, and then, of course untying it from the hay bale. She then tossed the hay in question into the nearest stall, with a horse with a sorrel coat. It was its lucky day. From there, Talya picked up the hay bale, and set it back where she had found it, on the stack with all the others. With that done, she dry washed her hands, and continued her journey back through the stables, admiring many of the horses and the few ponies in the stalls.

OOCI know this isn't set in the wilderness, but I figured making rope could be wilderness survival experience, as it involves taking something naturally occurring, and using it to create an item which would aid in survival, and have uses in the wilderness. Also, research(ing) for the various trials, if you please. Thank you.
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Talya
Darkness Becoming
 
Posts: 317
Words: 433400
Joined roleplay: March 5th, 2015, 5:10 am
Location: Wildlands/Zeltiva
Race: Ethaefal
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