Closed Are You a Tree, Too?

[Evarista]

22nd of Winter, 516 A.V. The bungalow Evarista rented on the outskirts of the village was to her liking. It was so much to her liking that she hardly left it in the first half of the day. The shade and the good airflow made the cleverly designed building into an oasis among the elemental purgatory that was the Sykan outdoors. Hwyn wasn't as bothered by it - which was hardly surprising - and spent more time out and about in general. The girl didn't complain. The relatively secluded and pleasant bungalow was in some ways an upgrade from her room at home, and just like at home, she enjoyed spending as much time as possible sprawled on the bunk, doing absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, that didn't last very long. Some figures in the village, whom she assumed to be leaders, soon made it clear that she had to get busy with something. Surely enough, there was work to be done around here: buildings and boats to build, tools to craft, game to hunt, fish to catch, clams and herbs to gather, and many, many other things that their clumsy and soft-skinned guest could not even remotely come close to doing. But it was apparent that she had to do something, and trying to stall the matter would probably make the villagers angry. Since Evarista was dependent on them for everything, she knew that placating them was high-priority. After many ifs and buts, she eventually found herself back in her bungalow, holding a large wooden spool. She had ended up promising... rope. She dreaded having to explain the details, but luckily, no one cared. The only important thing was that she'd show up later with the finished product. Evarista looked at the spool in her hands and felt the anxiety rise. She knew how to make thread, but making a thread thick enough to be called "rope" was beyond her capacity. She knew well enough that thicker variants were made by braiding, but sitting and braiding hair-thin fibres into a decent rope didn't sound doable. Unless... Flexing her fingers and looking at them skeptically, she tried to recall the maneuvers of spinning basic thread. Generating the silk itself was something she could do in her sleep at this point; the hard part would be turning her limbs into machines that would do the braiding with a minimum of conscious effort. Rhysol knew there were few things in this world as repugnant and terrifying as that last thing. Feeling motivated, the girl went to work, starting with what she already knew. A single thread, going from a gland in her mouth and attached to the spool, was easy to spin just by turning the spool. The spool, in turn, could be rapidly and effortlessly turned by morphing her hand into a chitinous prong that would be stuck through the hole in the spool, then make the prong turn on a slippery swivel, and turn the swivel with a series of mutually relieving muscles. Repeating the familiar motions gave her several loops of shimmering silk around the wooden length; a decent product in itself, but not rope. Still, she looked at her construction with satisfaction. It was a good basis to build her rope-making device on.

[Hwyn]

Hwyn Watching his master work was intriguing, kinda gross, but the revulsion he had felt about the way his master made her body shift had worn off on him. He watched her often, though he’d never call it voyeuristic he just thought her so interesting. She was so unlike other people, her general disinterest in social norms and ways of doing things that were otherwise set in stone. She was incredibly impractical, but she made the best of it. I mean, making silk… out of yourself, it just seemed strange, but we was not so confident as to bring the issue up. So he watched, he wasn’t even sure that his presence was something Eva had taken note of, generally she only addressed him if she wanted something from him, though that had allowed him the autonomy he enjoyed when it was available. So he sat and watched, the singlemindedness with wich she worked when she actually focused on something was impressive, if rare. So watching the way her “hands” moved was in its own way, kinda hypnotic. He wondered how she’d learned to do that with her hands, was it something some people just could do and others could not. Either way it never failed to impress him. He didn’t know how long he had watched for but the spool had definitely grown by the time he roused himself from his speciation. Moving himself into her field of view Hwyn tried not to disrupt her as he decided on what he wanted to say to her. He hated the idea of not doing anything so he needed to figure out a way he could help her and not be dead weight. Even if he handed much of the clerical duties around the house he was content to do those things as part of his life not included as work. “Miss Eva… If you don’t mind me imposing, is there anything I c-can do to help you… I-i… I mean if you allow me to I’d be happy to do whatever I can to A-a-assist you.” Flexing his fingers nervously as he watched her He wondered how she was holding up in the stifling jungle, she was always rather introverted so figuring out how his master was liking this jungle was difficult, on this surface It was easy to say she likely loathed it all, but then again she seemed to loath most things. As such he tried to shy away from making conclusions as to what his masters thoughts were unless she gave hard evidence to go by. He knew she hadn’t been terribly pleased with the menu this particular side of the world had to offer, though he’d decided he didn’t mind, with Sunberth as a baseline, most of the world was pretty nice. Sitting in front of Eva he waited curios as to what she was trying to accomplish and how he could involve himself in whatever it was she was doing.

[Evarista]

Starting the work was easy enough because she already knew what to do there. The next stage was more problematic. She tried to spin many single threads and braid them, but as expected, the resulting rope was far too thin. It looked like she had to spin a good hundred strands at once to get something decent, and they all had to be braided automatically somehow, because there was no way she'd spin a hundred threads only to braid them all by hand. So, she set to design some sort of rotating mechanism that would hold each thread and braid it immediately after it was spun. Spiral prongs with rotating vices, spiral prongs with static vices, flat prongs with only half-way rotating vices, half-way rotating prongs with spiral vices, prongs with swivels in the middle, double-jointed prongs with multiple vices, double-jointed vices on swiveling prongs... As she changed her machine's form and test-spun each setup with a concentrated look on her face, it certainly looked like she was acting with thought and purpose. But she wasn't. She was just making random shapes and trying them for efficiency - not unlike the way she did most of her "engineering", since real engineering wasn't something she had talent for. In her experience, however, talent could be substituted with patience. The problem was that, well, she didn't have that either, so this had better yield results soon. Unfortunately, it didn't. After about twenty chimes of gnarling her arms into increasingly bizarre shapes, she gave up. The task of working multiple dozen of threads at once was too complex. It looked like she'd have to do it the simple way, even if the outcome would be odd. Make three very thick fibers and braid them like one would braid hair to get a decent-sized rope. Considering that silk threads of such girth weren't a natural occurrence, it would raise questions for the keen observer, but she hoped that the villagers didn't care. After all, they seemed to be the utilitarian sort. As long as it worked, they wouldn't ask where it came from. Hopefully. Realizing that someone's been talking to her, she lifted her head and saw a familiar face. It was unusual of him to put himself on offer like that, but now was a good time. She did need some help, but probably wouldn't have thought of asking him unless he offered. He's only been around for a few weeks, so having him at her disposal wasn't something she's gotten used to yet. That had to change. "Bring food. A lot of it. And a variety." She already knew that extensive silk production would make her hungry, but she's never done something of this scale. The massive tissue consumption would need some equally massive replacement. "And my hands are busy, so feed me." While she was sure that brute-forcing it wasn't the most elegant way to do this, it was an excuse to pig out like a maniac. If there was anything she unambiguously enjoyed in this village, it had to be the food, but the suffocating heat generally killed her appetite. This was a rare and unusual opportunity to create some fake appetite. A whole lot of fake appetite. At least it would all be turning into useful materials, so it wasn't a waste. It was work. A combination of business and pleasure! The only way to do business at all, as far as she was concerned.