33rd of Autumn, 517 A.V.
It was a stupid thought, but it wouldn't leave Evarista's head.
The girl lounged in her armchair in front of the open window, ignoring the lonely empty wine glass on the windowsill. She didn't have to go to the temple today, and wanted to take her mind off of it. Just about anything else would be a better filler for her mind right now... but why did she have to think of this?
Long ago, she commissioned a special dress at Azure Reflections, telling the proprietor to wait for a cloth supply from her. Too many things happened afterwards, and the delivery was never sent.
She still wanted to see what the dress would look like. Even if the intended wearer was no longer around, she just wanted to see what a dress made from her special silk delivery would look like. Maybe just throw it away afterwards. Or even better - burn it up. Art is a bang, as she's heard a visiting minstrel say once.
Now that she thought about it, however, maybe it was a good thing that she never got around to making the delivery until now. The original reason for the delay was her lack of skill. At that time, she could only spin thread, and while she had brought a sample to a weaver to get it woven into cloth, that plan never got off the ground. She had almost despaired ever seeing a garment made with her silk and largely abandoned the idea since then.
Looking at this today showed an entirely different picture. Today, she knew how to make "cloth" without relying on a weaver. Just spin it, roll it and go. No weaving needed. Taking a deep breath and rising from the chair, Evarista decided to just that, right now, before her sloth got the better of her as it so often did.
Hiking up her sleeves above the elbows, Evarista pressed her forearms together in front of her and set her recently discovered technique in motion. In one forearm, she generated a single oblong spinneret - one that would produce not a string, but an entire sheet of silk at once. On the other forearm went a wide, short and flat vice, corresponding in dimensions to the opposing spinneret and fitting into it like a tab into a slot. The silk was going to be of the bioluminescent variety, but she omitted the greenish pigment. That meant the material would have a pure white glow. Hopefully.
Evarista licked her lips tensely, watching the skin on her forearms bulge as the growing silk gland displaced the muscle underneath. Disfiguring herself while standing around in awkward poses has become such a customary practice that she wasn't bothered by it any more. Taking goofy forms in the solitude of her room or up on the rooftops was, if anything, a form of escapism at this point. It made her feel pleasurably detached from the rest of the world and the laws that governed it.
Once her arm was mildly bloated with unspun silk, she closed the vice she had made on her other arm, feeling it clamp around the viscous liquid firmly. Just as she did when spinning threads; the only difference now was that she was about to add extra dimension to the thread. Now, the moment of truth...!
Her mechanism made an uncanny tearing noise as she forced her arms apart with all her strength. Her vision became obscured by rippling white, a glossy sea filling her nostrils with the familiar, warm aroma. Where did she know that smell from? It was herself. The scent of her own skin right after a hot bath. Did all her silk smell this way? It was natural, now that she thought about it. This was a part of herself like any other, even after it detached from the rest of her body.
Extending her lower jaw into sensitive mandibles, she prodded the white sheet to check it for solidity. Still slightly moist and very elastic, but definitely solid. Just as when she made her wings once. Yes, this would do. Returning her attention to the spinning mechanism, she continued expanding her arms forcefully, swivelling her elbows and shoulders at unnatural angles to continue pulling and shearing, making her grunt from the strain.
"Grrrgh!"
No longer able to keep track of how much she was spinning, only the tearing noises told her that the sheet was growing longer. When her arms ran out of space to bend, Evarista lowered them and flopped down onto the armchair behind her, panting heavily and trying to calm her twitching muscles. On her knees was a pile of solid, freshly spun silk, its organic warmth seeping through her skirt and touching her legs. But this material was not cloth. It was all a single, unnaturally massive fiber.
It didn't glow, because it was daytime, but it would definitely light up in the evening. Through whatever mysterious means, the firefly's light could follow the rhythm of day and night. The glow wouldn't be infinite, though. It would need food. This silk was a living being, with its own functions and metabolism. Without a doubt, it was her most formidable creation yet.
Having calmed her heart rate and rested for a little while, Evarista carefully rolled her product into a bolt and stumbled out of the door, hugging it close. The invasive pang of hunger from the sudden escape of proteins told her to stop by the pantry, but she endured it and rushed right out of the main entrance with determination. Her destination was all she could think about.
***
Spurred by impatience, Evarista walked with her widest gait, her head lost in the clouds. She roughly bumped shoulders with someone when turning a corner, but didn't even turn her head to check who it was, simply enduring the pain and clutching the silk bolt closer to her chest. When the door to Azure Reflections appeared in front of her, she rammed it open with her already sore shoulder without slowing down. Alira had better be in.
To her relief, the redhead was behind the counter, in the middle of a wildly animated lecture to her pouty-looking kelvic slave. Both their heads turned towards the unceremonious intrusion, but before either of them could say anything, the dishevelled-looking visitor flopped her baggage on the counter in front of them. Panting slightly and not even offering a greeting, she went straight to business in her normal breathy tone.
"This... the commission from last year..." She looked straight at Alira and pointed at the silk impatiently. Since she didn't mentally prepare for the conversation, which was a necessity for her, she visibly struggled to be coherent and continued dropping whatever disorganized words came to mind in hopes that the seamstress would catch on.
After a chime of confused back-and-forth, Evarista managed to calm down and Alira finally understood what this was about. Picking up the silk curiously, the proprietress began examining it with an expert's eye.
Meanwhile, Evarista pointed a finger at the still-confused Azure.
"Bring me water," she demanded sharply.
The kelvic was about to protest her tone, but then rolled his eyes and shuffled off to do as her was told. It was useless to argue with this one.
Evarista's attention was stolen by Alira's bewildered voice.
"This is... what is this? Where did you get it?" The woman prodded and stretched the alien material, her brow deeply furrowed. Deeming herself knowledgeable about pretty much every textile under the sun, she was understandably startled to be presented with something she couldn't even begin to make sense of.
"It's silk," Evarista answered simply. The skepticism on Alira's face forced her to add, "Special... silk."
"Soak it in... hmm... milk, or a sugar solution, and it'll glow in the dark," she continued absent-mindedly.
The redhead's eyes were as wide as saucers by now. Did she hear that right? Soak it in milk, she said?
Alira began to recall the details of that evening. The smug smirk on Evarista's face back then as she announced she would be supplying her own materials, and Alira's own prophetic prediction that it was going to be something weird.
The prolific seamstress had many eccentric customers that she enjoyed, and sometimes dreaded, being surprised by.
But the still mildly disoriented-looking Nitrozian in front of her wasn't just "eccentric". She was stark, raving mad.