Solo None of Your Beeswax

[Avela]

76th of Winter, 517 AV

Avela sat at her desk, looking at the row of beeswax candles in front of her. The candles had just come out of their molds, after spending the past two days curing, and each one carried the pale yellow color of beeswax. The Konti girl looked at the candles down the line, rubbing her hands together nervously. Beeswax wasn't a material that she used often to make her candles, despite the fact that it was considered one of the more common candle materials. The reason for that was simple--it didn't carry scent very well, and Avela liked to experiment with scent.

But beeswax candles were traditional for a number of reasons, and so, in an attempt to better herself as a candlemaker, Avela had decided to experiment. If this worked, she would have a new skill to add to her repertoire. And if this failed, she thought, she would have wasted the material and her time.

No, she reminded herself, as she picked up the small knife that rested on the desk beside her. It wouldn't be a waste, because she would be learning. She couldn't expect to be good at everything as soon as she tried it. No one was that good.

Avela tried to forget the fact that her previous attempts had been disastrous. She'd only tried once, after all, and that had been an idle attempt. This time, she would be trying for real.

While beeswax wasn't a great base for a scented candle, its unique texture and properties made it a common base for decorative, engraved candles. Avela had never been much of an artist in the past, preferring to base most of her artistry on scent and using only simple colors. But there was only so much of a market for normal, boring-looking candles with interesting scents. In Alvadas, that was usually the standard for places where the candle itself was not important. What was important was the ambiance that the candle created.

She'd known, because she'd seen some beautiful examples of engraved and carved candles, that sometimes the art was the candle itself.

Drawing in a deep breath and deciding that it was better to start than spend any more of her time staring at the candles, Avela pulled a sheet of paper over to herself. Using the knife, she carefully cut out a section of paper that was about the size of one of the candles, then dipped her quill in ink and started drawing on the paper. She wanted to start with a simple design, thinking that she would be more likely to pull off simple letters and numbers than say--carving a candle in the shape of a flower or something else that she wanted to do in the future. Avela decided that she would start small, writing out in clear, block letters, the letters of her name.

AVELA

Even there, however, she wasn't happy. Avela frowned, crumpling up the sheet of paper and cutting another one. This time, she tried to space the letters out evenly across the sheet, pursing her lips together as she did her best to keep the letters from running together.

Writing was harder than she thought, she realized. She wondered how on earth her father did this all day.

"Common" "Kontinese"

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[Avela]

Once Avela was happy with her writing, which took entirely more times than she wanted to admit for something that was only five letters long, she picked up one of her candles. Holding the sheet of paper with her name on it carefully in place, Avela went over her handiwork with her knife, carefully scratching lines along the strokes that made up her name. She worked slow, brow furrowed in concentration as she did her best to keep the paper from sliding out of place. As with all things in this endeavor, it was harder than it looked, and harder than it initially seemed.

Avela was starting to notice that that was a theme.

Still, she reached the last 'A' with no major mishaps. Avela let out a long breath of relief as she let the piece of paper fall onto the growing mess around her chair, studying her handiwork. A set of thin lines carved out her name on the candle, but they were so thin that they might as well have been chicken scratches. Avela knew that despite all of her efforts, the hardest part wasn't over yet. She sighed, mentally preparing herself, then drew the candle closer to her and bent down so that she was closer to her source of light, raising her knife and starting the delicate task of widening the lines she had made, carving out the furrows of the letters in her name.

It was finicky work, and Avela privately vowed, as she struggled with the first letter, that if she made it through this and decided that she still wanted to add engraving to her repertoire, she was going to buy a proper petching engraver's kit. In fact, as soon as she was finished with this insane endeavor, she was going to add that to the list.

The beeswax cut easily and cleanly, so making the furrows wasn't the hardest part. Keeping them somewhat even over all the letter, however, was. It was annoyingly hard to keep the entire letter the same width, and after struggling with it for a while and wanting to pull out her own hair, Avela gave up. Whatever. Her first candle would be lopsided. It wasn't like she was going to be selling it anyway. Who would want to buy a candle with Avela's name on it.

Well...her father might, if she asked nicely, but that was just pathetic. A thinly veiled attempt to get money from home, and her stepmother would see right through it. Avela vaguely wondered if she might be able to convince Kay'Layza to buy it the next time she met up with her for Kontinese lessons, but decided against it. Kay'Layza was just about as business savvy as her stepmother. There was no way it was happening.

She was thinking that, just starting to work on the 'V', when the knife skittered out of the furrow she was carving, cutting a thin line across the pad of Avela's thumb. The Konti dropped the knife and candle, letting out a volley of curses that were certainly not very ladylike, before raising her thumb to her mouth and sucking on the wound.

She could already tell that this was going to be one of those days.

"Common" "Kontinese"

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[Avela]

After a moment, Avela pulled the thumb out of her mouth, glancing at the wound. It didn't seem deep at all, which was a blessing. Really, it was nothing more than a scratch, although it would make the rest of the activity that much more complicated. Scowling, and muttering under her breath about what a careless fool she was, Avela got to her feet. She fished out a square piece of cloth from inside her desk, an old handkerchief that she had never really used, and cut a strip from it to use as a bandage.

By pinning one end of it down onto the desk with her injured hand and using her free hand and her teeth, Avela managed to clumsily wind the makeshift bandage around her thumb. She tied it loosely into place, wincing at the pain, then looked back down at her handiwork.

An 'A' completed, and about half of the 'V'. Well, Avela wasn't going to give up now. The candle would look stupid with only one letter on it, and off-center to boot. Gingerly, she picked up her knife again, holding the candle with her injured hand. The wound was light enough that it didn't sting too badly, from the other side of her makeshift bandage.

This time, she went at it even more slowly, if that was possible, carefully carving out the strokes of the 'V'. She didn't worry too much about keeping the lettering straight and not lopsided. Instead, she did her best in that regard, and spent the rest of her energy making sure that the knife stayed on course. She finished the V without any other interruptions, then started work on the 'E'. This letter required her to turn the candle sideways in order to scratch out the letter's smaller strokes, which gave her that much less of an area to hold into the candle with. Cautious of her injured thumb, and with the metallic taste of her own blood still fresh on her tongue, Avela pursed her lips in concentration and slowly and carefully gouged out the rest of the letter.

There. 'E' was done, and if it wasn't the clear, precise calligraphy that Avela had dreamed of making, it was, at least legible. A, V, E. She was more than halfway there.

'L' was the next letter to create, and it was easier than the 'E', although it still required her to turn the candle to the side for the bottom stroke of the letter, bringing the knife uncomfortably close to her fingers. When she was done with the 'L', Avela set the candle down for a quick breather before starting on the final 'A'. For that letter, she could feel the carvings of her other letters resting against the skin of her palm, reminding her of how much work she had put into this already. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she worked on the last letter, the last few strokes.

After all, how silly would it be if she stopped now, when she was almost done?

"Common" "Kontinese"

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[Avela]

'A' was a letter that she had already done before, so it came easier to her this time, the tip of her knife scraping steadily deepening furrows into the soft material of the beeswax. Avela finished the letter, then set the knife down to examine her handiwork. She placed the candle down onto the desktop, turning it this way and that to examine the lettering from all angles. It wasn't the best, certainly not anything she could sell, but the letters were legible at least, and she'd managed to get through it without cutting herself. She felt oddly proud of herself for finishing. She set the candle aside, making a mental note to burn it later, when the sun went down.

That left another five candles that had come out of this batch. A second ago, Avela had been too tired to consider doing any more, but the success of her first candle had given her confidence. She clearly wasn't good enough at engraving to make anything worth selling, but at the very least, maybe she could do something with the other candles that she could use as gifts. An idea came to her then as she looked at the candles--why not make something for her family. Avela grabbed another stack of paper and her quill, starting to write names in block letters:

TALIEN

SABINA

KAIREN

NEREA

She struggled a bit to keep the names evenly spaced across the candle-sized sheets of paper, having to throw out several of her first tries with her father's name. After 'Tairen', however, the others came easier, as if her practice was already taking effect. By the time she got to 'Nerea', Avela barely struggled at all. When she finished with the names, and had them more or less written the way she wanted them, Avela cut out each sheet of paper, then started the painstaking work of using her knife to scratch out the initial impressions in the candle.

One stroke after another. She started with her father's name, then got to work carving out the individual letters. The 'T' and the 'N' she struggled with, but the 'I' was easy enough, and she had already had enough practice with the other three letters from her own name. Her stepmother's name was a little more difficult, but only because the curves of the 'S' and the 'B' weren't featured in her own name. She managed to get through it without cutting herself, which was a small blessing--she was sure her stepmother would have something to say if Avela gave her a bloodied candle. The 'R' in Kairen's name was challenging for the same reason as her stepmother's, but once she figured out the trick, Nerea's was no problem at all.

It was quiet, meditative work, and as Avela worked on the candles, she found her mind starting to wonder. Odd, how something initially so boring and intense could seem almost relaxing, now that she had the hang of it. One by one, her family's names took form under her fingertips.

"Common" "Kontinese"

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[Avela]

Talien, Sabina, Kairen, Nerea. Avela worked tirelessly at the names, her mind going through the memories of the people they belonged to. Her father's candle brought back the most memories. She remembered being a child, before her stepmother was in their life, when she and her father lived together. He had been a younger man, then, and life had been difficult, but they survived. Somehow, he had kept her off the streets in a little cottage much like this one, and they had survived.

And then Sabina came into the picture. Avela found herself pausing as she worked on that candle. She remembered the first time her father had brought Sabina home. It was after they had moved from that small cottage into a house that was larger, after Avela could have her own room. Avela had come out to greet her barefoot and disheveled, with her hair its customary mess. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Sabina had disapproved of her instantly. But for all that her relationship with her stepmother was a complicated one, Avela couldn't truly say that she hated the woman. Sabina made her father happy, and was a good mother to her half-siblings. And Sabina had tried, in her own way, to bond with Avela, even sewing a dress for her not long after their first meeting.

It was the only dress that had survived Avela's childhood without getting torn, though she was much too big for it now. Avela found that as much as her stepmother made her nervous, she couldn't make herself hate the woman. How could she hate someone who put so much effort into her family, regardless of whether or not that effort had born fruit. She might not get along with Avela, but at least she tried. And Avela could admit, in this moment, that she could be a very trying person.

Kairen and Nerea had come out of that union, and Avela loved her siblings. She loved Nerea, who was sweet and gentle and hardly ever did anything wrong. She even loved Kairen, for all of his trouble-making tendencies. The two of them lent her life light and color, and although she would never admit that to her little brother, she wouldn't trade him for the world.

She set aside Nerea's candle once it was finished, smiling as she raised her arms over her head, leaning back in her chair in a stretch. The light of day was already fading, but she'd done good work for a day. She'd pack up the candles and go off in search of her family's house. If she was lucky, she thought, they might even invite her to stay for dinner.

She was standing up, about to do just that, when her eyes landed on the last candle, the one that she hadn't engraved yet. At first, Avela thought about leaving it, but then a thought struck her. A thought about a woman she had never known, whose life was encapsulated in a journal that Avela could barely read. The woman her father had first loved.

Avela's mother.

Her mother had been brave, and strong, and all of the things that Avela was not. The more Avela read from her journal, the more she discovered that. But the more she read from her journal, the more she wanted to be like her.

Avela drew in a deep breath, then sat back down, grabbing a piece of paper. This one, this candle, she would keep to herself. She wrote out the letters with care, matching them up to that last candle.

AYANA

"Common" "Kontinese"

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[Madeira Dusk]

Grades Awarded!

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Avela

Skills

• Observation: 1xp
• Writing: 2xp
• Calligraphy: 1xp
• Carving: 3xp
• Planning: 2xp
• Engraving: 3xp
• Etching: 3xp
• Medicine: 1xp

Lores

• Beeswax: doesn't hold scent
• Carving: harder than it looks
• Writing: using a steady hand
• Lore of engraving with inferior tools
• Medicine: using a makeshift bandage

Awards & Retribution
+ 6 poor quality engraved beeswax candles
- stabbed thumb: will heal in two to three days

Notes
Another lovely thread. I appreciate how flawed Avela is and how she works to make herself better in her work, and how her family life is so incredibly real. Where an inferior writer might make Avela a cookie-cutter Cinderella with endless virtue and an evil stepmom, you actually go into that messy grey area of a real family. I love it.