Solo A Spring Surprise

[Avela]

9th of Spring, 518 AV

Avela grinned, standing on her bed and looking down at the madness that had taken over the floor of her small cottage. The season had well and truly turned, and despite her worries about her brother and the frustration of trying to learn Kontinese, Avela had stumbled across something during yesterday's walk through the city that had lifted her spirits. Said something was now resting in a simple, unadorned wooden box on her desk, waiting for her to finish with her other preparations.

And what preparations they were. Avela had decided, in the spirit of spring cleaning, that the mess that had decorated her cottage's floors over the winter needed to go (she still maintained that the surprise arrival of one Madeira Craven on the 89th of the season had not been part of that decision). Once she could see her floor again, Avela had been struck by how much work space she actually had. Sure, her cottage wasn't large by anyone's standards, but with the proper application of perspective, it wasn't as small or cramped as she'd been allowing herself to think.

And so, for this project, she had utilized all of the floor. Every pot she could find had been laid out in a half-circle around her work space, about seven of them, of varying size and quality. Blocks of wax had been stacked up next to her candlemaking kit, which was open and displaying all of her tools. A bottle of green dye rested next to the collection. Her knife was resting, sheathed, next to the cords that would eventually become wicks, and although the coming of spring meant that the days were getting warmer, there was a fire starting to burn in the hearth. Avela would have opened the window if it hadn't been for the mass of insects that had descended on Alvadas, but oh well, she thought. Beggars couldn't be choosers. She could make insect-repelling candles next time.

It would have to be next time, because Avela was caught in the grip of her current grand idea. She snatched the box off of her desk and hopped down from the bed, walking over to her workspace and dropping into a seat. She sat cross-legged, pushing her hair out of her face, and carefully lifted the box's lid.

Eight tiny little dropper vials rested inside of the box, each one carefully labeled with their scent. The collection of scented oils had caught Avela's eye as she walked through the Bizarre, and after sniffing each of them for potency, she had decided that the collection was worth the business expense. Because Avela now had an idea.

She'd learned, from an idle conversation with a woman she had known when she was a child, that someone's perception of scent was oddly linked to color. Someone might smell a lemon-scented object, for example, but if the color was red instead of yellow, the person would have a much harder time associating the scent with lemon. And so began Avela's idea. A collection of spring candles, all dyed the same color, all with different scents. They would be packaged at random, so that each candle was a surprise.

Smiling to herself, Avela reached for one of the blocks of wax, beginning to work.

Template by Sevaan
"Common" "Kontinese"
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~Avela~

[Avela]

The first step for making just about any candle, but especially the taper candles that Avela was planning on making, was to melt the wax. Avela started by laying one of the blocks of wax flat on her floor, old cloths pressed between the wax and the floorboards to keep from ruining the floor of the cottage. She covered the top of the wax block with another sheet of cloth. Then, she took out a small hammer and started to get to work, hammering at the top of the wax at various locations until she felt it break. This part always felt oddly fun. Even though it didn't take as much effort to break through blocks of wax as it might have taken to do, say, carpentry, Avela always felt like she had accomplished something when she was done.

Smiling to herself, she set the hammer aside and gently lifted the cloth, looking down at the fracture lines that had appeared through the big block of wax, breaking it into smaller, more manageable pieces. Avela selected one of the pans and placed the wax pieces carefully in the pot, then hung the pot over the wax to melt. The wax would take a while to melt thoroughly, and while Avela would check on it often (she'd learned the hard way that leaving wax alone often resulted in a horrible mess), she could do other things in the meantime.

Avela sat up onto her heels and wiped some of the sweat from her face - it was getting hot in her cottage with the windows closed and the fire going - then went over to start preparing the wicks.

She sat cross-legged in front of the station she had prepared for the wicks, close enough to the hearth that she could take frequent breaks to check on the wax, far enough away that she wasn't worried about any of the wicks catching fire.

The ball of cord that she used for her wicking material was sitting on the ground, next to Avela's small knife and a measuring stick with her preferred length already marked on it. For dipping candles, the wicks needed to be about four inches longer than the candle themselves, to be trimmed to the appropriate length later. Avela was thinking of making eight inch candles, a fairly standard length, which meant that she would cut her wicks twelve inches long, or an entire foot. She started to unwind the cord, laying it flat against the measuring stick, and cut out several lengths of foot-long wicks. About a dozen would probably be good enough to start with, for this initial scent. Avela might need to replenish the wax in the melting pot if it started getting low, but she wasn't too worried about that. One of the consequences of making a living as a candlemaker was that she had a lot of extra wax.

She paused after cutting the last wick to check on the wax. It had started to melt, but there were still solid pieces sitting above a puddle of liquid wax. Taking a spoon, Avela stirred the pot to make sure that the wax didn't burn, then went back to work.

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"Common" "Kontinese"
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~Avela~

[Avela]

Once she was satisfied that the wax wasn't about to burn on her, Avela went back to the wicks. Carefully, with fingers made deft from having to do this time and time again, Avela threaded the bottom of the wicks through the holes in the small, round weights that she had set out, tying them off. She fumbled one of them, letting out a curse as the weight tumbled out of her hand and skittered across the floor of the room.

Avela got onto her hands and knees to chase after it, managing to trap it with her hand before it rolled into the gaping abyss under her bed. Triumphant, she sat back up and threaded the weight through the cord, tying it off. The other weights went onto their cords without incident, one after another. Avela laid the weighted cords down onto the floor, then checked on the wax again.

It was melting at a steady rate. Soon, it would probably be ready for the dye. She left the wicks for now, stirring the wax to make sure that there weren't any clumps. When she was absolutely sure that the wax was thoroughly melted, she reached for her bottle of green dye.

This was a tricky part. Use too much dye, and she could very well ruin the whole batch. Any color, used in sufficient enough strength, just turned into a muddy mess that was indistinguishable from black. And since she was trying to make the candles identical aside from the scent, she would have to measure it carefully. Avela uncapped the bottle and used the cap as a measuring cup, carefully pouring out half a cap-full of dye. A swirl of green dye fell into the wax pot, and Avela quickly capped the bottle again, setting it aside. She stirred the pot, letting the dye filter in through the rest of the wax. The whole way, Avela kept her eye on the color. When the dye was mixed in thoroughly, she lifted the wooden spoon and studied the hot wax running off of it.

Too dull, she thought, frowning, too faded. This needed to be vibrant. Spring was here!

She tipped another half cap-full into the pot, stirring carefully. This time, the color popped out more, becoming a bright, vibrant green. Avela grinned. Perfect. One cap-full of dye was the sweet spot, then. She made a mental note of it for the other candles, then reached for her box of scent. Opening it, Avela chose a bottle at random, glancing at the label.

Cherry. Ooh, that was good. People didn't tend to think of cherries being green. (Well, Avela had eaten a handful of green cherries once, and some blue and pink ones, but she was mostly sure that was an illusion.) Carefully, because it was just as easy to go overboard with scent than with dye (and a lot more expensive!), Avela pulled out the dropper from the vial and placed a few drops into the mix.

The air began to fill with the scent of cherries.

Template by Sevaan
"Common" "Kontinese"
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~Avela~

[Avela]

Avela stirred the wax until she was satisfied that it was mixed through. Then, moving carefully so as not to burn herself, she reached for the cloth she kept next to the fire and used it to lift the hanging pot to another rod, slightly higher than the crackling flames in the hearth. This would ensure that the wax stayed melted, but would let her work without worrying that the wax was about to boil and bubble over. She set a lid on the pot and went back to her wicks, reaching for the slender, wax-stained pieces of wood that were waiting in a pile beside them..

The pot wasn't big enough for her to dip more than two candles at a time, so Avela tied two of the wicks to each rod, checking to make sure that the weights hung down to an even height. She went over the knots again, making sure that they wouldn't slip, then started the tedious task of making the candles themselves.

The Konti sat in front of the hearth, picking up one of the rods and carefully lowering the wicks into the wax. She dipped each rod a few times, making sure to get an even coating around the wicks. Ordinarily, Avela would have then dipped the candles into a basin of cool water, to let them cool faster before applying the next coat, but the recent water restrictions made it so that she couldn't afford to do something like that. Instead, she hung each rod on a drying rack after she was finished with it, going through all six rods in succession. By the time she got to the sixth, the first would be cool, and so on and so forth. She continued that pattern for a while--dipping and cooling, dipping and cooling, and soon the wax around the wicks began to take on a characteristic taper candle shape.

As she worked, Avela started to lose herself in her task. The candles were coming out so beautifully, smooth green wax hardening into slender, taper shapes, and she found herself pleased with that. There was hardly any awkwardness when it came to making candles, hardly any anxiousness or excess energy. It was just simple work, and when she was working, she could forget herself. She could forget all her worries about her brother, forget her Konti language lessons, forget how the dryness was everywhere and how the insects were clogging the air this season and how her stepmother wouldn't leave her alone.

She didn't have to be anything for anyone. She was just Avela the candlemaker.

When the wax started to run low, Avela broke another wax block into pieces, slipping enough pieces into the pot to hold her over for a time. She added a little more dye and a little more scent, doing her best to keep the measurements exact so that she could do the same for the remaining candles. And one by one, a dozen green, cherry-scented taper candles took form under her fingers, hanging from the drying rack.

Template by Sevaan
"Common" "Kontinese"
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~Avela~

[Avela]

Eventually, after many repetitions, the twelve candles were complete. Avela let them hang on the drying rack as she pulled the pot from the fire, leaving it on a collection of cloths to cool. She kept the fire burning, breaking another of the wax blocks and setting it in a new pot. While that pot hung over the fire to melt, Avela started putting the final touches on her first dozen candles.

She took each one from the rack, pinching them between thumb and forefinger to make sure that the wax had hardened and cooled. Satisfied, she laid each candle flat, cutting the weights off of the bottoms with her knife. The wicks, she trimmed to an appropriate length, then left the candles stacked in the corner to work on her next batch. This time, she chose a nice lemon scent to go with the green dye that she added to the mix--a single cap-full of dye. The air filled with the fresh scent of lemons as Avela worked, preparing the wicks, stringing the wicks from their holders, dipping the wicks into the wax, one after another.

She took a break after the lemon-scented candles, taking time to stretch and move stiff shoulders. Avela got to her feet and tiptoed carefully around her supplies, rummaging in her kitchen for something to eat for lunch. Finding some bread, cheese and fruit, she ate a quick meal before getting back to work.

The apple-scented candles were next, and they felt a little cheap to her, since apples could, in fact, be green. However, thinking about it, Avela was rather pleased with the effect. People would think that the candles were apple-scented, but they would be unsure of themselves, because all of the other candles had the wrong scents. It was almost like the joke was doubly-layered there. For her fourth scent, she considered lavender, a scent that she had worked with many times before, but after a moment, she changed her mind. Lavender was too distinctive an odor, too obvious. She needed something a little more subtle.

She went with orange instead. It was a similar scent to the lemon in the end, but it was just different enough to be interesting. After that, to cut down on the amount of citrus scents that she had, she rummaged in a different box for some vanilla, making vanilla candles. By the time she was finished with those, the sun was beginning to set. Avela lit a candle of her own, a simple, unscented candle so that she could focus more on the scents she was working with. She started on a batch of peppermint candles, already thinking about her last scent. Jasmine, maybe, or cranberry. She flipped a coin and went with cranberry, then started packaging the candles. She finished those and went to bed, yawning as she left them on the drying rack.

In the morning, she would package the candles, taking randomly from each selection to make sets of five. She would tie them together, and wrap them carefully in wax paper. And then, when she made her rounds, she would sell the collections too. And eventually, if people ordered more, she could make another batch. But not for very much longer. There wasn't any point to limited edition candles if she made them all the time, after all.

She blew out the candle beside her bed and stretched out, closing her eyes. Avela slept deeply, falling into dream.

Template by Sevaan
"Common" "Kontinese"
(•̀o•́)ง

~Avela~

[Madeira Dusk]

Grades Awarded!

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Avela

Skills

• Organization: 3xp
• Planning: 3xp
• Candlemaking: 5xp
• Weapon- hammer: 1xp
• Observation: 4xp
• Mathematics: 2xp
• Acrobatics: 1xp
• Meditation: 1xp

Lores

• Lore of scent being affected by colour
• Candlemaking: preparing wax
• Candlemaking: oddly fun
• Candlemaking: wicks must be 4' longer than the candle
• Candlemaking: too much dye will ruin the wax
• Meditation: the calm of repetition

Awards & Retribution
((I couldn't find essential oils on the price list, so I'm using the price of scented water))
Eight 1oz essential oils: -4gm

Notes
Lovely little thread. Avela is so sweet and endearing!