Completed [Painted Sky] To Wear The Sunrise And Sunset On Your Wrist

[Kelski]

Timestamp: 20th of Winter, 519 A.V.

She wanted the stone.

Kelski wanted it badly.

Her eyes skimmed over it though, not lingering, careful in her negotiations. The Svefra often came up with some unusual things, but nothing like this had come through her negotiations. The Sea Eagle traded them supplies – food, wood for the repairs of their ships, even dock time at The Empryeal Demesne – in exchange for the raw stock they could gather. Lia Cadia laid out the raw gemstones and it was a good assortment. Kelski made a show of examining a few of the more expensive pieces. There were a few good diamonds, one even colorless, and two a deep chocolate brown that she loved. She pushed them aside and examined an array of sapphires, a few raw rubies, and some large chunks of quartz crystal. She separated out everything she couldn’t use – the quartz being some of it – and shook her head at the Lia.

“It’s not hard enough to bother cutting. It’s only Quartz. These others are nice… and I’m iffy on the rest.” She said, indicating the diamonds, rubies and sapphires she’d sorted out. She hesitated over the stone she’d spotted immediately, picked it up, then wrinkled her nose. “Off color Topaz. It’s unusual but its full of inclusions and I don’t think I’d have enough left to even have something large enough to show off the color by the time I cut around the inclusions.” She stated. It was true enough of any normal Jeweler, but Kelski was confident with her abilities and she was certain she could get at least a twenty-carat stone out of the raw material if she cut it carefully. It would have to be an emerald cut with a taper to it, but the scrap would be more than worth it. She replaced it in her undecided pile and quoted the Lia fair prices for her ‘for sure’ pile.

They never traded in money though. And Kelski was more than fair with her supplies. It wasn’t her way to cheat anyone. But for some reason the Topaz had her enthralled and she wanted it.

The Lia surveyed what she’d picked out and nodded. The woman quoted her a sum that was at least 20% more. Kelski frowned. “Now that The Outpost is around, I can get raw gemstones cheaper for just a trip through the Dovecote.” She pointed out. Then she glanced at the maybe pile. She fingered through another few of the gems there, avoiding the Topaz. Cadia smiled. “For the for sure and maybe lots, I’ll take 400 gold.” She said, folding her arms across her chest.

Kelski shook her head. “I’d have days and days of work into all of this and I’d be lucky to sell the finished stones for 400 gold. I’ll give you 300 gold for the two lots and throw in a fresh elk we took down yesterday and dressed out on top of it. It will feed your whole pod in red meat for three days.” She added, knowing the Lia and her people craved something other than fish when they traded with the land folk.” She added.

[Kelski]

The Lia considered, shook her head, and asked for mooring for four days in addition. Kelski considered carefully, looked thoughtfully at Dock and knew he’d enjoy the company, then smiled.

She spit in her hand and the Lia grinned and did the same thing. They shook and Kelski knew instantly they’d probably run through twice the food that she’d offered, and so she’d give them only the cuts of lumber they could carry easily that were less expensive. The Lia knew it too, but neither woman cared. Business was business, and though neither were too interested in rabid negotiations, Kelski was more than content with the fact she’d got the Topaz… and the Lia hadn’t even known she’d wanted it.

That was a form of Stealth the jeweler could get away with.

Under Lia Cadia’s watchful eyes, the jeweler gathered up the for sure and maybe gems, wrapped them cautiously, and counted out well over three hundred gold. The chocolate diamonds were a good score too, rare to find in this part of the world. Kelski suspected word was getting out that she was in the market for gemstones and what types… and Svefra were trading with Svefra so she was finally getting things from around the Suvan and across the seas.

The Lia turned, once she had the coin, and called orders to the pod which already had half their numbers beached on the Empyreal Beach. They had a palivar tied up at the dock as well – the Lia’s personal ship and her family holdings – which she walked quietly back too. Sona trailed her, the woman in charge of the sawmill on the ED lands. They were talking about cuts and types of wood Sona would be responsible for loading in the next day or two as part of her payment. Unfortunately, three hundred and fifty gold in wood was a lot of wood. The Rising Tide would leave heavier than she tied up. Kelski glanced at the second ship tied up on the opposite side of the dock. The Dark of the Night was resting beside the ship across the dock. She wondered how the Architectrix ship handled mundane ships. It would have been nice for Dark to actually have some intelligent company. He had Dock though, and the two got along fairly well. Still, it was exciting to have visitors. The Svefra were common here in Matthew’s Bay and Kelski welcomed them.

After all, they brought her rare and priceless Topaz.

She climbed the tower steps to her workshop and set the new gemstones down on her workbench. She plucked the fist-sized topaz out of its box and walked it out on the balcony. She held it aloft to the sunlight and gazed at Syna’s rays through its transparent form. It was pure sunset and sunrise captured in stone. Topaz could come in all colors, but deep purple to red to orange to pink to bright yellow was as rare as they came, especially in the stunning color she held in her hand.

[Kelski]

Kelski turned the stone over and over in her fist, examining the angle. She slipped a jeweler’s loupe into her eye from its usual place around her neck and started mapping the inclusions in her mind still leaning on her balcony rail. When she released the loupe from her eye, she let it rest between her breasts, and glanced around.

She caught the Lia watching her from the deck of her ship, her lips curled in a smile. The sharp-eyed Sea Eagle inclined her head. Both women knew what the prize was in the middle of the group of gemstones. Kelski hadn’t fooled the Lia at all. The woman nodded at Kelski and Kelski offered her a huge grin. She doubted the woman could see it from the distance, but it was given none-the-less.

Then she took the gem into the shop, fired up her bandsaw, pulled out the diamond powder, and began slicing the lengthy tapered emerald rough out of the raw gemstone. The colors were so beautiful she wanted to maximize the scrap she had leftover because though she hadn’t decided what to do with the gem she’d cut from the raw. It might be that the idea cooking in her head needed more of the topaz left to execute. It was rare Kelski cut a gem without a specific plan for it. But this was one of those instinctual times.

Once she had the raw chunk cut down to a rough shape of what she thought would manifest the stone’s color the best way… she set it aside. Kelski took a little walk, rubbed the opal embedded in the back of her hand, and then walked back to the stone. She changed out the lap wheels on her lapidary equipment and attached the stone to her dop stick. Then she let instinct guide her. She started on the crown, cutting its table first. But as her hands worked, the table dissolved into a series of step-downs that looked amazing and retained the weight of the stone and enhanced its color. Kelski strove to make this stone a dazzling light show – one that reflected its colors accurately. It was the sunrise and the sunset and she wanted it to sparkle with brilliance and reflect that to anyone that saw it.

She started with a classic emerald cut, the only modification being that one end – the deep purple to red end – was wider than the bright yellow end. Then she kept the step-downs in the fashion of a fantasy cushion, accenting the star cuts along with the table that she minimized. She avoided cutting them as long baguettes as other jewelers would. Instead, she layered vertical facets that highlighted a curved keel.

The result caused the gem to focus on a single brilliant slice of light through the middle and had the cuts on either side of it gradually growing darker and darker out towards the end of the gemstone. The single point of light displayed incredible animation. She used a standard 96 cut main and adjusted the tables outward. The pre-polish cuts went fast. She began by shaping the outline of the 90 degrees, then created a girdle by cutting a row of facets around the stone at the 65-degree mark.

[Kelski]

Fairly soon, she reversed the stone on her dop and kept cutting… in a sort of trance that jewelers could get in where their creative juices were flowing. Then she began to work on the bottom. For something that was against someone’s skin, it was just as complex as the crown had been in its cuts.

She set her angles for the pavilion mains at 43 degrees then cut the indexes at 1 and 95, 47 and 49 until they closed the cutlet. She narrowed down the next step down and cut another set of indexes at 2 and 94, 46, and 50 bringing them super close to the center. She kept cutting sets 1 and 3, then at 1 and 4 until she ran out of room. When she got down to the ends, she carried them through the girdle.

She finished the mains by raising the angle a half degree and ended up taking two facet cuts at the center at 1, 96, and 48. Kelski had some leftover, so she had to add a set of facets on the sides at 55 degrees to blend the mains into the girdle facets. Truth be told, it wasn’t a fight like a complex set of cuts could be. The whole stone just seemed to emerge out of the raw like the gem had just been there waiting to be birthed.

She could have cut it down to 46 facets at the pavilion, but how she cut it immediately brought out the sparkle and brilliance she knew the stone had so she stopped. She stopped and she admired her work. She didn’t create the gem; she just gave it freedom. The Sea Eagle figured that was why she made such a good jeweler. Kelski paused then, excitedly took it to her lap wheel, and changed out the cutters for buffers and began pumping the wheel with its foot peddle. She lost bells to polishing the gem. Over and over, changing out to finer and finer grit and using, in the end, fine-grained diamond dust. When the gem was polished to perfection, Kelski laid it aside, picked up her sketch pad, and began drawing.

It was time to sketch, to plan, to plot.

The gem was large, far larger than she expected. It would have to be something bigger than a mere ring. It would, upon inspection, be the loveliest bracelet ever. Kelski took the gem, laid it on her sketching parchment, and took charcoal to it. The gem was sunrise and sunset personified…. so naturally, Kelski drew a double ripple she’d channel more stones into – one rising and one falling. She was careful with her strokes, sketching out each solitaire she’d channel set into them.

Then she pulled out paints and added color to the round gems sketched. Like the main stone itself, she made the top stones dark reddish-purple and graduated them to red, then pink then orange, then finally pale-yellow down to clear. She made the clear stones wrap around the second rising and dipping ripple. Then she frowned, not quite satisfied, and went back and made the dark red run to clear faster and then go dark again flanking the stone on either side.

[Kelski]

Kelski would have to and did use sapphires for the colored ripple, knowing she had some in most of the colors. For the second ripple, she considered, pausing to check her stock, and found that all she had in the clear was diamonds. The second channel of the bracelet would have to be diamonds. She’d wrap the ripples around themselves to form the bracelet as a rigid piece that would never lay flat against the skin. It would indeed stand rigid and proud on some woman’s wrist… whomever could afford to buy it.

Kelski didn’t mind.

The bracelet would cost a fortune anyhow, just for the topaz alone. With a channel of diamonds, it would be priceless… in the thousands of mizas. In many ways it was a hallmark piece, one that stated this was who she was as a jeweler and what she could do. And she knew, before she was done, it would be a personal best.. a crown jewel of her collection.

Kelski had a mold for the channel ripples, and even one that had larger center channels that gradually moved down to an parallel channel hat didn’t change shape. She made the bracelet seven inches long, so she ended up making a set of thirteen inch sloping channel bracelets from her molds to frame the Topaz with. They needed to be longer than the seven inches to account for the undulating flow of the metal. The first ripple was clear cut and undoctored. However, the second one – after she poured and cooled it – had to be cut at odd angles to flow into and out of the first ripple. Where the gold touched gold she soldered and polished so it looked like the all diamond ripple vanished into the sapphire ripple and emerged out the other side.

The Sea Eagle had no need to cut the diamonds. She had them in droves and simply channel set them into the ripples and then put the prongs on the Topaz and attached the whole thing together. It took days – mainly to set the little gems – and when she laid out the colored sapphire ripple, she found out she was missing a shade or two in the sapphires she needed to complete the work. That required trading with more Svefra and making one trip to the outpost to find either loose or set gems of the color and quality she needed. But when it was fleshed out…. finished… it was stunning.

She added it to her collection that was for sale, and it would showcase the new shop she would open in The Outpost.

Word Count: 2548

[Kelski]

G R A D E S

Kelski-

Business +2, Negotiations +2, Drawing +2, Painting +1

PM me with questions or concerns.