Colors in the Glass (Solo, Training)

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This northernmost city is the home of Morwen, The Goddess of Winter, and her followers who dwell year round in a land of frozen wonder. [Lore]

Colors in the Glass (Solo, Training)

Postby Fenilen on February 22nd, 2011, 10:54 pm

15th of Winter, 510 AV

"Come here, Firehair."

The lilting, beautiful voice that was all too familiar to his easily enamored ears rang out to him, calling him to her. Fenilen, son of Maverick, brother of Emory and Nyali, friend of Eagles and Birds, had no choice but to obey. Ever since Sairque had left, that voice had become even more demanding, even more of a pull on his already strained senses. With a heavy heart and a crushing feeling of guilt, his feet carried him to her side, where he awaited the next step in the process he was so familiar with. She would tell him what she wanted, like she always did, often teaching him something she decided was vaguely important. Often, what she was teaching him was how good she was at kissing, and multiple things more raunchy, but judging by the fact that she wore her hair up and her apron over her chest, it was actually going to be something that related to the craft they shared. She never slept with him without looking her best, and she did not see herself as looking her best when her garment was not something tempting. With a slight boost of confidence and certainty, he locked eyes with her, watching as her ever-shifting eyes studied his bare chest, hovering at the hem of his Byrda, like they did so often. A quick turn showed her "later", if ever, of course, and it was at that point that she truly began speaking to him, her soft lips, the ones that Fenilen had felt against his so often, brushing against one another as she formed the syllables and sounds he had become more and more proficient with over the season he had spent in the City of Eternal Winter.

"Today, Fire-hair," she purred, pressing herself against his hip, laying her head on his shoulder. Apparently, his guess had been incorrect. The Snow Leopard was so hungry today, it appeared, that it would hunt its prey without preparing itself. Worrying. He felt his heart skip a beat as her soft, but familiar skin pressed against his shoulder, as her hair fell around him, devouring his exposed shoulder, causing him to sight slightly. "I shall be teaching you how to put minerals into the batch prior to removing the slugs you want to shape," as she said this, her fine legs carried her forward. Without another word, she halted next to one of the wooden counters, reaching under it, pulling out various glass jars filled with powder. Silently, Fenilen raised his eyebrow, unable to identify any of the powders. As if she sensed his uncertainty, and felt the need to rectify it, she took a quill pen from the same counter, scrawling the name of the materials in Common under the Vani names that he couldn't read. Ah, so that was what they were. One was soda-lime, but he had known that prior to her scrawling the word on the jar. Any glassworker worth his rations could recognize the sand that was essential to their craft, after all. If they couldn't, what good were they? Still not sparing anymore words for the man, she began to write the colors each one made underneath the name of the mineral. After labeling all of them, she returned to her standing position, slipping the pen and the ink back under the counter.

"You see, in order to make a batch with colors within it, one simply has to add a dash of the powdered mineral to the batch of soda lime. For now, let's stick with making a clear glass, decorated with flecks of red. Red's mineral, if you read the jars, depends on what *sort* of red you want to make. Ruby reds require powdered gold-- and are therefore used sparingly. Gold, afterall, is better used on beautiful women, to further enhance that," as she said this, she vainly waggled her eyebrows at Fenilen, flipping her hair back in that way that she knew drove him crazy. All he could do was stare blankly ahead, focusing on everything but her actions, trying not to lose himself to her blatant attempts at seduction. "Other shades of red, however, are made by Selenium, a much less rare mineral. The hue depends on how much Selenium you use," she then added, grabbing the large jar of Selenium from the counter top. "This amount," she stated, reaching a glass, measured cup into the jar, emerging with a small amount of Selenium dusting the surface, "is only enough to offset a few ferrous impurities. You know, the things that turn the glass green?" he nodded. "But *this* amount..." Once more, she reached the cup in, returning with about half of the cup full, "is enough to dust the entirety of a full-sized vase with pinky-nail flecks of fiery red. That's what we want to make right now," with that, she tossed the dust into the furnace, mixing it with the soda-lime that was already boiling in the burning pit.

"Personally, I chose red because it is something that connects us," she purred, leaning against him once more. Guilt shot through his body in response to her obvious flirtations, but he ignored it. He had to learn what she was teaching, and if that process of learning involved her trying to seduce him at every possible opportunity, then he didn't exactly have much of a choice. "The fiery red in your hair matches the red that Morwen has granted to mine," as she said this, she tipped her head back, pressing a soft kiss to his lips, one that he did his very best to ignore. Focus on the job at hand, Fenilen... His eyes stared into the furnace, watching as the minerals swirled around, mixing with the soda-lime batch. Sensing his lack of interest, Faycia stomped off, standing on her tippy-toes so that she could peer into a barrel that Fenilen found a little too familiar. For the past few days, she had had him bring buckets of snow from outside and pour them into the barrel. The backbreaking labor had resulted in nothing more than a barrel full of water, which, judging by the way she was smiling like a madman, was precisely what she had wanted all along.

The red-capped head began to think. What could she possibly want with a barrel full of water? It wasn't like she was going to *drink* all of that. It was a full, tavern-ale sized barrel. That was not one day's worth of drinking, and besides, it had sat for several days. Hardly the tastiest drinking water! He supposed it could be used to cool burns, but if she really wanted to cool burns, they could simply do what they had always done prior, and rush out into the snow. Snow, after all, worked a little better than water. Colder, and as it melted, it turned into water. You got the best of both worlds, in the end. "Grab a pipe," she said softly, taking one of the clay contraptions from the rack next to the furnace. He didn't consider hesitating, grabbing one, following he every movement. As she dipped the long pipe into the furnace, collecting the glowing orange material, she spoke hurriedly. "We're going to be using a Symnestra technique today, one called Crackling Glass," finally, she removed her own pipe from the furnace, moving to allow the bare-chested Inarta uninterrupted access to the fiery pit. She herself jammed her pipe into the glory hole, to keep it from dripping all over the floor while he gathered glass on the end of his pipe.

"Crackled glass is simply glass with cracks along the outermost layer, made by dipping it into water for a few brief moments. Watch," as he pulled his own pipe out of the batch oven, she was moving along behind him, holding her pipe downwards, letting gravity elongate the piece to the length she require. When it was a few inches long, she plunged it into the water, ignoring the steam that rushed up into her face. Counting out loud to one, she removed the piece from the water, rushing it past him to the Glory Hole, where she plunged it into the fiery depths once more, letting the water evaporate off of the piece. "Your turn, handsome fire-hair" Faycia's sweet, lilting voice then declared, watching as he let gravity elongate his piece just as she had. Finally, he stepped forward, stopping on the edge of the barrel, cradling the pipe like one cradled a newborn child. That was, of course, if one was psychopathic enough to plunge a newborn child into a barrel filled with water, like he was about to. Without another word, he lunged forward, plunging the glowing tip of the pipe and it's burden into the water, watching in an enamored stupor as hissing steam rushed into the air.

"Remove it," Faycia reminded kindly after a brief moment, but Fenilen did not hear her. A frown played over her face. "Take it out, Fire-hair!" she barked, as steam continued to pour out from the barrel, collecting around his arms. It was only then that he snapped out of his stupor, both from the sound of his voice and from the searing pain. He screamed out without thinking, jumping backwards, taking the pipe with him. The once hot glass had now cooled, but since it had cooled so quickly, it was utterly worthless, cracked beyond belief. It literally broke off of the pipe, falling to the floor in hundreds of jagged, deadly shards. Steam rose to the top of the workshop, collecting near the roof, until it cooled and simply turned into vapor. More important than both the rising steam and the broken glass, though, was the mark the former had left on his pale, delicate forearms. Already, normally pink flesh was turning a bright red where the steam had come in contact with his skin, burning the outer layer of the flesh. Faycia had sprung into motion before he had even begun processing the pain, placing one of her palms in the small of his back, pushing him to the door, at which point she shoved him out into the blistering cold of mid-winter Avanthal.

"Stick your arms in the snow," she commanded, watching as his nipples instantly stood at attention in response to the biting winds. Silently, she passed into the workshop, returning with his Katinu, letting him slip it over his chest, albeit with a frown from herself. She couldn't let him freeze, but, of course, she always wanted to see his bare chest. Fenilen simply shivered uncontrollably as he held his arms in the snow. On second thought, maybe snow was a terrible, awful idea for treating burns, but they couldn't use the water in the barrel, as the contact with the glass had undoubtedly made it too hot for the purpose of cooling. Frostbite seemed like it would set in soon if he didn't do something. Fenilen shuddered violently as warmth passed from his arms to the snow, leaving his arms chilled and numb. Soon enough, he simply couldn't take the pain anymore, and withdrew them, returning them to his sides. "Must work," was all he managed to choke out, his teeth chattering too violently to form any words more complex than that. All she could give in response was a slight nod, and a rough tug out of the snow, looking at the pale hands. She frowned slightly, and led him back inside, sitting him down in front of the furnace, forcing him to hold his hands out to the warmth provided by the boiling glass.

Slowly, over the course of twenty minutes, his hands and arms began to come back to life, and when he was able to move them again, she went about performing the basic knowledge she had. "When there's a burn," she began, reaching under the magical counter that somehow managed to hold everything anyone would ever need. Her hands first extracted gauze, then a weird herbal paste, held in-- you guessed it-- a glass bottle, "you need to assess it. You only have a minor burn, it's just some red skin. As such, you put some lotion on it..." as she said this, she uncorked the bottle with a sharp yank, tilting it over so its contents slowly oozed into her hand. A little devilish smirk played across her lips as her eyes turned an all too familiar shade of scarlet, causing Fenilen's heart to sink a little. He was putty in her hands while he was in such a vulnerable position. Slowly, she raised her hands to his burnt arm, rubbing her soft skin up and down the pink flesh, pressing the cold liquid into the burn. Every little movement she made was one meant to stimulate Fenilen, one meant to lure him into her arms, but he would have none of it. He simply closed his eyes and bit his lip in a poor attempt to resist her sensual movements, wrapping his fingers around the end of the arm of the chair he was sitting on.

Finally, she finished kneading the balm onto his skin, and took the bandage in both hands. "With the gauze, it's really a matter of putting it on loosely so it doesn't cling to the burn, suffocating it," she announced, letting her dexterous hands demonstrate the lessons she had just given him. Her hands led the gauze around the wound, wrapping it over and over again, being careful to stay away from the wrist. She couldn't have him lighting the gauze near his wrist on fire in the middle of their little exercise, after all. Finally, when he was all patched up, she helped him to his feet, ignoring the tears that welled at the corners of his eyes from the pain that continued to sear through his arms. "Come, now," she said softly, wrapping her arms around his waist, ignoring the feeling of wet gauze against her back as he returned the hug in a very sloppy and inefficient manner. "Don't disappoint me. Don't keep me waiting."

It was those words that struck a long-buried nerve in Fenilen. He did not *disappoint* people. He did not *fail* people. He did not *fail* anyone, nor anything! He succeeded in anything he put his mind to, and that was all there was to it! He had made an oath to himself! Fenilen's fiery brow furrowed into a thin line as he grabbed a dustpan, brushing the shards into the wooden receptacle, and then dumping them into the wooden bin that meant they were fated for recycling. His uninjured arm grasped a pipe eagerly, dipping it into the Batch Oven once more, collecting a large slug on the end as Faycia watched with curious, squinted eyes, trying to discover the source of his determination. Struggle as she may, though, she could not uncover it. The source was his and his alone to know, as he went about his work with frantic passion. Once again, in a motion that one would call deja vu, he tipped the slug downward, letting gravity elongate it, letting gravity shape it into the general size of the piece he was going to be making. A wet tongue passed over cracked lips as he watched it droop downwards, only flinging it back up when it was as long as it needed to be. With that out of the way, he strode forward, once more at the edge of the barrel. This time, though, something was different.

This time, he would not make a foolish mistake. He plunged the piece into the water, withdrawing it but a few moments later, dashing away to prevent the steam burns he had received so quickly a few dozen minutes ago. With his now crackled glass in tow, he made his way to the Drum Oven, thrusting it in next to Faycia's, which she was spinning with an air of idle boredom around her. "Very good," she purred softly, waiting a full minute to allow his to cool. "Now, we'll both be working at the same time. Honestly, everything I wanted to teach you has already been taught now. You know how to make Crackled Glass, and you know where the colors are. Now, get to work. I want to see what you make," she purred out, already making her own piece off in the corner of his vision. Fenilen didn't hesitate, not even for a moment, placing his pipe on the bench, spinning it with one hand as he took a ladle and pressed it to the end of the slug, slowly rounding it down. The familiar motion, ground into his mind by years and years of work, was quick and proficiently done, and the spinning motion performed by his left hand never faltered in speed or frequency.

Eventually, the base of the object had been shaped into a rather round sphere, oddly perfect in it's proportions. Of course, such a piece would never be able to stand up if one tried to place it up by itself. Fenilen pursed his lips as he placed the ladle down, instead claiming a paddle in his right hand, using it the shave off the bottom of the piece, so that it had a flat plane on the bottom that allowed for one to place it on a table and expect it to remain upright. With that major expectation complete, he set apart the other important part of his creation, the neck of the flask. Without a neck and a mouth, there would be no way to fill the flask with whatever liquid or elixir the owner found so important. Using the flat, thin edge of the paddle, the one farthest from the handle, he began to dig in above the perfectly rounded sphere, cutting down the width until it was no more than half of an inch wide the entire way down. Tilting it dangerously, he picked away at the material around the lip of the piece, creating that little overhanging lip that people, for some reason, seemed to go crazy for. Placing the paddle down upon the table with a satisfied grunt, he grabbed another contraption, a device tipped with dusted diamonds.

Carefully, he dug the diamond-tipped cutter into the material just above the mouth of his flask, careful to form a perfect circle. When he was satisfied with his work, he dropped the cutter back onto the table, and lifted the pipe from the bench, plunging it into the Drum Oven once more, spinning it with both of his hands to keep the precious piece he had spent so much time on from heating unevenly. It was only while he performed this tedious task that he allowed himself to glance up at Faycia, watching her go about her own tasks on the marver, making some sort of toy. Once more, his wet tongue passed over the parched deserts that were his lips, but he pushed the salacious thoughts that had forced their way into his head out with an aggressive shove. He would have none of them today. He did not want her warmth. Thoughts of Sairque returned to his mind, of that beautiful red hair, of those golden eyes that he had stared at so longingly for all those seasons. He sighed slightly, removing his piece from the Drum Oven, enjoying the feeling of the heat pounding against his exposed navel. It reminded him of her. It reminded him of the warmth she shared with him whenever she had pressed against him. He missed her.

The piece, soon enough, found its way back to the bench, where Fenilen's lips lowered to the opening on the end of the pipe. In order to make the glass waterproof, he had to make that ever-important second skin, created by exhaling and creating positive pressure on the inside of the piece. A few sharp breaths seemed to do the trick, Fenilen thought, as he watched the glass from down the length of the pipe. Despite the distance between the pipe's burden and his face, he couldn't help but feel the heat pounding against his face, feel it drying his eyes. A little gasp flowed into his lips as he separated his lips from the pipe, shoving it into the annealing furnace, declaring the piece done. When it emerged, he would break it along the fault he had created with the diamond-tipped tool, letting it land in the cushioned box that had seen so many of his pieces over the month he had spent with Faycia. A small sigh, one borne of a mixture of pleasure and relief, left his lips as he settle down in one of the chairs, nodding off before he knew it, his green eyes covered by pale, heavy lids.

When he awoke, it was to Faycia before him, wearing a pair of thick leather gloves, clasping another pair in her hands. "Put these on," she said softly, thrusting them into his hands. With a groggy mind, and his eyes half closed, Fenilen simply stared up at her with a dumb-founded expression, rubbing his eyes as if he had been asleep for decades rather than the night. "I said put them on, I want to show you something," a little grumble was given in response once more, but eventually, he complied, pulling his gloves up onto his hands, rising to his feet as she went into a room he had never entered before. Still half asleep, the portals into his head only flitted over the aesthetic details of the room. Shelves covered every wall-- but that was what every damn room but the bedroom in here looked like. The only defining feature, the only one that really stood out to him and made him jump, was a vat on the far side of the room. As she crossed over to it, hips swaying in a deliberately enticing fashion, she grabbed two cubical pieces of glass from the shelves, along with two candles, and two knives. Without a word between them, she placed them down on the workbench positioned next to the vat, which was currently lidded, for reasons unknown to him.

As they both settled down in the chairs positioned at the workbench, she reached her hand into one of the drawers, producing two identical stencils of a rather simple snowflake. A quick hand lit both of the candles with the one she had brought into the room, and then she placed them along the table, one providing light while the other two were positioned closer to them. "Cover one of the sides in wax," she said simply, taking the candle in her hand. As wax collected in the curved basin beneath the wick, she poured it out onto the glass. Fenilen, always the apprentice, always the learner, mirrored her actions, drenching his glass in the candle wax, covering it in the liquid that proved to harden at a somewhat alarmingly fast rate and become a thin layer of solid over the glass. Once both of them had covered their glass, she spoke again, taking one stencil and one knife in her hands. "I'm going to teach you how to etch images into glass. Eventually, you'll be able to etch your signature into pieces you complete," she said softly. As she said this, she took the knife in her hand, running it quickly along the hot wax, planing it so that it was entirely flat. Knowing how sloppy Fenilen was with anything other than her or a pipe, she did this part for him, planing the wax with a few quick strokes.

"Simply carve along the outline of the stencil, and then I'll show you what to do next," she directed, not even sparing him a glance as she went to work on her own candlewax. "Be sure to keep the wax warm, though. Hover it over the candle after every two strokes," He followed her orders to the letter, but it wasn't really needed. More often than not, he could feel when he needed to heat the cooling wax. When it was hot, his sharp knife would glide through it with just a little nudge, but when it was cooling, it would threaten to break from the glass. After many long, tedious minutes of work, the vast majority of with were filled with quiet laughs from an ever-observant, and now finished, Faycia, Fenilen managed to finish carving the last of the wax from the inside of the stencil's design. His hand held it back away from his face for examination, which made him frown a little. The etching was not in the slightest even, but hell, it was the best he was going to get on his first try, he thought silently. Faycia dropped the knife, so he did the same, following like a mindless servant as she approached the vat, lifting from it the lid that had decorated it since he entered the room.

Within was a thick, white paste, one which she warned him not to touch, and one which filled the room with a terrible smell. She did, however, dip a ladle into it, lifting some of the paste up to her piece, where she poured it into the wax mold she had made, letting it burn the image onto the glass. After a full minute of letting the acidic material eat away at the glass and the wax, she dropped the cube into a barrel of water that seemed to be reserved specifically for that task, wiping both the wax and the acid off of the piece with a few strong bats of her hand. Fenilen, once more the follower, uncertainly grabbed the ladle, plunging it into the acid. It was there that he got a little uncertain. Couldn't acid burn hands off? Did he really want to be touching this dangerous material? It could leave him handless, and if he was left handless, he would be left a Dek when he returned to Wind Reach, if they even bothered to let him return! But, wait, he was wearing gloves... perhaps his fears were just a little unfounded. Faycia would never have him try something that could result in his physical harm or deformation without taking precautions to prevent said harm or deformation. She valued his beauty and... er... performance a little too much for that.

So, with quaking hands, he ladled the acid into his wax mold, counting off the second in his head as he supposed Faycia had. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand... When he hit the magical, golden number of sixty, his booted feet carried him to the barrel that Faycia stood beside, toweling off her cube. Protected, gloved hands shot into water that was no doubt infested with the hand-stealing, deforming substance, as he swiped the wax and acid from his glass cube with a firm push of his thumb, trying his best to prevent the acidic water from getting up onto the gauze that covered his lotion-smeared burns. Finally, he removed the cube from the water with a slightly proud smile, watching the wax fall to the bottom, looking over at Faycia, who was extending the towel to him in one hand while flaunting the piece in the other. The side of the cube where the acid had been was now decorated in a misty, translucent snowflake. "Perfect," Faycia's lips purred out the word perfectly, which was funny, because she had said the word perfect. "The etchings the acid makes are smooth, as you can feel, and are permanent, as they removed the outermost layers of the glass. Dry yours off, so you can see your work!" she announced happily.

So he did, but not before disposing of the water-logged leather gloves that plagued his pale, scarred hands. He tossed the onto the workbench besides them after peeling them from his hands, holding them before his face with a certain look of disgust for a few brief moments prior to ridding himself of them. Now free of the second skin that had been far too tight for comfort, he ran the towel all along the outer surface of the glass cube, absorbing the water. Then, like a bartender, he pushed his towel down inside of it, cleaning the water that had managed to cling to the inside of the hollow cube. After squeezing his overly-large first against the crushingly-small confines of the cube for a solid minute, his perfectionist attitude was sated by the dryness of the piece. As he held his back, his eyes drank in the snowflake. It was much... let's be blunt, worse, than Faycia's, but he would get there with practice, he was certain, and the practice itself had been more enjoyable than he had expected. Not to mention, the fact was, that as he became more and more proficient in his craft, the greater his need became to mark his artistic pieces, so that people did not claim them.

Speaking of artistic pieces, his piece in the annealer had likely finished cooling by now! He rushed out to meet it, closing his hands around the pipe, lifting it with one solid yank. He swung both his torso and his pipe with a spring in his step, carrying it to the wooden box that would become his friend for this piece. A slow, careful push eased the piece through the lips of the break box, at which point he torqued it to the side, snapping it cleanly, right at the point he had marked with the diamond-tipped cutters. An eager hand groped into the box, securing the piece, lifting it out with great care. Only when it was securely clasped in two hands did he observe his spoils.

He had made a beautiful flask, The mouth curved upwards, rolling back down over itself, and the bottom curved to form a gentle sphere, the bottom of which was rounded off so that it could stand upright. Flecks of fiery red, the same shade as his hair, colored the otherwise clear glass. Finally, it's most defining, and in his eyes, most beautiful feature, webbed networks of cracked danced out across the entirety of the piece, from the mouth to the very base, like a spider's web. It was, simply put, beautiful. Silently, his mouth slightly opened, his hands delicately rotated it so he could see the flat bottom, that perfectly smooth surface.

There. That was where he would put his name. The corner of his eye caught Faycia approaching him, her hair down, her apron off, revealing her tanned skin in every which way. She pulled him close to her, kissing him passionately, stealing the piece from him and placing it down on the counter besides them as her tongue danced with his, her hands playing with the hem of his pants...

Yet, as Faycia dragged him off to the bedroom to ravish him, to fulfill that eternal hunger of hers, his thoughts were not on her, but on the piece, and how much more beautiful it would look with his signature on it's bottom.

THE END
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Fenilen
Give Me Your Warmth!
 
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Colors in the Glass (Solo, Training)

Postby Cheshire on February 24th, 2011, 5:59 pm

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Character: Fenilen
Experience: +5 Glassworking, +1 Medicine, +2 Etching
Lore: Keeping Concentration, Art of Crackled Glass, Treating Burns, Failure is Not an Option, Glass Etching, Follow the Leader

Additional Note: Good post my friend. Long but good :D I'm glad to see Fenilen can see past the pretty ladies and get his work done.
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Avanthal Lore | Vantha | Avanthal | Morwen
~-----------------------------------------------~
When I was just a kitten,
They said I'd be a gem.
But now that I'm a Cheshire Cat,
It's odd how odd I am...
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Cheshire
Twenty Seconds of Insane Courage
 
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