Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Making literal doors, and opening figurative ones.

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Center of scholarly knowledge and shipwrighting, Zeltiva is a port city unlike any other in Mizahar. [Lore]

Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Postby Minerva Agatha Zipporah on June 10th, 2012, 8:11 pm

12th Day of Summer, 512 AV
Late Afternoon

Tock had been up bright and early for work today, just as she always was. It had been a long but productive day. She was getting along well with the new girl, Ira. She was doing good about not losing her temper, despite Eavin's recently renewed determination to make her life a living hell. She was even almost starting to get used to the fact that James barely spoke to her anymore. That was his problem, after all.

She had a better friend in Monty, anyway. Someone who appreciated her. Someone she was quite glad to lend a hand to, when he needed it. He'd helped give her baby eyes, after all. Repairing his Da's house was the very least she could do in exchange.

She had spent the day thinking about designs. Normally she wasn't focused on the artistic side. She would add a touch here and there after a project was complete, but she rarely started out thinking about one. But Monty was an artist; he'd appreciate an artistic touch. She had one in mind that seemed perfect. She stopped on the way home at the general store and bought a kit with some art supplies. She had plenty of tools, but she was lacking in a proper set of her own brushes and other painting supplies. Proper ones.

New brushes stowed in her pack, she headed for Tiffan's house. She had the needed wood at home from the tree she'd cut down, but she would also need some help hauling the wood down to Monty's Da's place (she really needed to get around to Animating herself a nice wagon). So when she got there, she let herself in without knocking (she was family, after all), and said, "Oy, okay boys, chop chop." She clapped her hands together to prompt the men into movement. "I done needs 'elp gettin' the stuff down 'ere. Ya done looks like a big strong chap, aye?" she said to Tiffan, looking him over. He was built like a horse, so he was probably used to manual labor. "Let's go, make 'er quick, aye? Done wit' all three o' us, shouldn't take no more'n one trip."

She led the father and son to her home and gathered up all the needed material, as well as all of her babies. She would need their help, and despite Cutty's malfunction she was confident she could let him do some work. He'd feel better that way. She was worried he was going to get depressed if she didn't let him do what he had been made for.

Hauling the wood was tiring work, especially after a hard day's work. She carried as many pieces as she could, propped on her shoulder, ignoring the aching of her muscles from the weight of it. Once everything was back at Tiffan's house, she set the heavy load down with a groan of relief, and let her babies wander the yard a bit while she set to making her measurements. She'd decided (without consulting the house's owner) that both the front door and the inside door needed replacing. She measured every side of the door jambs, which would be the first part that needed replacing, and then sketched up a quick, precise diagram of the needed design. Once she had the dimensions of all the wood worked out, she set Cutty up to do his job.

With the wood clamped in place, set carefully across a couple of old stumps in the backyard, she lifted Cutty into position and knelt down next to him. Gently stroking the flat side of his blade, she whispered to him, "Now Mommy knows yer not feelin' good, sweetie, but I knows ya can do 'is, aye? Be a good boy fer Mommy. I believe in ya." She kissed his blade and then stood and stepped back, giving him his command, "Cut!"

She heaved a sigh of relief when he started cutting, and then sat down nearby to continue her sketches. One of the great things about Animated tools, in addition to the love, affection, and companionship, was how much they increased her productivity. She kept a close eye on Cutty so she'd know when she needed to command him to stop, and started drawing, leaning on a wooden board she'd modified with a little holder for the ink vial.

If Monty were to glance at her drawing, he'd see she was sketching a running horse.



Shopping Note-25 GM marked off for an Artist's Toolkit.

OOCLet me know if you want a new lock on the door, which will cost Monty some $, or if you just want Tock to strip the old lock from the other door and install it on the new one. Either way she's got a little locksmithing experience already, and can install a very basic lock with some effort, cursing, pinching her skin in the metal, insulting the lock's mother, and so forth.
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Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Postby Montaine on June 13th, 2012, 1:37 pm

Shyke, doing work was hard work. If he’d known working would require so much work the glassworker would have left it to the professionals. He had only managed to bring the smallest amount of materials and even then had had to stop half way back to catch his faltering breath for fear of collapsing in the middle of the street. When he had hired the garrulous gadgeteer to fix his father’s door he had not been expecting the eagerness with which she took to the project, though in hindsight he realised that perhaps he should have. Tock rarely did anything by half measures and she was never going to be satisfied by simply repairing one measly door.

Montaine had managed to switch shifts on the stall for the morning, in exchange for watching the annealer the night after next as holding vigil over the immense cooling oven was one of the least desirable jobs to the crew. Monty found some pleasure in the peace and quiet of it all, and the opportunity to practice and hone his abilities by himself, but a good night’s rest was always preferable to long hours of sitting in front of the fires. Though at least sitting in front of the furnace, or sitting at the market stall, wasn’t as utterly exhausting as hauling wood, whatever little wood he could haul.

His Da more than made up for him though. More than once throughout his life he, and plenty of others, had wondered how such an enormous man had produced such a small and sickly child. More than once he had tried to imagine his mother and his Da as they must have been back when they had first met on the Cyphrusian plains, the tiny harbour girl and the towering horseman. He never really thought much about his mother, she had existed, once, but she had died shortly after he had been born. His father had told him a story, when he was young, about how she had died as a valiant hero. It had been a lie.

Monty was slouched against the side of the house, wheezing but slowly recovering. The small patch of open ground that lay behind his father’s home, along with the homes of a half a dozen other families down this side of Kova street, was barely serviceable as any sort of arable land. All the plants that had once grown there were dead, dry twigs and crisp, yellowed sticks. The ground was hard and cracked and crumbled to dust at the touch of a finger. In the old days, in the days of prosperity before the terrible destructive forces of the Valterrian threw the world on its head, it might have been a garden.

The glassworker pulled himself to his feet. Two of the neighbourhood kids were daring one another to approach Tock’s golems so he shooed them away and approached the gadgeteer’s makeshift workspace.

‘A horse? Terrify me those do,’

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Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Postby Minerva Agatha Zipporah on June 13th, 2012, 5:12 pm

Tock looked up at Monty in shock, then back down at her drawing, then back up to Monty again. Her jaw hung open for a moment before she said, "But I thought ya done liked 'orses! Ya done got yer glass 'orse, don'tcha? 'At's why I's done gonna put one on yer door. If'n ya don't like 'em, I guess I could put somethin' else..." She frowned at the drawing and scratched her head. She wasn't sure what else to put. Horses had seemed like such an obvious choice. She wanted to personalize the work, and make it something that Monty's Da would really appreciate. Something to help make his house into a home.

She paused in the drawing, having to consider now whether to start over on a new design. Then she noticed Cutty was done with his work, and she got up and hurried over to him. She held up a warning hand to Monty and his Da, indicating they had best stay back. She leaned in close to Cutty's leather 'ear', and shouted, "CUTTY STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!" It wasn't until the fifth shout that he complied, jumping and jerking back as if in surprise. It seemed as if he hadn't heard her shouting at first. Tock knew he actually hadn't. He was narcoleptic (an issue she was still trying to figure out how to resolve). She heaved a sigh of relief in seeing that she had gotten him to stop. When he didn't obey her commands on time, he could potentially cause damage or injuries. Though she had learned, to an extent, which commands were safe and which weren't. As long as no one was fool enough to get under Cutty's blade, having him cut the wood was mostly safe.

She lifted him carefully, carrying him by both handles on each end of the long saw blade. She set him off to the side and said, "Stay! Stay! STAY!" She paused for a moment, watching him carefully to make sure he wouldn't move. Once she saw he was holding still, she patted him gently, said, "Good boy," and kissed his blade.

If he started wandering around, someone could get hurt.

She took the cut boards and started lining them up and carefully attaching them to form the body of the door. Attaching a set of boards on a flat plane was kid's stuff; the decorative carving would be the more challenging part. As she was working on the assembly, she asked Monty, "Ya done gots a lock fer 'is? Yer Da's old door ain't got one... Not so safe, 'avin' no lock fer yer door. Anybody could done walk in..." In Sunberth, no one left their doors unlocked, especially at night. It just wasn't safe.
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Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Postby Montaine on June 13th, 2012, 8:00 pm

Tiffan looked up, ‘What use is a lock round here? You’re in beggar town, Tock, we don’ got nothin’ to steal nor anyone what’d take anythin’, let alone the money to buy somethin’ fancy as that, we’re poor folk down this way,’ the man looked up at the sky, ‘Listen you two, s’bout time I set off for work. It’s bad enough I got me son payin’ for me house, I ain’t lettin’ you put food on me table too, let an old man have his pride,’ he walked over and kissed the glassworker on the top of his head, ‘Now you don’ work him too hard, Tock, an’ if you needs any heavy liftin’ you get ol’ Mister Dowell from down Treval Street,’

Monty grumbled at his Da and shooed him off, brushing the hair disturbed by his father’s farewell back into place, ‘S’true though, we never had a lock when I were a littl’un, meant I could sneak of if’n I wanted to, not that I did much mind given,’ he patted his chest, ‘You know. But I s’ppose if’n we’re replacin’ the front we might as well, no harm in it,’

The area of the city in which Montaine was raised was arguably populated by undesirables. Beggar town, as the residents had taken to calling it, was a spread of the city tucked away in the northernmost part from Loros Street through Kova all the way to Aterax. Due to its isolation from the Market Road or any of the temples of the city, along with the great distance between it and the university, beggar town had fallen into disrepair and remained essentially a ramshackle bunch of dilapidated roads and houses filled with the poor and destitute. Beggar town was where the beggars lived, where the whores and the crippled lived, where those who could afford nowhere else were welcomed. To anyone else it was a frightening place. To Monty it was home. There was a certain camaraderie amongst the paupers of Zeltiva that extended beyond simply saying I won’t rob you because you have nothing worth robbing.

The glassworker wandered back over to the drawing and looked it over for a little while, ‘S’only me what doesn’t like ‘em. Da works the stables, an’ he took me there once to see them an’ one bit me, never like ‘em since. I only made the glass one for him, it’s his birthday next season an’ I wanted to get him something better’n that stupid little vase he keeps on the window ledge,’ he cocked his head, it really was a very good drawing, ‘He loves horses, it’s sad really,’
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Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Postby Minerva Agatha Zipporah on June 13th, 2012, 9:56 pm

Tock waved a hand at Tiffan's back as he walked away and said, "Oy, a lil 'ard work's bloody good fer 'im! Can't done always be gettin' others what fer ta do work fer ya!" She would always gladly put people to work if they had idle hands and looked like they needed something to do, but she wasn't one to pawn her own work off on someone else. Even if she wasn't fully capable of a job, she always insisted on at least helping. It was the only way to learn.

After Tiffan left, she set back to work and told Monty, "Well, if'n ya gets the lock, I knows 'ow ta install 'er. Better fer ta git 'er sooner 'an later. Gotta git the right size 'ole cut in 'er," she knocked on the wood, "an' I can't done do 'at wit'out seein' the size o' the lock."

One the boards for both doors were attached, she sanded the wood down, then started making measurements to line up where she'd be carving the horse image. "Jus' cause ya done got bit ain't no reason ta 'ate 'orses," she told Monty. "I don't got bit by a boy 'fore in a fight, ain't done means I stopped likin' boys, aye? Jus' popped the petcher inna nose," she jabbed her fist in the air, "an' 'at were 'at." She'd also once bitten a boy's ear off when she needed to escape from him, but that was another story.

She started etching the design she'd drawn onto the wood with a sharp gouge. It covered the full width of the door at about chest height. "Don't suppose ya done never rode one, 'en, neither?" she asked Monty. "I ain't neither. Drove 'em onna wagon, but ain't done ridden one 'fore. Maybe I's build one one day though, aye? After my wolf." As soon as she was skilled enough, she had plans to make an Automaton wolf. She'd been working on the designs in her spare time for months. It was a rather complex design, though, and she wanted to get it perfect.

She finished the etching and used her mallet and chisels to start carving out the design, beginning to hum as she worked. She nearly always hummed while she worked. It helped her to concentrate. She was completely unaware that she did it. It was just an unconscious habit she had.
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Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Postby Montaine on June 14th, 2012, 2:15 pm

‘Hey! Ain’t no fault o’ mine if’n I can’t be round horses. It ain’t just the bitin’ thing either, they’re jus’ so petchin’ huge! An’ even them ones up at the stable are nothin’ compared to some of the striders from Cyphrus, me Da says,’ Montaine trailed off. Whenever his father began to talk about horses he felt a pain in his gut. It wasn’t just that he feared them; it was true that he found the colossal beasts intimidating certainly, but it was the knowledge of his father’s utter adoration of the creatures that caused him trepidation and a great sense of guilt.

There was one reason, in the glassworker’s mind, one reason why his beloved father was in Zeltiva, why the man was no longer living amongst his people, why the man never had the chance to earn his wind marks, why the man lost the one dearest to him. There was one reason for all the greatest pains and miseries in the towering horseman’s life.

His son.

What made it worse was that despite it all the man never stopped caring for the boy, never once looked at him with malice or frustration or regret. If at the very least the man had shown even a glimpse of distress at the magnitude of what he had lost in order to protect the life of the sickly, little boy whose birth had no doubt caused the sudden sharp decline in his mother’s health that ultimately led to her death, if at the very least he could have been angry then perhaps Montaine might have been able to forgive himself, he could accept the anger and move past it.

What he could not accept was that for the man who had loved him so dearly through all of the trials and troubles of his ill youth saw him as a worthy exchange. A worthy exchange for the sacrifices he had made, for his own happiness, his own life.

‘He’ll love this,’ he said, smiling at his friend, ‘Thanks Tock,’

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Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Postby Minerva Agatha Zipporah on June 14th, 2012, 6:41 pm

Tock shrugged and shook her head at Monty's foolishness. "Can't done been scared o' somethin' jus' cause it's bigger an' ya, neither," she said. "I ain't big, aye? But ya know I's scary. When I done wants ta be. An' I done thinks a wee spider done been scarier 'an a 'orse, no matter 'ow big the 'orse is, aye?" She leaned down to pet Bitey, who was crawling around by her feet. Sometimes scary things came in small packages.

Of course, she hadn't heard enough about Monty's past to pick up on the subtler, symbolic reasoning behind his dislike for the animals. So she chalked it off to pure foolishness on his part.

She continued tapping her mallet gently against the butt of her chisel, cutting out the shape of the horse. Then with the basic form complete, she switched to a chisel with a finer tip, focusing on some of the more detailed parts of the design. She cut out sweeping flows for the mane and tail, giving the appearance that the horse was running through the wind. She also carefully worked the lines of the body to give the appearance of flexing muscles. Horses in particular weren't her most learned subject, but she had been studying animals, particularly wolves, quite a bit over the last few weeks. She was trying to learn how to make artificial body parts that were the closest as possible to real muscles, and thus had been studying a great deal of anatomy and muscle structure. Learning how to incorporate that into the art was something of an accidental side effect of her studies.

"So," she said as she worked, leaning close to carefully watch every etch of the lines she was carving out, "if'n ya ain't likin' 'orses yerself, whaddya want on yer own stuff? I mean like, ya jus' done gots 'at apartment now, aye? But if'n ya go git a place o' yer own, whatcha want on it? Oy, butcha prolly done gonna 'as fancy glass windows what wit' designs worked right inta 'em, aye? So what wouldja done puts on yer own glass? Can't always jus' be makin' stuff fer everyone else, aye?" Monty had to have his own tastes. If it wasn't horses, she would guess it was something natural. He somehow struck her as more the type to want a design of something natural, like a plant or animal, rather than geometric designs like Tock preferred.
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Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Postby Montaine on June 16th, 2012, 11:01 am

‘A place o’ me own? What, like as to settle properly? A proper house?’ Monty reeled at the prospect. He had never really planned that far ahead. He had visions of the future, of course, dreams he needed to fulfil, but the concept of something after. Settling down in a proper, permanent house, a home, it was an alien idea. All of his designs for the future had gone no further than buying a boat and sailing out of the harbour to explore the world beyond. But what of after? What about when his boat came sailing right back in again?

‘I ain’t never given it much though, to be honest. S’ppose I’d have fishes, an’ waves maybe, like you see on some o’ the older buildings, I’m a Zeltivan after all,’ he scratched his nose, ‘But the idea o’ settlin’ down in some proper house, I don’ know, ain’t that sad? I ain’t plannin’ to buy no house and settle down ‘til I’ve done what I set out to do, ‘til I’ve learned all I can, an’ seen all I can, an’ after that, well, s’bit borin’ isn’t it?’

The glassworker waved at a passing couple from the next road along. If there was one thing he absolutely did not want to happen to him, it was this, all of this. To find himself in some run down old hovel, in some city in which he didn’t belong, at the expense of his dreams. Maybe he would never come home, permanently at least. His inner child cheered at that. In his younger days all of his imagined futures had involved sailing forever, stepping on land only to gather supplies and visit his Da. As he had grown older he had gradually disregarded these as unrealistic follies of infancy, the childish delusions of a boy unable to do anything but dream.

‘Before that I gots to go out an’ get meself a ship, an’ sail round the seas,’ he smiled, ‘Maybe I’ll let you carve a load o’ fishes an’ things on that instead,’ he watched her work, carving out the finest details that brought the horse to life, not literally, although with Tock you never quite knew, ‘S’ppose you must have hundreds of ideas for your place, it bein’ a whole city an’ all. You could do carvings on the golems too, like, like tattoos for golems,’

The garrulous gadgeteer’s visions of the future were quite a bit more grandiose than his own and upon first learning of her desires he had considered them hopelessly optimistic. He had never said so, naturally, as he wished to keep all of his limbs intact. However, as he grew closer to the woman and more accustomed to her blunt and brutal personality he began to doubt his own doubts. Everyone knew you couldn’t settle in the wild lands, what with the animals and the yukmen and the monstrous horrors that roamed the places the roads didn’t go. But if anyone could shout down a monstrous horror, it was Tock.
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Postby Minerva Agatha Zipporah on June 16th, 2012, 8:25 pm

"I done been 'round the world," Tock replied. "Sunberth, bleh," she made a disgusted face. "Mura, prettiest darn place I ever did saw. Not much men there though..." She hadn't minded that fact one bit, but she supposed that might make it less appealing to Monty. "Novallas. Syliras, done gots some upright petchers there, aye? Goddamn cat... Ravok," she shook her head, "if'n ya think the poshies 'ere is bad, ya ain't seen nothin' til ya done been up ta Ravok. I done met 'is Guv up 'ere what 'ad a stick shoved so far up 'is arse, she came out 'is nose," she snickered and shook her head. "'En stopped back in Mura an' Sahova onna way 'ere..." As far as she was concerned, that was just about the whole world. It couldn't be much bigger than that, after all.

She switched to her finest gouge, setting aside the mallet and leaning in close to etch out the finer details of the horse's eyes and ears, the spots on his rump, and the other careful details that would give him personality. "Ya know what though, Glassman?" she asked. "I done been what ya wants ta been, aye? Movin' 'bout, seen what I wants ta seen, learnin' what I wants ta learn. Ain't always what she's cracked up ta be..." She frowned, thinking about Satevis. That was something she hadn't had during all her travels. Romance. Affection. She thought about her babies, who had all been born here. She didn't think she'd want to take them back out on the road, or the sea.

"'Ouse ain't jus' fer settlin', though, aye?" she looked up at him, a contemplative look in her brown eyes. "S'bout what's yers, aye? My own place, ain't nobody what can done kicks me out. I done been kicked outta lots o' places. An' she's 'bout what I can't takes wit' me, aye? I's got lots ta do, an' I can't keep doin' 'er in other people's places, aye? Gots ta 'as me own shop, me own forge, me own smelter. I can't 'as all 'at, an' take 'er wit' me, aye? So I's gotta 'as 'er 'ere. Same witchoo, if'n ya think 'bout it."

She studied the horse, adding some more lines with the gouge to detail the mane and tail more. "Is like," she said, sucking on her teeth for a moment in thought, "ya done wanna learn all 'is glass, aye? But where ya gonna does 'er? Ya gotcher Bossman's place now, but when ya done leaves, 'en what? Gotta go someplace new, talk some new bloke inta 'irin' ya. An' if'n ya wanna does yer own stuff, ya done gotta does 'is stuff first, 'fore ya can does yer own. So whatcha gonna do when ya wants ta do somethin' all big an' stuff?" she spread her arms out wide to indicate the scale of her dreams.

"Ya can't done the big stuff outta someone else's backyard," she declared. "Ya need yer own. Yer own glass place," she waved a hand at him, "my own workshop. 'At's 'ow ya can done 'as whatcha want, wit'out answerin' ya nobody else, aye? I ain't gonna answer ta nobody. Dun care if'n it done takes me my 'ole life ta git 'er done, I's done gonna 'as my own place, where I can does what I wants, aye? So's as I's startin' what wit' my 'ouse. 'En I's gonna 'as somethin' bigger. An' ain't gonna stop what 'til I croak, aye?" Maybe not even then, if she could transfer her soul into another body. She just had to figure out how Nuits did it.
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Intertwining Roots (Montaine)

Postby Montaine on June 17th, 2012, 4:02 pm

‘Yeah, s’ppose,’ Montaine idly kicked the dirt a little and watched the small dust cloud plume upwards. Obviously it would have been impossible to install a set of glassworking ovens on a ship. Certainly unwise to fit a light wooden vessel with a heavy, burning furnace, if the sheer bulky weigh t of the things didn’t sink them the coals would set them alight. Not to mention that the moment they hit a small squall, petch it, a rough wave, the most fragile pieces would be tossed to the beams and shatter. Yet despite it all, despite the clear flaws in his plans, he remained largely unperturbed. The glass wasn’t simply his career, his dreams of mastering the art didn’t end with him heading up some workshop in the city streets with a gaggle of apprentices of his own. Sure, that might well be where his life ended up, but his dreams of the glass would come to a head some time earlier.

His dreams led up to the perfect piece. A singular item of glass manufacture of such perfect beauty that it could succinctly represent the entire art. It was for this reason that he desired, needed, to know the secrets of the other glassworkers, the secrets of Sahova, of Riverfall, of the Inarta, about whom he had heard only whispers and rumours, yet they told of glass more incredible than any of Syliran design. He needed to learn these secrets, these techniques, or else he would not be able to infuse his greatest creation with the very essence of the art. He could not create the piece without knowing everything. Or else it would not be complete.

It was an obsession. It was an obsession that had grown more pervasive and more strong over the past season, a dream that threatened to consume him, his waking thoughts and his sleeping nights. It occurred to him why he had been so utterly entrenched in the desire of late, that with the loss of one obsession he had subconsciously concentrated all of his faculties on the other, that with the loss of one of his dreams the other had taken hold of him with renewed vigour.

Monty sniffed, ‘You goin’ to the Head later? Gertie’s playin’ accordion, oughta be fun,’

He had been spending more nights at the pub of late, and more mornings mired in the painful remnants of nights at the pub. At least there he could relax and think of other things. It was more enjoyable with a regular drinking partner as well. As much as he enjoyed the company of his friends amongst the glassworks crew, they rarely inspired as interesting topics as the garrulous gadgeteer. Not that the mammary endowment of Gertrude’s daughter wasn’t a worthwhile and scintillating topic of debate, of course, just that after a few dozen times the discussion tended to become a little stilted.

‘I’ll buy the first round,’
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