Binding Pages

by **Jenni Twilight** on May 26th, 2014, 5:41 pm

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-- Spring 30th, 514 AV --

Sayeo had been scowling at the stack of paper for the past five chimes. After many bells of painfully boring and irritating work, they’d finally managed to re-sort all the pages into the (mostly) correct order. It felt like too much effort after such a simple incident… and Jenni wanted to slap the reader harder than ever for dropping the old thing. At least nothing had ripped, which would have caused more problems. The pages were actually rather robust, and it was the poor quality binding that had fallen apart, leaving them with a mess of paper to deal with.

Sayeo was staring at the pile for a reason, and a decent one at that. Part of the reason he’d been picked for the job was that he had some experience book-binding. And they needed to figure out how to bind this. The Twilight was only tagging along as she’d been part of this job in the first place… and she was curious to see how it worked. How did you physically collect all of the pages to fit in one binding, and not fall out again? Luckily, it was a dilemma that the older Seeker would have to face… all she had to do was understand the explanation to come.

It felt like it had been longer than it should have been, but Sayeo finally spoke. “I think… I have it. Normally you have pages gathered into signatures, which are collections of a bunch of folded sheets of paper, which will eventually be stacked to become your book. For this, however, we have a whole bunch of loose pages. I don’t know if they were even in signatures from the start… but that might be why it all fell apart. I don’t know how to bind things without signatures, so…”

“You need to make them into signatures?” Jenni tossed in, getting the idea. If you didn’t have something in a situation like this, you usually tried to make it. Sayeo grinned up at her, proving her guess right.

“Exactly! Still, you need larger than normal sheets for this… and all we have here are of normal page size. It’ll probably make it look funny, but we’re going to need to use fresh sheets of long paper to wrap all of the sheets in each signature… and we can work from there.”

Jenni tried to imagine this, and it seemed like it would work. There would be random blank pages scattered throughout the book, however… though that was a problem they couldn’t avoid. It wasn’t even much of a problem, more of an asthetic inconvenience. However, one thing confused her a little, when she flipped the idea of the signature around in her head.

“But… won’t the pages fall out?”

Once again, Sayeo was pleased at her inquiry. “Yep. It’s the same problem with normal signatures, however, so we’ve gotten past the hard stage. What you do with a lot of books, normally with a large margin, is sew the pages together. This means they’re all stuck, and won’t fall out. These pages have a margin on the left edge, but it’s not quite big enough… it’ll work, but the first word of each line will probably be annoying to read. But… I think this guy’s handwriting is problem enough that it won’t matter as much.”

It all seemed to be working out well. There were holes that the morpher didn’t understand, especially what to do after the signatures… but she was sure Sayeo would explain it once they were there. Once step at a time, it seemed.

Common - Nari/Crook - NPC - Writing - Reading

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by **Jenni Twilight** on May 28th, 2014, 12:32 pm

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Sayeo soon returned, after leaving for a moment, with a stack of large and remarkably new sheets of paper. He’d decided paper rather than parchment, because apparently that was how he’d been taught how to do it… though there wasn’t too much difference between the two materials. On top of that stack was a small pile of various tools, most hard to see from Jenni’s angle. He set the load onto their work table, pushing off the smaller items.

“So we have the paper, two sets of needle and thread… and a bone folder.” He smiled up. Getting a good look at his collection, the Twilight saw a few odd things she wasn’t expecting. The ‘thread’ for one, was thicker than most you used for sewing… that she’d seen. She’d never sewed before, so this would be a new experience. It wasn’t really a thread, but more of a cord… thick and robust looking. The bone folder was something new altogether. She couldn’t relate the shape to anything, except maybe a knife blade… but that was a large jump. It was about the right size, and the ends came to a point… but it wasn’t metal at all, and there was no hilt or handle. The name could have meant two things, but by looking at it she figured it out pretty easily. It wasn’t something that folded bone… as if that was possible… but rather a folder made of bone, the pearly white material remarkably obvious.

“What do we do first?” she inquired, absently picking up the bone folder to look at it more closely. It was nice and smooth, and practically soft to the touch. Sayeo glanced up, having been fiddling through their stack of pages to bind.

“Oh, right. Well, we need to divide these pages into signatures. Give me a bit… I haven’t done something with so many pages before. Should I go with more and small signatures, or five big ones?” The last was muttered to himself, his attention having now drifted off of Jenni. As an experiment, apparently, he took about a fifth of the stack of papers and wrapped it in one of the signature ‘cover’s. It was remarkably bulky, and he shook his head. He shrunk the page by a half, and frowned a little longer in consideration. This process repeated until he finally straightened with an announcement.

“I think twenty pages per signature is good enough. Good thing I brought a lot of paper! So… just sort this into stacks, and then wrap the new papers around them. And that’s it! Wait… no. The bone folder thing. You want to make sure the cover thing is completely even, and then fold it so the page edges are as far in the crease as possible. Then use the bone folder to create a very fine and smooth crease. Look…” He plucked the item from her hand and used it on his own half-finished signature, pressing it along the edge and dragging it, so the paper folded remarkably neatly. He placed the item back on the table, and began counting sheets.

Common - Nari/Crook - NPC - Writing - Reading

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by **Jenni Twilight** on May 29th, 2014, 11:14 am

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Jenni split the pile whilst Sayeo was counting, so she wouldn’t have to wait for him, and began on her own stack. She quickly counted out twenty sheets and pulled them out, holding them in one hand. With the other she grabbed a cover sheet and awkwardly wrapped it around her collection. Trying to make sure nothing fell out, she left it on the table, and carefully made sure that the whole thing was even. The annoying part was that the book pages didn’t seem to want to stay together, so the whole thing was a little lopsided. She pushed them inwards so it all fit snugly, then snagged the bone folder to attempt what Sayeo had shown her.

It was remarkably easy, just like the way you’d fold an edge if you were using your finger… except you were using a piece of bone, and the result was much smoother. Her edge was a little wobbly and she scowled at it, attempting to straighten it but failing miserably. Giving up, since there was no use wasting the time, she set it aside for her own pile. She had almost added it to Sayeo’s, then remembered that the pages still needed to be in order…

This time, she paused in thought for a moment. Her earlier tactic had been annoying, especially when it came to the wrapping step. She frowned, remembering how it had gone, then grabbed one of the cover sheets and set it down in front of her. She then counted out another twenty pages, and set them at the right edge of the sheet. Then, it was an easy process of folding the cover bit over and smoothing it out with the bone folder.

The process went on rather repetitively, but it wasn’t annoying in the way sorting the pages had been. It was something with her hands, something she rarely did, and it allowed her mind to wander in a nice way. She thought about morphing, noting that she probably had to practice a little more… She couldn’t even take on a full form. Maybe she should try something human? It would certainly be easier, considering the lack of bone change. Well… there might be slight changes, like say… cheekbones. She looked up at Sayeo when thinking this. His cheekbones were less prominent than hers, creating a smoother, and much softer face. Eye color, eye shape… it would have to be much more detailed to replicate a face, many… smaller changes. A challenge in its own way, maybe.

She’d have to really study someone to be able to replicate their face, however. It would be hard, to say the least. You’d have to stare at them for a while, then stare at your own face… and pick out the differences. However, that was something she was used to with her own morphing… the replication stage. She didn’t know anyone that would simply let her sit and stare, though… maybe a relative? Maybe even Sayeo here. She had to admit… she wasn’t exactly close with many people. Her life was almost a little lonely in that way. She did have Crook, however… so it wasn’t all that bad.

Common - Nari/Crook - NPC - Writing - Reading

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by **Jenni Twilight** on May 29th, 2014, 12:32 pm

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They finished in what felt like no time, all the pages having been used up. By some luck, Jenni had managed to split the stack evenly, so there were no extra pages when Sayeo was done. She had about fifteen, rather than twenty, so bound them in a slightly smaller signature compared to the rest. Their stack was now a little taller than the original one, and much easier to bind, it seemed. There still looked like a lot of signatures, however…

Sayeo then began to introduce her to the needle and thread. “Do you have any experience with sewing?” He probably knew the answer, considering the morpher’s background, but she shook her head anyways. “Didn’t think so. So… this is the needle. This is the thread.” She knew that. “This bit at the end of the needle is called the eye. The thread goes through here. We have larger needles than with normal sewing because it has to go through hall this paper. The thread needs to be rather robust as well. When threading a needle, you want to leave about two inches of thread coming out one side, and hold the needle sort of at the fold, so it doesn’t all fall out. We’ll need about this much string to go with it, for each signature.”

He gave a demonstration as he explained, holding the cord close to the needle’s eye, and, after a few tries, slipping it through neatly. He demonstrated how to hold it easily, then stretched out about how much of the thread to give a visual. It was more than Jenni had expected, but there was probably a reason for that. She knew little about sewing other than the bare basics, all which Sayeo had covered. Other than actually poking the needle through your material. In this case, it was paper.

Sayeo passed her the needle, and then threaded one for himself. Once he double-checked that she was holding it properly (So she wouldn’t poke a hole in her fingers, apparently), he began the much more complicated explanation on how to sew the pages together. It involved a lot of loops and going in and out of the paper, but the process seemed rather simple. You had three holes, sewed a certain knot at each, then moved on to the next hole. It seemed the hardest part was forcing the needle through all twenty two pages in the signature (including the cover), which included brute force and needle-wiggling.

She wouldn’t have gotten the knot on the first try, but the older Seeker showed her all three, giving a repeated explanation for each. By the third one, she was pretty sure she had the idea, at least until it came to her trying it on her own. At the end, Sayeo tied a large knot, and cut of the remaining end with a small knife from their pile of tools… which had apparently been forgotten before.

“Now you try!” he said, passing the items over to her.

Common - Nari/Crook - NPC - Writing - Reading

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by **Jenni Twilight** on May 31st, 2014, 4:28 pm

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Jenni took the needle carefully in left hand, and held the signature gently with the right. What was the first step? Go through the paper. Sayeo had threaded and knotted this string for her, but after this… she was apparently on her own. She found a spot that looked to be in a similar placement in comparison to Sayeo’s, and shoved the needle in. It went barely anywhere. She glowered at the item and pushed harder. It had looked quite hard when the older Seeker was trying this, but now… it was even harder… plus her lack of physical strength made life more of a challenge.

It took her nearly a chime of shoving and wiggling to inch the needle all the way from one side of the paper to the other. The sudden release of tension told her that she was out. She relaxed the tension that had unknowingly been building and paused, letting the needle stay in the paper, to shake her arm. Her fingers felt a little raw after that. She glanced up to see what Sayeo had thought, but the man had started on his own signature, only occasionally looking up to see how she was going. When their eyes met he smiled questioningly, and she shrugged and glanced back down. She’d just have to keep trying… maybe this would get easier.

She finished the knot rather quickly, only having a moment’s confusion when she couldn’t remember if something went over or under… but when over didn’t seem to work, she tried under and it ended perfectly. One out of three holes in this signature… out of only Eyris knew how many signatures. She groaned mentally… this would possibly be even harder than sorting the pages. And then after that… they still needed to bind the book itself.

The process continued after that, and as she’d hoped… almost by the third hole it was easier to shove the needle through the paper. Maybe she was getting the hang of it, or maybe she was getting stronger. Or both. Though she doubted becoming ‘stronger’ had anything to do with poking a needle through a few too many sheets of paper. She also might have been over-reacting during the first one. There were a lot of possibilities, but what she did know… was that she was in a much better, a much easier, position. The Twilight smiled a little at the thought, and tied off her thread with a simple knot… then added it to the pile, in order.

The rest of the signatures grew steadily easier, and by the time they were halfway through the Seeker could get the needle through all of the pages without much fuss, and avoid slamming her fist into the table from the force each time. It was nice to see something so hard get so easy in such a short time. The stitch itself had taken her no time at all, and with all the repetition… she wondered if she’d ever forget it. Though she didn’t know if it had any practical uses outside of bookbinding. She wasn’t a sewer, to say the least.

Common - Nari/Crook - NPC - Writing - Reading

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by **Catastrophe** on June 4th, 2014, 3:46 am

Jenni Twilight :

Notes :

Solo Binding Pages

Binding Pages

Binding Pages

Binding Pages

Binding Pages

Binding Pages

Binding Pages

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