Completed Working from Home

[Naiya]

2nd Day of Fall, 514 AV

A cold.

It had been nearly three days since she had started sneezing, and the day before she had begun to cough as well. This morning when she had woken, early and after fitful sleep, she had coughed so hard she woken up her brother Teo who, after a brief grumping at her for waking him, told her she had better stay in bed.

After three days of sniffing and sneezing she was beyond ready to take his advice. So Rue laid back down in her bed and went back to sleep.

Or she tried to anyway.

She lay awake and listening to the sounds of the quiet morning, then to the sounds of her family waking, and even to her brother quietly explaining why Rue was still abed.

Even so, the quiet bustle of the pavilion and Syna's rising light prevented her best efforts from allowing her to pass back into the realm of dreams. Now doomed to a day spent in her house with family Rue dreaded further the day ahead.

So she took the first escape that presented itself to her, embroidery.

She would take the day to get some work done.

[Naiya]

She had been working on a tunic for a customer, a beautiful blue fabric - the color of the sky as Syna falls beneath the horizon. It would have been easy enough to sew together the fabric and fit it to the measurements of the woman, but she had asked specifically for a thick band of knots to circle the hems of the tunic in the color of her birth pavilion.

They had deliberated about catching the 'true' color of the topaz clan, a subject that was more conjecture than consensus, or using a color that would not only maintain a hold with the colors of the Topaz clan but also compliment the color of the tunic. In the end they had picked out a honeyed yellow, with not quite orange in the darkest areas.

Once settled Rue had asked the woman how soon she needed the embroidery finished. They had agreed that a week would be soon enough, but still enough time to complete the arduous task.

So Rue had set to work, spending time on the thick twisting bands as often as she could. She had even taken to bringing the work home with her, tending to it while others worked on their own projects. Today should give her enough time to really get some work done.

She crawled out from beneath her covers just long enough to retrieve the tunic and a sewing kit. Then she settled cross-legged on the floor, blanket wrapped around her waist and draped across her lap, and set to work.

Already she had completed the crisscrossed line of knot work around the cuff of the left sleeve, and, despite her best efforts, there were rather obviously misplaced stitches.

It wasn't anything too horrible, no mismatched lines, or missing crosses, but the alignment of the stitches across the top and bottom of each curve end had slight variations, or even in one spot a not so slight misalignment with the other stitches.

It was the sort of thing that looked inconspicuous as it happened, but a turning over of the finished work brought the flaws out in spades.

She would need to fix them somehow. That was obvious enough. The how of the matter was more difficult, especially considering that she had finished the work with only a few different lengths of floss.

While it was good that she was becoming better able to estimate the length required for specific types of embroidery, it also meant that the floss was a long mostly unbroken thread through the embroidery. It made for smoother work, and problematic errors, for if she were to cut the thread of the misaligned stitches, the entire section of embroidery would come undone.

A fit of coughing disturbed her pondering, shaking her from her thoughts. She turned her head in towards her shoulder, pressing her mouth against the fabric of her clothing as she waited for the fit to pass.

With a sigh she placed the work aside and detangled her legs from the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders instead. She was going to need more than her work to keep her mind off her illness.

Still dressed for bed, with her hair still partially tied up from sleep, she made her way to the cook fire, seeking a pot of water to warm over the flames.

While she water for the water to heat she searched the sacks of spices and dried herbs, hoping to find something to flavor her drink.

There were a few different dried herbs and spices, but they leaned towards meats and soups, nothing she particularly would like to drink. Instead she sought the plants the children were gathering, an outing of more importance to them than anyone else, but useful to everyone in the end.

She found Lana first, supervising the plant collection that grew more difficult as the summer plants dwindled and autumn plants sprouted.

"Why aren't you dressed?" Lana asked, pointing at the blanket she was draped in, "Your hair is all messy too, daddy won't like-" The rest of her words were cut off by more coughing on Rue's part, and Lana's mouth closed with an audible clacking of teeth.

"Sorry, I guess I've caught something. I don't want to get everyone sick." Rue answered, and Lana nodded sagely. "Have you found any pineapple weed this morning? Or maybe gypsyweed?" The gypsyweed was also called speedwell, it was good for coughs, and swelling among other things. The pineapple weed, did something? Perhaps for a fever. Either way, they both would add a benefit to her drink.

Lana shook her head, a frown falling over her features. She turned to a small sack at her feet, not quite half full of fresh plants that they would set to dry over night.

"Just some mint." She said, offering the small sprig to Rue. It wasn't a lot, nor particularly healthy after the harsh summer, but it would certainly flavor her tea.

"Thank you, that's perfect."

[Naiya]

Rue crouched by the fire while the water heated, mint sitting in a mug beside her. The warmth was welcome in the not quite cool air of the coming fall. She felt chilled despite the tempid weather and her proximity to the fire. A result of being under the weather most likely.

She considered for a moment going to the opal clan, seeking a healer, but discarded the thought. She had a little cough, and a runny nose. Hardly a need for the healers.

She glanced at the water, but it was still seemingly untouched by the heat. With a sigh she turned her attention to a spill of ash across the ground by the fire. A second glance at the water proved the same, and her attention returned to the ashes there. Watching the water would not make it boil faster.

Digging about until she found a thin twig in the wood by the fire, Rue began to sketch out the pattern of the embroidery in the gray ash. She even added in the mismatched edges of the coils so she could better plan a solution. For a while though, nothing occurred to her as a fix for the problem.

The ash was soft, and light, picking up the scratching of even the lightest touch. She did her best to adjust for the strange medium, but without a guide she found she soon had a large mistake in her drawing. A line crossed from the top of one curve over the gap of the twisting knot, to the midway point of the next curve.

She dashed her hand through the fine powder, erasing the line of knots and beginning anew. She drew a series of knots once more, each scratch a thread making the shape of the knot.

Whether haste was her mistake or just a simple disregard for the project caused it, it had happened, and distracted her completely from drawing out the path of her embroidery. There was a line similar to the first that had caused her to erase the work, a scratch connecting the knots across the top.

She was about to blow the soot away, back into the fire maybe, when she realized that she might have a solution.

A border around the intertwined lines, stitching in a single direction, with maybe a running stitch to hem in the lines and keep a neat edge. That might fix her work without having to redo the entire hem.

A few long brushes through the ash formed a general image of the bordered knots. That, she decided, was going to be perfect.

[Naiya]

Healing steam rose off the green tinted water beside her, all but forgotten between fits of coughing. Though more often than she drank, she leaned over to breath in the steam, the minty vapors clearing her head both literally and figuratively. The bulk of her attention was on the embroidery in her hands, running stitches in parallel lines -- or mostly parallel anyway, along the top and bottom of the main set of knots provided a framework for the half inch bar of floss that would disguise her mistakes.

Stem stitches were slightly overlapping lines of thread that wound around each other in a smooth cloth covering that was cleaner than a chain stitch, or a cross stitch. They were bulkier, and might not hold up to rough wear as well as a different type of stitch, but they were the best fit to go with the already done knot work.

By time she finished a fit of coughing and found her cup emptied, she had finished the clean-up on the first sleeve and begun the satin stitches of the knot work around the other sleeve. These she was more careful with, but they would get a stem stitch around the edges as well, to keep the pattern balanced.

The distraction of her empty cup was enough to put aside her work and seek another. The water was still beside the fire, though it wasn't as hot as her first cup, it was easy enough to fill up with the warm water, rather than spend time waiting for it to heat once more.

She was making her way back to her warm spot on the floor when her stomach growled. Apparently her thirst wasn't the only thing she was neglecting in her quest to finish her project.

Hot soup would have been her first choice. Her family however had been going about their day as usual, and working had a way of making even the best of weather too warm for soup.

Ara was cleaning up what looked like the midday meal, and she glanced up form the task at the shuffling sound of Rue's approach.

"Oh, Rue, I thought you were sleeping. Are you feeling any better?"

Rue nodded, smiling, and opened her mouth to say she was fine, but found instead that her voice was caught deep in her chest. She cleared her throat, a few times before it did any good, and altered her answer. "I've been better." She said instead, gratitude apparent in her posture.

"You've sounded better, too." Ara said, a sheepish laugh startling them both on it's release from her lips. It wasn't often the two of them say each other during the day, it was a strange feeling. "Did you want me to make you something to eat?"

Rue shook her head, she wouldn't ask her to go through extra trouble, but she did swipe a small hunk of bread and some cheese from what was still out. "I'll just eat this. Thank you, though."

She made a hasty escape, food and warm water in hand.

[Naiya]

Her cough, she soon discovered, had battered her throat nearly as much as it had her sides, which had begun to ache from unfamiliar muscle movements. The bread she had brought back with her had brought the pain in her throat to attention, the rough texture scraping down as she swallowed.

It wasn't exactly pleasant. Though it did help the growling of her stomach. The cheese was better, softer, falling into crumbles. It didn't make the bread any easier to swallow though. She ate the cheese slowly, watching the movements of the pavilion around her as things were packed away and other things taken out for use. The occasional glance in her direction was the only real sign that anyone found it odd. Rue decided the novelty was her presence in the house, not the illness that initiated her stay. She fussed over her work a bit, not really accomplishing anything while she decided if she was hungry enough to eat the bread despite the mild discomfort that accompanied it.

When her cheese was gone she turned her attention to the hunk of bread in her hand, rough and now unappetizing. The protesting of her stomach pushed her to find a solution that didn't involve getting back up to face the awkward situation between herself and Ara in the kitchen.

She balanced the bread on her water, leaving both while she set to working on the top line of stem stitches. She repeated the process, beginning with the careful, always more difficult that you think it should be task of threading her needle once again. Then two lines of running stitches parallel to one another - or as close as she could get to such a thing bordered the smooth line of knot work that encircled the sleeve. Two rows on top, two on the bottom. Then a thicker string, and a few extra threads all strung through the needle at once to give the individual strands visible in the twisted rope-like border would appear fuller and rounded rather than thin and flat.

As she reached toward the ends of the string, preparing to tie them off so they would stay together and in the fabric, she knocked her cup with her elbow, sending it tipping around its base and knocking the bread into the luke warm water.

She made a face, thinking that she might have cursed if it wasn't so unlady like. She set her work aside once more so that she could deal with the mess.

Soggy bread was... much more edible when one's throat was sore. That was the realization that kept her from tossing the cups contents out for some animal to scavenge. It wasn't very appealing. Chewing it gave way to the odd texture and even squished water out of the spongy bread. All in all it wasn't a pleasant meal, but it did eventually fill her stomach which was the more important part of eating.

She decided that more than anything else after her soggy bread and cheese meal, she wanted to lay back for a moment in her yet to be packed away bedroll and stretch her back and arms and neck. She had been sitting over her work on and off all day, and she was tired of it.

So she did.

[Naiya]

She was waking up. It was an odd realization to have when sleeping, or even falling asleep had not been a conscious decision. She didn't remember falling asleep at all. Though she obviously had, because she was awake now, and there was no waking up without sleeping first.

It was all a bit odd. Or perhaps she was just groggy from her unexpected nap. One way or another she was awake now, and she still had work to do.

She pushed herself up into a sitting position, finding that her embroidery work was crumpled beside her on the rug. Her needle lay short a few threads beside the tunic. The missing string was not hard to find, though she did lose the needle once as she pawed through the bunched up fabric in search of the rest of the floss.

She had been making the border, the twisted floss a way to let it stand out from the mostly smooth lines that she had spent so long making. She gathered her thread once more, twisting it all together and stringing it through her needle's eye. It was both easier and harder to string the artificially thicker thread. It was far easier to see the spun ends, but lining them up just right to prevent the thread from slipping past the eye on the wrong side was more difficult than it was with a single piece.

She did manage to eventually get the job done, and from there covering the edges of her needle work was easy. It was possibly the best plan she had with her embroidery yet.

[Khida]

Rue Nightsong

Skill	Points
Drawing	+1
Herbalism	+1
Medicine	+2
Planning	+2
Sewing	+3

• Drawing: sketching knotwork
• Embroidery: adding embellishment to mask mistakes
• Embroidery: the difficulties of fixing errors
• Embroidery: stem stitch
• Herbalism: making a simple tisane
• Herbalism: properties of gypsyweed
• Medicine: home care for a sore throat
• Medicine: symptoms of a cold
• Observation: finding irregularities in patterns
• Planning: coordinating clothing colors
• Sewing: threading a needle

Notes

I think this is the first time I've seen a PC sick in-thread, at least when I was grading it. Marks for unusualness. You definitely get the lore for gypsyweed, at least, because "lore of Cyphrus flora" mostly covers recognizing the plants, not necessarily their properties in detail. I didn't give you lores for the others, though, because Rue didn't really express knowing the properties of mint or pineapple weed, nor did she learn them here.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding this grade. Also, please edit your request to show this thread has been graded.