Completed Milking Flowers and Giving Dye-jobs Pt. II

[Naadiya]

Milking Flowers and Giving Dye-jobs Pt. II 75 of Spring Year 522 Naadiya stood in Uta’s kitchen looking at the ingredients on the counter while Uta and Talivindra got the makeshift hair-cutting station hobbled together again. She had water boiling in a copper pot and looked around the space noticing how much of the objects that would normally have been iron, steel or even the less commonly used nickel had all been replaced with copper, tin and bronze. Uta had a full livestyle conversion this season as had many of the other citizens of the settlement who had tried to cope with the cards fate had dealt them. Unable to rid themselves of the curses, most inhabitants found ways around them. Dawn and Tony had strayed away from the fiber and fabric that would either wilt or cause rashes upon their touch. As a result, cotton garments had started to fill more and more of their wardrobe despite the considerably more muted and drab colors that it was able to hold from the available dyes. Naadiya too had made changes. Often she would cover up a considerable amount of skin, particularly her head and shoulders in case of a sudden spring shower. The feeling of rain falling on her face was something Naadiya had grown to love during her time in Syka and just as quickly as the pleasure had been introduced, it had been taken away. While the Sykan atmosphere remained warm throughout most of the spring season, its periodic showers had proved cool enough to trigger her curse’s response to cold water, so an umbrella had become a regular part of outfits when leaving the inn. In front of her was the jar of flower-based shampoo she had gathered the day before, along with a sack-full of orange tiger lily blooms that she had dumped into a large, polished bronze bowl, a few avocados in a smaller terracotta bowl, and a long-necked bottle of dark glass labeled ‘’Sesame’ on a small paper tag that hung from a twine necklace. She had propped up on her new notebook against a clay jar painted teal, and read through one of her mother’s old recipes, now transcribed in a beautiful script thanks to her enchanted quill. That too she pulled out, in case there would be need to make an additional note or change to a recipe. Awakening the quill with it’s assigned pass-phrase, Naadiya held the object and placed it with its point poised on a blank corner of the page and left it in it there floating in place, waiting for spoken words to lead its way. After a few directions from Uta, Naadiya navigated the kitchen and grabbed a wooden bowl and spoon. “Uta, do you have a sieve of some sort?” Naadiya called out to the woman who was now seated and having her hair washed by Talivindra’s nimble fingers. “Ugh, no. I had to have it buried with the rest of the magnetic things I wanted to keep. I still haven’t found one made of copper or bronze so I’ve just been using a cheese cloth if I ever need to sieve something. It did not take long to find a cheese cloth, those had been readily available hanging from handles and folded in drawers, so she took the closest one that looked unused. 551

[Naadiya]

The Benshira woman draped the cheesecloth over the bowl and started scooping the floral gel into the center with a wooden spoon, occasionally darting an eye towards the simmering pot over the fire. There was steam rising from the sides of the lid, and she judged the water to be hot enough though it had not yet come to a boil. Naadiya threw several flowers in the steaming brew and prodded them with a longer spoon she set aside for stirring the larger pots, and replaced the lid when she was satisfied. Tal was setting out a few tools of her own on a side table near where Uta sat, ivory tools, some copper and carved wood and bone accents as well. Everyone’s adaptability and ingenuity encouraged Naadiya to keep hoping a solution to these curses would reveal itself soon enough. Neither Syna, nor Xyna had relieved her of her burdens and Naadiya was too uncertain to attempt any prayer to Rhysol in plea. He did not seem the kind to take such a plea lightly and Naadiya discarded the idea immediately, not wanting a monkey doll of her own. She had gotten momentarily distracted and missed the pot suddenly boiling over. As the lily scented water bubbled and splashed from the sides of the trembling lid, it put out the fire below. Naadiya let out a quick curse and moved the pot out of the way with padded oven mitts. After the mitts were removed, she summoned her fire starter from the magical charm Talivindra had given her and tried a couple of times, using her flint & steel near the kindling. Both times the kindling caught sparks and a small flame but the fire was not hot enough to catch the still wet wood. Looking around, she was about to ask Uta if the woman had any ready-cut firewood somewhere in the house when her eyes landed on the nook that held exactly what she was looking for. Naadiya replaced the wood and was about to strike her flint again when she reached for the rough steel tool that usually accompanied it and found it wasn’t where she’d left it. Immediately assuming a pet had come and taken it, she glanced around quickly and found it not so far off. Still on the floor, the steel was slowly sliding in Uta’s direction. Naadiya jumped up and with a couple of strides, she had grabbed the implement before it reached enough momentum or magnetic pull to fling itself towards the botanist. Her hands moved faster now, trying to get a flame going as quickly as possible so she could stow away the magnetic metal. Oddly enough this tool had not had such a sharp reacting to Uta’s curse as the iron eating knife that had once cut a hole in Naadiya’s pocket trying to go with the magnetic pull within the botanist. She wondered if it had something to do with the steel being an alloy, a mixture of metals, or if there was a radius around Uta with the magnetism being strongest at the core and weakening towards the outer edges. The fire was lit, and soon Naadiya had stashed the flint and steel away in her magical bracelet charm away from Uta’s unintentional pull. She then went back to the counter to assemble the philtering contraption she’d bought to furnish the newly reutilized workshop she was having built near her home. Surprisingly enough, bronze had been as easy to find as iron or steel when she’d browsed the stalls of The Outpost for her new tools. Xyna may not have been directly getting involved, but occasionally Naadiya thought she felt the scales of her fate tip in a favorable direction even in the smallest of ways, and whether merited or not, the Benshira woman gave thanks to the goddess of trade, and for her realm. 648

[Naadiya]

“Naadiya, I’m going to start soon, do you want to come over and watch?” “Yes, give me a minute I’m just finishing up and then I can let this be unattended for a little bit, I think.” A bronze tripod stood on the counter and held up a bulbous glass beaker with a short and corked neck on one side opposite one that was much longer, and angle downwards, tapering at its end. Below it she place a wide tallow candle once lit. It looks right… let’s see if it works? Uncorking the shorter neck, Naadiya inserted a funnel and ladled in some of the tiger lily stew. She poured very slowly, afraid the sharp temperature spike would shatter the glass despite the assurances of the merchant that being heated was precisely the function of these types of beakers. She stared at the tinted water with its bits of plant material willing the mixture to rise to a boil. It was been transferred as quickly as she could manage, from one source of heat to the next, but unfortunately seemed to be taking it’s sweet time to get even a simmer going once inside the glass. Conceding, Naadiya went over to Talivindra who had already washed out all the remaining dye from Uta’s hair and was combing it all out to see the effect of the black, and how neat her application of the hair dye had been. Pretty neat, as it had turned out. Naadiya nodded to appease the already very self assured look on Tal’s face and the Verusk nodded back. “Looks good, doesn’t it?” Tal asked, not really needing an answer. “It does.” Naadiya gave her one anyway. “Oh, does it?!” Uta burst out in excitement, her feet tapping lightly on the wooden floor. Talivindra grabbed a different comb and sectioned off the hair on the botanist’s head in the areas she would cut separately. Naadiya watched where she slid the comb’s pointed end trying to see the logic behind the irregular grid. She realized, or course, though later than she would have liked, that Uta’s usually asymmetric cut would have to be planned out before the scissors actually cut anything off, but soon the scissors were already snipping away. Inches of hair fell on the ground, littering the normally neatly swept floors of Uta’s almost meticulous little abode, but she couldn’t be happier of the mess. Every snipper of dead ends that fell made her feel closer to the Uta she remember before she feared the possibility of being bitten by every nearby bit of metal. Naadiya had started to hear a bubbling sound, and looked back at her glass beakers. There was something happening and Naadiya went over to look. “Are you sure you don’t want to try an even more drastic cut?” She could hear Talivindra asked Uta in the background, “I could shave a strip down one side of head all the way back! That would be most unique!” In the round bottomed beaker, the loose-leaf lily tea was beginning to boil in full. The vapor rose up to the beaker’s ceiling until it reached the long, tapering neck. Once it was there, steam would gather and eventually condense until it ran down the angled neck and dripped… directly onto the counter. 550

[Naadiya]

Damn, Naadiya thought, rushing over to the table to place a container that would catch the heavily scented drops. “If you tried,” Uta replied to Talivindra, “you could consider our friendship over and done with, my dear. Besides, do you really want to risk getting explosive diarrhea every time you take a bite or a sip of something? There are all manners of plants I have at my disposal, someone of them you might even enjoy the taste of, until their less pleasant effects kicked in…” Naadiya smiled as the two friends bantered, but she didn’t look over, instead making sure the cup that would be collecting the falling drops was securely placed, after she wiped the lost drops away, then giddily looked at the beaker while tapping her foot wishing that this step too would go by a little faster. It wasn’t. So Naadiya grabbed the cheesecloth she had already filled with gel and brought the ends of the cheesecloth together so that the gel sat in a little pouch suspended by her grip. In a twisting motion, she squeezed. The gel seeped through the cloth and left behind a good deal of debris inside the cloth. Another twist and another squeeze. A third might just be pushing the fabric’s durability. Every weave could be stretched beyond its limits, and then it was useless, holed and worn out. Referring back to the recipe book she had propped up, Naadiya grabbed the bottle of sesame oil and measured out a couple of thimbles, doing the simple math in her head as she halved the recipe for the quantity she was making. She stirred with a wooden spoon and wondered if there were any magically enchanted spoons from the same makers of the automated quill that would have done the stirring for her. That would be very handy as well. Non-stop stirring, beating or mixing ingredients without also gaining a very strong and sore arm in the process. Chef around Mizahar would chop off a hand for one! Well maybe not that, might be a bit counterproductive, but they would pay boatloads! How much would I pay? For now, she stirred herself. The oil and gel did not want to mix together and took a bit of vigorous beating for them to emulsify and by the time she was happy with how the blend looked, the little cup by the beaker’s dripping lip had collected a nice amount of was a lily-version of rosewater. Naadiya took it and dripped it slowly into the gel as she continued to stir with her other hand. Either impatient or highly overestimating her ambidexterity, she started to waver. The bowl spun along with the spoon and a few drops of the lily scented water missed their goal so Naadiya just stopped, poured the rest into the bowl and returned it to it’s drop-catching position before resuming her stirring. The recipe had called for slowly adding in the rosewater, or its replacement, but she couldn’t see how big a difference it would make when everything in the bowl was wet anyway. This isn’t baking, she reminded herself. The bowl was starting to accumulate some suds around the inner walls and the smell was rising in the air. She brought over the homemade shampoo to where Tal was finalizing Uta’s haircut and presented the bowl to the Verusk woman. “Smells nice enough,” Tal said, sniffing the bowl’s contents “Are you going to try on your ‘client’?” Naadiya asked, gesturing towards Uta who was using a small mirror to look around her wet head, looking for imperfections to the cut, but finding none. 608

[Naadiya]

“Use that? Oh no, she’s already washed her hair too many times in the last few days. Too many chemical process as well. She needs a nutrient filled conditioning treatment to restore the life of her hair. “Restore it’s life? I thought you said it looked good?!” Uta shot back but Talivindra continued talking as if she’f heard nothing and the botanist tried looking closer in the mirror she held. “Cut open a few of those avocados, make a mash of the fruit’s flesh and mix in some sesame oil and a little coconut oil— Uta do you have coconut oil? Okay, mix in some coconut oil, and a little bit of honey. Throw in a thimble of the lilywater for scent as well.” Naadiya had done as the woman instructed, only then noticing that not only had the quill taken down Talivindra’s recipe, it also had gotten a good deal of their previous conversation and was uselessly and frantically waving in the air, having run out of paper. Naadiya flipped the page and replace the quill on the upper left hand corner. It went right back to writing, taking down the words that had otherwise only been written in the air. She had used two of the three avocados and left the last one in the bowl. It looked to be almost perfect, even though she could not see its inside. Even so, Naadiya set it aside for later, maybe a snack for the three along with some sort of bread to spread the green mash onto. With Talivindra giving step-by-step instructions, Naadiya took handfuls of the avocado-based conditioner and massaged it into the botanist’s hair until it was all saturated in the floral scented green paste. Then, she wrapped a thin towel over the woman’s head and tucked in its ends so she could move about freely. “Keep that one for a couple of bells, then rinse it out with water, just water mind you, but be thorough. You are going to want to do that conditioner a couple more times in a coming days until your hair feels like its gained all its ‘oomph’ back, trust me you will see the difference. But you can’t just keep what’s leftover from today. The avocado will go brown and start looking foul, and you can’t add a citrus juice to the mix to keep it looking fresh because the citrus will start to strip away your color again. Speaking of avocados with lime… who is hungry? I am.” Talivindra gathered up her brushes, combs, and scissors while Naadiya did the same for the philtering supplies. Then, Naadiya securely stored the hand made shampoo/bodywash, the remains of the conditioner for her to use herself later that night, and every last drop of the lilywater, hoping that like rosewater, it would have many uses other than just for its pleasant scent. When everything was gathered, they corralled around the eating area where Uta had set out some slices of toasted bread. Naadiya had taken the last avocado and was cutting into it, when the knife hit something hard. It couldn’t be the pit, it had struck the ivory blade much too early into the fruit’s flesh. Curious, she set down the knife and raised the leather-coated fruit up to her eyes and saw what looked to be an incision where something had been pushed into the fruit’s flesh. This was not the first time Naadiya had come across a fruit or vegetable that had already been pierced by a creepy crawler who’d reached it before her but something felt off. The knife had felt like it hit something hard, not a squishy slug or caterpillar. More cautious now, she prodded the knife’s tip into the hole and sliced into the flesh fully, dragging the blade around the pit and twisting the avocado to be split in half, dissecting it near where Naadiya had felt the hidden debris. It wasn’t a slug or a caterpillar or any other variety of insect or bug. What she saw jammed into the green flesh was a bit of metal, a pinkish gold, bright and looking to have been recently polished despite the place where Naadiya was finding it. She dug it out with the tip of her knife and revealed a golden X, with a tiny loop at the end of one of its legs. Recently, Naadiya had come across several other objects like this one and took little time to recognize it as a charm suitable for a bracelet like her own, another mismatched metal bauble to add to the collection. “Tal, did you put this here?” She asked the Verusk, who had been the one to gift her another of her magical charmed, only the previous day. “Put what? What’s that? No, can’t say it was me. Why would I stick a gift inside a fruit? That’s a little bizarre.” Naadiya could not disagree, but something about the trinket felt clean, or safe rather. Certainly not clean she thought, as she wiped off the bit of jewelry and attached it to her bracelet. Even as she slid the loop into place, she hoped this charm had no taint of Rhysol or any other ill-will of any god, but still, she attached the golden X. “I’m sure it will be fine.” She said more to herself than anyone else, as they continued to prepare a snack to pick at while the three women talked. 916

[Gossamer]

Grading!
Here is your thread grade!

Naadiya-

Herbalism +4, Cosmetology +2, Observation +5, Socialization +4, Cooking +2

Herbalism: Boiling Tiger Lily’s In Water to Make Lily Water, Uta: Like’s Unusual Hair Dye Jobs & Asymmetrical Hair Cuts, Talividra: Gives Haircuts & Dye’s Hair, Herbalism: Making Shampoo, Herbalism: Making Conditioner, Cooking: Prepping Avacado

Acquisition: X-Shaped Charm, Shampoo & Conditioner


Mod Note: I know you requested Philtering, but this fell more into the realm of Cosmetology and Herbalism than Philtering. Think of philtering as potion making, where you learn very detailed processes (absorption, assation, calcination, chromatography, cupellation, distillation, insuration, sublimation, etc) at the lower levels to infuse properties into ordinary things… such as food, perfumes, medication, and all sorts of magic. Indeed, at upper levels you can infuse gnosis power into tinctures and tonics if you have the ability to make them via Herbalism or Medicine. So while you are making shampoo (A combination of Herbalism and Cosmetology) and Hair Dye, it is not technically philtering. If you distilled some essential oils out of regular plant properties, it would be worth herbalism and philtering since you are using philtering techniques.

I think you were trying for distillation, but you never even mentioned the term ‘distill’ and you did mention ‘condense’ from a beaker but that’s something that happens on pan lids, in beakers for herbalism, etc. If you ran your liquids through a condensing coil, then you are in philtering territory again. You did ‘assemble the philtering contraption’ but there was no detail so thus no XP. I would suggest doing a little research on these sorts of things and get into detail in future threads.

As always PM me if you have issues.