In the afternoon, Avanis worked on her hats. She’d made more hats than there were heads in the village but working on those small round-shape hats was the only thing that soothed her. Sometimes, when she was cutting shirts or making new pants on request, something she did not enjoy doing, she started to doubt her own talent. There was something with long threads of fabric that did not sit well with her. She didn’t have the right tools, the right disposition for it. She liked to work on smaller apparels. Hats! That was where she truly shone as a tailor.
Avanis often told herself she should have just been a hat maker. But, reasonably, it was already a stretch for the village for have their own tailor for the fat number of sixteen people. She constantly reminded herself she should consider happy. But deep down, she didn’t feel she was. Making shirts, undergarments and shoes was a real chore. Avanis just wanted to make hats. Pretty, sturdy, dashing hats. Nothing else.
Fortunately, thanks to the hunters, Avanis had plenty of fur to make hats with, more than she needed, one would think — and would be wrong. Avanis had more hats that she let on. She never told anybody, never showed anyone, but behind the small eight head rack where she displayed her hats, there was a hidden stash of seventy-eight hats. Hats of all sizes and color, with flowers and tooth ornaments, ribbon, no ribbon, feathers, snake skin, precious stones even. These were the seventy-eight hats of Avanis secret collection. Avanis the hat-maker, who was just a tailor.
Number seventy-nine was coming along fine. Last week, Gladys, Linckus and Titus killed two bear-squirrels. The hunters normally didn’t go after bear-squirrels, but, in this case, they said they’d been ambushed by four bear-squirrels. It’d been a tough fight. Titus was the living proof of it. They’d left him with a large scar across the chest. Avanis had spent a full afternoon mending his shirt. Pheren stayed four days by Titus’ side. He’d been recovering slowly. He probably should still be in bed or light duties, but Titus wasn’t one to just sit around idly. He was already back on the hunt.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Fortunately, the hunters had brought back both bear-squirrels they’d took down before the other two ran away. Without a cart, it had been no small feature. Each bear-squirrel weighted about eighty pounds. They were too heavy to carry, so the hunters had dragged them all the way back to the village. When Avanis received the bear-squirrels fur, after Blas had skinned them, the first thing she did was to wash them in the stream. The furs were filthy, all sticky with mud, dried leaves and other unidentified stinky substance.
After getting rid of most of the dirt, she’d hang them to dry by the fireplace in the town hall. It was the biggest hearth in the village. It had taken two full days for the furs to dry up. Avanis scrapped the last bit of mud that remained and brought them in her atelier. Now that they were clean and dry, Avanis noticed that one was clearer than the other. One was brown with shades of black. The other was beige with shades of brown. It was perfect. In her head, Avanis could already picture all the lovely hats she would be making in the coming weeks and months. So far, the only request for the fur had been a pair of boots from Linckus. He wanted not only keep a token of the ruthless predator he’d slain, but wear that token. Since his kill was the beige bear-squirrel, Avanis made her first special hat out of the brown bear-squirrel. It was coming up nicely. The shades were unequal, but Avanis knew how to compensate its unbalance. She had in her atelier a drawer filled with a hundred feathers. There were cardinal feathers, hawk feathers, falcon feathers, fire bird feathers, ice pigeon feathers, thunder fowl feathers, rock chicken feathers, shark swan feathers.
The fire bird feathers were a perfect fit for the bear-squirrel hat. She was coming to her favorite part of the hat making process: the last touches, the last decisions. One thick feather? Two small ones? Three feathers? Two small and a large one? Two fire beard feathers and a cardinal one? Maybe. She tried combinations of it. The red cardinal feather in the middle, the two fire ones on the sides? The red cardinal on the top, with the fire ones underneath? Yes. This was nice. This was the hat.
All that was left to do now was to pick a nice ribbon for it. By the time Avanis finished, it was already dark outside. She was going to be late for dinner. She carefully placed her hatpins to keep the hat’s shape and ran out to the town. For the space of one afternoon, Avanis had completely forgotten about her precarious situation as the village tailor.