~ Gisopi Minari’s, The Cobbler’s Art, Chapter Ten - Boot Anatomy - The Toe Box
The front portion of a boot, known as the toe box, is responsible for covering and shielding the wearer's toes. It is situated at the front of the boot, just above the outsole, and its shape, which can either be rounded or pointed, is determined by the style of the boot.
The boot's toe box is an essential component since it shields the wearer's toes from harm and contributes to the shoe's overall capacity to hold the foot firmly in place inside the shoe. A toe box that is the right size and shape will enable the toes to move around freely without the sensation of being squished or pinched, which is another factor that adds to the overall fit and comfort of the boot.
Some boots may feature a reinforced toe box, which is an extra layer of protection for the toes that is constructed of a material that is either more rigid or more long-lasting. This is especially frequent in work boots and hiking boots, as the toes of these types of footwear may be more susceptible to damage from impact or abrasion.
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The painting is a little sad, honestly.
Mirabelle hovers by the front window of the shoemaker’s shop, staring at the old man who is sitting there, gazing at the portrait of a woman that is hung up next to himself.
The old man never speaks, apart from when someone is there to pick up their shoes or to place an order that gets hung onto the already overflowing board behind the counter, but, from what she has come to learn, the woman in the portrait is the man’s now deceased partner.
It has been well over a month and a half since her arrival in the city of the human-people. Mirabelle, living in secret, has adopted their ways with surprising speed and… oddly enough, a sense of enjoyment. She loves flying through the streets, finding more stuff to eat, even if most of it is garbage. She doesn’t even notice anymore since it’s become such a staple of her diet. She loves sneaking into the workshop at night and making shoes in secret. She loves sitting in the park and watching the people who are familiar to her enjoy their lives in different ways.
All of that malevolence, that incredible anger, and that disgusting feeling she had felt in her heart are gone now.
Sure, she’s still sad. There are nights when she lays there and does nothing but think about her family, about her brother, about her friends. In fact, the nights when she does so are more common than the ones she doesn’t. She’s still twitchy and jumpy and terrified of every little crack and pop in the world.
But, lately, if nothing else, Mirabelle can say that she’s happy in a very lonely way. She still hasn’t tried talking to a single person, and as far as she knows, not a single person has even seen her.
Fairies are very good at hiding.
The man, the shoemaker, seems to be the same, in a sense. He, like her, is all alone in the world. He, like she has learned from him, has chosen shoemaking as the thing that keeps him fed, busy, and sane, and from her observations and the snippets of conversations that she listens into, she has come to understand that the man himself only became a shoemaker after adopting his wife’s trade, back during happier days.
Then she left to go to the sleeping-place.
Mirabelle glances over her shoulder at the painting one more time before she flies off to go home. It’s not time to work just yet.
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Now that she has magical abilities to help her crafting go faster, Mirabelle has come to realize that there is a certain divide in society here. For the longest time, she had wondered why the old man, despite being a master at his trade, only ever made things with his hands.
Surely, if he has abilities like she does too, he could make a pair of magnificent boots in a few minutes flat? So why does he forgo that and instead undergo a process that takes weeks instead?
She had found the answer to that later, after finding another shoemaker in a different part of town while she was exploring the city. This other man made his shoes with magic, all of them. They were fine shoes, too. strong and sturdy things, far cheaper than ‘her’ shoemaker’s work as well.
But, at the same time, they were limited.
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Limited in their design, limited in their appearances and in the adjustments able to be made. If someone casts a spell to make a boot, that could be adjusted to a size and to a rough shape accordingly, but the general boot itself will look very generic, very standard. It’ll be a solid boot, but nothing more than that.
It’s a question of efficiency versus artisanship. It turns out that magical crafting, while practical and in most cases entirely indistinguishable from a hand-made item, is seen as "cheaper," at least in the lower price segments. She doesn’t really understand it, but in the human-people world, this is how it is. Two pairs of boots next to each other, one made with magic and the other by hand, will cost wildly different prices that people are willing to pay just because of that arbitrary difference.
She doesn’t really know what to think about it herself. She likes the process of the work, though. So maybe she’ll just half-half it? She can use her magic to attach pieces and merge fiddly things together while still hand-making the majority of the shoe, like she did with her sandals. That seems like a good compromise to her.
Mirabelle lays in her nest, thinking about the old man. She really owes him for letting her have this knowledge for free. Would he be mad if he knew that she was secretly there, stealing his experiences and lessons? Mirabelle doesn’t want to be a thief. She wants to be something that contributes, something that makes people happy. So how can she pay the shoemaker back? How can she make him happy?
The fairy lays on her back, on a pile of fluffy, colorful fabric as she stares up at the ceiling of her home. She lowers her gaze, staring at the many colorful things she has adorned her walls with; old flowers, some pretty scraps of paper she found on the street, a shiny rock, which was a real pain to get up here, but it was worth it. It’s very shiny.
“AIH!” she sits upright, her wings buzzing excitedly as an idea spontaneously comes to her.
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It’s not late enough to go to the shoemaker’s workshop just yet. The cruel fairy, Mirabelle, instead flies around the park, excited for the time to pass.
Something on the ground catches her eye. A glint of metal. Another shiny rock? Looking around carefully to make sure there are no cats or birds around, she lowers herself to the ground and looks at the thing.
It’s a coin, a thick, silver-tinged slice of metal with the face of a very sour looking man imprinted on its surface. Given that it’s human-people money, it’s pretty big in comparison with herself. Mirabelle grabs the rim of the coin, grunting as she pushes it off of the ground. It reaches up to her waist when it stands on its side.
The fairy looks around, not sure where it came from. Did somebody drop this? They must have. There doesn’t seem to be anyone here, let alone anyone searching for it.
…Does this mean that it’s garbage? Can she take this?
Mirabelle looks around herself one more time. But there really isn’t anyone here. Shrugging to herself, she wraps both of her arms around the coin and then lifts it up into the air, fighting against the light breeze as she tries to make it back to her tree, doing her best not to look at the oddly dark spot on the ground that the decomposed squirrel had left behind and stained the world with, down at its base.
She drops it into her nest, not really sure what she’s supposed to do with it. Is this a lot of money? It’s just one coin. But she knows that different kinds of coins are worth different things. It’s like how, for fairies, the red berries are worth two blue ones and three yellow ones. The red ones are just the best. She assumes it’s the same with money for the human-people. In a sense, it’s also arbitrary. But they have decided that the golden coins are the best. One gold one is worth several silver ones, and one silver one is worth several copper ones. Does this make sense?
Well, it does if you hold such things to be true. Red berries are worth more because they’re better, even if the yellow ones will make you just as full. Just the same, gold is worth more because it’s deemed to be better, even if it has the same form and shape as the bronze ones.
Maybe fairies and the human-people really aren’t so different?
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Mirabelle hovers in front of the baker’s stall, watching him and the street with hawkish eyes, waiting for her chance.
The man turns to the side, helping a customer pick out some bread. Mirabelle swoops down from the rooftop, the coin awkwardly clutched against her body with both arms. She darts behind the boxes by the stall and then makes her move, zipping quickly into the cart, dropping the coin there on a shelf, and then flying back to the roof with fearful, paranoid eyes.
No hand comes to swipe at her, no voices shout after her, and no cat comes to try and eat her for lunch. The day moves on undisturbed. But Mirabelle feels less pressure in her chest. She feels better. Her debt to the baker has been repaid and then some, so she is no longer a thief.
It’s about that time now. With a clear conscience, Mirabelle flies off to watch the shoemaker work, feeling much lighter than before.
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The day went well. She feels that she learned a lot, and now she has returned home.
Mirabelle sits on her branch. The owl, after some ‘convincing’ was shooed away from her tree. She didn’t hurt it, but she did spook it a little by rustling the branches and by knocking a few twigs loose with some magic. It flew off all by itself, leaving behind some fluff and feathers, which she took for her nest. They’re very soft, though they do smell a little like birds.
Now, she lays there, on the long branch, watching the young man with the beautiful hair return to the park bench.
She tilts her head, nibbling on a piece of snack-bread she had been saving for tonight’s show, a little disappointed. He’s alone tonight. That’s unusual? The man sighs, falling back onto the bench, and spreads his arms out across the rest, his eyes wandering up towards the sky.
— Maybe the new girl of the day is coming later on today?
She waits a while, kicking her legs and nibbling her bread. But nobody ever shows up. Some people walk through the park, but nobody ever really pays the man on the bench any mind, and he himself just seems to be staring up towards the sky. Mirabelle turns her head upward, looking at the sky, trying to see what it is that he’s looking at. But it’s just a sky like any other. The sun is setting, painting the water atop the pond awash with a lonely red streak that runs along the surface.
And then, just like that, Mirabelle realizes what she sees. She sees the thing she has seen everywhere else around herself already. The gaze of the shoemaker, staring at the portrait of his partner, the gaze of the old woman as she feeds the ducks, the gaze of the man who breaks the sticks, the gaze she herself makes when she stares into the water, down at her own reflection, hoping that one day it will answer her when she talks to it, just so that there is somebody there to respond to her, the gaze of the man with the nice hair when he isn’t attached to someone else — these are all the same expressions, the same feeling, whether on their face or on hers or on the face of the man sitting alone on the bench, staring up towards the sky, loneliness has found them all. She would have never guessed that the man with the great hair, always around another person, would ever be lonely. But here he is, and the look on his face is one that can’t be brought on by a single night of being companionless; it is something that has been there longer and was only hidden beneath the facade of bravado, charm, and popularity.
Mirabelle nibbles on her bread, feeling bad for him. He has really great hair. Is that relevant? No, but she can’t help but notice it repeatedly, and so the fairy lays on her branch, staring at the man who simply sits there, staring at the heavy sky that looms above the both of them.
After about an hour, he gets up, straightens his collar and hair, and then goes off to wherever it is that he spends his nights.
Mirabelle then gets up and gets ready to go to work. She has a surprise in store for the shoemaker, and maybe, with a little effort, if she does it right, she can remove a tinge of sadness from at least one lonely expression in this place.