I'm tying decorative knots for fun and to sell. They're not fast projects, but they're faster than making clothing and then trying to tailor it to anyone who says they want to buy it.
That's what I'm doing. In the long run it's more profitable to sell a set of robes than it is to make decorations, but in the meantime there are people who won't buy the robes for this reason or that, and you still have to pull the robes in or let them out so that the clients can see what they'll look like.
We could just make robes, sell them, then the clientele can take it to a tailor if they need it resized. So one of them can make the robes, one of them can tailor them, then --
I don't like being pretty. I don't know why everyone says that the god's blessed me with such good looks, surely I must have great talent. I don't. I've never been able to understand the insights. The others can feel something, and when they meditate on the feeling it expands their souls and their thoughts. I don't feel that.
I feel that I should be rewarded for doing well. There are several other people who have attained the same level of enlightenment, true, but just because what we do has been reproduced doesn't mean we worked any less hard for it! It's not like we do everything exactly the same.
The same ingredients cooked in the same manner can yield drastically different results depending on how they're prepared. That's why I'm a better disciple. The others in my class fail to even produce the most basic poison, and I can turn the same ingredients into a multitude of elixirs, poultices, pills, potions, and more!
Why can't they sleep outside of their stupid clothes houses? If they laid outside it'd be so much easier to slit their throats. I can go into their smelly folding houses and slit their throats to silence their obnoxious snoring, but that doesn't improve the smell. And it's too much work.
Am I high? Or sick? I don't feel bad, per se, just disoriented. Nothing makes sense. I'm supposed to help bring in money, but I don't have the patience or mind to make a single uniform set of robes, so I make decorative charms to sell to people visiting our clan. But I have no talent whatsoever. I have nothing. Just my face. I want to scar it, but I'm tired of everyone saying I should be more like my younger sister. Be kinder. Be gentler. When do they ever tell the others to work more diligently on completing the basics before they try to develope their own styles or twists on the styles we've already mastered. There are manuals that explain the poisons and these idiots can't even keep my family safe. Our parents have gone on a mission, conscripted to raid a treasure, but I haven't made silk in a while. Like, everything makes sense when I think it, as I remember it, but when I try to remember what I said after I made it, I can't.
Needs more salt.
But we don't have any. We were part of a good family, contributors to the clan, then the elders conscripted several members for a sealed treasure mission and our parents had been killed. They were kind initially, giving us the support we were due, but when we refused to give away our family technique, to sell it like a trinket, suddenly our family's past contributions no longer mattered. Suddenly we were leeches abusing the good nature of our clansmen. They took our home, and would have claimed the things we were forced to leave behind if, brave, angry Thorn Needle hadn't put a torch to it.
I stagger to my feet and look down at my hands. They're on the ground. Am I on all fours? Six. Feet. My hands are my feet. Are my feet my hands? This is bad. I need to go to the kitchen, but they'll put me in a pot and cook me. Will they sell me for the money they need to pay rent? It's easier living in the woods. But they don't have the same resistance to heat. I don't. We? They. They who? Whoever they we me us am are, food. Need food. I ignore my spinning thoughts, muscle memory leading me to the kitchen. But I'm outside. Did I go to bed? I was in a bed. But I woke up on the floor. Did I put me on the floor instead of the bed to make a point? Did I bathe before I went to bed? That might be why I was on the floor.
I wash up before heading to the kitchen. No matter what, we have to be presentable. They want to see us fail. They want to see us desperate. We will get our revenge by living honest, clean, fulfilling lives. They will look for our tears and burn in the radiance of our smiles. Let them suffer in our happiness. Resolve strengthened I try to remember where the table is. I don't have a table. I used to have a lot but Woodcock stole it. And murdered his village maybe. City. Golden Rivers. I'm Sandy. I remember being Woven Moon Silk and three of her sisters. Their youngest was given to a family affiliated with their family. The girls couldn't work and raise a child when they were children themselves.
Do I have any happy memories? Fack! Or is that what being a cultivator is about? Hardship and perseverance. Jeebus... Even when you can make your own shit there's gonna be someone who comes by and tries to take it, destroy it, or it's so far beneath their notice the destroy it or ignore you completely. Huh. I pull down a stew pot and climb into shiver thorn jelly. Fack. My head's a little clearer. Well, my thoughts are clearer. Well, the thoughts in my head are clearer, regardless of who they belong to. I dump the jelly and some berries into the mills, thinning it with juices, add water, jump in and swish around until it's mixed, then put it on a sigil before cleaning myself up, eating greenery and veg cake as I go.
Once I'm clean enough I put on some more veg and fish cakes, because they're simple and they can feed all of us for a long time. Or just me for a little while. Then it's a more full groom while I try to process what the fuck. Is this indigestion? Ate too many souls too closely together and now I've got spiritual acid reflux. Fascinating. I unbank a pot of stew, just to be sure, and sip the stew off the top, trying to be clean. To be neat. I'm tempted to jump into the stew, but I've groomed so much already.
I can't not compare it to stew I've eaten before. In my head I know the vegetables, fungi, fruit, and leaves I've put in my food shouldn't taste like this. The disconnect is insane. 'Cause some of the stuff I thought were root veggies were, fack, are fungi. Or fruit. Some of the things I thought were berries are herbs. So some of my favorite combinations are, to hunan palates, dry fish, bitter herbs, highly poisonous, and hard fungus. But they taste delicious to me.
I think of weaving, the movements of the shuttle, pulling the threads together, the strength and coordination needed to keep it tight enough, straight enough, without distorting the pattern. The Cutting Board opens and I'm horrified, shocked, impressed, and proud AF. I've made so much silk. As an individual. There are clans and companies that have made so much more over the years, but for the years I was producing, for the few short years I was alive and all the stuff I made. I was at the top of the rankings for a short while. Oh, shit. I've been losing reputation for using my silk for combat. The fact that I'm not producing it as an actual product? Shame on me!
Fuck off. I'm gonna keep making mats that no one gets to see, 'cause that's what's keeping me alive, fuckers! I flick through the windows to find out what I've earned and how long I've got it for. Combat? Wasn't much combat oriented. Weird how I can think of all the violence as just gathering food versus pitting myself against an opponent or honing my skills, 'cause I was honing my skills to get that sweet, sweet nomnom. So... Topped the charts, as an individual, for individuals and groups, for years. Production picking up during my dying times.
Fuck the triplets. Fuck Shimmering Steel. Fuck Thousand shitty Valleys. I'm not just going to eat the triplets. I'm going to find out where all of the Thousand Valleys' holdings are and eat those, too. If they try to stop me I'll go after the ones they expanded into due to my produce. They could have kept their holdings at the levels they were at and I would've kept producing, they could save up for the hard times, but no. They worked me to death, repeatedly, and then expanded, needed to keep that shit up, and kept pushing.
I click through the screens, looking for a way to redeem my rewards, and wind up at a screen full of completes that haven't been acknowledged. Fuck you, shitty ass advisors spending my student points for "The Greater Good". I try to complete them as quickly as possible, hoping that being more me will balance out the rest of the stuff I'm digesting. I'm a little afraid that finishing the producer stuff will strengthen the sisters, but rewards.
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Producer
Produce Silk
You've produced Silk!
Achievement 100+
Elemental Producer
Produce Elemental Silk
You've produced Elemental Silk!
Achievement 50+
Top Elemental Producer I
Reach Top 1000
You've become a Top 1000 Producer!
Achievement 100+
Top Elemental Producer II
Reach Top 100
You've become a Top 100 Producer!
Achievement 100+
Top Elemental Producer III
Reach Top 10
You've become a Top 10 Producer!
Achievement 100+
Top Producer I
Reach Top 1000
You've become a Top 1000 Producer!
Achievement 100+
Top Producer II
Reach Top 100
You've become a Top 100 Producer!
Achievement 100+
Top Producer III
Reach Top 10
You've become a Top 10 Producer!
Achievement 100+
Silky
Reach Top 10 Material Producer
You've become a Top 10 Material Producer!
Achievement 100+
Weaver
Produce Fabric
You've Produced Fabric!
Achievement 100+
Top Weaver I
Reach Top 1000
You've become a Top 1000 Producer!
Achievement 100+
The spam from the notifications is being blocked out by all the popups that I have to close. I got cheese! What can I do with it? I never did learn to redeem the points. I could buy a calendar --. Don't need one. Um... I can check?
Too much work. I close the window and focus on me, and I don't see me lounging. Usually I'm lounging. Laying down propped up. Now it's mostly my hunan body. But there's too much. Too many eyes, and they don't all look like mine, but they're familiar. I've had them or seen them, and they're not confined to my head. Too many arms, sprouting from my shadow, from the jars, hanging from my jewellery. My profile is distorted, shaded, not quite human in my hunan form, but not like my mutated bug cultivator form.
And there's a grin, just a long thin crescent, a slash across my face curling upwards, lightly, at the corners. And it's glowing red, but the red light doesn't light up anything else, and I'm grateful. This silent, usually lethargic, usually dismissive representation of my ability to store things, chuckles. The sound, like several people trying to hit the same notes in sync and almost getting it. This me that isn't me, is so honest I'm sick with the realization that I didn't just kill people. I did it without thinking about it, they weren't all a threat to me, and I didn't just drain their essence, I practiced consuming them. The thing that lets them fill in their spot in how things are. I did it over and over and over, and the way I did it was flawed.
I need to work on me, and my technique. I'm ranting so much to myself about how other people were manipulating me, using me, warping me, making me into something other, and then I do this? The world of cultivators is full of death, but it's also a refinement of one's self. I can be anything I can make myself be. Why would I make me be other people? I need to digest. I did eat too much, too soon, with no consideration to the consequences. Now I've got indigestion and a corrupted spirit.
Come to think of it, shouldn't this be worse? I've dragged over five other people to occupy my spot because of something I messed up, and I've just got some weird indigestion? Some weird mismash of them and me, and I still find myself? Having them as part of me doesn't feel off. It's just, again, that there are too many.
I need to make a shrine to Silent Howl. Because of his meddling having multiple spirits really does not bother me. I need to digest them, yeah, but, mentally, being influenced by random thoughts and feelings I don't understand that are somehow stronger and more subtle than intuition or intrusive thoughts is normal. There's just too many.
I close the windows, the notifications already gone from the corner of my vision, and groom myself. I'm not dirty again, but it's always been a way for me to center myself, to find myself in my own body. Even when I was not okay with the legs and eyes -- a quick flash of the WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?! at the thought of my squishy grubby body, -- I could groom and feel content that I might not be okay, but I'm okay. I'm not hurt, I don't owe anyone shit other than acknowledgement of how they helped me develope into who I am now, and I've got food. So much food. And a nice house that I don't have to pay taxes on. Well, not to someone else, I have to pay energy unless that's going to some bank bug god in which case I EARNED THIS! I look around, waiting for a response, then slowly go back to grooming, my guard still up.
Things aren't easy, they could be worse, but I'm doing alright. No, I don't have to worry about siblings, those aren't my siblings and they're not my responsibility. Yes, I'm pretty, and it is a blessing, but it's something to be used as things come along, but not something I want to try to hone. I need to Get Gud and being able to coax people into picking me up by looking harmless, even when I develop into someone, something that's not, will be a boon. I am me. I am influenced by those I interact with, but I can still remain me. I have a choice.
And if anyone tries to change me from the me I want to be I can just eat them.