When Lissa arrived home with her parents from the solstice festival, she was still sending up a fruity cloud of glittering rainbows every time she farted. She had managed to smuggle a few extra party potions home in her pockets and squirreled them away in the trunk at the foot of her bed as soon as she was alone in her room. She wasn't entirely sure what they did since there had been too many kinds for her and Bup to try them all in the short time Tecka had allowed them to occupy the space in front of the refreshments table, but she just knew they'd be fun.
What was more though, they had been magical, and she could feel them working inside her. Probably somewhere deep in Lissa's brain she had connected the idea that if she could focus on how the magic felt she might be able to figure out how to activate her amazingly awesome magical powers early, but mostly she just thought it felt really cool and focused on the internal sensations because they were new and pleasant and interesting. She changed into her night clothes and got under the covers. Tecka and Drust came in to tuck her in bed and kiss her good night, resulting in many giggles and snuggles, but Lissa was too distracted with her own thoughts to insist that Tecka tell her a Lost Treasure story.
When her bedroom door closed and the only light in the room was a tiny bit of crescent moon's light from between the shutters and warm firelight only just seeping in from beneath her bedroom door, Lissa payed close attention to how her body felt. The several weeks her parents had spent asking her in several different ways why she was frustrated back in the autumn had been genuinely helpful in beginning to teach her about self-awareness and how to pay attention to her emotions and the signs and signals from her body. In this case, it wasn't quite her physical body she was paying attention to. The potions did affect her physical body, but they did it from somewhere next to her body without actually being in her body. The sense she had of that part of her was dull and quiet, like when her foot had been asleep for a long time and she could just barely feel when she poked it with a finger. She pretended that non-physical part of her was her foot and tried to wiggle it.
She farted another strawberry-scented puff of glittering rainbows and giggled, but she didn't think that was related. She tried again to wiggle whatever dull-feeling part of her felt connected to the potions' lingering magics. Nothing. Maybe it was just too numb because it was sleeping like her foot did when she sat on it. Was she sitting on her magic feet? She giggled again. That... was probably silly. It's too bad that Bup hadn't come over for a sleepover, she thought to herself, then she could have asked him right then what magic felt like to him. At least, she thought as she began drifting off to sleep, at least she had figured out what the part of her that felt magic felt like. If she wanted to use magic, she had to be able to sense it first after all.
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As the winter crept toward spring, Lissa learned the difficulty of spinning a consistent weight (that was what her aunt called thickness) in her plies (which was what her aunt called one of the individual threads that were twisted together to make yarn). She had already learned the very basic mechanics of spinning on a drop spindle, but while spindles had their uses, for the size of project that she needed to accomplish, a spinning wheel was the only way to produce the amount needed in a reasonable time frame. Her aunt's collection of spinning wheels were big and small; contained pointed spindles and skinny or fat orifices; used bobbin tension or double drive tension; had one treadle or two treadles; those that could fold up for travel and those that were heavier than than Lissa. The seven wheels each had their uses and there was very little overlap in the particulars of each one. Eventually, her aunt would probably teach her all the ins and outs of each machine; for this project, however, Igmi had set little Lissa in front of her shortest wheel.
The wheel was actually comparable in height for Lissa as if she had been an adult sitting at one of the taller wheels. It had two treadles, the special name of the pedals for her feet, making it easier for her to control her starting and stopping, which she found herself needing to do quite often at the beginning. Before she was allowed to start with the wool top she had combed herself, Lissa had been given a few ounces of similarly prepared wool that wouldn't be missed if she horribly butchered spinning it. She did.
Her first attempts at using the wheel had been a horrible mess of poor tension and poor technique. From across the room, it had looked to Igmi like Lissa was trying to wrestle a hooked leviathan from the sea rather than spin wool into something useful. The fast spinning wheel had yanked the yarn away from Lissa's fiber supply again, and the end of the yarn disappeared through the orifice to wave at her haughtily from one side of her bobbin as it wound around and around and around. She uncoordinatedly stopped the wheel with her feet on the treadles, and scowled at the tapered point that stuck up from the bobbin like a stubborn monument to its triumph over her.
Igmi had approached then, adjusting the tension on the bobbin to be significantly lighter and instructed Lissa to try again by treadling much slower than she had been. Suddenly spinning became significantly more fun than it had been just moments earlier. After several minutes without the yarn snapping from too much twist or being yanked straight out of the girl's hands, Igmi was satisfied that she could begin on her larger project.
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Lissa began by filling as many bobbins as was required with the tightly spun wool. Aunt Igmi had shown her what a worsted spin meant, and she was busy executing her aunt's instructions. She never let the twist coming from the wheel enter directly into her fiber supply, but kept a careful hold on her combed top in the fingers of her right hand. With her left hand, she held the junction between spun yarn and fiber supply right at the point of the drafter's triangle. It was extra tedious, requiring her to make short forward drawing motions with her left hand to carefully control when the twist entered the fiber to ensure that the fibers would lay as close to each other as possible without trapping any air in between them. If she did it well, it would create a very dense yarn that would be quite abrasion resistant. It wouldn't be as soft and fluffy as a woolen-spun yarn, but it would create a saddle blanket that would last a lot longer under regular use.
She found she did not enjoy spinning itself as much as she had enjoyed combing the wool, but spinning was taking significantly less time overall than preparing the fiber had. That was good though, since she really didn't have the focus or patience for the spinning work to go on as long as the combing had. It was good for her to know how to spin, Lissa thought, without necessarily choosing to be a [spinner] when she was able to choose a profession.
One afternoon when she was particularly tired of sitting at the wheel, she complained, "I'm tired of spinning, Aunt Igmi!"
Igmi, who had chosen to be a spinner for practical rather than passionate reasons, nodded, "Aye. It can be quite boring at times. Perhaps you just haven't found the things to love about it yet."
The slight woman, who was sitting nearby at a taller wheel working on her own project, stopped spinning and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully.
"You know, Lissa, during your [ancient's blessing], we didn't use up all of the [umbral fur] that you had collected," Igmi said and paused to study the girl's reaction closely.
Lissa's eyes grew wide as saucers, and she slowly turned her head to look at her aunt, the fiber in her hands all but forgotten. "What?" She gasped.
Igmi smiled a tight mischievous smile, "Perhaps, when you're done with the spin for the saddle blankets there, we can pull it out and see what can be done with it."
"YES! YES! YES!" Lissa squealed.
It took Lissa a full ten minutes of running about the workroom to wiggle and squirm the sudden excitement in her body into a manageable state for sitting. Igmi generously let her run around since she wasn't yelling or knocking anything over. At one point, even Uncle Hayzen and Cammind poked their heads in from the next room to see what all the fuss was about, and Igmi quietly explained while Lissa continued to run back and forth, muttering to herself with glee.
When Lissa finally returned to her wheel, she took one look at the half-full basket of the combed top nests she had made and the stack of empty bobbins sitting on posts on the table. She wouldn't finish today, maybe not even this week, but if playing with the [umbral fur] was at the other end of this project, she could, no, she would do it really soon. With renewed vigor, she sat down at her child-height travel wheel, and got to work.
Lissa believed that she would, and that made her right. Within a week and a half, the basket was empty and all of her bobbins were full. All that was left to do was to ply the strands from two bobbins together to make the two-ply yarn that Uncle Hayzen would weave into thick, sturdy saddle blankets. Aunt Igmi reminded her that when plying the strands together, she needed to spin the wheel the opposite direction from the spin on the individual plies. The fibers didn't want to be spun at all, so it was almost like twisting and then untwisting them, and Lissa's goal for this portion of the spin was to create physical balance between the twist she had already put into the plies and the twist she was now taking away by spinning two plies together. It also didn't matter if her bobbins didn't have the same length of thread on them; as soon as she finished one thread, she could attach the end of the thread on another bobbin by intertwining the two ends and carry on. That was good, because none of her bobbins ended at the same time. Not one.
Before she began, Igmi helped Lissa to adjust the settings on the wheel for the plying process, explaining why she was making each adjustment. She adjusted the tension on the bobbin again, tightening the high-friction twine that wrapped about the end of the bobbin. This would help the uptake of the bobbin as Lissa spun the two plies together, preventing them from becoming over twisted. She also changed the position of the leather drive band that transferred the girl's treadling power to the bobbin and the flyer that added the spin to the fiber. Igmi moved the drive band to a larger whorl, a disc with a groove along its outer circumference for the drive band to sit against, so that it would also perform fewer revolutions for each time Lissa treadled. Lastly, she added a little bit of grease to the hinges and contact points, which had begun to sound more than they ought to.
Satisfied with the wheel's setup, Igmi stepped back and watched Lissa work for a few minutes. The girl had really come a long way, and she was quite impressed with her ability at such a young age and complete lack [skills] from a profession. Despite her complaints and frequent distractions, the dexterous child was a natural. Perhaps after they were done here, and engaged in an exploration of the promised [umbral fur] reward, Lissa ought to explore a bit of weaving with Hayzen as well. And there were other things besides weaving and spinning to do with yarn and thread. Igmi didn't often have time for those disciplines, but that didn't mean she couldn't take the time to show Lissa if she was interested.
The girl was treadling away on her small wheel, making quick work of the remaining steps for her portion of the work on the saddle blankets. The sooner she was done with all of this, the sooner she could play with that strange, soft, inky fur that had given her some of her own magic. Maybe, just maybe, that would mean something magical for what she could make with it.