Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

After Padraig had arrived home, Faith had to admit that she felt better. Emotionally, of course, that went without saying, but physically too. She'd slept more soundly than she had since he'd left and, whilst she continued to feel sick, she hadn't actually vomited and was keeping what food she ate down. So, whilst it was a struggle to eat, she ate and they started to slowly get back into their routine. Or, whatever passed for a routine for them with the impending birth of their child. By Faith's reckoning, there were maybe eighty trials until she was due to give birth. That was doable. "I'm doing my best, you know," she said conversationally to the swelling of her stomach, "to make that a very nice place. As much good food as I can manage, and I don't poke you back when you kick me. So, you just stay there awhile and all will be well." She was excited for the baby to be here, but just lately Faith had started to think about the actual birth.

This pregnancy had shown her that her pregnancy with Rose had been, as she had suspected, an illusion. It had been the stereotype of pregnancy, for her. As a medic, she understood pregnancy in an observed way ~ yes, women got tired, they said they were emotional, that kind of thing. But this time around, Faith would have to admit that it was nothing like she'd experienced before and, when she looked back at Rose's birth it, too, was textbook. All of this combined to make her a little worried about what birth would actually be like. Not that worrying about it would make a difference, but it was all she could do. She'd read every book, been there and delivered no end of babies, even had an illusionary birth of her own. She was as prepared as she was going to be.

So why did she feel so very, incredibly, woefully unprepared?

Sighing, she pulled the wood around her. She'd bought this to make a chest for Arlo. She was going to make him a few things, to say thank you. He'd been kind to her when she'd turned up at his camp and he'd covered for her on the Immortals' Tongue when they'd gone there as part of their qualification. Somewhere along the line and she wasn't quite sure where, he'd graduated from someone who might be a friend to someone who was. So, she'd decided that she was going to make him things and a chest to put them in. With a desire to personalise it, she'd thought about how to do that and then, had decided to use the scenes they'd seen drawn on a cave wall on Immortals' Tongue. It was, after all, the earliest form of storytelling. That worked, so Faith got herself and the area where she was working sorted, and was ready to start.

The first thing that she wanted to do was to make sure that the sizing of the engraving would work. It needed to fit, one scene per side of the chest and all be a uniform height, so that required some calculation and adjustment. She did that, then traced it out on to the wood itself. Faith was slow, careful and meticulous as she always was with everything she did and she looked up and smiled as Katie came into the room where she was. "Is everything alright?" Faith asked, still more than a little twitchy about Padraig, who had only arrived home two trials ago. He was thin and gaunt, injured and hungry. He was, fundamentally, emotionally and physically exhausted and Faith had fussed about getting him to rest, to eat. To bath. "Everything's fine, little doll. What are you doing?"

"I'm making a chest. For Arlo, to say thank you. I'm going to put some blankets in it, when I've made them. One to keep him warm and the other to keep him cool." Katie nodded at Faith's explanation. It was the first thing she'd made that hadn't been for the baby since she'd discovered she was pregnant, so Katie knew that it must be important to her. "Your friend, the one who helped you?" Katie questioned and Faith nodded. Katie said nothing more, just sat and sipped her tea. She'd put a cup down for Faith, too.

In truth, Katie was worried about Faith. Cyrus was, too, and they were both concerned about Padraig, too. But the pregnancy gave an added dimension to the situation with the former slave, so Katie just sat and sipped her tea, watching Faith work. The two of them had spent a lot of time together since Padraig had left on the expedition, making clothes for Bun, bedding and all sorts of things. Faith got on with what she was doing, measuring and then transferring measurements between the parchment and on to small notes on the wood itself, then back again. She checked and checked again. "I'm going to use a mortice and tenon joint," she said. She knew Katie didn't know but then the two women had fallen into a sort of routine, and Katie knew Faith's need to remain practical, pragmatic and factual.

"It's where there is a piece taken out of one piece of wood, and a corresponding piece juts out of the other piece, they fit together. If I can get it just right, totally accurate, then it's incredibly secure. The two pieces fit together perfectly, when it's done right." She was working as she spoke, explaining it to Katie. It was why she measured so much, Faith explained. Katie nodded, "it sounds like you and Pad." Faith looked up in surprise, a question on her face. "The joint you're talking about," Katie said, "it sounds like you two. How are you, little doll?"

Faith breathed in and smiled, "I'm fine," she said, her hands moving to the tenon part of the mortice and tenon joint. She was sanding it, carefully, making sure that even the sanding was in the same direction when the two parts fitted together. "I will be. It's been... it's been hard. People seem to keep trying to separate us and it's when we are separated that I am not fine. There's nothing I can't do when I'm with him." She looked down at the two pieces of wood. "Nothing."

Putting the two pieces together, Faith smiled and looked at Katie. "Even a mortice and tenon joint. See?" She smiled at the woman who made Cyrus so very happy and showed her where she'd needed to sand to a minute amount, but the difference it made, how the joint being flush meant that there was no gaps, it would be less likely to take in water and so on. Fundamentally, Faith said, a good join made a piece of furniture, as much as a bad join destroyed it. Katie just nodded.

The chest was coming together and Faith just had to do the engraving now. It was a nice piece, she had to admit, and she was pleased with it. She and Katie had chatted about this, and that, and nothing at all. There was something on Katie's mind, Faith knew, but the woman would ask it when she was ready. As Faith lowered her head with the fine-tipped chisel and small, lightweight mallet which allowed her to work in detail, the question came. "I suppose, as a slave, you grew used to being so concerned with everyone else that you don't focus on yourself?" Katie asked and Faith considered it carefully. She maintained her focus on the carving, carefully taking away tiny pieces at a time and wiping away detritus every few moments, too, keeping the space she was working on clean.

"It was... there was a very limited notion of self. I spent the first seventeen arcs of my life with no name, referring to myself as 'this slave'. It was about being an object." The first time they'd met, she told Katie with a smile, she had curtsied to Padraig. He had asked her, what would be an appropriate response. She'd told him none. "To do so, I explained, would be like whistling back to a kettle or barking back to a dog." Then, of course, there had been the teapot analogy when he had asked her if she was really wearing those clothes on a journey picking herbs in the woods. A teapot was not to be blamed for the teacosy placed on it. Katie shook her head. "I find it hard to understand that, Faith. I find it hard with Luna, but with you? You seem a million miles away from that, now."

"I am," Faith said, carefully following the line she had drawn to frame the engraving she was making. She used a more flat head chisel for that, because she liked the effect it had on the finished piece. "I wouldn't change my childhood. It made me who I am and I am who he loves, but I am not that person any more." Katie wondered at the young woman. So calm and collected, not yet twenty arcs old, Katie watched her and tried to put in to words her worry. Before she could, though, Faith smiled. "But Katie, I am not and have never been a slave to him. I never.. from the moment we met, I was just me. With him, I have always been. I don't hide things from him.We talk, about everything. There are no secrets." Katie was worried, Faith thought, about Padraig and her, they were both very private people, but she needed to know that.

After she had put the finishing touches to the carving, Faith moved on to final sanding. This was done with the incredibly fine sandpaper and she focused on it carefully. "It took time," she said with a smile to Katie, just a quick flick of a gaze to the woman. "Took some balancing acts and miscommunication, but there are no secrets between us now. Everything about him is mine, everything about me is his. Even our pains and hurt. We can't be any other way." Katie sat back and looked at the young woman. "Then it will just take the two of you some time, I suppose." Katie said and Faith nodded. That was fine, the young human said, they had all of that. Then, with a twinkle of mirth in her eyes, she held up two varnishes. "Light or dark?" Katie looked at the chest and then at the varnish. "Light"

Nodding her head and getting the small brush to start on the detailed varnish before she moved to the more broad-stroke of the main piece, Faith nodded. "Good choice."

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