He’d spend all morning preparing for his lesson. The evening before had ticked by while he organized his various things in his clearing; in the roots of one of the myriad trees that sheltered him ever so slightly from winds and damp rains, he’d found a hollow, about four inches wide by six deep, a large enough storage compartment to fit his gourd down into for the most part alongside his random collection of small, decorative shells and two glass flowers.

The vines now hung from the low lying branches of a tree across the way from the one with the root compartment, some branches of the drift wood laying across the branches of a mostly bald pine tree (bald, because he’d stripped the branches so) and others buried in the ground at the foot of the tree, absorbing the moisture in the ground to remain pliable. His carrying rope, ends frayed and mostly for the use of example at this point, dangles from a branch on the same tree, occasionally shifting in the breeze.

Occasionally while he worked, he discovered a stone or two that had tumbled loose, depositing them in his collection; once all the clearing seemed suitable for company, he set out in the early dawn towards a copse of pine trees to the far eastern border of the land, a good hours walk from his clearing and another hour back, his conch shell for gathering sap held lightly in his teeth. He’d learned, quite quickly the day he’d been finding them, actually, that the shells were fragile and crushed quite easily if he exerted too much pressure, and so it was with a delicateness not truly befitting a stag of his size and build that he scrapes the chunks of sap loose from the tree bark, filling the conch slowly. Occasionally, he has to set it down, grasping a leaf between his lips to press the sticky substance down and not leave his lips bitter and numb from the sticky goo he needed to teach with.

When the shell is full, he returns to his clearing, the morning sun at an angle that suggests it will be at its total height in a few hours. The large, flat slate of stone that he often uses to rest small objects on while working becomes his table where the shell sits and warms in the sun, the sap dripping down into a liquid soup over the next hour as the rays of light heat and soften it, and all the while he totters about making finishing touches on his area of habitation.

Once there is absolutely nothing to delay the inevitable anymore, he pauses and looks solemnly about his clearing, feeling the same well of nerves that had sent him into a midnight cleaning fit rising up inside of him.

Dammit Aaron, he thinks.

"Craftsmen!" he calls, voice deep and resonating as it perforates the serenity of the Edge, "we’ve a project to work on together."



[ OOC: Anyone interested in learning how to make VERY basic rope is welcome! This lesson does not require magic and is open to any class Tier 3 and 4 member as well as unranked members. This project will lead to character opportunities such as: “inventing” tar, “inventing” rope treatments, ect.; I’ve already done all the research on how to go about creating this things from natural objects with no magic and will happily talk you through it. :D He will also be mentioning plans to deconstruct the wall and reuse the glass for later projects. I’ve tagged the Craftsmen and anyone who personally contacted me about wanting to come. ]

@[Destrier], @[Semira], @[Nasreen]

Two came, at least obviously.

The first is a mare he does not know, adorned with wings and graced with deep chestnut coloring highlighted by large patches of white. She is very similar in color to his mother, something that draws a slight pang of melancholy and homesickness in his chest, but it is less than that which plagued him when he first came to this land, more of a sweet memory pooled in the lost days of his youth; he smiles at the pegasus mare, his awkwardness evident in the aimless fidgeting of his hooves and the way he occasionally dips his lips to scoot the shell to and fro on the stone.

The second is his friend, Semira, who is greeted with a much more comfortable gesture of welcome than Nasreen for the simple fact that he knows her; his dark lips smile and his head nods hello, hails and greetings rising from the two women who have come to join him in his lesson. A sigh of relief almost escapes him as he realizes that these two seem to be all the company he will have for the afternoon, a lot of the worry and pressure placed on him in his delusions of having to teach a large fold of students easing in the comfort of knowing it would only be one stranger on this day instead of many.

His muscles ease, his face slacks in its tension, and, much more easily than he had thought, the words come to him. "Welcome, I’m Dragomir, as you may have guessed from Semira," his smile turns to the painted pegasus and then to his friend, large frame stepping a few feet to the side as he grabs his rope from the branches holding the vines, dropping it down on the stone alongside the sap.

"I called everyone here to discuss the remains of the wall, but also to teach how to create this," he gestures down at the stone and rope with his muzzle, his smile flickering in the corners in his doubts that this will be interesting enough to merit a lesson, much less enthusiasm, "its rope made from vines, seemingly useless until you start testing the strength of it. I cannot give you the magic of the Moon, but I can teach what I know of using things that grow and exist around you to create without Godly assistance."

A sound outside the clearing causes his blue eyes to dart towards the source, at first thinking that it is only someone passing by until a familiar collection of dual colors catches his eyes in the shrubbery and causes his smile to most immediately vanish and his ears to fall back ever so slightly atop his head. He wonders if he should call to her, to invite her in, but the thought is painful, invoking the sharp pains of his broken heart, and he quickly returns his eyes to the stone table in front of him. Still, it doesn’t seem right to leave the Queen of his herd standing alone on the outskirts, even if she has wounded him unintentionally; it is not her fault he is unworthy of her admiration, for Dragomir, as young and naïve as he might be, understands that he cannot change anything outside of himself, especially as complex a thing as a woman’s heart.

He knows that, while he is filled with sorrow when he looks upon her, that Kahlua is still and always will be his friend. He cannot deny her that.

"Kahlua," he says softly, slowly lifting his eyes back to the poorly hidden figure of the painted damsel who had so sweetly captured him and riddled that cage with hopeless desire, "it’s not so intimidating a project you must hide from it." His laugh is short and bouncing, the sound deflated by the inner conflicts he seems to constantly have brewing within him, but it is sufficient enough to hide the outcry of his wounded spirit and is friendly enough as to seem a true, welcoming invitation to join them.

"Grab a fresh vine, everyone," he says, a pause filtering into his actions to allow Kahlua to join them if she chose but not a long enough one to make her feel pressured or focused on, the seamless transition from coaxing to teaching one that may seem wise and intuitive but is truly the stallion trying to hide his own writhing heart from the eyes of his students and companions. His stride is long as he moves again to the tree, pulling down a moderate length of vine and setting it on the ground before him, rolling a stone towards him from around the base of the large, nature made table and then balancing an end of the plant matter on the single stones surface. "You’ll need something to crush it over," he begins, lifting one large hoof over the vine and pressing down, adding slight agitation to the pressure of his weight by wiggling the hoof ever so slightly back and forth, "press down to hold it firmly against your crushing surface. The aim is to separate the individual fibers enough to make several strands from the single vine. Take your time and do not press to hard or you will tear the fibers lengthwise and lessen the efficacy of your final product." As he speaks, he works, occasionally dropping his muzzle down to fan out the individual, string like strands of the vine as it separates, letting the others look when they wanted and aspiring to remain as helpful as he could.

As everyone settled into their work, Dragomir tried his best to pour his focus into his own vine and not on the fact that the woman he wanted but could not have was just over there. It seemed that fate would have them be near each other, but it was painful, and he wonders as he steps away from his work to look upon what the others are doing why it is the Gods find it so fitting to cause angst in him. His partially finished vine is grasped in his dark lips to help show the others more personally how to do it.

He pauses before Nasreen and looks down at her vine after setting his on a nearby stone so she can watch him, seeing the same overworking on the first bit of the length that had existed on his own; he smiles fondly in light of her admittance that she feels as if she’s not doing a very good job, seeing so much of his own fears in that statement that he cannot help but feel almost instantaneous kinship with the russet and ivory mare. Kahlua’s voice softly sends praise and assurance, for which he is grateful – but also feels another deep pang within himself at the sweet sound of her kindness. Kahlua asks a question as well, but it is Nasreen he answers first after a quick glance and fleeting, meager grin is given to the Queen.

"I’ve been practicing for the last week or so," he explains, his deep voice rolling and patient, "you’re doing well. The trick is to keep the weight even across the hoof as you press and grind into it so it doesn’t break the natural fibers." He demonstrates as he talks, his large hoof settling down and pressing firmly into it for grip at first before he starts to waggle it.

"I came up with the idea watching the trees," he answers with a deep, rumbling chuckle, finding the notion much more amusing now that he said it out loud than it had been at the time, "a branch would break a single vine as it fell from above, but many vines would hold it. I began to wonder if it was possible to make the strength of many vines into the size of one." He lifts his face from his work, turning to look more fully at the woman who had stolen his heart and that, to his best knowledge, had simply tossed it into the sea.

It is all he has to remain straight faced, more cold than he usually was when facing his friend but finding no better way to deal with talking to her at this time. "When I started collecting the vines, I noticed they were made of many smaller strands and began my trial pieces from there," taking a few long steps to where the completed rope hung from the branches above, he admires it and the quickness with which he’d figured out how to make his idea function fills him with pride, "I thought it might make it stronger if I braided them, but it was a tedious process and I nearly tangled my first vine into a useless knot trying. So we have this method, which works. This rope can hold much more weight than it could as a vine."

He smiles quite happily as he notes that Nasreen’s work improves now that she has seen the technique he has been using more closely; it had already been good enough to work into a rope, albeit a lumpy one, but the next twine she started on would be as good if not better than the first one that he had made once he’d figured out the best way to apply his hooves to the stuff to break it apart.

His grin only grows as the two ladies almost mimic each other, like sisters – a humorous note of the flow of the conversation that lightens his resentment towards the Queen slightly, eases the way his chest hurts when he looks at her. She will always be beautiful and perfect, he decides – it is only his own fault that it hurts so badly, after all. He’d known better when he met her, a foolish boy with foolish dreams and a young, naïve heart, and while the sting does not immediately reside, he resolves within himself that on this day, he will not let it bother him, or diminish his desire for her to love him in whatever small ways he could win such things.

Even if it was only friendship and a professional tie through their duties to their herd mates that he could hold close to himself, it was enough; no man spent his life weeping over the one that got away unless he was to become a very lonely, very miserable hermit somewhere far off from the nearest smiling face.

While he doesn’t seek out companionship actively, his time in Helovia has slowly crafted him from a solitary child raised in island seclusion to a mildly social creature, not that he felt any more comfortable in large gatherings or around those he did not know; but he finds that he derives great pleasure from being among those who are coming to be considered his friends, and that life would be rather droll and empty without their occasional interruptions to his winding thoughts and never ending inquiries on life.

He bends down to gesture with his nose and work as he explains after gathering his own separated twine and laying it on the ground between the two mares so both could look without stepping away from their current tasks. "Grab the end nearest to you and separate a chunk of the twine away like this," his teeth grasp the unbound tethers and fan out the ends, taking about a quarter of the material and tugging down, pressing the top end he wasn’t pulling free down with his hoof and moving it down as he loosened the strands, "some will fight you a bit, but just tug the fiber free until you have a separate collection of strings. Then do it again, until you have four strands instead of one."

And he did as he instructed them to do, moving slowly so they could watch and taking time to glance up every so often with inquiring eyes to see if they had questions.

@[Nasreen]

The conversation drifting over their work turns to another kingdom, somewhere he has never heard of. "Thank you," rumbles his deep voice, and he smiles brightly in return to his fellow crafter’s complement, feeling it sift through the strands of his heart with warmth that resonates whenever he feels useful or proud. In this case, it is both, and the wonderful sensation of being good at his job filters through him as he takes in the name of where Nasreen must be from: Th’orqui.

It was an odd name, and he repeats it mentally a few times and ponders as to what size it must be if there was an entire branch of craftsmen dedicated to just making rope. His talents where stretched across an array of areas, from the rope they made now to the glass magic that he wielded, and his work was truly only limited to his imagination and drive. That Th’orqui was so great a kingdom that there were actual classes of craftsmen to join ranks with was a titillating thought, indeed; he wondered what other trades were available there, and if it was far away.

While the thought of leaving the Edge was painful, the lure of knowledge he couldn’t find in Helovia was a bright one. He lets the thought settle into the back of his mind, washed away as he recalls his friends and the sure weariness that would come from such a journey. The heartache of being gone from home had taken him once, and while he had survived, he’d rather not do it again.

Even if it meant he stayed a simple glass worker, a few odd trades on the side.

Kahlua is asking questions instead of him, which he’s happy for. All the talking has been focused around study until now, and he’s glad to have a brief break from waggling his tongue around his mouth. While he is capable of speaking with clarity and intelligence, and will do so if necessary, he’d rather just hang back and listen to the easy flow of friends having a conversation that includes him only because he’s standing there.

While chatter of the land Nasreen had left filled his clearing, he wanders of with an ear tilted to the interesting conversation towards his center stone, grabbing a shell in his mouth and placing it nearby Kahlua, visible and out of the way so she wouldn’t accidentally spill it; he repeats the action until all those present and working have a medium sized shell filled with a scoop of sticky, sun heated sap.

Working his tongue on the rough of his mouth to get the terrible taste out, he patiently waits for the ladies to finish separating the strands of their vine so he can explain what the sap is for and show them how to use it.

@[Nasreen], @[Kahlua]
Late tag because I fail at remembering to do things xD
Unarchived to finish the lesson. <3