Once he had decided on a project, it didn’t take him long to begin on the work that would accomplish it; he had gone home the day he had met Sheba and spent the evening pondering the best way to fashion glass globes which would hang from the mane, and after making a miniature test bauble and some slender twine the day following that (now resting among his random bits and pieces in his root notch) he had gone to bed with great enthusiasm for this morning, when Sheba was to return to pick up her gifts.

As soon as the sun was in view he had been up and about, first fashioning the orbs themselves from his usual working stone, propping them up and keeping them from rolling off the surface with several long sticks he’d rested around the border of the stone. When he’d made three of the glass objects, satisfied with their thickness and color (he hadn’t tinted the glass to allow the color of whatever was in them to shine more obviously) and testing the diameter of their mouths with a few of his own stones. The rim would easily fit in most small collectables, including feathers and flowers and gemstones, and he hummed quietly to himself as he turned away from the baubles with satisfaction writ all across his features.

Digging his massive hoof into the soft earth where he had buried his driftwood, he pulls up a piece and drags it to the stone, finding the diameter of the branches too slender to properly plug the tops and sighing ever so slightly in the midst of his quietly mumbled song. Returning the improper piece to the hole he reburies it and uncovers another, dragging it to the stone and smiling happily to discover that it has a fair sized branch of the perfect width to fit snugly into the top of the glass.

Working quickly, he digs the point of his toe into the softened wood to create a dip which the wood should break along, moving up the length of the branch for each cork; after he’s sure the rivulets are deep enough, he applies pressure to the wood to break each one free. The first splinters horribly – too much weight to suddenly, he decides, and so more slowly he works on the next and most cleaning completing the last one. The corks are rough on each end but will be easy to grab, and if he understands the properties of the wood well enough, by wedging it down into the bottle while its wet, it should remain snug for the rest of the time she uses them.

He does so, still humming along as he squeaks each closure in place, quickly coming to the last few parts of the project with a smile splitting his face. Drawing his composure once more, he pulls the twine nearer to him and loops it about each to create ties, feeling weariness tug hard on him by the time the third hoop is sealed and ready to be strung through hair.

Attaching them as he had Ranjiri’s beads to his tail, he cleans up the remnants of his work (including reburying the wood) and moves out of his clearing and back towards the part of the wall he had met her at. He wonders if she’ll be able to find it, but decides that if she can’t, he will just walk the wall until he finds her; it doesn’t take much for him to locate specific locations along the structure, but he had also helped make it and had kept watch over its length since then. He understands that others not so used to their home might get lost, but hopes that he won’t have to spend too long searching or waiting with all this enthusiasm pulsing through him.

He arrives to the clearing in which they had met and waits with his smile soft on his face, careful not to swat at the flies with his tail while the baubles are tied into them.

@[Sheba]
OOC: Sheba at first, please, and then others are welcome into the thread if they'd like. He has finished the baubles! Be sure to post it to Character Record's Updates or its like they were never made. :)

Her voice draws his eager eyes to her, their blue depths dazzling with his excitement to show off the finished baubles (and perhaps one of the most complex pieces he’d constructed so far, considering it involved multiple facets rather than just glass). Her smile greets him in all its shining perfection and he tries to return the gesture with his own simple, lopsided grin. "You as well, Ms. Sheba," he says, his nose wrinkling up in good humor and catching the heavily saturated scent of the unicorn mare here in the clearing.

It deepens his smile to know that she has been anxiously awaiting him.

"I’ve got them finished, here," he adds in after a genial nod of his head, sweeping his dark muzzle back towards his tail and grasping at the loose ties that hold the spheres in place. When he turns his face back towards the Arabian built unicorn, his pride is evident in the twinkling that ignites in his eyes and the smile that grows and grows as he waits for her eyes to fall on them.

The glass is simple and clear, not colored; he had figured whatever went in them would add tone to the container and that any tints he added would detract from her collections of small items. He had left a sapphire in one of them as an added gift, not sure why he had done so other than to immediately supply the notion that the three baubles were for storing things which fit into their round mouths.

He settles them down the loamy earth before her, taking a pace back to allow her to look over them at leisure. "I can help you tie them in place, if you need," he offers, skin twitching with his restrained enthusiasm, "they should easily hold stones, feathers, small bones… anything you can fit inside. The corks are softened driftwood and I made the twine myself."

@[Sheba]

He takes in her praise with a giddy pride that leaks from his effervescent blue eyes as he looks at her looking at his creations. She’s close enough to leave a faint mist across the surface of the baubles, and her delight as she looks them over is contagious; he grins broadly, borderline stupidly, eyes keenly watching each ripple of joy that crosses her and the eagerness with which she meets his gaze when he asks if she’d like help tying them in place.

He nods as he steps forward to grasp at her offered mane (cautious not to step on the glass), admiring the work of the braids in her ivory hair and enjoying the sweet, feminine smell that rises from her as he tousles the locks with dark lips. Occasionally dipping his head down to grab one, he works as she talks enthusiastically and with a swift cadence to the words, and he can’t help but keep his smile in place even where it normally vanishes beneath his concentration – of all the things this woman is, beautiful and etched in grace, she is first and foremost a beast of flattery and sweetness, and poor Dragomir is too simple of thought and too naïve to life to assume that her gushing praise is only a tactic to worm her way into his mind and glean his secrets.

It works. Her hidden question is met with raised brows and a quirk to the curvature of his lips as he fastens the second capsule in place, pausing as he finishes to answer the inquiry and to check the balance of the baubles in ensure they looked pretty along with being useful – for he does know that women like to look nice, if nothing else.

"I’m the only Glazier at this time, though I haven’t been for long," he answers, withholding the name of Aaron with a faint sense of defending him from those who he may not wish to know of his name or past, "it’s the Moon’s magic, to create the glass. I haven’t seen what the other herds have been gifted, but I am sure they too have their own unique talents given to them by their Gods."

"I’ve heard something about the Throat utilizing metal," he continues, "but I do not honestly know. I imagine there are also those who have earned their talents on their own, unique things desired in their hearts that were given to them as blessings…magic knows no boundaries but that which our strength of will imposes on it. Anything is possible."



[ OOC: He doesn't know much of the other herds and their crafters, but I did try to give you as much as possible. :D He's quite painfully antisocial lolololol ]
@[Sheba]

He smiles at her mention of going to the Throat, he himself not the sort to so brazenly approach a land owned by a group of individuals unless directed there by his superiors or invited by those within, as he had been to the Edge by Mirage. That he had stayed in one place surprised even him, some days, mostly because he was not really made from the same material as the rest of the people in the Moon’s hold, and often felt like an outcast where he was truly a member of the council and seemingly well liked by most that knew him by name; it wasn’t a true affection, anyway, not with his secrets and the hidden way that he thinks, even as he unlearns the lessons burned into him in his youth and tries his best to become a denizen of peace rather than a creature of a defiled kingdom as Ricochet had been.

That she hasn’t been many other places is something they have in common, and he says as much in reply because he himself is not brave enough to go to the Throat and is unwilling to admit as much in front of the pretty lady. "I’ve really only seen the wilds, and not much at that," of course, in a few weeks, he will see the Falls – but that has not come to pass and so he has nothing in his mind but the images of the old, dark forest with the pool of rubies and the other miraculous places of natural creation that the Earth God had created for them, "and the shrines to the south, of course. I went as soon as I heard of them."

He does not tell of how that same God he so revered for creating the mountains and rivers and valleys had shaken the earth and chased him away that day. He has never told anyone. It is a bit too embarrassing to divulge even if it would make him feel better to hear a good, reasonable explanation for why it had happened other than that he was unworthy of a God’s ignorance, much less kindness, and deserved only wrath.

So is the guilt ridden mind of the young man, studiously dusting the skeletons in his closet to keep the others from noticing them stacked behind his carefully constructed guise of shyness and intelligence – the truth known only by a woman who was gone, dead as far as he knew.

As if she can feel his turn of thoughts and the sadness that begins to fill him where her praise had previously held him up, he looks to her as she lengthily makes her exit, her accent floating her pretty voice up to his ears and drawing him away from the dark waters that lap at the fringes of his conscious. It is only a matter of time until he is alone with his hypocrisy again, and as if she can sense this, too, she loiters in her goodbye, even reaches out to touch him.

He does not flinch, growing used to women and their desire to touch everything and everyone, but instead revels in the delicate way with which she does so, the flicker of surprise that lights her face in the realization that she has reached out to touch him – and it is mirrored in his own features as he takes notice of the fact that his own had extended to meet hers midway, a rather friendly gesture for two mostly strangers and an extremely uncommon one for the introverted stallion.

"It was my pleasure," he mumbles awkwardly as he retracts his nose, his mind hammering away in frantic wonder as to why it is he’d just done that and a cloud of butterflies swirling chaotically through his belly, "come by again if you need anything else." His deep voice is steady despite the riot going on inside him, the stag quite used to dealing with the frustrating and insane things that women do to him and the never ending wonder as to whether it is this way for all men. His father had never said a thing about it.

"Goodbye," he finishes while watching her go, the tangled mess of his thoughts writhing like a ball of snakes behind the innocent and almost emotionless expression that lines his simple face.

@[Sheba]