Mid Second Cycle, Low Season 20672
Well, hmm…
Sorry I disappeared for so long. Moving to another city, changing jobs (with some weeks at 90+ hours… because I decided to mind…)… Now I’m finally back to a reasonable rhythm in my own place.
But even then, that’s not really the most important reason… I mean, it played a role of course, but I must say the hardest part has been to find something Ailith could say about those projects, that has stumped me for a long time… Every time I thought about it and nothing came to me…
This time however, I’m taking the bull by the horns and all that, and I’ll write something. Won’t be the best thing ever, but at least it’ll be better than nothing and get us unstuck.
Ailith hesitated for quite some time. Not that she had nothing to say on the projects, but that for the most part, it would be kinda obvious. She’d have much preferred appreciate the work without having to judge anything.
No, even that wasn’t really true: she could perfectly well find the flaws - or some of them at least - and strong points for each of them. It was the idea that her opinion might play a role in shaping the futures of whoever had sent those pieces that paralyzed her: she didn’t want to say no. She’d feel terrible about it in fact.
But… Matah probably already had a very good idea of who he wanted. He probably asked her to see where she was at - and maybe see if she had any good idea he hadn’t thought about, who knew - but her opinion wasn’t going to be the deciding factor.
Or… It probably wouldn’t be except that… Well, except for that third project where she had things to say that he couldn’t have known. Things that might drastically change the outcome.
In the end, before he prompted her again, she jumped in. “I really like the colours of the first project. The pattern is pretty nice, and the many shades of blue are interesting. But…” she tilted her head to the side. “I’m unable to judge how much of it is due to chance and how much is deliberate.” After a short paused she added, “More importantly, the jar is…” she grimaced a bit. “There may be a lot of reasons to explain why, some that shouldn’t negatively reflect on the crafter, but… As it is, it doesn’t feel good. Like it was done 'good enough' without really caring how it looked. It might be that whoever made that doesn’t really care about the whole thing, or didn’t think of the project as a whole, only about the colors.”
Which wasn’t so good. After all, even if the colours were the main 'thing' about the craft, the jar should have been done better: it showed a lack of care. Or it might show a lack of care. Because if instead the crafter had learned entirely alone without anyone to show how it was done, it became pretty good. After all, Ailith was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to make a glass jar anytime soon…
For a moment she clearly hesitated in saying all that out loud, but in the end she shook her head and sighed, turning towards the second piece. “Here the cords are well woven. I might be able to do it a bit better, but even then there’s no guarantee. The colours aren’t faded or washed out, including the red which is the hardest to get to stick.” She tilted her head to the side. “Might be that another source of pigment than what we use has been selected. Or a different technique maybe. One or the other it’s well done. Granted it’s a bit, uh, well, the colours clash a bit in places, but it’s not that big of a deal.”
She considered the piece for some time, hesitated, grimaced, sighed, before finally adding, “Still…” She hesitated again, her shoulders dropping a bit. “It’s well done and all that, but… It’s… I don’t know. It feels… it lacks…” she shook her head. “The first one shows either a lack of care or resourcefulness,” depending on why the jar was so… uh… was how it was, “but here there’s… It feels sort of like a safe bet. As if the crafter didn’t want to take risks, instead doing something that would be good enough. And it is 'good enough', but…” But it wasn’t really what Matah was looking for, right?
“As for the third one,” Ailith tapped her lips pensively. “I can’t really judge the technique or anything.” After all, for all she knew a bunch of random stuff could have been picked and thrown into the jar… Although… “Well, except that…” she pointed at the jar, “I can smell things that I don’t see in there.” So something had to have been done.
“And it does smell nice. The problem is that, assuming we got that person to come… We wouldn’t really have much to teach on that subject, right? Access to better resources might be the only thing we could give. Except that since there aren’t any nearby perfumers, it’d be something we would have.” Well, something else anyway. For a few years, depending on what happened after the apprenticeship. “More importantly… There is a field of study that Llewelyn mentioned a few times, which has to do with, uh… Well…” She frowned. “It’s all a bit complicated, but the goal is to make new things with other things. Like we make glue for example.”
“And if it’s something that might interest that perfumer, there’d likely be a huge number of things to work on and discover. Well… Depending on what we’d be ready to share anyway…”
Hey, nothing awesome but at least there’s some content in the end!