Closing Time

[Sivan]

His story earned no comment, but he remembered that he was here after hours and that Master Len'Alen was being generous with his time so he tried to be a better customer. He knew from the other side of the equation that it could be frustrating to draw out from the customer what they actually wanted.

"I like that," he supplied after being shown the three-piece suit. It was suitable should he need to be present for client meetings or for being an elf-about-town when showing Torin (and sometimes Destyn) his natal city. He turned his gaze upon the more utilitarian clothing. It was the Gelerian sailcloth innovation that truly caught his attention, however.

"No, do go on. We do have some protections beyond the mundane, but my master's first maxim was safety first. I brought friends from Kalzasi to see Silfanore. One, my business partner, is also here for a sort of apprenticeship alongside me. Whether we use such things at Tavárinoikos, or not until we return to Kalzasi, I would be interested in what you might come up with using the sailcloth. He has a noble patron. Their sigil is a seven-pointed blue star on a field of argent." He considered. "We can pay."

They had been quiet about their financial successes, not wanting to seem like nouveau riche as well as not Hytori, but while Torin's elementalism made him all but heatproof at his forge, Sivan would like to protect him from the more caustic and acidic of alchemical solutions he used in conjunction with his other skills to enchant artefacts into being.

"Were you imagining something made entirely of the sailcloth or is it too stiff for that...? Perhaps overlapping sections of it like scale armor. It would rather be a sort of armor for a maker, eh...?"

Sivan was lost then down the rabbit hole with a question of design he understood.

[Filaurel]

•───────── Gloaming Hapertas ────────•

3rd of Searing, 124th Year of the Age of Steel

The tailor blinked with surprise at Sivan's earnest response. Frankly, it was rare enough to hear someone advocate spending extra time or energy for safety, let alone a journeyman. And to volunteer that he could pay without even hearing the price? Perhaps too earnest, this one.

Still, Filaurel was willing to play along. His mind had been buzzing with thoughts since he'd acquired the sailcloth for his work for the aeronautical elf, and it was gratifying to have someone interested in hearing about it.

"Ah, well, yes and no-" Len'Allen was not the type to stammer, but his voice was cautious, "Leather segments might be appropriate if there were a risk of shrapnel, but the sailcloth itself is phenomenally elastic. In fact, here..."

The man rose from his chair, almost painfully slowly, and proceeded back to his storeroom--a glorified closet, really, but very densely packed with fabrics--and retrieved some of the expensive silvery cloth from a cupboard. It floated ahead of him, to the table in front of Sivan, and carefully unfolded itself, draping over the sides of the furniture; perhaps two yards, all in all. With another thought, Filaurel lifted the glass vial of ink from his reception desk... and dashed it across the cloth, leaving a diagonal trail of black from one side to another.

But even as the ink hit the sailcloth, it began to roll off. With another act of Kinetics, the tailor yanked the corners of the cloth upward to prevent the ink from spilling onto the wooden floor. Instead, it simply swirled around within the cloth, leaving not the ghost of a trail upon its shimmering surface.

"Whatever they wove this from, it is intensely hydrophobic. You could dip it in the fountain outside and it would come out dry. It is as strong as silk; a warrior cannot tear it without a knife, but it stretches twice as far. A medium like this material... when I say it should be embroidered with a sigil of nobility, I speak in terms of Scrivening. This sailcloth has a particular affinity for what the old masters called 'nobility of self', the propensity of a thing to avoid comingling of its essence. Properly decorated, I doubt any natural acid would mar it."

The telling (or perhaps the showing) seemed to exhaust the tailor, who carefully poured the ink back into his vial and stopped it up before collapsing back into his chair. His face fell, and he sighed.

"But I am afraid the cost of a full suit of the material is prohibitive. It is created in Gelarand by some secretive process, and only a few bolts ever find their way east, through smugglers or some other unsavory route. What little I have acquired has been consigned for military use.

[Sivan]

Sivan gave the demonstration his entire attention, opening his arcane senses as well.

"Aye, there's magic in the processing of this," he murmured, half to himself and half to Filaurel. He was used to brainstorming and such with Torin, and the two of them being good friends and master semblers, they found that they would fall back upon conceptual conversation via their paired runes when articulating in words was too slow or too difficult.

"I could... I think I could... no, I certainly could reverse engineer this given time. I don't know if it's a state secret like the creation of mithril." He rubbed at his jaw thoughtfully while Filaurel continued. His face fell when it proved out of reach.

"Ah, of course. Better to keep the soldiers safe than let me get lazy at the alembic anyway. Oh, but if you end up with any scraps, unusable to you, I would happily defray your costs to have them. Ah, but of course, if you need every spare inch, I understand. Well, and if you need a scrivener to help you in your military applications, I would be happy to collaborate with you." Indeed, his fingers were itching to pull out a notepad and begin scribbling thoughts just in case they fluttered right out of his head to make room for more.

"I suppose. Ah, I suppose I should depart. You have my measurements and I can return during regularly scheduled hours."

Filaurel was clearly weary from the long day, and perhaps the use of Kinetics. The last thing Sivan wanted to do was make a bad impression and end up looking ridiculous in his new clothes. Likely, he wouldn't know he looked ridiculous until he was walking down the street and garnered laughter: the tailor's revenge.

[Filaurel]

•───────── Gloaming Hapertas ────────•

3rd of Searing, 124th Year of the Age of Steel

If Filaurel had gotten uncommonly intense during his musings on the sailcloth garment, then Sivan's loosely-dropped words about fabrication captured his attention completely. He glanced over the man's features with renewed attention, his mouth thinning to a line, eyes blinking rapidly. He sucks in a breath.

He'd talked to various sources about the cloth, of course- weavers and tanners, artisans well-versed in mixing the craft of the fields with mystic lore, for the tailors of Sol'Valen commonly used both. Indeed, for a master, arts both mundane and sublime were indistinct, it was all simply the art. To a man they had told him they knew of no way to replicate the fabric.

...but he hadn't really considered an alchemist, had he? After all, that was not within the ordinary bailiwick of a tailor, mystical arts or no.

"Of course, sir- ah-." he realized belatedly that he had, once again, failed to ask a client's name before conducting business. One might have thought that habit, at least, would have been knocked out of him by the Princess' incognito visit. "I beg your pardon, it occurs to me now that I have not asked your name. I am Filaurel Len'Alen-"

Yes, that was the proper way of it, but he couldn't stop himself from pressing forward into the business truly at the forefront of his mind. "-and if you are serious, that you could fabricate this, ah, fabric... then in truth I would be in greater debt to you than I could reasonably hope to repay. The little work I have accomplished with it thus far has exhausted every clothier's stock in the city, for they never had more than scattered scraps. A source which did not rely upon illicit foreign trade would be..."

Well, he'd already said that he couldn't pay for such a thing. But the greater community of tailors within Sol'Valen could, perhaps. And if he was right about the military value of the material, then perhaps even one of the Vals would take an interest in the trade. It could be a prime opportunity.

"If you believe you can do it, I will gladly lend you this yard. I only warn you again that I could not honestly promise equitable remuneration."

[Sivan]

Sivan looked crestfallen.

"I apologize. I am Sivan Len'Myren. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Master Len'Alen."

Wanting to return to the comfortable common ground, he left off to consider the sailcloth once more. His Semblance was powerful, but it would still take time to sit with the material in order to grok it. Only then could he research what was known of the process of creating it and then perform certain tests upon it to verify his educated guesses.

"I am a competent alchemist, but I am also working under the supervision of true Makers, so I have more resources at my disposal that otherwise I might. I would ask no remuneration, especially given the testing would require at least some of the material's alteration. I will attempt to return as much of it in as salable state as possible, of course."

He was going to have to be patient and not get to work on it immediately upon his return home as he really ought to get good rest so he would be at his best on the morrow. The Masters were exigent, the only path to growth, they said. Sivan didn't disagree.

"It likely won't be an exact match or it would already be available in Sol'Valen's markets, but I think I can manage to figure out how to treat canvas or... weave something that acts similarly and in a process whose costs are less than importation."