Chapter 425: Chapter 425 - Little Leather Learning & Multiple Marinating Meals
Working leather had been one of her favorite crafts. The way skilled hands could transform raw material into something both beautiful and functional was just satisfying to be a part of. She’d tried a bit of everything in her long life - tailoring, carpentry, various ways of smithing, and of course shaping and constraining raw essence.
’But as creepy as it is when you think of it as *skin*, nothing feels quite like working with supple hides. Wood does come close, because it’s also fibrous... but I think I’ve eaten enough parts of trees now that I never want to see one again.’
For that reason alone she felt it might be a good idea to not be hasty. To not go back to where she was born as Elua er Goltbred the moment the gateway was charged. Because there was a good chance that she would start a logging company out of pure spite without telling Qat... and set the continent on a course of being deforested within the century.
In that same sort of concept, she had begun her arboricide with some lye preparation. She already had plenty of hardwood ash from experiments with charcoal making, so it was a shame to her that she didn’t have to destroy a new tree. It was only a matter of adding it to about twice as much water in one of her cleaned cauldrons and boiling it - a step achieved very quickly as her Gaseous Element heated the air bubbles in the water itself.
After it simmered for a while, she rapidly cooled the liquid to stop the convection inside. Any remaining grit settled quickly into a sludge at the bottom. Within around thirty minutes... she was already siphoning out the useful liquid part still floating separated above that and dipping one of the feathers into it to see how quickly the vein curled and melted away from the quill.
’Steady, but not violent. A strong enough but not too strong batch.’
The alkaline substance made from the leached potash would be used for bucking, scouring the outside with the acid to remove any grease - as well as to swell and loosen the collagen fibers within the hide. This would then be neutralized by surrounding the piece in a controlled bubble and injecting carbon dioxide into the existing water in order to make carbonic acid and bring the overall acidity down.
"As I thought, this is good practice."
While she performed almost every step that would allow for slight mistakes, she was also testing her physical energy paths with her body in motion and not just in meditative rest or with light stretches. Failing a lot - losing a lot of energy to either lossy bursts or forcefully sped up healing - she’d used her best baselines so far to further her self-research greatly.
She had known that there was some mismatch in herself, but so much of the foundational sections seemed so vastly different that she felt it was a pure *wonder* her old techniques ever worked in the first place... without causing severe damage. In fact, she was more and more convinced that she had just been healing a bit more rapidly than she was degrading ever since she was old enough to actually use some of them.
Thanks to her efficient consuming technique and instinctual pushes of energy wherever it was demanded, it never seemed like she was being drained. If her Ogre Physique itself hadn’t kept slipping the bonds of her old level of control, she wasn’t sure she would have noticed things were this wrong until she actually hurt herself by going all out.
"Or rather... I may have never noticed. I certainly didn’t when letting loose on that one intermediate. Could have made it all the way about to ascend again... this time with my fortress. And I may have failed because of it..."
Usually not one for such distant what ifs when they were well negated by the past, Elua nonetheless felt more contemplative about this sort of thing the closer she came to being a more stable cultivator. More and more, she was letting her fits of hormonal influenced emotions simply run their course.
It did leave the occasional little bit of spiritual contamination nearby, but she had nothing but time and energy locked where she was. Scrubbing that clean was no more serious of a problem than when she did it in her and Qat’s little home. In fact, not really worrying anymore that the swordswoman would see or feel it took a lot of the burden off.
Another ten minutes of careful scraping and cleaning the ash sludge out went by before the next serious adjustment was needed. This time, her elbow had developed a knot of energy when trying to empower herself with it at an acute angle. Such repetitive motions really let her fine tune herself like a musical instrument.
’Or perhaps a whole orchestra? One with over 600 skeletal muscle groups thrumming, more than 200 bones drumming, north of 70 organs humming - at least 5 of them vital soloists to the score - and that’s not even counting how many cell structures make up all of those things.’
"Speaking of organs... I guess it’s time to mash you up."
From the creature, she had sat aside the pancreas especially. There were more than a few disgusting methods used throughout history to make leather ever more soft and supple. But all of them involved coating the leather in *something* from a digestive tract.
Dung or stale urine, usually, but with a fresh kill and an intact organ that produced the very biological components needed? The heiress was *most certainly* more inclined to smash the pancreas to pieces and mix it with warmed water than the other cruder and less sanitary methods!
There was something deeply satisfying about the work despite the frequent self-interruptions. Each pause to realign felt like learning at pace rather than failing by running into a wall. Her body, when working in harmony with the new pathways, even moved measurably with more and more of the grace that she sought.
She lost track of time, absorbed in the rhythm of work and refinement. By the time she looked up, the sun’s position had shifted significantly and her latest energy supplement was long overdue. But she didn’t feel the familiar exhaustion that usually came near the time she needed a new infusion of consumable matter.
Though her stomach was complaining greatly that the marinated meat had just been sitting there, uncooked, waiting for its complex flavors that would make her next meal ’pleasant’. The real work toward perfection was just beginning. Yet, Elua er Goltbred felt genuinely optimistic about the outcome.
⟠ ⟠ ⟠
The scent of something very edible drifted through the small house as Klaytei stirred a pot of stew. After a couple months of sharing the space - insisting that it was less trouble if the branch manager just stayed here with her - she’d fallen into comfortable routines. Cooking and cleaning had become her domain while Dima handled the more physically demanding tasks like hauling water from the city well.
Of course, the sigilist was also busy helping maintain and update the city’s defensive sigils. Hearing the stories of the destructions across the continent of Guild facilities had made her nervous and get right back to work after she’d done all she could and failed... to find evidence of the Goltbred wrongdoing!
"Smells wonderful."
The woman said as she walked through the open doorway with an armload of clothes to be laundered. It was just one of the tasks that she had insisted upon taking over, as it was a lot less strenuous on her than the mortal. Her smile was so ’warm’ and ’sincere’... the kind that made Klaytei’s heartstrings cross into x’s and o’s.
’My princess has a sweet mouth... someday I’ll get a bite of it.’
On the windowsill, a certain fox with a certain cultivator’s spiritual Avatar lodged inside stretched languidly in a patch of sunlight. It’s russet fur scattering a yellowy glow as it basked in the attention of its two devoted females. The creature had grown noticeably plumper during its stay, ’thriving’ under their care.
Though it had not went hunting itself in over a week... and Klaytei had begun eyeing its lethargy with a sense of mild disgust. Nodding toward the wrapped bundle sitting on the table, the personal servant of the heiress spoke in a condescending tone.
"Another package arrived for our fat little lord this morning. From my Lady’s young commander, as usual."
"I wonder about all this he keeps sending."
"Well, it’s always the same instructions - ’place in the cultivation room, handle with care’. I already promised I’d do no more than that."
"But what could be so important that requires such secrecy? And what is Fuzzy Tail doing in there all the time?"
"Probably best not to ask too many questions. It is supposed to be my Lady’s... pet?"
She dissuaded her again, but without a doubt her own curiosity was also piqued. The packages had been arriving very regularly for weeks, each one carefully sealed and clearly valuable. Many marked with the Valmenf family emblems and not the Yecine.
The fox they discussed opened one amber eye and regarded them both with the sort of disdain of a lazing creature that knew focus was upon it. With a delicate yawn, it hopped down from the windowsill and padded toward its food dish, tail swishing with only the choicest of ’entitlement’ in its heart.
"Spoiled beast..."
Klaytei muttered, but Dima was already reaching for the premium dried fish she had taken to buying specifically for their demanding houseguest. A fact that irked the servant greatly... as while she could argue that the woman was doing lots of things for her, she was not really buying her special food!
The sound of voices from outside made them both freeze and the beast yip it’s command to hurry things along. A pair of people seemed to be approaching the front, open door while talking about the house they were in.
"Are we expecting anyone?"
Before the Goltbred retainer could answer the sudden whisper in her ear that made her toes curl, a knocking sound echoed through the house - one she was familiar with. Because it worked off of a certain sigil that only few people knew about and only those few could activate. A sign and request for entry that belonged to people who had... almost every right to be there.
Two young faces she recognized were peeking in the doorway and they both lit up with greeting waves. Klaytei knew... she just knew that her private little dinner date now had a fourth and fifth wheel, next to the fox’s constant third.