Anything But Fragile [Aya]

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Sampson
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pardon me, just getting used to v5...

Anything But Fragile [Aya] Jun 17, 2013 23:36:50 GMT -5

Post by Sampson on Jun 17, 2013 23:36:50 GMT -5

"Remember what you promised, Eisley," the older man hesitated as he placed the few crumpled bills into the girls hand. He was always doubting her word, always questioning if the girl would follow through. How many times did she have to tell him?
"I'll be there, Joe," the girl laughed as she closed her hands around her pay. After working the fields all week, Eisley was eager to spend her latest amount of income. If covering her bosses' daughter's shift next week got her an early paycheck, as well as a small bonus, she was sure as hell not going back on her word. It wasn't like she was in any position to get fired, either. Not with so many mouths to feed and so little cash to go around. Not showing up for her extra shifts next week would surely get her canned. But was taking on so much more work worth a few extra bucks in her hand?

Something told Eisley as she walked down the dirt road with her money still balled tightly in her first that it wasn't. The weather was hot enough to kill the earlier mirth she had found with getting the payment in her grasp. She slipped the money into the pockets of her jeans in order to wipe the sweat from her palms. It was hotter in District 9 than it had been in awhile. With the heat baking against her skin, sweat pooling around the metal of her glasses, Eisley was miserable. Just the short walk home seemed unbearable. The realization of what waited at her destination made it no better. She loved her family with every inch of her being, but with her parents constantly asking if she wanted/needed anything and wondering if she had more money, home had started taking more and more from her each time she returned.

With the money burning a hole in her pocket, each step closer to home meant she would soon be giving up her latest paycheck. She could already hear Clifford asking if she could buy him some new clothes, as the pair of pants he had were getting too short. Elysia and Finnian would be in the other ear, pulling on her arms and legs while asking for candy, her mother insisting that it had been months since the kids had a decent treat like that. The whole scene would be all about who could get their hands on Eisley's money first. Knowing exactly how it would be when she got home caused the girl to roll her eyes. Pushing up her glasses, she turned into a nearby store. Some places, if they were nicer than others, had fans on the interior and were a great relief. Even if the place wasn't that nice, it would at least give her a break with some shade.

Oh shit. The thought burst forward as Eisley realized which store she had managed to stumble into. It was the one owned by the Powermaker survivor. Dark eyes floating over the assorted sculptures of glass, Eisley knew exactly what shop she had walked into. Was the owner in the back? She could feel the temperature had dropped heavily, but the sweat in her palms stayed. The idea of being in the presence of the girl that everyone knew as "Survivor" instead of her real name, Savior, made Eisley's skin crawl. In short, the Coon girl had heard plenty of stories about the deceased family of the glassblower who owned the little shop on the corner. How could she have so blindly walked in?

Eyes scanning over the glass pieces of art, she wondered if walking in hadn't been that big of an accident. Something about the idea of meeting Savior Powermaker was intriguing. Perhaps her latest misstep would end up being her newest adventure. If the girl turned out to be as crazy as the rest of her family had seemingly been, Eisley could always walk out and never come back. She brushed back her dreads and continued to make her way through the store, watching the counter through the corner of her eye.

Last Edit: Jul 2, 2013 19:24:23 GMT -5 by Sampson

gm bourgeois decadence [aya]
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Anything But Fragile [Aya] Jun 18, 2013 14:57:04 GMT -5

Post by gm bourgeois decadence [aya] on Jun 18, 2013 14:57:04 GMT -5

They’re calling you a genius
Is that why you’re acting so competitive
And even if they mean it
Don’t let the feeling get to your head

Savior Powermaker —

It would've been easier for Savior Powermaker to pass on making glassware by trade if she hadn't already owned a small shop. It was an inheritance from her father, along with a list of complexes and the immediate wariness of the strangers who still recognized her when introduced, even a decade later. She supposed there were worse things to have notoriety for than outlasting grown people four times her size, but it was the pity that she absolutely could not stand. At six years old, had she not already proven herself strong?

Of course, at that young, she hadn't known very much about glassblowing or fusing or lampworking at all. As crazy as her zealot parents had been, they were still reasonable enough to keep their six-year-old away from the furnace, and away from the molten glass that came out of it. When the glass shop came into her possession, the older gentleman in her father's employ had agreed to take Savvy on as an apprentice, and over the next decade she learned the ins and outs of the trade. Having reached the age of retirement, her mentor now dropped by the shop around once a week, leaving the sixteen-year-old largely to her own devices.

Although the majority of the shop's income came from stemware and tumblers and pint glasses and steins that were exported to the Capitol, Savvy preferred to spend her time making the glass sculptures that adorned the shelves of the shop. It was impractical, from an economic standpoint; after all, who in District Nine had the money to drop on glass bookends and trinkets and beads? But since Savvy enjoyed making them, she did so all the same. There were whole forests of little glass trees, inhabited by little glass owls and stags and hellhounds and wolves. Little glass cats chased little glass mice around little glass buildings, and a little glass train sat affixed to little glass tracks, with little glass smoke billowing out of the little glass tank engine.

But for every tiny animal, for every house or skyscraper or pine tree, there were two glass sculptures engulfed in glass flames. Most were unassuming enough, but Savior had never been able to shake the imagery of her favorite childhood bedtime stories — the ones her mother used to tell, stories of a hellscape engulfed in infernos taller than the highest buildings in the district, the whole world covered in soot and ash as it burned. Her work did not always reflect the conflagration that came to her in her sleep, but when fire was at the forefront of her mind, she often expressed it in glass.

Savvy was at her workbench in the back of the shop when she heard the door. Had she been working the furnace and actually blowing glass, she probably would've ignored it, but she was simply scoring a design into the glass necklace charm that she'd nearly finished. She took two minutes to finish up etching the vine into the glass, stuck her tungsten pick behind her ear, and put the bead in the annealer to cool.

Glassworking glove still on her left hand, hair still tied back, she marched into the front of the store to see her customer: a bespectacled girl with a mess of dreadlocks who was browsing the merchandise. Both hands tucked into the pockets of her leather apron, Savvy leaned against the counter. "You break it, you buy it," she cautioned, eyeing the other girl warily. As the majority of her customers were not residents of District 9, it was very rare for someone to enter the little shop at all, and the girl did not seem particularly interested in ordering a set of champagne flutes. In the past, her store had been partially ransacked by a quartet of shithead eleven-year-olds, who'd only had enough time to knock a handful of sculptures off of the shelves before Savvy chased them off with the glass knife she kept under the counter for such occasions. Fortunately, for the sake of both parties, they'd had enough sense not to return.

"You lookin' for something?" she asked. No one ever accused Savior Powermaker of having common business courtesy — and 'Can I help you?' implied that the girl would like nothing more than to drop what she was doing and wait on whoever asked. More often than not, the opposite was true; she'd want to get whoever was browsing the merchandise out as quickly as possible so she could get back to her work. On that particular day, Savvy wasn't in such a hurry — after all, she'd reached a good stopping point in her current project and was ahead of schedule on the next shipment of glasses that were being sent off to the Capitol, so for the time being, she wasn't overtly concerned with getting the other girl out of her shop.

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Sampson
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pardon me, just getting used to v5...

Anything But Fragile [Aya] Jun 18, 2013 21:41:17 GMT -5

Post by Sampson on Jun 18, 2013 21:41:17 GMT -5

Watching the little glass figurines, careful to stifle any urge to touch them, Eisley could imagine what the creator of such crafts would look like as her eyes remained full of the sparkling, brittle material. Surely someone who made such delicate little creations had to be just as fragile, right? It was the same principal for any other master of a craft. Gamemakers for the Hunger Games all had that detached genius, a superior air about themselves as though they truly believed death was theirs to manipulate. Careers, within the very masterpieces that the Gamemakers developed, harbored their cliche bulk of muscles and brutal apathy. Why? Because you have to fit the bill if you want to master anything. If you care about it enough inside, it starts to change you on the outside. A master adapts for the love of their craft in order to become that much better. It would be no different for a glassblower.

As her dark eyes flickered over the glass objects that lined the shelves, occasionally stopping to gaze intently at the ones that appeared to be engulfed in flames, the girl began to picture their creator. The Powermaker survivor would have gentle hands, maybe with a few scars from broken pieces that had managed to pierce skin. But the scars would be few and far in between, unlike those on the flesh of inexperienced workers. She'd be pale, the lack of work outside in the sunlight leeching her skin of any pigment. Eisley had never seen any pictures of the Powermaker parents before the tragedy, so the rest of what their offspring could look like was a mystery.

"You break it, you buy it," the voice interrupted Eisley's train of thought. "I break it, I buy it," Esiely reiterated as if she did have the money to pay if something did end up breaking. She shifted her eyes to finally get a glimpse of the fabled girl. Her idea of the survivor was shattered, replaced with the real image of Savior Powermaker. Adjusting her glasses quickly, the girl took in the sight of the store's owner. A smile parted Eisley's lips at the realization she had been right about the girl's pale skin. It held a certain glow in the dark backdrop of the shop's walls. Even if she had been wrong about the other qualities, just being correct about one thing kept her grin alive. The Powermaker child had muscular arms, nothing like the thin ones she had imagined a person working with glass would have. It must have meant the girl had tons of control over her strength, as Eisley could easily see the other's hands crushing a fragile statue in their grasp.

Savior had a voice that matched the strength that seemed so evident in her arms. She warned that she wasn't playing around; if Eisley's clumsy tendencies caused a casualty for one of glass sculptures, she'd pay for it. Poised like an overbearing parent, or a vulture watching over her nest of hatchlings, the owner leaned on the counter without saying much. She definitely didn't radiate the normal hospitality of other craftsmen, the kind of people that constantly pushed for a sale. The Capitol must have been pretty supportive of the Powermaker's craft. An image of the Capitol propaganda that sometimes appeared on the small television screen back home floated to the surface of her mind. She could practically see the same shimmering wine glasses that lined Savior's shelves decorating the tables of the many Capitol celebrations. They certainly looked like they belonged somewhere—anywhere—other than the bleak atmosphere of District 9.

Making her way back towards the front, back into view of the watching eyes of Savior, Eisley was once again greeted with blunt words. "You lookin' for something?" she asked, not even offering some kind of assistance. It didn't dishearten Eisley in the slightest, however. If anything, the idea of a challenge made her that more eager to introduce herself to the owner. It also made the lump of money in her pocket burn all the hotter. Even with the bonus, it's probably not enough to get me anything in here. The shop was full of 'delicacies'. She had often heard her mother refer to different things they couldn't afford as delicacies. Things like candies, new clothes, jewelry, and often times, baked goods, all fell under the category of being delicacies. If there was anything else Eisley would add to the list herself, it'd be the little glass forests and its little glass wolves and little glass owls. Maybe she could afford one of the little glass salt shakers that slept near the front of the store. Then again, she wouldn't have enough money left to purchase any kind of salt to go in it, so that was rather counterproductive.

Unwavering grin still hanging on her lips, Eisley let her fingers play with the edge of the counter as she replied with as much confidence as she could muster. "I'm looking for a gift," her tongue flicked across her lips as she spoke, "You make all this yourself, right? It looks great." Eisley normally wasn't one for flattery, but she figured getting Savior to lighten up a bit couldn't hurt. If she had any chance of getting to know the girl who had survived where her parents had fallen, improving her first impression was essential. She wasn't some bored kid looking to poke her nose around somewhere it didn't belong. "I'd heard things about your work," more like things about you, "Figured I would stop by and check it out for myself."

"Name's Eisley," she added, sticking out a hand in greeting. If anything, the gesture would hopefully get the girl before her to take her hands out of the leather apron that circled her neck. That way, Eisley could know if she had guessed right about the scars. It was also common manners, something her mother had strictly instilled in her from when she had been younger.