Thu Oct 24, 2019 11:24 am
Sunset, 20th Yaris, 2719
Woven Delights, The Painted Ladies
I
t had been a long, lovely sort of day. Ava was tempted, sometimes, to think poorly of her daily routine – to find the steady flow of customers in and out of the shop wearying, the oppressive Yaris heat draining, the need to put on a smiling, pleasant face for the occasional galdori customer unbearable. She had woken tangled in her sheets, with her heart pounding from a lingering dream she could not remember, uncomfortable in the Yaris heat, the stale breeze blowing in off through the small open window more taunting than refreshing. Even the small gray cat had been scarce, of late; Ava rather thought he had found some cooler place than the sweltering confines of her attic room, and she scarcely grudged him for it.
So Ava had woken, and there had already been the faintest pale gray light creeping in through the window, the first sliver of it after the long dark night without the faintest trace of Benea. Rather than try to sleep further, she had risen – she had done her morning chores with only half her mind, the rest busy in places she did not like to go, and it was only seated in front of her mirror, carefully applying her eyeliner with even smooth strokes, that she had started to come back to herself. She had stared at herself a good long moment in the mirror, and almost without thinking she had smiled at herself – the sort of warm, reassuring smile she might have given a customer who looked as she had, worried and pinched around the eyes.
And then Ava had laughed at herself, and finished her eyeliner, and painted on the rest of her lipstick. She had risen from her vanity, and worn her newest dress – pale yellow linen, still just ever so slightly rough to the touch, not yet broken into softness, with rutching over the chest, long straight sleeves, and a simple brown band at the waist, giving it just a hint of softness to the design before the skirt fell to the ground, pointed at the front and back with the faintest trace of brown embroidery at the hem.
She had opened the shop for the day, and let the world rush in, and instead of irritable she had felt gratitude, deep and profound, that this wonderful, busy, bustling life with all its secrets and dangers and possibilities was hers. She had settled behind her counter, and welcomed her customers one by one; she had nudged Mr. Carter towards a greener fabric than he had been considering, a soft summery linen that brought out the fineness of his eyes; she had laughed with Mrs. Boucher, kneeling on the floor to play peek-a-boo with her littlest boy as he crept out from behind her skirts; and she had had a long and serious chat in the hottest, quietest hours of the afternoon with Mr. Erskine, about the best pink silk for one of their shared galdori clients.
It had been with a full and happy heart that Ava had drawn the curtains over the large paned glass window at the front of the shop, that she had closed the door and locked it, and gone back to her counter, spreading out the first of the fabrics she would need to cut to send for the next day. She had made her way through the list of linens and cottons – linens for summer wear, cottons for those who needed something they could wear as the chill began to creep back in the air, as it eventually must. She usually preferred to cut her silk first, slippery as it was, but the sheers had been growing ever harder to use, and she had thought to do the linen and cotton, take a break for dinner, and come back refreshed to the silk, ready to use all the patient skill she had built over the years to coax it into submission.
The knock at the door caught Ava by surprise mid-cut, and her hands went utterly still – it had not been a new habit for her, to respond to surprises with stillness, but it was one she had cultivated yet further, as a deep or jagged cut of fabric might ruin an entire piece. She had not expected anyone, and for a moment she thought of blond hair scraped back in a bun, of a handsome face made worn by the worries of the day, and she –
Ava put those thoughts aside, and set the piece of light blue linen down, and made her way to the front of the shop. She glanced through the hidden little peephole, and it was Cat that she saw on the step – Cat, the blacksmith she had met only a week ago (had it been only a week!) on a tenth she had taken for errands, the young woman with the painful-looking scar and the worse galdori clients, from whom she had commissioned a pair of silk shears. Who, Ava remembered well, she had asked to come see her once that other commission – that terrible sword – had been finished.
It was no trouble at all to open the door and to greet Cat with a warm, friendly smile. It was sunset, but Ava’s make-up looked as fresh as it had that morning, the soft black curls of her hair no more mussed than they had been when she had set them close to dawn. “Cat!” She said, and the pleasure of it showed in her voice and on her face. “Oh, how lovely of you to come by. Please, do come in.”
Ava stepped back and held open the door. The curtains were drawn over the window display, so Cat’s first sight of the shop would be the interior – dimly lit in the evening light, with the only true light over the counter at the back end, but still full of colors and fabrics. Shelves lined every wall and the spaces between and fabrics filled them all. Just next to the door was a display of silks mingled with linen and cotton, a burst of light greens that tumbled down over themselves like a waterfall, the textures mingled together so that one never quite knew what the next fold would bring, cool and welcoming, as if to say that even the Yaris heat could not dampen her spirits. Yellows were most on prominent throughout the shelves, though – some light fabrics hanging from the ceiling, swathes of it that called the eye to the displays below, the two colors together like a summer garden, made pale by the heat but no less lovely for it.
“How have you been?” Ava asked, and her voice was as soft and gentle as the fabrics, welcoming and easy. She held there for a moment, and her eyes dropped politely to Cat's hands, careful not to turn her back on the other woman.