2412, Tull 18, Velpa
Xanthy yawned for the fifth time since she sat in front of the loom. The sound of shuttles sliding through stretched strings resounding in the humid room in an almost synchronous manner filled Xanthy's ears.
Sunlight shone through the room's only window which was large enough for Xanthy to slot her head in but not her shoulders. Look likes there's no escaping through that. Four, concrete walls surrounded almost fifty weavers. Warps turned, treadles slammed and clacked against the floor. Wooden mechanisms fitted with threads spinning from spools ticked matching a second in a timeteller.
Xanthy wiped sweat from her brow and threw her own shuttle towards the other side of the loom. In all the people with her here, she was probably the only one not adhering to some sort of a pattern. Well...make that two.
June fumbled with his own loom for the last hour. He had managed to get his threads tangled with each other, his heddles all messed up, and right now, he was squinting at the roller. Oh, no.
"Hey, have you figured it out?" Xanthy hissed at him. Her voice echoed across the hollow room but none of the other weavers looked away from their work. She tugged at the stiff dress the warden shoved into her face before reporting for mess hall. Was this what the Commons got to wear every day? Ugh. So tight and hot.
June wagged a finger into Xanthy's direction. "Relax, I got this," he insisted.
Xanthy sighed. He hasn't got this. She watched as June cranked the handle. He must have turned it the other way because the work of the previous weaver before him snapped out of its tight hold and flopped into the wooden floor. Oops.
June cursed. This time, at least five female weavers turned from their seats to glare at him. Xanthy raked her fingers at the hair framing her face as she crouched and fixed June's disastrous loom.
Her fingers flew across the complex machine. She saw a loom for the first time when she was herded into this room with June and for some reason, she understood how it works. The loom was such a simple yet ingenious machine. Why couldn't June get it?
She gave a satisfied exhale as she stood up. She tested the roller, plucked at the strings, and passed the shuttle for at least one round. June blinked at her like she had suddenly grown wings. Wait, she didn't, right?
Xanthy glanced at her back and blew a breath of relief. As if things weren't bad for her, already.
She spent the rest of yesterday looking for the woman who saved them. She wanted to thank her for standing up and covering for them against the Civil Guards. The whole evening wore on and Xanthy had scoured the whole grounds without catching a whiff of the woman. At the least, it gave her a good idea of how vast the place was.
Xanthy clamped her jaw to stop the yawn that threatened to blossom from her mouth. What time was it even?
"Lunch time is still two hours away," a male voice said. Xanthy whirled to her right to find a middle-aged man with dark blond hair tied at his nape. His ears were round and human. Good.
Xanthy smiled at him. "How can you tell?" she passed the shuttle from her left hand to her right. "There is not a timeteller in sight."
The man shrugged. "After a long time weaving, you will get used to the passage of time," he replied. His voice carried a tinge of melancholy that Xanthy couldn't quite place. "New here?"
"Yeah," Xanthy chuckled as she stepped on the treadles. The machine squeaked as threads pulled taut and wove. "How long have you been here?"
"Three weeks," the man answered. He worked on his own loom too. Xanthy watched the colorful pattern he was weaving. Her eyes burned at the plain sack she was working on. "Not too much of a long time, isn't it?"
Xanthy shook her head. "It is a long time for me," she glanced at the window and frowned. Why wasn't it night already? "A day is long enough, too."
"I feel that," the man agreed. "What is your name?"
"Xanthiene," she nodded. "Yours?"
The man smiled when Xanthy glanced at him from the corner of her vision. "Jarvik," he said. "Jarvik Draswist. Do you have a family name?"
Xanthy blew a breath. "Vivenca," she replied. "I am Xanthiene Vivenca."
Jarvik's shuttle stopped in the middle of the layer of threads in its journey towards the other end. Xanthy knitted her eyebrows. "Is something the matter?" she asked.
Jarvik shook his head. His tied locks swung from its tie along with the motion. "Nothing," he chuckled. The sadness crept to the surface again. "It is nothing."
Xanthy rolled her shoulders and went back to her work. She had heard from the gossiping maid-weavers that wages were determined by how many yards one was able to weave per day. That thought alone kept Xanthy passing her shuttle back and forth.
June cursed again and Jarvik leaned to check on Xanthy's friend. "He does not have nimble hands, does he?"
"I can hear you, old man," June hissed as he tried throwing his shuttle to the other side. It didn't even reach half the distance.
Instead of frowning, Jarvik chuckled to himself before deftly plucking the threads with his fingers as if to execute his own style of weaving. Xanthy knitted her eyebrows. They could do that?
Xanthy blinked the sweat off her eyes and sniffed. She tugged at the bodice of her dress. It seemed to have been sizes smaller considering it hung just up to her knees when she first tried it on.
If there was anything that Xanthy should be thankful for regarding this despicable uniform was that it came with a cap of some sorts that helped to hide her pointy ears. At least, with Reeca's cloaker, she was bound to be able to pass off as a human for as long as she could.
A Human. A fairy. Both concepts sounded foreign to her. A bigger niche occupied the rest of Xanthy's soul. A Disfavored. She was a Disfavored. Human, fairy, or half-blood. It didn't matter so long as one was born and raised without the Queen's favor.
So why...was she working as a Common, now? Why hasn't she been found out already?
Xanthy casted a glance at the locked door by the northeast corner. She kept expecting it to burst open and deliver Civil Guards looking to purge her soul from this world. That fear was enough to keep her on her toes most of the time.
"June, let me ask you a question," Xanthy turned to June who was now tinkering with his warps instead of weaving. She sighed. Looks like it would take a long time before June could pay her anything.
June grunted as he plucked a string and giggled when it gave a deep thwang. "As long as it is not about this infernal machine, shoot," he began playing a dissonant tune on the taut strings.
Xanthy rolled her eyes. "What is a trail?" she asked. Her boots slammed on the treadles. "Everyone keeps mentioning it. Why do I need to hide mine?"
"Are you familiar with the part of the soul?" June cursed when he stepped on the treadles at the wrong time. The machine cried out in pain that made Xanthy wince. If anything, they were going to have to send June away and Xanthy would lose her only source of funds for her new house.
Xanthy shook her head. "No," she admitted. All she knew was that everyone has a soul that goes to Pidmena's realm after their brief life here.
June shrugged. "Well, that explains it," he shoved his fingers into his hair and messed it up. "A trail is part of our souls concerned with the imprint we make by using magic in this world. You need to hide yours because you are an...anomaly."
Yeah, Xanthy could see that. She frowned. "And the other parts?"
"Eh, the shadow is your past," June's expression curled ambiguously. "The form is our physical bodies. The legacy is our abilities. The synnavaim is our innate ability."
"Except that in humans, the synnavaim does not exist," Xanthy recalled that bit from their conversation in the carts.
"Not inexistent," June corrected with a wave of his hand. "More like...locked."
"Why?" Xanthy knitted her eyebrows.
June waved his hand at Xanthy's face. "Eh, I do not know," he turned back to his loom and started tinkering with it again. "Ask the old man over there."
"Hey, I can hear you," Jarvik snapped with a smile on his face. Then, he tapped his chin. "No one really knows why the human synnavaimis are locked but some sources say it originated from the Hundred Years' War."
Jarvik chuckled at the apparent look of confusion now plastered on Xanthy's face. Her mind roiled with so many questions. "Look, I am not going to lecture you about history," the man said, manually weaving the ends of a colorful rug. "That is the job left for those scholars at the Academy."
Xanthy raised an eyebrow as she cranked her warp. "Academy?"
"The Academy of Magical Arts," June blurted. Xanthy nodded at the job he was doing. Huh, he got the hang of it. Finally. She didn't understand the bitterness that mixed with it. "It is in the Junction City."
Xanthy nodded. The Junction City where all fairy races were allowed to interact. Lanteglos. Home of the Imperial Fairies and of the High Queen, herself. It'd be wise to stay out of its way.
"So," Xanthy breathed after a beat of silence. "There are five parts of the soul? What happens if you take one?"
June stepped on a treadle harder than necessary. "Geez, Xanthy. You should read a scholarly tome or something," he sighed. "This is giving me a headache. Is there any way we can take a break in this hole?"
A distant clanging echoed from across the grounds. As one, the weavers pushed their chairs back, stood up in a shuffle of clothes, and headed to the door that opened seemingly on its own.
"That is your break," Jarvik winked before disappearing into the wave of rose brown dresses and tunics.