Fall 1, 124
People watching. It was one of Kage's favorite things to do, whether he spied on aelves, faelnir, or even animals in the forest. It was such an easy thing to accomplish. He stood in his home and created a small bird made entirely of wood in the palm of his hand. He focused saol into it to give it incredibly lifelike details, then attached a tether to it. It was a fetch, and with a command, he sent it through a portal that Sylvia had opened into Græntún.
He tapped into the bird with his mind as the portal closed behind it. He commanded it as it flew through the town until it settled down onto a branch outside a faelnir's home. This faelnir was named Naru, and he was a jewelry crafter – one that Kage had taken an interest in. Kage knew he would someday sunder the man, but he enjoyed watching him as he went about his days. The best part was, he could keep an eye on him by tapping into the bird's vision every once in a while. All he had to do was task the bird with following Naru from a distance.
Over the last few days Naru had spent some time wandering around and getting used to the jewelry crafter competitors around town. He had asked a couple business owners how much money he needed to start a jewelry business and he was quoted a hefty sum. Naru barely had a fraction of what was necessary. He didn't even have enough for the land cost of his dream shop. There were so many expenses that he hadn't even thought about that were really putting a damper on his plans.
"I'm going to need a loan for this or I'll be working for many years! First things first though, I'm going to need a place to set up." He thought to himself as he pictured a luxurious jewelry shop with his name plastered across the storefront.
Even joining a group of merchants was a hassle. They didn't even want to talk to him until he had funding to build his shop. They wouldn't even let him in their blasted meetings anymore and directed him to seek help elsewhere. Already mildly annoyed, Naru eventually found himself once again at the front steps of his employer's shop. He needed figure out how to go about making quality gem cuts. It was all a part of his plan to get the experience he needed to finance his own business. Then he could tell his coworkers what useless bags of meat they were and he could start his life of luxury!
Naru found himself once again sitting at his workbench at the jewelry shop. He was getting to a point where he needed to have very fine tune hand movements. He couldn't afford to take a hand and scratch his nose, or moving his muscles to a more comfortable position. He had to practice being as still as physically possible. A lot of his woes came from the fact that he was nervous when he worked with high value goods. "I just need to calm down and focus," he would tell himself, but that was always easier said than done. He was an excitable man and being calm and steady was not something he was known for.
The man attributed most of his fidgeting with the noises that came from outside the workshop. There was shouting, negotiating, banging, gossiping, and it was all very distracting. Naru wrapped a cloth around his forehead and did his best to cover his ears. It blocked a little, but not all that much. He tried to think of ways to quiet everyone down, but he doubted he would be very successful with that either. "Perhaps I can try singing," he would think. He had never really sung before, but he was willing to give it a try. "Who knows, if I get good enough at singing I could woo even some women!" He chuckled to himself at the absurdity of the thought then opened his mouth.
Naru would emit a sound from his mouth which was incredibly off tune. It was times like this where he wished the godheads had granted him a beautiful voice and not just looks. With the noise being produced from his mouth, Naru closed his eyes and tried his best to focus on his own noise and not the noise coming from outside. Slowly but surely, Naru found his happy place and it was as if he could only hear his own voice. He was starting to appreciate the calming aspects of meditation. Eyes opening, Naru would grab his tools and try to remember where he had left off. He had been messing with protractors, but he hadn't learned all too much about them.
Since his boss didn't have the time or patience to give a lesson on angles and protractors, Naru was on his own. He would simply try to learn the basics so that he could understand how to use the faceting machine. He would look here on the side of the faceting machine and took a close look at the protractor he had been shown the previous day. "So this is called a protractor. This thing is a full circle and it says it has three hundred and sixty ticks. So there must three hundred sixty degrees in a circle. Divide that by two and you get one hundred eighty for a half circle. This machine will rotate in a quarter circle which leaves ninety degrees."Naru paused and was impressed with how logical this all was. "Every time I adjust the faceting machine the dial next to the protractor changes. So all I need to do is adjust until I reach the desired angle?"
Naru felt ashamed at his lack of mathematical prowess. He understood the main point about adjusting until the desired number was reached so he nodded. He would also commit to memory the angles that made up a circle and half circle, but he wasn't sure he fully understood the concept. He wasn't entirely convinced so he would fiddle around with the adjustors in order to get a feel of what made the angle increase and decrease. There were ways to move the angle by a lot and some that made the angle change by a nearly unnoticeable amount.
"I think I have the gist of it," Naru muttered with a sigh of relief, "now, onto the gem." Naru looked at the topaz and saw that it looked absolutely horrid since it was uncut. Why exactly does a gem look better when it has been cut? He figured it was because when you create the right angle, light is allowed to bounce around inside the gem. If he put enough of the right cuts he would get a truly brilliant gem. If he messed up then the gem will look dull to all but the oblivious of customers. Through Naru's deduction he figured that this meant that being precise with the angles is everything!
Naru looked through the box of gems and pulled out several more topaz gemstones. He decided that he would sand the gems down to a smaller size and try attaching the gem to the faceting machine. It required little more than cleaning the gem and gluing it to the drop stick. Naru then practiced applying pressure to the lap without actually turning it. Naru would reference a reference guide that his boss kept in the workshop to pick angles to work with Before long, Naru was able to make the adjustments without fiddling around and looking for the correct knob to turn. He was actually having quite a bit of fun!
"Good," he said when satisfied, "I think I'm ready to start the cut. I guess the edge
I have glued to the drop stick will be the top of the gem. I should keep that in mind as I shape the gem so I can get a feel for what the gem will look like." This was probably the most nerve wracking part of this whole process. Making one flat side was easy, but he would have to make dozens for the rest of the gem to be considered complete.
It was a dream come true for the aspiring jewel crafter to finally be able to use a faceting machine. His smile was one of pure joy as he turned the lap and lowered the gem onto it. He was gentle at first then applied pressure until he could almost feel the friction rub away at the gem's rough edges. The reference guide had instructed his student to set the angle to thirty degrees. The man would watch carefully as an edge appeared where a rough bulge had once been. It looked like a much too shallow edge but it was a necessary mistake to show what would happen.
He then decide to summon all of his strength and make his fingers turn red as he pressed the gem hard into the lap. This certainly sped things up, but he wasn't sure using all of his strength was a good idea. The screeching sound the machine made under the excess force snapped Naru out of his meditative state and the sounds from outside started to flow back into his ears.
"Argh, why did I try to rush things, he would scold himself. He would stop himself and whisper words of encouragement to himself to calm down again. When he finally found his happy place again, he would continue his work. He wanted to be persistent in his meditation and make sure he could keep as still as possible when handling the faceting machine. He had no intention of getting yelled at for wasting materials again.
Before long Naru had created what he thought was quite a flat looking gemstone. The bottom part of the gem was pretty much done and all there was left to do was shape up the top. As he started cutting the top edges he started to notice that this gem didn't look all that good. Sure his precision could use work, but something was just off about the gem. What was more is that he didn't think he'd ever seen a gem cut this flat before. His smile had turned into a grimace and he felt like he had royally screwed up. Naru released the adhesive with some solution and held up the gem so he could inspect it.
"Hmm," the young man said as he examined the gem with a magnifying glass, "not bad for my first time doing this alone. I can clearly see that the cuts are not evenly spaced and it doesn't look like any of the cuts are the same depth. But why this gem looks so dull?" Naru's eyes lit up as he recalled what he had deduced earlier. "The angle was incorrect for this gem," the boy would mutter as he realized that each gem probably had its own angle configurations. He had just turned to a random page and started working!
Naru took the dull gem out to his boss who knew immediately what had gone wrong, "you see each gem has its own set of angles and cuts that make it look best. For Topaz, anything under about forty degrees doesn't let light bounce around enough inside the gem. Instead, the light passes right through leaving you with a gem that is simply too dull." The boss handed the gem back to Naru and the young man headed back to the workshop. His fingers were numb from all the handiwork.
He rested for a while and daydreamed, only snapping out of it when his coworkers started complaining to him about all their problems. This was the time in a very short while where all employees wanted the same day off. Naru had feared this would happen again because he had convinced them to work for extra pay. They were clearly taking advantage of him, hoping for more money. Naru was not in the mood to hand out any freebies today. "If none of you want to work then none of you will work and I will hire replacements for you. End of story." With that, Naru stormed off into the workshop. He needed to hold the employees to a consistent standard and make sure that they didn't step too far out of line.
Naru wanted to start working, but now his head was full of frustration and anger. There was no way he could continue cutting gems like this. "Okay buddy, all you have to do is clear your mind, he would tell himself but it wasn't that easy. "Just think about cute little kittens. " It didn't work all that well, but it was the best he was going to get.
Somewhat ready to work, Naru started to think about what he wanted to accomplish today. If he remembered correctly, he had been cutting gems yesterday. He had messed up cutting the gemstone by using the wrong angle for topaz. But today he was going to try again with the correct angle! He had figured out that if an angle was too small it would be too dull because light would pass through the gem. If the angle was just right then light would be reflected back through the top of the gem. So if an angle was too large then the light will be reflected too far and come out the side of the gem. It was angle control that determined whether or not a man was good or not.
A dull gem and a wealth of knowledge, those were the things that Naru had gained thus far from his teachings. Naru took a deep breath, attached a new uncut topaz to the dop stick, and started the cutting process. Whereas last time Naru was merely focusing on getting the angles right, he now knew that angles were only part of the battle. He had to focus on keeping symmetry all the way around the gem and not confusing types of facets. Naru referenced the papers Yunsig had left for them and saw that there were facets called girdles and stars which were both different from main facets. This was helpful to understand so that he could mentally label each facet size and angle. Each time he finished a facet he would repeat the type under his breath.
Hours passed as Naru did his best to replicate the drawing before him. In the end he was left with a topaz with eight main facets, sixteen girdle facets, and eight star facets. Or at least, that's what he was going to tell himself. In reality, many of the facets simply were not sized properly due to this being his first day using the machine. He was at least sure to use the correct main facet angle of forty degrees. All that was left to do for preparing this gem was to polish it. Once that was taken care of, Naru set the gem stone into the allotted space on the silver ring.
Final product in hand, Naru marched proudly into the main room of the jewelry store and showed off his work to his mentor. Yunsig shook his head and said, "no need to show me lad, it's probably no better than your last one. Your goal for the rest of the day is to sell that ring. A topaz silver ring with a gem of that size typically goes for about twenty gold money at this store. Let's see how much you can sell it for."
Naru stood there dumbfounded but went to see what his options were. There was a very tall intimidating man that had man sauntered into the store. His body was lean and he wore plate armor that covered small parts of his body. On his face was a mask, two horns on the top, and a snarling face depicted perfectly, adding to his intimidating mask, On his belt were two giant clubs that almost touched the ground, and seeing as how long the man's legs were, they must have been gargantuan in size. Naru looked this guy up and down and then turned to the other side of the shop.
"This is the easiest choice I've ever had to make," he thought to himself as he gathered up to courage to walk over to the old woman that was the only other one in the shop. He approached the woman and spoke loudly, "hello miss might I interest you in a silver topaz ring?" Naru then held up the ring with a goofy smile both of which caused the woman to step back. She hesitantly took the ring and looked at it closely before responding, "This isn't what I'm here for, sorry."
Naru wasn't expecting a rejection. He was hoping his craftsmanship would have at least been enough to garner some interest in conversing. Perhaps the woman was too old to see properly. "Or maybe I did something wrong?"
Before the woman could hand the ring back Naru interjected, "are you sure? I can give you a good price for it! It's yours for a discount!" The woman pressed the ring forcefully into the young man's hand and looked quite upset, "you're joking right? Even if I was interested in that gem even I know it's not worth much. Half. I'll pay that much and no more."
"If that's what you think then I guess you can have it for half, then," Naru said clearly disheartened to be told his work was near worthless for the effort he had put in. Realizing that the boy had the backbone of a wet noodle, the woman pulled out her money.
The woman left the store with a wide grin on her face leaving Naru alone to face his employer. Yunsig merely shook his head in disappointment and said, "you've got a lot to learn about selling product lad. Once you've got a price in mind you stick to it. It's up to you to convince them that the ring is worth that much. It's a bit difficult for you because you don't know the sales side of the business but it will get easier with time. Alright I've had enough of teaching for today. Pack your things and head on home. It's almost night!"
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