The Shining Wyrm

8.3

Jewel glared at the spindle, then looked over to Mother and how effortlessly she seemed able to take a bundle of wool and just magic it into thread on the simple little piece of wood and stone.

If everyone else had to focus as hard as her to accomplish the grace and mastery of their spinning, Jewel would not feel so bad.

But instead, Mother and all the other women were talking constantly, barely even paying attention to the effort.

Even the girls who were still learning themselves seemed to mostly be able to turn their attention away most of the time.

And Jewel was ashamed to say she was jealous of them to only have a few years of growth and at most a doubling in size to concern themselves and their lessons.

Jewel had doubled in her length nearly four times since she was hatched!

Mother commented and talked about how the children were fairing through the village, how the men were getting on.

A few admonishments for the bruises they had seen from Jewel’s rough treatment.

Apologies offered just as freely and good natured laughs and encouraging smiles.

Jewel was yet not a mistress of wool enough to afford much attention for the banter all around her.

She needed to keep her focus.

As Jewel got longer and bigger, the nuance and specifics she learned the year before in spinning always changed. It felt like every year she had to struggle just to regain competence all over again.

When she was four she had mostly been able to do it as children and her Mother spun.

But then she had gotten too long to hold herself all the way upright.

So she had briefly learned to run the pulled line of wool horizontally from hands to foot before dropping the spindle down. But then she had gotten so long that way was too far for the wool to go and still let gravity keep the pull.

Then as her Wyrmfire grew stronger and deeper that caused all kinds of other problems.

And that was after she had found a way to even manage what peasant girls could do at half her age!

Her hands and feet had started poorly suited to the work. Her claws are sharp and easily either snared or broke the wool, her digits, while usable to grasp, had less finesse in their splay and her scales had a different texture to any skin of the women and made keeping the wool moving the right pace through them difficult.

And then all four of her limbs had grown larger, their capacity for the tingling flame of Wyrmfire swelling more.

At one time Jewel had even briefly used the claw finger of one of her wings to help drop the wool to the spindle but that had worked poorly at best and impossibly when she got a bit more wingspan.

Spinning was probably one of the works that Jewel was the absolute worst at.

But it was the proper duty of a lady to know how to spin thread, weave fabric, repair garments and embroider clothes.

So Jewel was there with Mother and twenty-five of the women and girls from the village working on Father’s wool from last year’s shearing.

Jewel huffed again and shifted and bunched herself up another way. She had gotten just big enough that the way she had used to hold herself before was making the thread too weak.

Shifting around and trying to find the right compromise and folding and piling herself to get her feet and hands at the right distance from each other all over again.

Struggling to get the angles right. Her arms were so awkwardly placed! They were both too close together to give a spindle that fit her hands with proper room between them and yet far enough apart the child’s one would not work.

She shifted and moved around on her side of the spinning room. Which was whichever room had good light on that particular day and enough space for Mother and the day’s tithe in spinners to work in the same room as Jewel for the season.

It had been one of Mother’s suggestions years ago that Jewel abandon trying to spin precisely as a human woman did and instead sought to leverage the gifts she had been given as a dragon.

And that did help.

Temporarily.

Whenever Jewel could manage to find a proper posture her size did provide means to handle a great bulk of wool at once, and when she was not failing to pace it such that the thread grew weak, she was often complimented on the quality and strength of her thread.

So she was using her size to do a longer drop with a heavier spindle.

And when she managed to get all things properly sorted, Jewel could spin thread quite well indeed.

Jewel could be an asset.

But that assumed Jewel could get the pace, spin and balance right for her latest dimensions.

Then that she also successfully adjusted for how her scales could be simultaneously too smooth and too catching on the wool at the same time!

Which was a nuanced property that changed as much with her mood as it did her age!

It meant Jewel often had at best half a season in five when she felt even reasonably useful at spinning.

Jewel just kept growing and changing every year, and her scales shifted and did frustrating things in the precise nature of how they went down her fingers when there was more finger to cover.

And then there was how, if she let her Wyrmfire get too heated the wool, started to bend and cling to her from all over the room and snare itself together.

Which meant that she also could neither grow overly excited or agitated or frustrated or even let herself daydream overmuch as some of the girls did around her when they grew tired of talking.

To spin Jewel had to be calm, poised, serene and at peace not just in appearance but in truth.

She tried again holding the wool, spindle and thread precisely. The main clump held in her right hand, fed from a bundle resting on her coils, the loosely aligned thread running over her left hand finger just behind the root of her claw and from there dropping down the length of her folded up midsection to the weighted spindle dangling just over the floor.

The place of her current posture consternation was finding where she needed to alternate with her right and left foot to gently keep the spindle going.

Jewel focused inward on just the feel of the wool passing from hand to finger and down and to simply get to the business of relearning and remastering just how long she needed to wait before the thread was strong.

Keep her wyrmfire to only slightly running through the tips of her fingers and toes to help the fibers only stick to her otherwise smooth scales without pulling the thread apart mid-wind.

Breathing deeply and ever so slowly so she did not disturb any of the other women and girls in their work.

Yes this probably would work, the thread was coming out properly strong.

It had taken her a quarter of the morning spinning time before the noon meal but she finally had an idea of where she had to hold her body.

Now from this posture, she was trying to match her Mother’s or even some of the older peasant woman’s grace as they shifted smoothly from the spinning of a length of thread to the winding round the spindle of the finished portion and the drawing out of more wool into a fresh line for spinning.

All simultaneously! The clumps of wool sliding through fingers and down into a fresh length. The best amongst them (and Mother was nearly the best) could keep the motions all fluid and constant and without the awkward stalls and stops that Jewel faltered into repeatedly.

As she failed to keep the fluid movements right for the fifth time that morning, Jewel had to smother her frustrated groan.

But of course, that meant her wyrmfire was no longer tamped down everywhere except in the very tips of her fingers and the root of her toe-claws.

The agitation spread through her hide as the wyrmfire rose up and pulled the thread of the spindle towards her, picking up specks of loose fiber and dust. They clung to Jewel's scales before she could recenter herself.

The banter hitched a bit but they all knew how much it bothered her to interrupt their gossip.

Mother’s duties for Father were important. Talking to the other women of the Village while spinning was about more than just filling spindles of thread, after all.

The words and gossip that passed among them was the heartbeat of the village.

It was among the reasons Mother insisted that the women who worked spinning Father’s wool stock should change every day among the households of the Village.

Thinking about this, Jewel found her center.

Focusing on something other than her own failings helped.

The slack returned to the wool around her coils as once again the trembling tingle of Wyrmfire focused itself back to her fingers, toes and deep in the core of her body near her heart.

Jewel glanced around at the way the eldest and surest spinners around her moved.

There was a sort of rhythm to it.

To their voices, to the way they spoke, the way the wool moved in hand among them and then was drawn into thread.

The slight bobbing of the spindles as they twined the thread into being was magic.

A familiar kind of magic.

Jewel paused in her struggle, relaxing, letting her spindle still.

This was familiar.

Jewel began moving again, but this time it was different.

She listened to the murmurs and the gossip but more than that she listened to the music in it.

She felt it in the wyrmfire that ran in the thinnest spark through each finger and toe. Not just her own but in the others.

In the way that there was almost a hum to the wool as it passed her digits and ran over the smoothness of her scales.

The subtle winding against the grain of the wood, not just in her spindle but all of them.

There was a hum in the thread being made.

Jewel found herself humming softly along with the music in that.

She felt how the music wanted to move.

How the wool and the light and the wood and the fibers sang.

And started to shift herself, moving her legs, her coils, her arms and neck.

Making the sound more right.

Making the movement more smooth.

The conversation stilled a bit around her for a time. A few of the girls and older women offered their own songs.

Old songs Jewel had heard before when she walked the village.

Outside houses where families learned old truths they did not share with Father or any of the Footmen.

But they were here to spin thread from wool.

And soon while Jewel’s humming did not vanish entirely the gossip and the talk returned.

Jewel was surprised when they had not even reached the noon day meal and they had all of them run out of bundles of wool.

Or to be more precise, Jewel had started taking from their own loads of wool in order to spin more of it into her own line.

And then she had simply run out of more work to do.

Everyone seemed to be staring at her with a bit of wonder and amusement at the incredibly burdened spindle of thread she had made.

Mother beamed at Jewel and looked around at the rest of the women and girls that had come to fulfill their service as Spinners.

At the fully spun wool that should have been the effort of a group this size for at least another thirty days.

Now all nicely wound and wrapped.

Jewel felt the urge to flare her wings rising but held to the decorum mother expected her.

“Well then! It looks like we're done for the day girls! Who would like to join me in a celebratory drink with the noonbread?!”

Jewel could not help but laugh.

Mother was wonderful but she loved her wine.