#but also they clamp down on thier own kind wreckin crap because hey we don't want people looking at us too hard because let's be real

[sparkledeerfr]

The Two Weavers

Mochi had noticed the door under The Castle the first week they had cleared it out. He studied the runes carefully, noticed the age, the perfect smoothness of the stone as though someone had filled an archway with cement. Daniel had asked him about it and Mochi had not so much lied as he had just left certain things out- the runes were an intricate spell made by weavers to keep evil away. It was best not to disturb the work.

Mochi checked on the door once a week after that, because yes it was made by weavers and yes it was a very carefully woven spell to keep evil away. Well, to keep evil sealed and away from others was much more precise. Mochi had never actually seen the work done in person, nor had he done it himself, but he knew exactly what had happened. It was the very, very last resort of the weavers to punish and remove one of their own kind. A very nasty individual had been sealed into a room and left there with a few key items- the weaver equivalent of marooning a shipmate on an island with a pistol and one bullet.

(Read More Link)

The problem was that master weavers were exceptionally hard to kill, and their life span was unknowable if they had mastered flesh weaving as well. There could be someone behind that sealed door or there could be nothing but a skeleton, some rusting weaponry, and dried-up vials that once contained liquid. It bothered him some days to think that someone could be alive down there, and how long they had likely been down there alone in the darkness. But he also knew that you would have to be an surpassingly, exceptionally nasty person for them to do that. The spell had to be performed by a group of weavers who all agreed it was for the best, and weavers were not a group to do something without thought or mercy.

He continued checking on the door, and though some weeks he would be lax, he always came back.

That was until the day he found the spell had been broken- the runes were scratched out as though they were a coal drawing wiped with a finger, not something etched into stone. There was a hole bored straight through what was once the sealed doorway, large enough for a mid-sized dragon breed to get through. Mochi of course carefully looked around and found no one, but noticed that the various supplies the prisoner had originally been left had been set into the wall, the stone encasing them as though it was resin that had been poured around them.

His next step was of course to search around town, to carefully warn Booker and Hex about any new strangers, and to write to the heads of the weaver order out in Wind about what had happened. From there the heads would likely warn other groups just in case the escaped individual held a grudge for the order itself, and weavers were exceptionally good at spotting other weavers so it would be best to have more eyes on the lookout.

Mochi was honestly not sure what to expect would come of this. He half expected a letter to come from the heads of the order telling him that the individual had been apprehended, but they had only sent back polite letters thanking him for the warning and any documentation they had about who the individual may have been. There wasn’t much to go on- only twelve people in the long history of the weavers had ever been sealed in such a way and all mention of them aside from the warnings had been wiped from the records.

But still weavers were no fools. History you tried to bury always came back, and thus they had kept careful lists of those so punished, their appearance, their abilities and why they had been imprisoned. Two such people were possible matches- a female mirror and a male skydancer. Both were expert weavers of all schools. The mirror had been sealed for ‘unethical and disturbing experiments’, the skydancer for ‘abusing the art of fleshweaving’. Unsettling, sure, but at least it gave Mochi more to work with should the prisoner show themselves.

Months had passed with no letters, not even the barest trail, hint or rumor came floating towards him. Perhaps the prisoner’s long sentence had changed them, and they left to start a new life. Perhaps they were just keeping quiet. Either way Mochi decided to not let it consume his thoughts more than necessary- at least that was until someone told him about the new pottery shop that had opened in Can Town. He would have checked it out regardless of course as he was always happy to see a new artist arrive in the area, but this time his first instinct was suspicion instead of excitement.

This instinct turned out to be correct as the owner was a male skydancer, and Mochi felt that little extra fire in the stranger’s aura that told him the other had studied weaving. The owner was busy chatting happily with another customer so Mochi took the time to look the place over. The pottery work was exquisite, of course. Even the most plain red clay pot was well smoothed and glazed to perfection. There were two-toned pots with razor sharp edges on the designs etched into the surface, fine china vases, stoneware, salt glaze- just about anything one could ever need in vessel form. And no doubt each piece was technically perfect and well made, no doubt the owner would be all too happy to create a custom piece should you ask.

The order always compared fleshweaving to sculpting when he was learning it. Funny that.

Mochi looked up from a blue and white urn to see the owner looking at him- and a wild grin spread over the other’s face. It reminded Mochi momentarily of that other skydancer, Atlas.

It was always skydancers it seemed.

The owner rang his current customer up, thanked them and then came trotting happily over to Mochi, who glanced around the shop and found himself alone.  “Hello hello friend!” the skydancer said, a wide smile on his face. “My name is Grenfell, Gren for short, so happy to meet you! I’ve heard that you’re ummm...a weaver? A fellow artist?”

“Yes, I weave,” Mochi replied, eyeing him carefully. “My name is Mochi. I was just admiring your work.”

“How kind of you to say so!!” Gren replied, his smile and eyes growing somehow wider, and Mochi suddenly had the thought that perhaps the years of isolation had in fact done a number on Gren, just not in the way he had expected. “It’s my passion, you know, working with clay. I dare say I’d do so for free if I couldn’t wrangle payment out of it, haha!”

“As would I with my work,” Mochi replied calmly. He was a patient individual, but this dance was already growing tiresome. Lives could be on the line. “And I would hope that you’ll stick to pottery and not practice your particular skill on anything else?”

“Why no! Of course not! How could I possibly work on anything else but clay??” Gren said, his smile showing more teeth.  Mochi sat there, quietly blinking at the skydancer, waiting for a proper answer. “Oh dear I’ve forgotten how absolutely boring weavers are. My goodness you’re not even the least bit unnerved by me!”

“You have not yet given me a real reason to be,” Mochi replied. “Now, should I call for backup, or can I just quietly keep an eye on you? I would be perfectly willing to let you attempt to re-enter society.”

“Oh I should think that I’d rather keep from ending up where I was, dear Mochi,” Gren said, still grinning. “But completely re-enter society? I dare say that’s a hard ask. Who among our order could possibly do that? We are all rather odd, after all.”

“Then we shall have peace,” Mochi said. “But if anything goes wrong, know that I shall be looking to you.”

“Oh my dear weaver, I would expect nothing less.”