Mirabelle's Boots - Chapter 14 (Patreon)

~ Gisopi Minari’s, The Cobbler’s Art, Chapter Fourteen - The Cut

Now that we have spoken of the individual pieces a boot is made of, let us look at another differentiation. That is the "cut" of a boot, which refers to the height and shape of the boot shaft, which covers the ankle and lower leg. There are several different cuts of boots, including:

Ankle Boots - also known as ankle cut boots, these boots rise to the ankle and are usually lower cut than other boot styles. They are commonly worn by the everyman, and are also popular with the merchant class.

Mid-Calf Boots - these boots reach the mid-calf area and are a popular choice for everyday wear by those in less temperate or unfavorable regions in regards to climate. Adventurers in particular love these, not only for the fashionable statement they make as a mark of their trade but more importantly for their protection in the cold, dangerous dungeons.

Knee-High Boots - these boots reach the knee and are often used for fashion purposes or for added warmth in cold weather. There is a particular fashion statement available for this cut of boots, for the brazen and bold.

Thigh-High Boots - these boots reach the upper thigh and are commonly used for fashion purposes.

The choice between the different cuts of boots depends on the purpose and occasion. For example, ankle boots are a good choice for casual wear, while knee-high or thigh-high boots are often used for fashion purposes. The mid-calf is the popular choice for anyone near monsters or dungeons.

_____________________________________________

It is a new day.

Her voice fills the air as she prances around her home, inside the tree. Sunlight shines outside with vivid intensity, filling the air with a deep warmth that radiates towards the insides of everyone she has seen outside today. There has hardly been a single sad face.

— And the wicked, horrible, cruel fairy is no exception.

Mirabelle holds onto a piece of colorful, bright fabric that she had found outside. It looks like a failed dying experiment that had been tossed out for some reason, instead of simply having been covered up with a darker ink. It’s a large piece of cloth, red on one end, but then as the dye fades along its length, it fades to a softer yellow. As a whole, it’s much too big for her. But if cut into individual pieces, it’ll be a great material for her to work with to make her clothes.

That’s what she wants to do today.

Mirabelle beams, holding the fabric she had been hugging and spinning around with it away from herself as she looks at it, nodding.

She’s going to make herself a new dress today. She’s been watching the seamstress lately, learning from her, and she’s been practicing her boots. The arts are, of course, very different. But there are one or two transferable skills and concepts. Then, when she has a pretty dress, which will make her a good thing, she’ll finally be able to introduce herself to the humans.

The fairy drops down to the floor, laying the large piece of cloth out on the ground flat and spreading it as she decides which piece to snip off for her dress. Lifting her gaze, she looks out of the hole of her tree, past the loose fabric, towards the rays of sunlight beyond that fall in, painting the cloth she’s atop, which carries the same color.

The smile on her face widens, as she looks back down at the cloth that the sister-sun has chosen for her.

Mirabelle nods and sets to work.

______________________________________________

Cutting the fabric is easy enough. Mirabelle still has her shard of glass, but it’s a crude implement that rips the threads rather than cutting them. She’s learned that she needs a very sharp blade to actually cut the fabric and not just damage it. But since she has no such tools here and refuses to steal any, she’s improvised.

The glass will cut better if the fabric is tense and taut. So she’s tied a corner of the cloth square to the branches of the tree outside, nodding to herself as she looks at the colorful rectangle, and then, after laying on it for a while too, sets to work cutting a nice piece out for herself, before then vanishing back into her den, giggling and kicking her legs excitedly as she crawls over the wooden hole and into the tree.

She’s decided that she’s going to put pockets on it too, to help her carry things! Big pockets!

______________________________________________

In essence, her sack is a bit like a dress. It’s a cylindrical, open ended piece of fabric with holes for her arms to stick out of.

But it makes no accommodations. It’s just a tube; however, a body is more than that. A body, like all things natural, has shapes. It moves in and out. It moves. It turns. Clothes need to accommodate that. She’s learned this from her bootmaking. Boots, too, aren’t stiff, solid constructs of stone. They’re pliable. They have a certain amount of give to them that allows them to bend, move, and breathe.

So the fabric too, needs to be cut and sewn, not as one simple block of material, but as a few different sections that are then added together — in much the same way as a boot has different pieces that make up the whole. Dresses are the same. They have sleeves, for example. This needs to be considered when assigning material, and, given that her fabric has a colorful gradient, she has to be careful to find pieces that match the hue of the body so that she doesn’t have different colored sleeves.

She has to look presentable, after all.

— Leaves rustle outside of her den, and she looks, as birds fly by in the early afternoon sun. She hasn’t done anything else today except this, but that’s okay. This is her project.

Mirabelle grabs a fistful of some of the old bread she has stored against the wall and eats it before returning to her joyous work.

(Mirabelle) has used: [Tailoring {Sew}]

__________________________________________________

Hours pass.

The fairy lays on her stomach on the floor, her legs kicking up behind her as she hums, the tip of her tongue sticking out of her mouth as she stares at the threads she’s sewing at the bottom of the dress. She’s decided to add a little frill to the bottom hem of it, for a little…

Mirabelle stops thinking about the word.

- For a little extra.

Just… extra. Extra material for a little extra prettiness, for a little extra… wholeness of the piece. It’s not supposed to be functional and drab like her sack. It’s supposed to be… pretty.

It’s supposed to make her pretty.

Her wings buzz excitedly on her back as she works, adding the finishing touches.

_____________________________________________________

(MIRABELLE) has crafted an {Pretty}(Normal Quality)[Bouffont Dress]

Unlocked: [Tailoring {02}](Stitch)

{Pretty}(Terrible quality)[Bouffont Dress]

A small dress sized for a fairy, made from a fabric with the hues of a warm spring day, turning slowly towards summer. It has two short sleeves. The chest area is form fitting and the lower drape is loose and airy, with a decorative frill on the bottom.

It has a large pocket on either side of the waist.

{Pretty} +50% Value

• Weight: 0.10kg
• Durability: 10/10
• Value: 002 Obols

The fairy screams, running around her den in a circle, holding the dress in her hands as she spins and jumps, stamping her feet excitedly, before looking back up at her finished work with something stirring in her chest and eyes.

She runs to the side of the room, looking at the polished scrap metal she has there so that she can see her own reflection as she holds it up against her body, and then, a moment later, Mirabelle tears off the old sack and puts on the new dress. The soft fabric grazes much more lightly against her skin than that of the rough burlap sack she just had on. She can’t contain herself and laughs, spinning and watching the flowing material below her waist spin together with her, the fabric rising to create the image of a lost blossom, floating atop water.

She did it.

Mirabelle holds her hands together, not sure what this is, as she looks at herself in the mirror — this sensation.

She doesn’t have to look away when she sees her reflection. Bravely, the fairy stares at her own eyes, feeling something squirming in her gut, until eventually the building warmth is too much and she squirms around, quickly flying into the air in excitement.

Today’s the day.

She’s ready.

Mirabelle shoots out of her home, landing on a branch of the tree, before shooting off towards the first person she wants to meet.

It is dark now; night having come close to falling, but she won’t let that stop her.

Terrified but giddy, she shoots towards the shoemaker’s store, carefully flying in so as to not get her new dress dirty.

It is dark.

The shoemaker’s store has closed, and the city has already reached that time where it winds down slowly for the night. The door is locked, and the tools are neatly put away for her to find.

Mirabelle drifts through the store, her wings quietly buzzing as she floats through the air, until she sees the shoemaker in a familiar spot, sitting on his chair next to the portrait of the woman who is missing — having gone to the sleeping place long ago, leaving him alone to fulfill their shared art, alone.

She’s ready.

Mirabelle looks down at herself, exhaling, before then looking up and nodding to herself.

“Sir,” says the fairy, pushing down her shaking voice and all of her doubts. “Sir,” she says again. “Excuse me. I’m… I’m Mirabelle,” says the truly wicked creature, grabbing the edges of her frilly, springtide dress and lowering herself into a curtsy as she has seen others do here in the city. It is a polite manner of greeting in such situations amongst the human-people. “I… I just…” She lifts her head, feeling that sickly welling in her gut come again. She’s going to cry, and she doesn’t even know why. She’s not sad. But it’s there, that feeling. “- I just wanted to introduce myself and say thank you!” exclaims the fairy, lowering her head and closing her eyes tightly, pressing a droplet of wet out of them after all. Her expression is that of a child who expects immediate, violent repercussions.

But nothing comes.

She opens one eye and looks, and then another follows.

“Sir,” says Mirabelle quietly, drifting around to the side of the chair to look at the man who sits there in sleep, his head nodding down. The wretched spawn of horrific starlight looks at the shoemaker, her gut churning, as his body fails to undergo the motions of sleep, instead simply sitting there in total stillness — no breath, no movement, no response.

She drifts back, her hands covering her mouth as that welling rises to her throat, causing her to fight down the vomit before leaning over and purging.

The monstrosity born of a demon’s bowels screams, crying for help, as she grabs him, touches him, and makes real his presence in her sphere of existence as her hands touch his face, pushing against it as she yells and screams and cries.

However, the shoemaker stirs not, having gone now too to the sleeping place, where his wife has been waiting for him for a time now.

Mirabelle howls, never, ever, ever looking down at the black, inky smears around his fingers — lest she notice them, and if she does, she convinces herself that she didn’t.

________________________________________________

It’s over.

Everything is over.

Mirabelle doesn’t even really fly anymore. She just sort of… drifts in the wind, her wings loudly buzzing as she mindlessly bumps into houses and poles, not looking where she’s going as her body takes her back ho…

— Back to the hole that she lives in.

Her new dress is covered in ink and vomit, and there are smears of grease from the store. She floats through the air, seeing her tree in the distance, and then, sighing, just stops using her wings.

The fairy falls in free fall, the night wind taking it where it wills, her body not able to resist its whims as she careens, closing her eyes and waiting for the ground to take her, as everything spins.

Enough.

She’s had enough.

Maybe the stars will let all of this be. Maybe they’ll let her sleep too, so she can be with her family and everyone else, so she can finally stop being this horrible, foul thing that she is and if not, maybe she can just stop being in total.

The cruel fairy finds not the strength to smile as she wishes the world goodbye, the wind rushing in her ears as she feels the impact start, blades of grass bending beneath her back for a second.

— And then a second too long.

Her side hits hard against the ground, the fairy bouncing and then flopping over, yelling in an instinctual pain that should have been expected, honestly, as she flops down a few times, looking up in a confused, blurred daze at the giant hovering above her, sitting on a bench and rubbing his head, adorned with a mane of beautiful, soft hair, that something had struck.

He looks around the area before looking down at the fairy next to him on the bench.

The two of them stare at one another for a while.

Then he looks away, staring out towards the water. “Rough night?” asks the stranger, with no further questions than that, neither about her existence nor her state.

Mirabelle ugly-cries.

“Yeah,” he remarks, not saying anything else as he simply sits there and waits, until eventually the snotty, wet-faced beast of the dead stars looks up his way, still not able to formulate herself right.

“I thought I’d be happy if I was pretty,” she says, putting that statement out there with no further context or explanation to this man, whom she doesn’t really know at all. “But- but-” She pulls her air in, her throat tightening up too much to let her talk anymore.

The man smiles a knowing smile, shaking his head and digging into his jacket to pull out a comb. “Check this out,” he says, showing her the comb and then pulling out a crumpled scrap of waxed paper from his other pocket. He unfolds it and then wraps it around the comb. Mirabelle’s chest heaves as she can’t get enough air through her hyperventilation.

The man with the nice hair holds the paper-wrapped comb up to his mouth and blows on it, making the most ridiculous, quacky buzzing sound she’s ever heard. He looks back down at her, raising an eyebrow and smiling. “Eh? Not bad, right?” asks the man, waving the comb-construct with his hand.

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!” screams Mirabelle, clenching her fists.

He stops, scratching his cheek for a second, before he slides off of the bench and kneels down on the dirt, his face level with hers, as he lifts the comb up again and plays it like an instrument. It doesn’t sound like one. It sounds like a goose that ate a bad muffin. But he does so and stares at her with that stupid expression of his. It’s so goofy and ridiculous and -

— Mirabelle laughs, her chest heaving as her laughter triggers another bout of crying.

*Frwieeik*

“Stop it!” complains the fairy, laughing as she looks up at him, almost offended that he’s responding to her nightmare of a life with such nonsense.

He lifts both eyebrows, stares at her, and plays it again.

*Frwieeieik*

She laughs, hating him for it.

“There,” he says, nodding once as he watches her fall back down into her trauma, her throat and stomach aching from the movements.

“What the hell is supposed to be different now?!” she yells at him, regretting ever giving him that stupid comb. Is he delusional? Is he some kind of lunatic? What the hell is his problem?

The man with the great hair stands back up, winking at her as he unwraps the comb, puts the paper away, and then runs it through his hair, fixing the damage she did with her landing all in one move as he smiles a disgustingly sincere smile, which shows her that he truly means the wretched thing that he has to say to her after everything –

“You’re smiling now,” he replies. “So now you’re going to be okay.”

The air itself seems to stop. The fairy glares at the total stranger as she touches her face to feel that he had indeed forced it to move against her will, despite her greatest desires to feel miserable, and for good reason.

“I’M NOT!” she argues, not willing to let him win so easily on the subject of her future.

The man confidently tucks the comb away, patting his jacket where it rests as he looks at her. “If you can still smile,” he starts, holding out a hand to her. “Then you’re always going to be okay. Eventually.”

The utter shamelessness of the statement, the utter brazenness of his demeanor as he holds down a hand as if to help her up, the disgusting confidence in his posture — it’s all nauseating.

Mirabelle gets ready to scream.

“I like your dress, by the way. Are those pockets?” he asks.

Her shoulders slump, everything inside of her dying at once — the sadness, the terror, the hope — everything goes and just leaves her sort of blank as she looks at his hand, held down to her, noticing that her own arm is reaching out to grab the edge of his finger to pull herself up.

“They are…” relents the cruel fairy, smiling somehow, despite the heaviness of the starlight that washes down over them as she lifts her gaze, tears running into the lifted cracks of her mouth as the two of them look at one another, both knowing but not really knowing the other.

“Grace,” says the man, introducing himself, the glimmer of starfall trapped in his hair and eyes. “Nice to meet you, Mirabelle,” he says.

In the water next to them, the ducks quack.