very_sharpe | Workshop Visit

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daine

Workshop Visit

Thomas was quite pleased to get a text from Daine asking if he was free, or at ihs workshop. He answered her: yes to both.

Come through the alley at the back of the building. The shop is closed but I'll let you in through the workshop if you'd like to visit.

He'd be happy for the company.

At the moment he was restocking after the lunar new year; he'd spent all his time making little rooster mementos and hadn't bothered to make anything else. Steve had warned him that they were selling out on things, and that one or two people had been by to request commissions. He had a board with all the commission receipts and descriptions and sketches for the commissioned pieces. The long work benches were well organized and at the moment it seemed that he had a little assembly line going for some of the smaller pieces he sold. It helped to set things up that way when he had Steve helping him.

When he heard a knock at the door he wiped his hands off, as best he could, and went to open it for Daine.

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This is overdue, Daine thinks. Not that Thomas would know, but he's one of only a few people she told about Kitten before the dragon actually arrived. He knew more of her than anyone else did. Given that - and given how much she assumes Kitten will love his workshop - it seems silly that she hasn't brought the dragonet around sooner.

Well, she's doing it now. With the shop actually closed, but Thomas still there, it's better timing than she might have managed earlier. She'd sort of assumed they'd have to hide in the back room so customers wouldn't stumble across the dragon, and she'd been fretting a little about Thomas's employees seeing her. But if Kitten can see the shop without anyone but Thomas seeing her, that's fair perfect.

By the time she reaches the back entrance, she's feeling almost giddy. "Hullo, Thomas," she says when he opens the door, her large backpack slung over her shoulders and a larger grin on her face. She steps into the workroom, breathing in the familiar scents of sawdust and paint and metal - craftwork smells that she doesn't come across so often here as she would back home. "I was hoping to talk to you about that model of Kitten. I've come upon something that might help."

"Oh, certainly. Ah, let me clear some space."

Thomas moved a few notebooks and stacked them so they took up far less space on one of the tables. It was actually a table the used to eat lunch when his helpers were in, but he'd sort of taken it over in the off-hours.

"I think I've done a dozen sketches of dragons, but they're all-- well, you've seen the ones I've built and put out already. I'm trying to get Kitten's look properly, since she's a real thing and not a bit of myth from my world. I'm sorry it's been slow going."

"It's all right," Daine assures him. "I know you've been fair busy." There was the new year, and she doesn't expect him to prioritize commissions - especially one she'd have to pay off in installments - over keeping his shop stocked.

She carefully shrugs off the backpack, supporting it from the bottom as she sets it on the table. "It's just as well you haven't gotten too far. This ought to make things a bit easier." Keeping a straight face is impossible, but it doesn't matter. Kitten's arrival was so unlikely that she doesn't expect Thomas to have guessed at it. Without further ado, Daine unfastens the cover flap and pulls it back, allowing Kitten to pop her head out.

The dragonet looks around the workshop, her cat-like eyes adjusting to the light, then blinks up at Thomas and chirps a greeting.

"Thomas, this is Kitten," Daine says, eagerly watching for his response.

Thomas didn't mean to stare - he certainly knew how rude it was - but it wasn't every day that a small dragon appeared in his shop. He managed to collect his senses long enough to offer Kitten a curteous bow; that somehow seemed the least he could do in the presence of a young dragon.

But he was still staring.

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Kitten." He couldn't keep the awe from his voice. He stood up straight again and moved closer to the table, wanting to take in all of her. "You're far more graceful-looking than I've been imagining - I'm terribly sorry for that." Daine had told him that Kitten could understand people, so he talked to her like one. The last thing he needed was a dragon - even a small one - annoyed with him.

He looked at Daine, almost speechless for a moment. "Did she-- did she just appear here?"

Daine bites back a grin. Thomas's reaction was about what she'd hoped, and it's a treat to finally see it.

Kitten responds to the bow with a graceful nod of her head, a gesture she'd put to use in Carthak, during all the fancy introductions. The effect is somewhat spoiled by the way she then clambers out of the backpack, which Daine sets down beneath the table, out of the way. Kitten stretches, then sits up on her haunches, examining Thomas without about as much interest as he's showing her.

"A few weeks ago," Daine confirms with a nod, her tone faintly apologetic. "I meant to bring her by sooner. But I've told her all about you and the shop; I knew she'd like to see it." Kitten's been fascinated by the technology in Daine's apartment, but it's not the sort of thing she can take apart and understand. Not that she's going to take any of Thomas's creations apart - Daine might die of shame if she did such a thing - but they work in ways she knows the little dragon could understand and appreciate.

Kitten turns to examine the workroom with a low, impressed whistle, then points to the table that seems to be holding a few works in progress, the whistle rising in pitch, inquiring. "I think she wants to know what you're making," Daine translates.

"Well, I can't blame you for wanting to let her get acclimated," he said. When Daine translated Kitten's curiosity, Thomas went to pick up one of the nearly-finished models from the work bench. He brought it to the table for Kitten to examine. It was a little rooster that flapped its wings and scratched the ground with the turn of a crank.

"You can play with it, if you like. Worst comes and you take it apart, I can always put it back together," he told the young dragon.

Kitten examines the rooster closely, bending her neck to bring her head nearer the little object. It takes her a moment to notice the crank, and she turns it slowly at first, as if uncertain that she ought to. But when the little figure springs to life, she chortles in clear delight, and Daine grins.

"Mithros, don't tell her to take your things apart," she says in an undertone, though she's making no real effort to go unheard by Kitten. The dragon glances up from the rooster long enough to blow a raspberry at her, then hunkers back on her haunches and lifts it off the table, turning it between her forepaws to examine it from all sides. "She might take you up on it, and then you'll really have a mess on your hands."

She doesn't truly think KItten would cause such chaos, but she also doesn't want Thomas to bite off more than he can chew.

"Really, unless she's going to try to eat it, it won't do any harm. I can just put it back together," he assured Daine, not minding at all if Kitten wanted to disassemble the toy. It was meant to be played with, after all. Thomas couldn't help but smile when he heard Kitten's sound of delight - he understood that clearly enough.

"Oh I don't know. She's a clever girl, better to let her have something she's allowed to play with. Less worry about her troubling something more fragile. And if she's terribly curious about something, I can always show it to her."

Daine's reasonably confident that Kitten won't eat it; the dragonet seems to have grown out of her 'experimental nibbling' phase. Even if she did take the little rooster apart, she'd probably do it carefully, in a way that wouldn't actually break it. Still, Daine isn't so sure 'playing' and 'taking apart' should be treated as interchangeable. Not that Kitten will be exploring any other shops anytime soon, but Daine wouldn't expect most shopkeepers to have such a charitable view of a dragon deconstructing their wares.

Kitten, on the other hand, is evidently pleased by being called 'clever' by this new acquaintance. She lifts her head proudly, then turns to Daine and lets out a pointed snort. "Yes, yes," Daine says, wrinkling her nose at her. "You're terribly impressive."

The dragon nods, then turns back to the rooster. She seems to be examining its eyes most closely; from where Daine's standing, it looks as if they might be made of stone, though cut very tiny. She trills softly, and the little stones flare as if someone had shined a light behind them. Daine smiles. "She learned that trick a few months ago," she tells Thomas. "It doesn't change them or anything, it just makes 'em shine."

"Well, it's a terribly clever trick. Wonder if I could mimic it somehow..." He trailed off, already wondering about how he might be able to replicate that effect. It would never be as natural as Kitten made it look, but still. Shining stones could be something special in some models.

"Would she like toys?" He realized he was talking about Kitten like she wasn't there and looked at the young dragon instead. "Pardon, that was rude. Would you like to have some things to play with? If it's alright with you, of course," he added, looking at Daine again. "I make plenty that would be more appropriate for her. Most of them are made out of wood."

They were for children, but Daine said that kitten was still rather young.

"I should think so," Daine guesses, frowning thoughtfully. "Like a lamp, but tiny." There's a bulb on her phone that's astonishingly bright for its size, so at least she knows they exist. Mithros knows how easy they are to find, or how expensive they are -- or whether Thomas would find it easy to work with such things. One of the reasons she likes his creations so much is because she mostly understands them. Adding electronics is well beyond what she could imagine working out.

Daine bites back a smile as Thomas catches himself. Even back in Tortall, it wasn't so unusual for folk to speak about Kitten as if they didn't expect her to understand them, and while the dragonet was usually quick to correct them, she likes it best when they correct themselves. Kitten nods vigorously, and Daine doesn't bother hiding her smile at that. "She'd love it," she says, though it isn't really needful. Kitten's obvious interest doesn't require translation. "Especially things like yours, that move and do things. My grandda carved me some wooden puppets, and she liked those, but her paws are too small to really play with them."

"Perhaps something with a battery," he mused, mostly to himself. He'd have to work on that with Steve to see how small of a thing they could work with, and how easy they could make its replacement. A battery would run out. Perhaps they could also make something that a person could plug into an outlet.

He took a small notepad out of his pocket to take note of all that. He looked over at Kitten with a smile and added another note to make something for her. "We'll sort something out for you then, Kitten-dear," he promised her. "A toy you can pull around, another you'll be able to take apart and put together as you please. Things you can work with your paws just as they are."

If he could make things for children's hands, he was sure he could make things that would suit Kitten's delicate paws.

Kitten perks up and lets out an excited chirrup, and Daine grins. "She never really had much in the way of toys back home," she explains. "We were on the move a lot, and we had to pack light -- and she was always so interested in whatever was going on that it wasn't as if she got bored overmuch."

Things are different here. They obviously won't be taking any long trips, and Kitten will have to spend a lot more time entertaining herself than she ever did back in Tortall. Daine's not even sure how long any given toy will keep her occupied, but it'll be better than nothing.

"Thank you," she adds, giving Thomas a grateful smile.

Kitten whistles to get her attention, then points from the rooster toy to herself before hunching forward, as if to mimic the toy's posture. "Oh!" Daine says, once she's figured it out. "Do you still have those dragons that make smoke? I told her about them. I think she wants to see, if they haven't been sold already."

"She'll have as many as she likes here, so long as you don't mind me spoiling her a bit." Thomas knew this place might not be as entertaining for Kitten, so he'd try to come up with things to keep her interest.

He smiled at the mention of the dragons. "I do, certainly. Hold on." Thomas disappears through a door to the front of the shop and comes back a moment later. He sets one of the medium-sized dragons - about a foot tall - on the table for Kitten to examine. He showed her how to make smoke come out of its mouth. "Daine's told me that's not how your sort makes fire, but those are the only stories I'd ever heard before that."

Daine shakes her head, the gesture echoed by Kitten a moment later. "You may as well," she says her smile turning wry. She's more worried about Kitten being bored than spoiled; and that's if you can even call it 'spoiling' when the dragon's already dealing with far less freedom than she's used to. Thomas could make her a whole pile of toys, and it would still feel less like an indulgence and more like damage control.

"Only if it won't put you behind here, though," she hastens to add. She wouldn't presume the toys to be gifts, but he still has a whole shop to run, and customers to consider besides her and Kitten.

The model dragon earns an admiring whistle from Kitten. She even stretches her tiny wings in imitation of the flapping move the model makes, though the smoke makes her sneeze. "That's what you get for sticking your nose in it," Daine says mildly, knowing how tough the dragonet is despite her appearance. For Thomas's sake, she adds, "She's done worse to herself." She doesn't know what exactly is in the smoke, but considering the things Kitten's eaten in the past without any long-term ill effects, she doesn't expect it's anything that would harm her.

"Well, I should prefer that she not try to explore the workshop itself too much. Perhaps she'd be alright, but I'd feel terrible if she managed to find anything that actually could hurt her in here."

Perhaps Kitten was resilient - Daine had said as much about her - but Thomas would rather not test that theory around tools and technology that Kitten might not have run into in her own world.

"But she's welcome to visit - both of you are - as often as you'd like." He offered Daine an almost shy sort of smile.

"That's fair enough," Daine is quick to agree. This is Thomas's workspace. Even if his concerns are for Kitten's sake, Daine doesn't want the dragon to muck up his business, either. "I wouldn't want her to mess about with your things, whether they'd hurt her or not. It's still your shop."

Kitten lets out a mild cheep and ducks her head, lifting a paw to rub at her snout. "And that's kind of you to offer," Daine adds with a grateful smile. He really has been terribly kind to her, ever since she met him. "You'll spoil both of us," she adds with playful good humor, nose wrinkling. "You've already been fair sweet to me, and now you're going to start in on Kitten."

Thomas actually looked a bit shy for a moment, very nearly blushed when Daine said he'd been sweet to her. "I rather like seeing people happy, and you've been kind to me as well. I've-- sometimes I feel I've a great deal to make up for. But when I was happiest, when I felt best, I was making things for people I care for and making them smile. So if I can even do that even a bit for you, and Kitten, I'd be terribly pleased."

He looks a little sheepish for a moment, and Daine wonders if she said something wrong or embarrassed him somehow. She didn't really mean it, the stuff about him spoiling them, but she'd thought that was obvious. They've all three of them been yanked into a foreign realm and trapped in a single city; after all that, it would take an awful lot of fine treatment before it started to feel like spoiling.

She understands having a lot to make up for, though, and she nods sympathetically. Well, she doesn't understand what it means for Thomas -- and while part of her is curious, wondering if Edith might have anything to do with it, she knows it's none of her business. If he wanted to tell her more, he could, but it'd be fair rude to pry. She wouldn't relish telling him about Carthak, after all.

Instead, she focuses on the nice bits. "I'm sure you'll manage," she says. "And I'm glad Darrow lets you do what makes you happy. If we're all to be stuck here, it seems only fair that we have that chance."

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